False. And true. I hear people say this all the time, quite literally: on calls, at events, in content like a newsletter. 😉

Amazon truly is an ecosystem. So it really is evolving day by day. Well, that’s a little extreme. It’s certainly evolving every few months. Do you really want it to be stagnant?

What do people mean when they say this? Amazon is inconsistent. They enforce policies randomly. New FBA fees get announced, only to immediately get pushed back 6 months. Prime Day is now what I’ll dub Prime Week. That’s all true.

What’s false? The basics are the same on Amazon:

Overly simplified, yet all true. Everybody is doing this in some shape or form. What 99.1% of people, even smart capable ones, miss along the way?

I could go on… But I won’t. My point: Amazon evolves because it’s a living breathing system. That’s okay. We may not like the changes but they’re necessary and we absolutely can adapt. At the same time, the goal on Amazon and how you get there hasn’t changed. Most people just aren’t good at hitting the same nail on the head over and over again until you achieve your desired outcome.

My content often centers around the three distinct categories of Amazon’s business: Catalog, Creative, & Advertising. This is your tasting flight of smaller yet no less delicious samplings of the Amazon ecosystem. Today’s Flight focuses on advancements in tech.

Can generative AI really help you with your Amazon business or is it a lot of hype? Hard to say. We’re still on the verge of all the possibilities. My great friend Brett Bohannon recently shared how he’s been building stuff to make analysis and auditing of your catalog faster and easier with GenAI. He calls it Helm. Sign up now to start accessing. Don’t expect this to takeover your business. Do expect it to make tackling the priorities in your business easier.

GenAI won’t run your business. GenAI can improve your operations.

At unboxed last year Amazon announced the official Sponsored Products with Video ad format. You can now run Sponsored Products with Video. I feel like I just said that twice, twice. Why care? Sponsored Products drives organic rank in search results, majority of the time. Ad formats like SBV (Sponsored Brands with Video) are way more disruptive. Now you get to test driving rank natively in search with SPV. Best way to drive organic rank is a single keyword campaign, with one ad group, and an exact match term. Don’t change the format on the setup just test on the front end if anything improves with video, Impressions, CTR, Conv. Rate, etc.

Use current video assets or create new ones to test driving organic rank. Start testing. Always be testing. Measure and assess.

Sometimes we’ll have a third flight option. Today we don’t. You don’t just need more stuff to read.

You’re welcome.

I love Negronis. It’s a classic equal parts cocktail that calls for gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari. That’s the original. The world is your oyster when it comes to riffing on this recipe. I’ve been buying all the Amaros recently and one Amari adjacent liqueur I’ve acquired is Becherovka, a Czech herbal liqueur made from a secret recipe of lots of herbs and spices. It’s slightly medicinal, bitter, and sweet. And I love it. Mezcal gets used a lot in our home and I found a recipe for a Negroni variant that called for Mezcal and Becherovka. I took it a step further and replaced the sweet vermouth with Amaro. Throw in some orange bitters and you’ve got a party.

Every two weeks I release a new podcast episode that talks all about the future of retail. This is the most recent one.

Everybody says their data driven. In reality, who isn't data driven? We all make decisions based on data points, it's just not always the right data that drives us. More data doesn't equal more revenue. Deciding on the right data, then getting it visualized properly is what leads brands to crush the competition.