AI, Analytics, and Adapting Seller Strategies in Seattle

The Buy Box Experts team recently attended Amazon Accelerate, a premier event designed to connect and empower sellers in the Amazon marketplace. Multiple announcements aimed to change how sellers navigate their operations, content optimization, analyze reporting, and grow their ads within the marketplace. Here are some need-to-know takeaways and key reflections that we feel are useful for our brand partners or other connected sellers, including:?

• The Future of AI in Amazon?
• Seeing More in Your Analytics
• Discovering Your Next Growth Opportunity?

The Future of AI in Amazon

More AI advancements were unveiled at Amazon Accelerate 2024, signaling the future of e-commerce for sellers. These innovations highlight how Amazon continues to leverage AI to simplify and improve the seller experience.

• Project Amelia: Defined as “Amazon's all-in-one selling expert designed to streamline seller operations,” Project Amelia is an AI system in development mode that will help sellers monitor business performance and manage listings. This AI assistant will support year-over-year business insights, content recommendations, and inventory management by answering knowledge-based questions, offering status updates and metrics, and eventually helping with actions and issue resolution on the seller’s behalf as it develops. It’s currently in beta for select US sellers and will roll out to more users in the weeks following Accelerate, expanding internationally later this year with multilingual support.

• Amazon AI Video Generator: Amazon introduced AI-powered video ads to help elevate ad visuals with a single product image. The generator adds live image motion and dynamic elements to product marketing to support more customer engagement with ads. The examples shown at the conference included natural-looking steam rising from a coffee cup image and AI-generated videos with text and music overlays. According to Amazon, the video generator and live images are currently available in beta to select US advertisers.
• More Personalized AI Listing Content: Amazon also introduced several general AI tools that will take personal product recommendations on listings to another level while streamlining and enhancing the process. The new technology allows sellers to input a brief description, URL, or product image that AI will use to help generate base listings that engage customers. It will also help sellers address compliance requirements during the creation process. Amazon is expanding its capabilities to allow for bulk listing creation, where AI will generate optimized titles, bullet points, and descriptions for multiple products simultaneously. Plus, the generative AI will help brands create A+ content like image carousels and comparison charts to enhance product detail pages. Sellers can even use it to personalize product recommendations and descriptions based on individual customer preferences, ensuring they position their products in front of the right audience.

Seeing More for Analytics and Operations

As part of the conference, Amazon announced updates on analytics and reporting tools to help sellers optimize their growth and operations.?

• Customer Journey Analytics Tool: Looking for more ways to track customer interactions from awareness to purchase? Amazon’s new Customer Journey Analytics Tool will help sellers track customer engagement at each stage of the shopping funnel, allowing for more effective targeting and audience segmentation. Its advanced segmentation features allow sellers to create highly specific audiences based on customer interest and product relevance, driving tailored promotions.?
• Business Planner Tool: Designed for sellers who need help prioritizing based on their personal growth, the Business Planner Tool helps sellers set, track, and achieve growth goals by offering personalized action plans to increase traffic, drive sales, or reduce costs. It also updates recommendations as sellers take specific steps, providing ongoing support. This tool is currently available to sellers.?
• Custom Analytics Dashboard: Instead of piecing together audience and customer journey data from random metrics and reports, sellers can now use the enhanced Custom Analytics Dashboard for a more comprehensive layout and easier analytics access. This tool allows sellers to build dashboards to monitor sales, ads, and product performance, build custom metric reports, and access deep insights into product performance and personalized recommendations for optimization.
• SAFE-T Dashboard: Amazon shared some updates about the SAFE-T Claim Dashboard, which was initially introduced in April 2024. This tool is designed to help sellers manage returns and refunds, support sellers against return fraud claims, and help contest refunds where the seller may not be at fault. The new SAFE-T downloadable report feature will be available toward the end of December 2025. This feature will simplify and show all refunds and reimbursement claims to further protect against bad actors. To get the most out of this feature and the rest of the dashboard, sellers should review top denial reasons, submit high-quality evidence, consistently review claims, and promptly respond to Amazon with concerns.?

Discovering Your Next Growth Opportunity

The recent Amazon updates have emphasized the importance of adopting full-funnel marketing strategies for long-term growth, and this Accelerate presented several other points of growth for sellers to consider over the upcoming year.?

• Emphasize NTB Metrics: Instead of getting stuck in strategies that heavily rely on traditional metrics like ROAS and ACOS, incorporating NTB metrics helps focus on customer acquisition and drive full-funnel strategies. Amazon’s European Expansion Accelerator provides opportunities to find NTB sales in marketplaces since it supports cross-border growth with training and tools.
• Pay Attention to Streaming Metrics: Streaming metrics are a key growth factor, which was emphasized at this year’s Accelerate. Amazon expects 117 million households in the United States to have streaming devices by 2025 and to spend an average of 5 3/4 hours daily viewing TV and digital video. By adding Streaming TV into a media strategy, some brands have seen a 58% increase in NTB conversion rates, including 151% better add-to-cart rates. Add it to your own strategy to help accelerate growth.
• Drive Brand Loyalty: Customer loyalty is an essential driver in long-term brand success, so it’s important to focus on key elements such as quality, service, and engaging content when making growth plans. Keep offerings fresh by updating packaging and content regularly and employ a "from cart to connection" approach, which involves analyzing customer data to identify where customers drop off in the purchasing journey and taking targeted actions to address those areas.
• Refine Audiences and Promotions: Increasing marketing capabilities with brand-tailored promotions on Amazon allows sellers to create more granular audiences for targeted advertising. These promotions include Amazon’s Advanced Audience Segmentation, which enables sellers to refine their audience based on specific products and design tailored ASIN promotions. Sellers can also cross-sell to customers who have shown interest in related products, such as by targeting buyers of coffee makers when selling coffee. By selecting specific goals, products, and audience details, sellers can effectively launch exclusive discounts to promote tailored offerings in their stores.

Innovating with a Human Touch in the Amazon Marketplace

After absorbing everything we learned at Amazon Accelerate 2024, we continue to adapt and enhance our services to deliver the personalized approach that brands seek in an agency partner. Brands are increasingly seeking agencies with a stellar reputation that can provide granular analysis and seamless integration of advanced marketing concepts. We aim to continue building tailored tools that align with our clients' specific goals and custom visualizations, driving actionable strategies. Our focus on dayparting and hourly data allows us to develop precise objectives for different product lines throughout the year, ensuring our clients stay ahead of the competition.?

AMAZON NEWS AND NOTES?

• Find Amazon strategic tips, optimization advice, and event highlights in our monthly Amazon Marketplace Insights newsletter!?

• CONNECT WITH US AT AMAZON UNBOXED 2024

Our team will be at Amazon unBoxed 2024 in Austin, Texas, October 14–16. Reach out if you’d like to connect while we take in the innovations and technology that help bridge the gap between audience and advertiser. Contact our director of advertising growth and strategy, Dave Vermeulen, at [email protected] .

• CELEBRATING OUR EXPERTS

Congratulations to our senior advertising manager, Muhammad Zain Ul Abedin, who won our Buy Box Experts Q3 Growth Award for acting like an owner and increasing the August 2024 ad sales for his accounts by a significant percentage! Four of his accounts also achieved YoY growth during July Prime Day! Thank you for all your hard work for our team and brand partners!