Amazon Advertising unveils 8 new tools and features

Here is the marketplace news that captured our attention this week.

Amazon Advertising unveils 8 new tools and features

Amazon has announced a slew of new features and tools it said will enhance brands’ ability to tell their stories and improve customer relationships.

Experts agree advertisers are likely to find the new features attractive, which will in turn help Amazon capture additional media spend—particularly among the advertisers that sell goods on the platform.

Here’s a closer look at what Amazon unveiled:

Interactive video ads

First, Amazon is adding the ability for viewers to request more information in interactive video ads on the IMDb TV app on Fire TV. Shoppers who request product information will receive an email or a QR code, which will take them to the brand’s landing page on Amazon.

The e-commerce platform first debuted these interactive video ads in the U.S. in May with additional verbal calls to action like, “Add to Cart,” “Add to List” and “Buy Now.”

According to research from eMarketer, Amazon’s U.S. market share topped 10% in 2020 to hit $15.7 billion with growth driven primarily by interest in its ad space on Amazon Fire TV, IMDb TV and Twitch.

Interactive audio ads

In a similar vein, Amazon Music is giving listeners the option to “Remind me,” “Send me more information” or “Add to cart” in its interactive audio ads in a limited beta in the U.S.

Brand Follow

Amazon is expanding its Brand Follow feature, which, as the name implies, allows U.S. shoppers to “follow” brands for notifications when they are about to stream on Amazon Live. Now, Brand Follow will also display deals from the brands consumers follow on Amazon’s homepage. Moss said this helps brands give their loyal followers special offers.

Per Amazon’s figures, more than 20 million Brand Follow connections have been made since it first added a follow button to livestreams in 2019. In mid-2020, the platform started adding the ability for shoppers to follow stores and posts.

Sponsored display ads on Twitch

Amazon is also building on the sponsored display ads on Twitch’s Browse tab and directory pages, which were first introduced in June. Now, these ads will also be integrated into Twitch livestreams in the U.S., U.K., Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

Amazon Marketing Cloud

Next, Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC), an analytics platform that debuted in January, is now more closely integrated with the e-commerce giant’s demand-side platform.

Advertisers can upload their own data and query it alongside data from Amazon ad campaigns. Amazon also recently launched a library with templated queries for a range of measurements.

“We’re continuously enhancing Amazon Marketing Cloud’s capabilities based on user feedback,” Moss said. “[We’ve] reduced query times, we’re adding a simple user interface that complements our API, and we’re enabling brands to bring their own first-party data sets into their AMC instance and customise queries based on their needs.”

Brand Metrics

Amazon also announced a measurement tool called Brand Metrics, which includes data like the total number of shoppers who have considered a brand based on product detail page views or brand searches and the value of shopping engagements based on sales generated over a 12-month period. Brands can also see awareness and consideration data alongside competitors using predictive consideration and sales models. Reports are updated weekly.

Brands can use this tool to measure the long-term value of brand engagement and evaluate what’s driving growth. Brand Metrics is in beta and available in the U.S., U.K., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Spain.

Amazon Brand Lift

Finally, another tool, Amazon Brand Lift, allows advertisers to create surveys and solicit responses from a panel of Amazon shoppers. Brands can look into six campaign objectives, including awareness, preferences and intent. Amazon said reporting is typically available within two weeks. This, the platform said, helps advertisers “glean fast, reliable and actionable insights at scale that help them understand the impact of their brand marketing efforts.”

Amazon Brand Lift is in beta in the U.S.

In a blog post, Amazon said it is launching the new features as the relationship between brands and consumers evolve, media consumption becomes more fragmented and customers engage with content and brands in more places thanks to omni-channel shopping.

Tambo's View:

Amazon's advertising offering keeps going from strength to strength. These new features will enable advertisers to better tell their brand stories and educate their customers about their products and services, thereby increasing sales and attracting more advertisers to the platform. From a customer perspective, the new features will provide for a better customer experience, particularly the 'brand follow' feature which will personalise the shopping experience and reward loyal customers with deals and offers.

Vietnam's first industrial, B2B e-commerce marketplace gains momentum

Enterprises large or small rely heavily on B2b eCommerce marketplaces today. While most people use Google and other search engines to search for products, enterprises did not have the same capabilities in the past. However this is now changing thanks to the increasing number of B2B eCommerce marketplace platforms.

Some would consider Alibaba and Amazon to be the pioneers of the online B2B marketplace. Today, Alibaba and Amazon are the biggest B2B marketplaces in Asia. SMEs have been relying on both these B2B eCommerce sites to not only reach out to customers in the region but globally as well.

China dominates when it comes to e-commerce, especially in B2C businesses, which has grown tremendously as companies focused on better serving a vast base of customers over the past two decades.

According to the B2B ECommerce: The Challenges and Opportunities Caused by Digital Acceleration report, total sales on B2B eCommerce sites grew 10% to $1.39 trillion in 2020. Though B2B marketplaces currently make up a modest share of all electronic sales, it appears the B2B industry is heading to an eventual marketplace-dominated distribution model.

Apart from the dominance of Alibaba and Amazon, other B2B eCommerce sites have also emerged around the region to give businesses more choices. For example in India, TradeIndia is the subcontinent’s largest online B2B marketplace with over 20 million monthly visits by both SMEs and large enterprises.

In Southeast Asia, Averest is Malaysia’s B2B eCommerce marketplace for all industries. Averest offers low-end membership packages that are affordable for SMEs. It also helps businesses pick up the exporting potential with a low budget.

Meanwhile, Obbo.sg is Singapore’s largest B2B Marketplace, hosting thousands of small business online fronts with products and services, empowering them with the connectivity tools to do business globally at a few clicks.

Vietnam’s growing B2B eCommerce marketplace

Despite being one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, Vietnam’s businesses suffer from manual and inefficient processes resulting in wasted time and higher costs for both purchasers and suppliers when procuring goods. Additionally, purchasers cannot quickly source products due to the lack of price visibility and transparency.

To deal with this, EI Industrial is the first industrial-focused B2B marketplace in Vietnam that aims to accelerate digital procurement in the country. With eiindustrial.com, purchasers can now easily source from multiple suppliers and identify the best deals available.

EI Industrial also recently received a US$670k seed financing round led by early-stage venture capital firm Cocoon Capital with participation from BEENEXT. The platform currently serves over 500 customers in Vietnam, including global companies such as the Esquel Group, Heineken, Toshiba, Olam, Aqua, Oishi, Wahl, and Central Group. It also works with over 300 sellers to meet the growing procurement demands, including Schneider Electric, Bosch, Honeywell, and 3M.

The funding comes at the right time as Vietnam’s B2B eCommerce market has the highest growth rate in Southeast Asia, reaching USD 13.2bn in 2020, and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 43% by 2025. With the funding, EI Industrial plans to build a faster and more user-friendly platform and expand the sales, marketing, and technology teams to drive rapid growth.

Since its launch in September 2020, eiindustrial.com has become one of the top 100 companies with the fastest traffic growth internet in Vietnam. With the growing demand for B2B eCommerce services, the industry is only going to grow in the years to come.

Tambo's View:

Vietnam is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world and SMEs are the backbone of its economy. The new B2B marketplace EI Industrial will allow buyers to directly source products online for the best price thereby developing Vietnam’s core industries through technology, and supporting businesses and sellers in improving both their productivity and profit margins.

Amazon announces launch of Amazon Local Selling in US

Amazon has announced the launch of Amazon Local Selling in the US. It’s a new set of services that enables local, regional, and national retailers to start or expand their Amazon businesses by offering both in-store pickup and fast delivery to local customers. Amazon are currently surveying European merchants to assess the appetite for launching this side of the Atlantic.

More than half of all products purchased on Amazon are sold by third-party sellers, most of whom are small and medium-sized businesses. With Amazon Local Selling, sellers can quickly and easily expand their multichannel offerings by listing products in Amazon’s store and offering them to local customers in designated areas for in-store pickup on the same day that they place an order. When making an order, customers can select in-store pickup and receive a notification when it is ready that day. Or, they can choose fast local delivery by the seller.

With Amazon Local Selling, sellers can give nearby customers the opportunity to support local businesses with regional offers across all product categories, and they can offer products they couldn’t before, such as large or fragile items. Additionally, sellers can offer customers add-on services, such as product assembly or installation, for the products they deliver.

What does Amazon Local Selling offer?

Reach customers that live near your location

Offer your products to Amazon customers who live within certain areas and within a 25-mile radius of your retail stores or warehouses. By offering local delivery services and/or BOPIS (Buy online, pickup in store), Amazon customers will be able to easily learn that your products are available for fast delivery or in-store pick-up.

Expand to new self-delivery and pick-up technologies

Your products available for local delivery or BOPIS will be visible to customers in Amazon’s store product search results and on product detail pages. Customers will be able to choose between home delivery and in-store pick-up options.

Convenient pick-up and delivery messaging for Amazon customers

Customers will receive messaging about delivery options, pick-up location, timing and process, to help you manage either local home delivery to customers or in-store pick up.

Tambo’s View:

The Local Selling Opportunity enables merchants not only to sell to Amazon's customers globally but to also engage with their local communities, allowing them to further scale their businesses at a reduced cost as this method carries zero shipping fees for the seller. If this is a success in the US, we can expect to see the same being rolled out in Europe shortly.