Amazon launches new features, search traffic will see a big change

Amazon updates frequently. In addition to adding other locations on the search results page this month, Amazon Advertising has added a time-sharing pricing function. Sellers can not only increase active bidding, but also place ads during optional time periods every day or week.

On the surface, the new adjustment provides sellers with more flexible options, and advertising will be more accurate in the future, which can bring traffic to a certain extent. However, it will actually push up advertising bids and intensify sellers’ internal competition. Another new feature of Amazon, “Ask a Friend”, was recently launched, which is expected to bring more traffic to sellers’ products, but this traffic is beyond the control of sellers.

Ad adjustments and the new “Ask a Friend” feature will drive big changes in Amazon’s traffic.

Amazon Advertising adds time-sharing pricing

Recently, Amazon Advertising has added a time-sharing pricing feature, which allows sellers to choose to increase advertising premiums at any time and run ads during selected time periods every day or week, or all day.

Currently, this feature is in the testing phase and only some sellers can see it. This time-sharing price adjustment feature only supports increasing bids, and cannot lower bids. When using it, sellers need to set the base bid lower and increase it regularly.

It is understood that time-sharing price adjustment could be done with ERP before, and now Amazon has launched this function. Sellers have personally tested and found that there are still some differences between Amazon's time-sharing price adjustment and similar functions on ERP.

Some sellers who have tried it believe that time-sharing price adjustment is optional. They have tested it in parallel for a long time in various ways and found that time-sharing price adjustment cannot bring about a clear performance improvement. Of course, this is also related to the inability to absolutely test only the single variable of "time-sharing".

On the other hand, it is not recommended to use the time-sharing price adjustment function for new products. You need to run data first, and the time-sharing price adjustment strategy may affect the exposure of new products.

In short, sellers need to use time-sharing price adjustment according to different situations and study it slowly to achieve the purpose of increasing traffic. This is the second update of Amazon's advertising function this month.

The bidding space for corner positions has been increased, and advertising fees continue to rise

Earlier this month, Amazon added more ad bidding locations, adding "the rest of the search results" to the page, where sellers can set bids. Previously, Amazon only allowed sellers to adjust bids for the two ad locations of "top of search results (home page)" and "product pages."

"The rest of the search results" are usually displayed in the corners of the Amazon page . The conversion rate of these positions is generally not very high. Many sellers bid for these positions with the mentality of "picking up bargains". The conversion rate of the rest of the positions is higher than that of the product page, and the bid is lower than that of the top. It is a position with good cost performance, but now sellers can bid. If everyone adds a bid, it may be equivalent to not adding one.

Amazon has now taken out all the corners of search results, which shows how fierce the competition for advertising is. The platform allows sellers to bid, and the highest bidder wins. Bidding will lead to internal competition, thereby increasing sellers' costs.

One seller believes that the newly added bidding for the corner position is ridiculous . If the bid for this position is set very high, the CPC will also be higher, but the ad will still be in the corner and not at the top of the homepage.

According to the previous advertising logic, the bid will be continuously increased, and the ad space can be slowly pulled up. Eventually, the competition for the top few positions will become more intense. Now that there are more biddings for other positions, sellers raise their bids, which also raises the CPC ceiling for other positions.

In the past, the advertising fees for each position were raised to the limit, but now the advertising fees for each position have exceeded the limit. Some sellers lamented: "Amazon is cutting leeks so hard that you can't say anything. This position is about to set off another bloody storm!"

However, this adjustment will benefit new products. The click-through rate of new product ads is low in the early stage. From the perspective of position, exposure is mainly concentrated on the detail page. Generally speaking, the conversion rate of the detail page is slightly lower than that of the other two positions. If the bidding ratio can be set in other positions, the budget can be spent on this position, thereby improving the click-through rate and investment-output ratio of ads.

Obviously, Amazon's two new advertising changes will make many sellers feel that advertising costs have increased again, and the competition for advertising space has become more intense. However, in the opinion of an industry insider, the fierce competition for advertising space has no direct relationship with Amazon's new advertising features. After the new advertising adjustments, at least sellers have more choices.

As competition intensifies, the platform is becoming more and more competitive, and the corresponding functions must be further refined and improved. In the short term, after the new advertising function is added, some sellers will conduct tests and share the competition for the top positions, but it will not last long. Moreover, if the sellers find that the acos explode after testing this function, they will still consider other advertising positions.

In the long run, sellers’ advertising costs will continue to rise overall. From the consumer’s perspective, this change actually does not bring about much change. It’s just that sellers are involutionary.

Amazon may make a series of advertising adjustments in the future, increasing the number and location of other advertising slots. For example, Amazon recently added video previews to the category list, where there is still a lot of blank space, and there may also be advertising slots for similar competing products. Amazon's ultimate goal is to develop more advertising features, allowing more sellers to try them out, and continue to generate revenue for the platform. In this process, the platform will always be the winner.

Amazon tries to gain more traffic in the social field

Amazon's two new adjustments in advertising have made competition more intense while also allowing some sellers to place ads more accurately to a certain extent. This traffic is equivalent to the traffic that sellers pay for and is relatively controllable. Recently, Amazon has also added a new feature on the buyer side, which is expected to bring more traffic to sellers, but this traffic is beyond the control of sellers.

Amazon has launched a new attempt in the social field and launched a new feature called "Consult-a-Friend" (Consult-a-Friend in English) .

This feature allows users to view their friends' reviews of Amazon products. For example, if a user selects a product and clicks the "Share" button, their friends will receive a message reminding them to go to the Amazon app to view the product and make a review. After their friends reply, users can see everyone's collective feedback and make a purchase decision based on it.

According to test data released by Amazon, categories such as clothing, shoes, electronics, and furniture have strong social attributes, and users are most interested in feedback on these products.

This function appears on the buyer's side APP but not on the seller's side, so many sellers did not notice it.

This feature has been tested in multiple sites such as North America, Europe, and Japan, and may be rolled out across all sites in the future. This means that it may bring more traffic to some Amazon products, but unlike advertising, the acquisition of this traffic is not something that sellers can decide.

From the seller's perspective, advertising is still one of the most important ways to obtain traffic. As Amazon advertising continues to adjust, bidding will gradually increase, so the requirements for products will be higher, and whether the product can generate orders through advertising traffic will become more important.

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