Pathfinder Bulletin - November Recap 2021
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Company Updates
The Ultimate Guide to Amazon PPC Budget Rules
The new budget features that were rolled out during the latter half of 2021 have been welcome additions. We reveal some best practices around budgeting for advertising using these new features, and predictions for 2022 and beyond.
If you already know all about budget features and just want the nitty-gritty, we put a BONUS section at the bottom of the post with tips and tactics that you may find helpful.
Top 35 Recommended Amazon PPC Content Creators
As the complexity and features of Amazon Advertising grow, so does the community of experts and content creators. This is a treat of a blog post because it is an exhaustive list of other Amazon Advertising (and e-commerce) experts we ourselves follow and respect. From YouTubers and Podcasters to Slack Channels, Telegram Groups, and much more.
Zero "gurus" are listed here. We chose people dedicated to helping others in the community run better optimized businesses. Is there anyone we missed? Let us know. Check out this list and add some new experts to your playlist today.
Pathfinder Media Appearances
Post Black Friday PPC Numbers Roundtable | Seller Sessions
This episode was recorded as shopper credits cards were still glowing white-hot from Cyber Monday so our ad numbers weren't even settled, but as always I was excited to discuss the topic with the pros on this panel. It was reassuring to hear they are seeing the exact same trends that we are when looking at aggregate data YoY.
Should You Use Amazon Ad's New Budget Rules? | PPC Den #148
Betteridge's law of headlines states?"Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word?no." Well, in this case, the answer is?maybe?but you'll have to tune in to find out why.
Amazon Advertising Budgets | Online Seller UK #57
This was my first appearance on the rapid-fire Online Seller UK hosted by Prabhat and I quite liked the format. Are you noticing a theme with budgets and ad spend allocation this month?
Budgeting for Q4 and Beyond: Keys for Amazon Success! | Lunch With Norm #233
Set a reminder! I will be live?December 17th at 12:00 PM EST?with Norm Farrar talking once again about budgets.
Amazon News
Amazon copies products and rigs search results
领英推荐
As someone with a long-time interest in information security, these accounts from internal people in the InfoSec department, some of whom were?very?high-up at Amazon, are?fascinating. The degree of carelessness that this data was handled and protected surely seems like an institutional dysfunction or at least a massive blind spot. When I think about my own data stored by a company where procedures are this lax, I feel uneasy. Fingers crossed that things have shifted in a better direction in this area.
At Pathfinder we have on occasion during the onboarding process with a new client been sent data from AMZReview or similar services and were always a bit shocked by the cavalier nature with which it was provided. We're happy to see more and more tools provided through official Amazon channels that should diminish the demand for illegal or at the least unethical actions.
Sellers battling "guilty by association" account suspensions
After the TOS changes I wrote about last month this was the?other?big subject I kept hearing about time and time again. While we (thankfully) don't have many clients or friends in the industry directly affected by this there's no denying its impact. The worst part is you need to wrestle with Amazon to get information out of them that will help you resolve the issue. There is a petition going around which we're linking to above. I've heard that contacting the Account Safety team is one of the best ways to expedite the issue so we're also including a link to that.
Amazon on the high seas
I'm linking to two places where this is discussed as the NY Times paywall is a high one if you don't have a subscription. Basically, as the supply chain issues have piled up this year Amazon has been less reserved about taking direct action to make use of the ocean-bound shipping option to meet demand. This extends 3P sellers too, some of whom have used Amazon's expertise here to replace their own sea container logistics. As is often the case with Amazon, it seems like they had foreseen this and planned for it starting several years ago.
Andy Jassy profile in Vanity Fair
Andy Jassy gets the full Vanity Fair profile treatment. While I'm not a regular reader of Vanity Fair I do like Nick Bilton and this was an interesting read. Jassy seems like such a low-key guy to take on what might be one of the most visible jobs on the planet. He was largely unknown outside of Amazon until earlier this year and unlike Bezos seems to have very few enemies. He does have a competitive streak though and apparently loves eating buffalo wings — we all contain multitudes!??
Nerd Zone
Brand Metrics
This was announced a few months ago at Unboxed but I've not taken the time to properly highlight it. Appearing at the top left side of the Advertising Console above even Sponsored Ads the placement to access this feature tells us something about how important Amazon thinks it is (very important). I see this as another small step in Amazon attribution and reporting helping us expand beyond the narrow view we've had of things so far at the bottom of the sales funnel and casting our view towards the middle and even top of the shopper flow. Next up would be tying some of these mid and higher funnel advertising types into this data and demonstrating how they impact our lower-funnel campaigns types.
Brand Metrics might be in the Advertising Console but is gathered from insights across?all?customer engagements, not just ad-attributed. It allows you to look at metrics on a per browse node (subcategory) level so you can?understand your performance relative to a category and your peers.
In discussing this feature with the team I wasn't able to come up with a handful of ways the information is immediately actionable, but do I see where they are leading us and what potential it has? Certainly, and I look forward to seeing it grow in 2022.
That's all for this?year. Thanks for reading, and see you in 2022! - Brent
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