Amazon News and Trends – June 2022 Episode Summary:

In this episode of eCommerce Deep Dive, Nathan Hogle, Senior Director of Client Data and Resource Management, covers Amazon news and trends for the month of June 2022.

Improved Retail and Brand Analytics Dashboard –

With the relaunch of Retail Analytics, your reports tool will be separated into two separate products:

1. Retail Analytics (ARA):
   Available to all vendors, this includes the sales and traffic dashboards as well as the operational reporting dashboards. The dashboards included in this experience are as follows:
   • Sales
   • Traffic
   • Net Pure Product Margin (PPM)
   • Forecasting
   • Inventory
   • Catalog
2. Brand Analytics (ABA)
   Available to brand representatives, this includes the consumer behavior dashboards. The dashboards included in this experience are as follows:
   • Repeat Purchase Behavior
   • Search Terms
   • Market Basket Analysis
   • Demographics

Go to Retail Analytics under Reports.

• If you are a brand owner, you will see Amazon Brand Analytics.
• If you are NOT a brand owner, you will see Amazon Retail Analytic Basic.

There is also a full list of metric changes and their respective definitions in specific KPI calculations, which can be found on the new Retail Analytics page.

Four benefits of the improved analytics are as follows: 

1. Expanded access for non-brand owners:
   Retail Analytics will be available to all vendors (manufacturers and distributors), regardless of Brand Registry status. Access to the Net PPM dashboard and the manufacturer view in all dashboards is only available for manufacturers.
2. New data source:
   Amazon has migrated to a different data source for Retail Analytics in order to match the internal tools used by your Retail Partners. As a result of the new data source, the data in Retail Analytics may differ from the data in the legacy Amazon Brand Analytics dashboards.
3. Increased historical date selection:
   You will now be able to see historical sales data going back six weeks to three years, depending on the time frame selected (i.e., daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly). A recurring option is also available for month-to-date (MTD) and year-to-date (YTD) data, as well as the option to toggle change metrics on and off (e.g., year-over-year, prior period, etc.).
4. Help content:
   Each dashboard will include a Learn More link that leads to dedicated help content and an Amazon Retail Analytics metric glossary to help vendors better understand the inputs and calculations of the metrics in Retail Analytics.

New Amazon Brand Protection Report –

Last month, Amazon released its second annual Brand Protection Report, highlighting the progress made in the last year combating counterfeit products and bad actors on the platform as well as call-outs and updates on the myriad of brand and customer protection programs provided by Amazon. Some highlights from the report are:

• Amazon has made it harder for bad actors to register a new selling account by adding an in-person verification process. Amazon estimates they stopped over 2.5 million attempts at account creation in 2021, a decrease from 6 million in 2020.
• Brand Registry, Amazon’s brand protection and IP registration service, was launched in 2017 and now has over 700k brands enrolled. This is an increase of 40% over 2020.
• Project Zero now has over 20,000 brands enrolled, which uses Amazon’s advanced technology alongside sophisticated brand intellectual property knowledge to detect counterfeit products on the platform.
• Transparency, Amazon’s own serialization program, now with 23,000 brands enrolled (an increase of 23% over 2020) and protected over 750 million product units in 2021, an increase of 50% to 2020.

You can find the full report on Amazon’s Brand Services website and we encourage all interested parties to review it when possible.

Second Prime Day Confirmed –

Amazon began notifying third-party merchants of this fall Prime Day event via Seller Central though the notice didn’t announce any official dates. We can expect this event to run in the fall, early to mid-October. This is the first time the company will hold two such events in the same year. Read more here.

New Collect Shipment Workflow in Vendor Central –

If you are a Collect Vendor that routes shipments at an ASIN level in Vendor Central, this information applies to you. In July 2022, Amazon will launch an updated shipment workflow on Vendor Central for Collect vendors. These new features are designed to enhance your shipment experience when you create Amazon freight inbound less-than-truckload (AFI LTL) shipments in Vendor Central and improve on-time pickup performance.

As the new features roll out throughout July, you may see a new step in the workflow. The updated workflow will have a new step three where you can request an available pickup date that more accurately reflects Amazon’s pickup capacity. The new step will confirm carrier and fulfillment center availability before showing you available pickup dates to improve confidence that Amazon carriers will execute on the requested pickup date that you select.

For more information about the new shipment creation workflow, go to Shipment Workflow’s frequently asked questions.

To learn how to route shipments using the new features, go to the Create Routing Requests training.

New Tool to Update and Manage Videos –

To make it easier for brands to upload videos, Amazon launched a new tool that lets you upload and manage your product videos via Vendor Central. In addition to uploading a video, you can also:

• Associate a single video to multiple products
• Upload multiple videos for a single product
• Use auto-generated thumbnails
• Track status of the upload process
• Review viewership metrics

To get started, go to Upload and Manage Videos under Items in Vendor Central.

New Amazon Ads Team –

Amazon has recently posted job listings for roles within their Amazon Advertising business focusing on “Local Ads.” Amazon is tasking this team with working alongside smaller, city-specific ad companies – the kind of ads that you would see in a local newspaper for local mom-and-pop shops or smaller local chains. Brands that utilize these local ad companies are often advertising their products on Facebook or Google, as the ad competition on Amazon has become too fierce, pushing out smaller brands to make way for the largest brands with the biggest budgets. This move to focus and partner with local agencies looks to take on the local ad competition with the other large digital platforms.

Learn more about Amazon’s Sponsored Advertising here.

ASIN-Level Reporting for Amazon Sponsored Brands –

The new Attributed Purchases Report for Sponsored Brands provides insight into the specific products sold and attributed to your campaigns, which helps you understand which product sales your Sponsored Brands campaigns are driving, can surface new advertising opportunities, and identify which products are engaging new-to-brand customers. These products are directly promoted by your campaign, on your landing page, or are indirectly attributed via Brand Halo. At this time, this report is not available for campaigns that include book ASINs.

For brands-products association updates, click Access and Settings, and then click Brands in your Amazon Advertising portal.

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