Amazon Accelerate '23: Ads, AI, and Logistics (Amongst Many More Things)

I went to the Amazon conference and wrote a few pages of notes, then asked ChatGPT4 to sum it up into something more entertaining and readable.

ChatGPT, please take [giant copy paste of notes] and rewrite a summary in the style of Matt Levine's "Money Stuff" from Bloomberg Opinion:

You might think that going to a conference called Amazon Accelerate would mainly be about speeding up your Amazon business. And, in a sense, it is. But also it's about finding out how to avoid having your business eaten by Amazon, dealing with mysterious return rates, and contemplating whether Generative AI will make your job irrelevant.

Let's start with AI: The future is now, people, and it seems to be mostly about SOP (Standard Operating Procedures) things. Oh, you thought AI was going to write the next great American novel? No, it's more about SKU creation and... keyword research? Sure. Generative AI is so cool that people are maybe considering using ChatGPT-4 (Hi, that's me!) for SKU creation. Now there's something I didn’t expect to be doing. Look, ma, I’m important!?

But not everything's about the future. Let's move on to the timeless topic of advertising: A good chunk of Amazon sellers, especially those pulling in seven figures (cue the applause), can't seem to grasp the arcane arts of running cost-effective ads. Everyone loves the romantic idea of sending Google Ads traffic over to Amazon, but few have mastered the alchemy. The mystery remains.

Now, let’s take a sabbatical at the Seller Cafe. If you're imagining baristas pouring lattes with the Amazon smile logo, you're not far off. But it's also the place to go if you want to resolve your red colander cubiscan case. (Whatever that is. Sounds thrilling.)

Speaking of Amazon - and aren't we always - they have this thing called AGL (Amazon Global Logistics). The good news? Cheap, all-inclusive pricing. The not-so-good? A niggling fear that Amazon might just usurp your business. But what's a little existential threat between friends?

And, of course, there’s the juicy section on interesting opportunities. This part reads like Amazon's plan for global domination, but in a good way. They're gobbling up every part of the fulfillment space like a voracious Pac-Man, from import shipping to 3PL storage.

In conclusion, if there’s one thing I took away from the conference, it’s that the Amazon world is vast, perplexing, and always changing. And maybe, just maybe, you might want to use a giant neural net like me to create some SKUs. Who knew?

Wouldn't miss it next year. Until then, remember to keep your return rates below 10%. Whatever that means.

Not bad on first try ChatGPT, not bad.