A new report indicates Amazon is giving third-party merchants who advertise on its site better tools and personalized hand-holding, all in an effort to increase their spending on advertising.
Wall Street firm Cowen Equity Research recently met with two former Amazon employees-turned consultants who advise brands on best practices selling on Amazon.
Cowen analyst John Blackledge said the two consultants reported Amazon has made significant improvements in its Ad Tech tools compared to a year ago, “including improved reporting, more granular data, better targeting, and more keywords.” And the consultants expect to see continued improvements.
Cowen had reported on the Amazon’s advertising tools in a March report that described features such as targeting; dynamic bidding; and video ads.
The consultants also told Cowen that another way Amazon tries to get sellers to increase their spending on ads is through outreach, with Amazon account reps reaching out to sellers with lower threshold spending than they had previously seen.
“For example, some of our consultants’ clients who are spending only $5K or $10K per month are getting proactive outreach from AMZN account reps advising them how to optimize and effectively increase their AMZN marketing spend (though frequency of touchpoints from AMZN reps depends on the vertical).” This is compared to previous levels of spending that were “several multiples higher,” according to the consultants cited in the Cowen report.
It’s not just Amazon looking for ad revenue from sellers; eBay and Etsy are pushing Promoted Listing ads, and the Amazon rivals are finding more places on their pages (including search results and listing pages) to display ads to ensure supply meets demand.
