This Week's Amazon News: TikTok Shop's Rivals Make Moves, Google's Big Retail Media Bets, And More
What to Expect in Retail in the Age of AI Shopping Assistants
As revealed at NRF 2025, major tech companies like Nvidia and Amazon are developing agentic AI shopping assistants that can understand natural language, perform multiple tasks simultaneously, and act as personalized shopping agents, though retailers face challenges with data privacy, bias prevention, and slow adoption rates.
Retail Media in 2025: Google's Big Bets, New Tech and More Google's retail media head reveals key 2025 trends, including YouTube's emerging role as a shopping platform (with 85% of YouTube shoppers making repeat purchases), the shift toward managed and self-service solutions, and the importance of targeting category searches, which comprise 70% of Google searches. ?
Luma AI's Ray2 Video Model Is Now Available in Amazon Bedrock
AWS has launched Luma AI's Ray2 video model on Amazon Bedrock as their exclusive cloud provider, enabling developers to generate high-quality 5-9 second video clips from text prompts at 540p and 720p resolution with natural motion and realistic details through a single API.
TikTok's Rivals Are Coming for Its E-Commerce Business
While TikTok Shop's future remains uncertain due to US regulatory challenges, competing platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and WhatNot are attempting to capture its successful social commerce model, though none currently match TikTok's unique blend of algorithmic product discovery and seamless shopping experience that has attracted over 500,000 sellers.
How Thrive Market Is Building A Different Type Of Retail Media Network
Thrive Market's retail media network, launched in September 2024, takes a unique approach by prioritizing member experience over ad revenue, resulting in doubled revenue expectations and 25% brand partner adoption in its first month, while maintaining strict control over ad density and relevance for its membership-based model.
Free Shipping Tops Consumers' Online Shopping Priorities
A recent PYMNTS Intelligence report reveals that free shipping is the most important feature for 66% of online shoppers when choosing where to buy, while price-sensitive consumers are increasingly responsive to discounts, with every 1% price decrease driving a 1.029% increase in demand during the 2024 holiday season.
Post From Gabriella Neske :
Like fashion updates on a New York runway, Amazon has its list of fun ways to keep it real in 2025. What’s strutting down the runway this year?
AVN Drama: Amazon Vendor Negotiations are serving real “we need to talk” energy this year—just without the coffee date. AVS (Amazon Vendor Services): Because Managing Your Own Brand Is So Last Season - Amazon’s giving AVS more spotlight this year, with a bigger push to pay up for someone to "manage" your brand inside the machine. Think of it as hiring a stylist—but instead of making you look fabulous, they slap a wig on your account and call it a day. Bangs am I right?
Direct Import: Amazon’s Not Even Pretending to Be Subtle - Amazon’s Direct Import pitch is basically: “We want a discount, and tell us how much it costs to import, store and pick and pack your goods so we know we’re getting the best deal.” It’s like that friend at brunch who insists on splitting the bill evenly—after they ordered bottomless mimosas, the lobster omelet, and a side of truffle fries.?
Promo Budget Glow-Up: Want to look relevant? Better slap on some extra promo dollars in Vendor Central because Amazon loves a good "money makeover."
Seller Suppressions: Amazon’s cracking down harder than your mom during spring cleaning. One slip, and your account’s heading straight to the naughty corner.
3P Buybox Purge - If your prices don’t compete, say goodbye to the Buybox. Instead of ignoring your texts and calls, Amazon is swiping left on your products. Cold.
T&Cs Tightening: Think Amazon was strict before? Welcome to the Hunger Games of compliance. Pro tip: Just don’t breathe the wrong way.
Complex Incentive: Because Amazon Loves a Power Move -Missed the memo? No problem—Amazon’s here with Complex Incentives to remind you who’s the boss. Don’t want to comply with their terms? It’s like your mom after you called her “bruh,” but instead of no TV, they just stop cutting POs or slowly suppress your brand until you "learn your lesson."
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Post From Todd M. Piechowski, MPA :
The future of digital advertising isn't just about audience segments – it's about perfect moments.?
As upper-funnel tactics evolve, the winners will be those who master the art of context. Imagine getting the perfect offer for expedited airport security...while you're literally en route to the airport in your ride-share. It happened to me yesterday on the way to JFK (and many times in the past from Clear)
This is precision targeting at its finest:
Right moment: When airport security is about to become very relevant Right audience: Already identified as an air traveler
Right offer: Free trial, low friction, immediate value
Right context: When you are running late from a leadership summit and rush hour traffic - the pain point is top of mind With changes to third-party cookies and rising CPMs, this type of contextual intelligence is becoming crucial.
We're seeing similar patterns with Amazon's advertising evolution – it's not just about who the customer is, but where they are in their journey.
Think about it: Would you rather target "business travelers" broadly across the internet, or reach them exactly when they're thinking about airport logistics? ?
Post From Dustin Wassner :
If you’re not yet using Marketing Stream to pull your Amazon Ads API data, here are a few reasons you may want to consider incorporating it:
- Real-Time data: If you run your pipeline at, say, midnight PST, and you use standard API reports, the data (most notably the Ad Sales data) will become ‘stale’ as the day goes on.?
In other words, if you have client-facing data, and don’t use Marketing Stream, as time goes on throughout the day, Ad Console figures will continuously grow further from what your reporting displays. I have personally seen deltas of up to 6% in some cases...
This to me is the real benefit of real-time data – the ability to keep your database in sync with the Ad Console database.
- Smaller pipeline footprint: One API request to create the Subscription, vs nightly requests for multiple report requests.
Pulling data for dozens of brands can cause a pipeline to run for a long time, especially if the API is causing issues (reports expiring, excessive throttling, etc), and with Marketing Stream, this goes away.
- Advanced placements data: The concept of incorporating Placements into Bid Ops (decreasing bids to then increase Placements based on performance per Placement) is OK in theory. The major problem, specifically with SP Targets, is that we don’t have the performance per Placement at the Target level, unless you are using Marketing Stream...
If you're not using Marketing Stream’s data to make Placement adjustments with Bid Ops, then it forces you to get ‘artistic’ with your numbers - something I personally try to avoid…
Some things to also factor in:
- The amount of data you are working with is multiples higher compared to the standard V3 API reports
– I recommend using Snowflake or data stores to work more efficiently with the data.
- When using hourly data for bid ops, you must factor in time-zones (the data comes in hourly, but the time-zone for that data is not always the same)
- You will want to always keep in mind that sales data attributes to the date and hour of the click, and not the purchase
Post From Envision Horizons:
Amazon Marketplace Analysis in the Superfoods Space... Recently, we conducted an in-depth analysis of an established brand on a downward trend in the superfoods category on Amazon. Here's what we uncovered:
The Situation: A well-established CPG brand with the second-highest monthly revenue in their category experienced a 41% revenue decline while their category grew by 16%.?
Key Findings from Our Analysis:
Marketplace optimization is crucial in today's competitive Amazon landscape, even for established brands. Read the report to see our recommend strategies for brand revival. ?
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Amazon E-commerce Manager for The National Fire Protection Association | Creator of the most popular Amazon Seller AI Assistants on the OpenAI GPT Store | SEO and Gen AI Strategy
1 个月Don’t forget this one :) https://sellersessions.com/rufus-the-blueprint/