#501 - Meta Ends Credit Card Payments?! ChatGPT Beats Organic + Big Amazon MCF Update | WB 3/4/26

Meta is no longer accepting credit cards. Chat GPT converts higher than organic search. And important updates to Amazon multi-channel fulfillment. This and more on this week's episode of the weekly buzz. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the AM podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host Carrie Miller and this is the show that is our Helium 10 weekly buzz where we give you a rundown of all the goings on in the Amazon Tik Tok shop and e-commerce world. We let you know what new features Helium 10 has and we also give you a training tip of the week. So, let's get started and see what's buzzing. All right, so let's go ahead and get into this story about Meta, which I'm actually not very happy about as a seller. Meta is changing the way it builds direct to consumer advertising accounts. And you can see the ecom crew wrote about this and kind of I think were the first to kind of acknowledge it after this email was sent. So basically starting March 2nd of 2026, certain direct to customer advertisers will no longer be able to pay for ads with credit cards. Instead, affected accounts must switch to monthly invoicing with a 30-day payment window after the invoice is issued. So, for many advertisers, this is going to be not very great news, especially those who use credit cards as a way to manage cash flow or to earn rewards like cash back. I know a lot of us use either the American Express business gold where you get four points per dollar of ad spend that you make or there's a a Chase business where you get three points per dollar. So, it's kind of a a sad sad day for a lot of us on high ad spends. Traditional credit card rewards like the ones that I just mentioned can add up to really significant savings over a year. You can either get cash back, you can travel with those points, you can upgrade yourself to first class. And losing that option means many sellers may may need to rethink their cash flow and how they manage their budgets. So Meta is framing this as a move that's helping making billing more predictable and reducing payment interruptions. But sellers have pointed out that the practical difference isn't just about payment method. It changes cash flow timing. So, credit cards can give you a 3 to 4 week float between spending and when you actually have to pay, which helps with budgeting, especially in seasonal peaks. With monthly invoicing, you need to plan ahead to make sure you have funds available when the payment is due. So, you have to have the whole amount at one time. This billing change isn't unique to Meta. Other major ad platforms like Google require larger ad uh advertisers to move off cards, too. So, many in the e-commerce community are watching to see whether Amazon ads might follow. And I really hope they don't because we also use our credit cards on our Amazon account. Um, so what this means for sellers, you need to plan your cash flow more carefully. Invoicing means you need the budget ready when the bill arrives. Re-evaluate your payment strategy. So you may lose credit card rewards and floats. So consider how that impacts profitability. And talk to your Meta rep if you have one to understand your invoicing terms and adjust forecasting before the March 31st deadline. So, that is basically the story with Meta. And again, for all of us who use those to get those credit card points, cash back, travel rewards, um, sorry, it's a it's a sad thing. I don't think this is for every account. So, I' I'd have to see more of the details, but if we look down here, you can actually see the email here. They actually have a screenshot of it in this um, this article. We have the link in the description. So, you can see the, you know, they're saying, "Oh, it's a benefit to you." But, you know, not not so much for a lot of us. So, if you want to take a look at that, that whole article, it gives you some more information or you might want to contact Meta to see if this is going to affect you. All right, next up, this one is really interesting, especially because everyone's kind of all talking about AEO or answer engine optimization to make sure that, you know, their sites are showing up when people are chatting in chatbt and asking questions about products. This article talks about a new analysis that was of 94 e-commerce sites that found that traffic coming from ChatGpt converts 31% higher than traditional non-br branded organic search which is pretty incredible. That's that's pretty high. So in the study chat GPT referral traffic had about a 1.81% conversion rate compared to 1.39% for non-branded organic traffic. And the reason well users coming from AI tools often show a stronger purchase intent. they've already asked detailed questions, compared options. So, usually when they're clicking on a site, it's because they've kind of narrowed down exactly what they're looking for and they've clicked on the site because they found what they're ready to buy and that's why maybe the intent is a bit higher. Now, it's important to note that the traffic volume from Chacht is still small compared to Google, but it's growing quickly. And while average order value from ChatBT traffic may be slightly lower, the higher conversion rate leads to competitive revenue per session. It goes a little bit more into why we care and it says the data shows that AI referral traffic converts at a higher rate than traditional non-branded search traffic, but the volume remains small. So, this signals emerging value, not a replacement channel. So, this isn't going to replace, you know, all the other marketing channels that you've already created. You want to kind of do all of these at once. And as this improves, you know, the earlier you get in and understand it, the better cuz you'll be able to, you know, grow with the channel. And here's why this matters for e-commerce sellers. So if AIdriven platforms like Chachi PT are sending higher intent traffic and that channel is trending upward, the optimization for LLMs becomes really critical. So I think some people are like do I put in the effort to do this now or should I wait till later? Um but this is where you know you really should think about AEO or answer engine optimization. Um so just like brands optimized for Google SEO over the past decade, now they need to structure content, product pages, FAQs and schema. And schema is in the back end. So, schema is kind of confusing for a lot of people, but it's basically, you know, where you can write direct instructions for an answer engine uh or an LLM basically, so they can kind of scan your site really quickly and find those answers. And that's in the schema. It's basically, you know, so that the AI models can understand, reference, and recommend those products within that schema. So, that's kind of what schema is. It's really a little bit confusing. At first, I was confused about it. So, it may not be a massive traffic driver yet, but if you want to keep your sales flowing as search behavior shifts towards AI assisted discovery, optimizing for AI now puts you ahead of the curve instead of playing catch-up later. So, really important to consider doing this now and being ahead of the curve. All right, next up we have some important changes to multi-channel fulfillment, which is MCF through Amazon. So this email basically talks all about this and Amazon basically just announced that important packaging changes for MCF multi-channel fulfillment and buy with Prime and they're starting to roll out in April of 2026. So the two major updates are packing slips are no longer uh going to be included by default on MCF and buy with Prime orders and second products that are certified under Amazon's ships in product packaging or SIP program will now ship without an Amazon overbox by default. So that means if your product qualifies, it can ship in its own packaging without the additional Amazon box. So these changes align with MCF and buy with Prime more closely with standard FBA packaging practices and support Amazon's broader push to reduce packaging waste. They actually are going to give you a discount um for the ships in product packaging. Um so eligible ships in product packaging shipments will receive a per unit discount with savings ranging from a few cents for small standard items up to a dollar for bulky products. So, if you don't take action before April, these settings will automatically apply, meaning that no packing slips and uh ships and product packaging items without overboxes will just happen automatically. Um, but however, sellers can also opt out or adjust the settings in MCF fulfillment settings and API. Users can configure packaging at the order level. So, the bottom line is that this is both a sustainability shift and a potential costs savings opportunity, but sellers should review their ASE eligibility and packaging strategy before April to make sure you're prepared. So, all sellers should have gotten this email. If you didn't, you can probably do a quick search on the ships and product packaging and multi-channel fulfillment uh within seller central to find more details about this. Okay, next up, we have a new feature update, which is our new listing builder AI. Bradley is going to talk about this. This is absolutely incredible. It's going to save you so much time. You're going to be able to optimize your listings with relevant keywords. You're going to be a you're going to be able to find those keywords really quickly and optimize. So, if you have a ton of products and you want to, you know, continually optimize them without having to spend so much time and money, this is the feature update for you. This is one of the biggest updates that we've had in a long time. So, definitely check this out with Bradley. All right, so this week's new feature alerts, there's a couple and these have actually been out for elite members for a little while, but now it's out to diamond members. Uh, both of these. All right, so the first one is in listing builder. Uh, we have a new 8 in1 listing builder. Right. So if you go into listing builder, you can have your product as the seed as and then you add uh up to nine other products if you want that are your competitors and then you can pull keywords from eight different sources. your brand analytics keywords from yours that have conversions. The brand analytics keywords of your competitors, uh the search create performance keywords if this is uh one of your products, the top keywords for the whole niche, the opportunity keywords where maybe only one or two competitors are ranking for it. The historical keywords, this is exclusive to Helium 10. You can only do this here. Um and then other uh random filters that help you to get the top organic keywords from just maybe one or two listings as well as the top sponsored keywords. Once you do that, you can actually build your keyword bank, star your important keywords, and then now at the very end, again, this is for diamond. Now, it was only elite before, now it's diamond, you can actually um create your listing with AI. And and the cool thing about that is if you do it with AI, you can actually style it after maybe a listing, another listing that you like, the the vibe of that listing or the tone, you can actually style your listing after that. And it's not going to copy it, but it's just like going to copy maybe the bullet point length and and the overall sentiment, right? And you can also put an as uh in here to make sure that hey uh optimize this listing for the Roffus questions that are asked on this listing or another listing, your competitor listing. It's up to you. And then with AI, you could actually create the whole listing and it's going to give you a SEO score. So, um this was just a you know quick overview of it. If you want to go ind depth on like what went into this tool and like how you need to think about your keyword research and and what's important in listing optimization, we actually did a full 1hour workshop. If you want to see the full workshop, go to h10.me/listing replay. h10.me/listing replay to see the whole like 1-hour workshop goes a little bit more in depth. But if you're a dime member, start using this. for a platinum member, use code SSP20 to uh upgrade and save a little bit and give this a spin, reoptimize your own listings. Uh, another thing that was available for Elite members, now it's still in beta, but it's open for dime members, is in your follow-up tool for your email autom uh automation. What you can do here is you can actually set a preferred time. All right? So, for example, before you could just say, "Hey, wait 5 days after shipment and then go ahead and and send this request review or email out." But now you can actually say, "You know what? I want this to go out uh or I want Helium 10 to tell Amazon for this message to go out between 9:00 a.m. and 400 p.m. Pacific time or whatever time." like maybe you think your, you know, product uh has a higher likelihood of people responding favorably to the email or opening the email at a certain time a day. You can go ahead and specify that. So, give that a spin uh and let us know what you think. It's in beta right now. Anyways, both of these things uh available now to diamond members. They were available to Elite and uh hope you guys enjoy these tools. >> Thank you so much, Bradley, for that listing builder update. Um, I know he did mention a webinar. So, if you want to go to that replay, the link is actually in our description, so you can go there pretty easily. It is jam-packed with strategy on how to do this. So, you definitely want to check it out. Okay, the next article is about Walmart. And this actual article is a lot about retail, but I think it really does relate to Amazon um your just e-commerce sellers in general. And I'll explain a little bit why. Basically, what this is saying, Walmart is basically not just winning on price anymore. It's also improving how shoppers perceive its quality. That's really important, I think, and I'll get to that in a little bit. But according to recent Yuggov data, Walmart's brand health has strengthened over the past 5 years, driven largely by its strong value for money reputation. But what's especially interesting is that perceptions of quality have also improved. While Walmart may not lead every competitor on quality, it has significantly narrowed the gap, meaning shoppers increasingly see Walmart as offering both low prices and better quality than in the past. There's actually another chart here that shows about value and quality perception, which is really important. That combination is really powerful. So, when consumers believe they're getting a strong value and solid quality, it strengthens consideration, satisfaction, and recommendation, which is all they're all key drivers for brand growth. And this is great news for e-commerce sellers because there's often a perception that Walmart is only the place for ultra budget products and that higher quality brands might not fit. But as Walmart's quality perception continues to rise, the platform becomes more attractive for premium and differentiated products. So consumers are becoming more open to finding quality on Walmart.com, not just low prices. In addition, a lot of e-commerce sellers want their products in store. So as this perception kind of increases, the instore opportunity also increases. So, for sellers who are hesitated because they think their product is too high quality for Walmart, the data suggests it might be time to reconsider. I really do think that this is kind of a little bit of a balance because they're still going to be looking for a good price, but I have noticed that a lot of products within Walmart are higher quality now, especially because a lot of third party sellers have come in. So, if you can, you know, stay pretty competitive with price and achieve that quality, I think Walmart is a very good um channel to be looking at, especially if you want to get into their stores that their perceptions are growing among consumers. Even myself, I would have never purchased clothes before um at Walmart, but I have purchased some things because the quality is definitely improving there. Okay, so next up, we have a training tip of the week with Shiovali. And Shiovali is going to talk about how historical data can give you a competitive advantage. So, take it away, Shiovali. Hey there. Let's talk about a strategy that you can only do with Helium 10. Say I'm recording this in January instead of June and I'm curious about what the heck is going on for a particular Fourth of July product. If I were to look at Fourth of July decorations, I would get a number of products that are some of the best sellers here. However, are these the best sellers of products overall for Fourth of July? Probably not, right? Even more so if you think about running this search in a month like January. Sure, many people buy Fourth of July products in January, and you can absolutely find some top ranked ones on this page selling 400 a month. But that's not really a top seller for Fourth of July, is it? If I were to actually look at brand analytics using Helium 10 or via Seller Central, searching back all the way to see what the top month or top week was last year in 2024, odds are we would find its June 23rd to June 29th sitting at 400,000 searches for this keyword. Meaning what? meaning that I would now be looking at what the actual top product was, which as you can see would be this product as the number one product last year. It's barely even selling right now. Only a hundred people bought it in the 30 days. But it was selling tens of thousands of units back last June. So this is one scenario which is where we could go, hey, I know this is a seasonal product. Let me take a look at what keywords it's ranking for right now and what are the keywords that were driving sales to it back then. As another example, if I were to run Cerebro on the product right now, we see the product still has about 2,000 keywords ranking for it. Even now, it is selling, whereas some seasonal products are not even in stock. But this one's in stock and it's related to 2,000 keywords. Switching this up, I may want to see keywords for a search volume of over 1,000 and where it is actively ranking between position one and maybe organic position 10 to figure out where exactly is this product getting its sales from. And how many keywords are there? Zero. Look at that. Zero keywords. I probably would have to take this down to 500 or something to see if it's even ranking for it. Only one keyword for Memorial Day, which makes sense, right? Cuz Memorial Day is before Fourth of July. And with only one keyword, if I was doing my research using any other tool out there, I would find very few highly relevant keywords that are driving sales for this product. Would that help me create my listing for Fourth of July? If I were creating it months in advance, no. So, if I'm using another tool, I'd have to wait until 4th of July or June to at least see what the top keywords are. But watch this. What I can do inside of Helium 10 is hit the historical trends button and just select June of 2024. This will show me the keywords that are driving sales to this product that I know were selling great last June. I've got 65 keywords pulled up. And right away, I can see terms like Fourth of July decorations, USA decorations for party, Fourth of July decor, and so on. Now, here's where it gets powerful. Even though we're not currently in the season, I can still see what the top seasonal keywords were. Why? Because it's like I've taken a time machine in Cerebro all the way back to last June and July. That's just one of the use cases. Now, imagine this. There's a product you know is a strong seller and maybe you've tracked it before or you saw it ranked really high in brand analytics, but right now completely out of stock. Here's an example. This product is actually the number one selling coffin shelf all year. But look, it says currently unavailable. If you ran Cerebro on this product right now or used any other keyword tool, you might get nothing. No data, no keywords, right? Because Amazon isn't showing any relevancy data when it's out of stock. So, how do we find what was driving sales? And that is where Cerebro's historical data comes in. You can just take the same product, go back to a time when it was in stock, like last October, and back then it was ranking for over a,000 keywords. So let's say you only care about keywords with a search volume of 500 or more and where this product was ranking in the top 10. You can filter for that and boom, I've got 14 high converting keywords right there, which would have been invisible in any other case. And that, my friends, is the power of historical cerebro. That's honestly the most unique feature Helium 10 offers and it's only available on the diamond plan. We've had asked for this for years and I really think it's well worth over $300. It's that valuable. So whether you are tracking seasonal trends or analyzing products that are out of stock, this feature gives you the ability to time travel and see what was working when no other tool can. So if you do not have a diamond plan, make sure that you upgrade to it and you take advantage of this today. Thank you so much Shiovali for that training tip of the week. Definitely super helpful information on how to, you know, use that historical data. The next article we have here is actually from Amazon seller central and it's about their new AI powered assistant which is a play to kind of visualize data and you can see that this is an an announcement within seller central like you usually will get. So Amazon has basically introduced a new AI powered workspace inside seller central designed to make data exploration more interactive. The new canvas experience combines chat and visual dashboards in one place so sellers can ask seller assisted questions and generate personalized views of performance trends, inventory levels, and other key metrics. And the workspace updates in real time, which allows users to dig into data, explore follow-up questions, and view different perspectives on their data. So, this tool is, you know, basically going to help you to kind of visualize data a little bit better. But that said, a native tools inside seller central typically focus on Amazon only data and many sellers will still rely on advanced platforms like Helium 10 and other thirdparty tools for deeper profitability analysis, keyword research, competitive intelligence, advertising optimization, and multi-channel strategy. So tools like Helium 10 often provide more granular data like historical tracking and broader market visibility beyond what's available inside of the Amazon ecosystem. And to be quite frank, usually Helium 10 does a much better job of just visualizing um the data that we do get from Amazon. So while this update makes Seller Central more userfriendly and AIdriven, it's likely to complement, not replace the more robust analytics and optimization tools serious sellers already use, such as Helium 10. So I hope you enjoyed this episode of the weekly buzz. Again, I want to let you know that if you wanted to watch the uh webinar that Bradley hosted with Andrew Bell about the listing builder and how to utilize that, the description has the link for that particular replay. So, definitely check that out. Um, but otherwise, we will see you again next week to see what's buzzing. Bye, everyone.