Amazon News: FTC Crackdown, Prime Day Surge, and New Data Tools

Amazon News: FTC Crackdown, Prime Day Surge, and New Data Tools Unknown Speaker: Welcome, fellow entrepreneurs, to the Amazon Sellers School podcast, where we talk about Amazon and how you can use it to build an e-commerce empire, a side hustle and anything in between. And now your host, Todd Welch. Speaker 1: All right. Well, welcome back to Amazon e-commerce news. And I am your host today, Danan. I'm founder of EcomTriage. With me, I've got Robyn, Kevin and Neil. And each of them have, oh, Kevin. Speaker 2: I punched my microphone. Speaker 3: Sorry, folks. Speaker 1: Sorry, I'll do a better intro. Speaker 2: I was like, Danon, you really got me hyped up here today. Unknown Speaker: Awesome. Speaker 2: Good. Speaker 1: That's what I'm going for. So in each of these video feeds here, we have Quite literally what decades, many decades of experience with Amazon and, and e-commerce. Um, just we're so smart and we're going to talk about how smart we are and, uh, and we'll go into and humble. Yeah. We're super humble, which is really important for people. Um, so. I'm literally just trying to be funny because I'm nervous about this. So let's get into it. Oh, for those of you that are watching, please do comment and ask questions. This is live, so we do want to know what you have to think about what we're saying. If you have questions about what we're saying, we want to know that as well. And just feel free to Tell us your thoughts. If they're bad thoughts, keep them to yourself. We don't care. All right, so let's go into the, oh, by the way, also, I have very little experience with StreamYard, so I'll be figuring out how to run this as we're doing it. Normally, Todd, the owner of Amazon Seller School, is the one that handles this, but let's see. Thank you. I appreciate it. Speaker 4: We're off to a good start. We're off to a good start. Unknown Speaker: Yeah, for sure. Speaker 1: Okay. So I'm going to share screen and we're going to do, there we go. Okay. You guys should be seeing my screen. Yes. Speaker 2: It looks like it's loading. Speaker 1: It doesn't look like I'm able to zoom in on it though. Speaker 2: There's other views. There's buttons just below the screen. You can kind of play around with different... There should be one where we're kind of in the corner. There we go. You might have to... So many of us. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: Okay. I feel like the original one. Speaker 5: Yeah. Speaker 1: I think that's the better one. Okay, cool. So we're talking, Adobe put this out, Prime Day is expected to drive $23.8 billion in online spend across US retailers. So that wouldn't surprise me too much. And I think that Neil and Robyn, and probably you as well, Kevin, I'm no expert when it comes to Prime Day stuff. I don't do Prime Day deals. I don't run ads, though I am still a seller. What are your guys' thoughts? We'll start with you, Robyn. Speaker 5: I think if you compare it to the Prime Day of 2019 or way back then when it was like a 10X day where you would sell 10X, I think that if you just did that to that, it was disappointing for many brands. I think that it still was a great sale. Obviously, we expanded it to 40. I think before Prime Day, we talked about this. I think that expanding it to four days was like their way to guarantee it would still be the biggest Prime Day ever. We saw a lot of brands that did have really good lift. We also had quite a few brands that kind of opted out because of inventory issues or margins or concerns about tariffs or things along those lines. So it was a little bit of a different Prime Day for us and we had more brands that said, you know, we just don't have the inventory for it or we have concerns and so we're not doing as big of a push. But it was still a great sales. I'm sure that Amazon was not too pleased with that headline that came out on day two that say it was 41% down. I would not wanna be the person that took the call at Momentum when Amazon saw that as was the thing that everybody was running with. But I think overall, there was a lot of good things about it, but I think that there was a little, it was a lot lighter than before. Unknown Speaker: Yeah, cool. Speaker 1: Kevin? Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say making it over four days, you're trying to just take whatever there was, and just spreading it out. And sometimes too, when it's not as compressed, there's just a little bit more of procrastination of I'll just get around to it. I'll just get around to it. And so I, you know, I think the first two days for me were both equal. I heard other people say from the first day forward, every day went down. For me, you know, Tuesday, Wednesday were the same for my own brand. Then Thursday went down, then Friday went down. And then, you know, it just was a little bit slow on the shoulders before and after too. So I would say, That's probably a good point Robyn made that maybe they're just making it four days just so they could say it's the biggest ever and then next year it'll be five and then all of a sudden it'll be prime year. Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Speaker 5: It's like my birthday month that I have with my husband, just growing, right? Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Neil, what did you see? You manage a lot of PPC accounts. Speaker 4: Yeah, so I mean, across the four days, we ended up spending about $320,000 across the four days, we did 1.1 million in ad sales. And what ended up happening was what Robyn said, we did have conversations with our clients in the lead up to Prime Day. And tariffs was a big one, right? Sellers that had inventory stateside were not interested in selling at a discount that was untariffed. They're looking at it saying, hey, this is the last of my high margin inventory. Why am I increasing the cost of my operation for less money? A lot of our clients actually opt out of Prime Day. They might have offered a discount. Say 10% or something like that, but we just turned off the ads. They didn't participate. The clients that did participate, we did see an overall, so if we compare 2024 versus 2025 and then weight them correctly based on the two days versus the four days, we actually saw a 19% decrease in overall sales if we weight everything correctly. But if we do it unweighted, then we saw around 143% lift across all brands across that space. So 42% increase in ad spend, 42% increase in orders across the four days. Now, with that being said, you know, there's the lead up to Prime Day. Where we saw performance really start to kind of tank the weekend prior to, right? So that was the Friday, that was July 4th weekend, I think, is when we start to really saw the sales trend downwards, ad spend up over the weekend, everyone add to cart, add to cart, add to cart. And then Monday, or sorry, the Tuesday exploded, crazy day. That was by far the best day of Prime Day. Wednesday, Thursday, quiet. And then we did see some urgency on Friday. And I think Amazon kind of shot themselves in the foot here because with the previous Prime Day, it being only two days, there was that time sense of urgency for the consumer. And I think what ended up happening this year was there was time for customers to consider If they actually needed that product, right? And so you kind of, you have four days to hum and haw about it instead of having 48 hours to make a decision and move forward with the purchase. And so I think, you know, that humming and hawing actually happened Wednesday, Thursday, and then Friday, there was that push, but it wasn't as big as what we would have expected. If I look at 2024 versus 2025, I would say that this was a down, like Amazon did budge the numbers. They said, oh, our Prime Day sales were up 31% year over year, but they didn't weight it correctly considering they're looking at it four days versus two days. So it's not an accurate assessment for Amazon to come out and make that statement. But of course, they're going to make that statement. They don't want to say that everything's trending downwards because there is external market factors putting pressure on the consumers. Yeah. Overall, I'm happy it's done. I'm not a fan of Prime Day. I think, you know, when we, I crunched the numbers and, you know, did a profit margin comparison as well, right? We're looking at seven day blocks over the period of time. And with the decrease in sales prior to Prime Day, and then the decrease in sales after Prime Day, it's net zero, right? It's net zero. Speaker 1: This is exactly, I was waiting for you to be done, but you brought it up before. That's exactly what I wanted to ask about, because that would be my Guess as to what would happen, especially having double the amount of time for a prime day. Low, high sales velocity, low profit, low. Speaker 4: And factoring in ad spend, right? Increased traffic, increased ad spend. By the time everything shakes out, you know, I was looking at one of my, one of my larger clients and typically it's a 21 to 22% margin after everything's said and done. And during Prime Day, sales increased by 150%, but margin went from 22% down to 14%. And then when we factored that out over the course, you know, it's a net zero, except for, you know, we did move up in the category because we participated. So we did get some sales velocity and some ranking juice for that. But it's also short lived, right? Because of the aftermath of Prime Day, where no one's really buying and CPCs are high because traffic is down. It ends up being just a net wash. So yeah, I'm not, you know, it doesn't to me, it doesn't line anyone's pockets except for Amazon, especially considering prior to Prime Day, they were also sending out emails to sellers saying, Hey, um, we've made adjustments to your inventory limits, you're overstocked, you got to do a removal order. Many of my clients actually received emails like that, where Amazon was trying to clear up space Prior to Prime Day in the Fulfillment Center so they could try and get more Prime Day inventory out there. So they're pushing the products that don't sell out while trying to make room for the products that sell, right? Speaker 1: This is a good point. So my theory, having been selling on Amazon for 15 years, and just like looking at snapshots over time, My theory is this, Amazon doesn't want to deal with us crappy little sellers any longer. So they squeeze margins, they increase rates, blah, blah, blah. They say, hey, if you use AWD, you get a 10% decrease. And everyone goes, oh, that's great. It's better pricing. And they get backed out. And then they go, okay, we're not offering this anymore. And this is the cost. And whoa, now it's more expensive. And so my theory is that Amazon will continue to make these small, well, these incremental changes that force out more and more and more mom and pop shop sellers so that they can focus on the categories and bit slash businesses that actually generate the majority of the revenue. So we'll see about that check back in 10 years. But I'll tell you an interesting side note on Prime Day. From my point of view is I have clients that get attacked with negative reviews just prior to Prime Day. I just brought on a client that they were at a 4.6 star rating and they got hit with 31 star reviews and went down to a 3.7, I think it was, which disqualifies you for Prime Day, if I'm not mistaken, or 3.6. There's some point, I think it's below 4 or below 3.9. I can't remember off the top of my head, but you don't I qualify for Lightning Deals and Prime Day Deals. And so this was a multi-million dollar business. It literally crushed their business in a day. It was actually over about three days. So I'm working with Amazon to get those fraud stuff, those fraud reviews removed. But this is another thing that Prime Day causes. I'll be it less frequent than like having to spend a bunch of money on ads and stuff like that, but this is another thing that does occur particularly in the supplement industry is like, cool, let me spend a couple thousand dollars to attack my competitor. Awesome, I made 50 grand because I did that and I took their position. Speaker 4: That's nothing compared to the ad spend, right? Knocking out a competitor. That's a drop in the bucket. And the other thing that still kind of remains to be seen is the return rates. I'd be interested to see how much consumers change their mind and if we see an actual spike in our return rates prior to, or the fraud around that, right? Like, you know, buying a product, swapping it out, sending it back in, and by the time Amazon catches it, it's too late. Unknown Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. Speaker 5: I think another factor too is Prime Day has become kind of like an establishment that now people were like, well, Target's running a sale, Walmart's running a sale. So people were cross-checking prices. And so I think that there was a lot more like, oh, maybe that price, and that caused some skepticism within kind of the trust that the event had in and of itself, where more people are like, Hey, maybe that 20% discount isn't a 20% discount and so I think that that hurt conversions as well. I saw a lot more of that kind of content on like my regular everyday feeds instead of just my Amazon Seller Feeds. I don't know about, maybe I fell down a weird rabbit hole. You never know. Speaker 4: One thing that we did notice was that Our performance on Walmart during Prime Day absolutely tanked, right? And we ended up opting out to turn off ads simply because everyone was going to Amazon. So Amazon clearly dominated those four days on e-commerce purchasing. There's no question. Speaker 5: I think they said that Shopify had record days though, right? Speaker 4: I don't know. I can't speak to that. Speaker 5: I thought I read something that said Shopify had its biggest day ever, but don't quote me on that. I just thought I saw it in passing. Speaker 1: Did Walmart not do a Wally Day? Speaker 4: I don't, I've never heard of them. Speaker 1: Wally Week? Speaker 5: They did, but it was. Speaker 1: They did? Speaker 5: Yeah. Speaker 1: OK, because, you know, a few years ago they started doing Wally World days, you know, to match the days of Amazon Prime, but overlap by one or I mean, go one beyond. But I didn't see any advertisement for it this time. Maybe it didn't work for them. Maybe they know that they're beat on Prime Days. But anyhow, I looked at my sales while we were talking about this. I actually saw a 50% increase before. Prime Days. And then I went back down to normal sales. So, and I didn't, I know ads, no Prime Day deals, but I think that the advertising has its own sales velocity. And then you see that dip, that spike, that dip, and then potentially the return rate. Speaker 4: I wanted to say one more thing. One thing a lot of sellers don't understand is during these flagpole events or tentpole events, if you do sign up for a Prime deal, you can turn your ads off and on day one, you will probably still hit your regular Every day sales velocity, your total sales will be equal with your ads turned off. And if you offer a discount, right, we did see that where a lot of sellers that didn't participate, turned ads off regular day, even just because of the surge in traffic, right? Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 4: And with these deals, if you're not participating into private, you really should just turn your advertising off because Amazon's actively promoting these deals for This event and they're really focused on showing things that are on deal and they give them the premium spots and they, you know, and so if you are a small seller and you're not participating, you really are, it really is in your best interest just to be pausing those ads. Four days, wait a few days after and then turn them back on. Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay, cool. All right, let's move on to the next topic here. FTC warns Amazon. Oh, let me share my screen once again. We'll just end it there. FTC warns Amazon. Surprise, nothing's going to happen from it. All right. So, FTC warns Amazon and Walmart over sellers' Made in USA claims. The government sent warning letters out to four companies that claim their consumer goods are four companies. Okay. That are of U.S. origin, reminding them to comply with FTC's Made in USA requirements. The Federal Trade Commission also sent letters to Amazon and Walmart regarding third-party sellers who appear to be making deceptive Made in USA claims about their products and on those online marketplaces. Robyn, I believe you have a bit of expertise in this area, yes? Speaker 5: A little bit, not compared to a lawyer. We have brands all the time that come to us and they'll say Made in the USA. Tell us a little bit about that claim. They're like, well, we put it in the box in the USA. That's not made in the USA. In fact, Bigelow Tea got in, I think it was like a two plus million dollar settlement. It was a class action suit because they said they were made in the USA or some version of that. They got sued and Bigelow was like, well, the tea bag, not the tea leaves, but the tea bag is made in the US. The court said, yeah, people aren't buying the bag, they're buying the tea. There is a legal liability there for saying that there are some pretty stiff fines and ramifications for saying something is made in the USA when it's not and I believe it has to be like virtually all needs to be here. The standard is even higher than say like moving things through a country for tariffs. I mean it can't be you throw three stitches in the end at that and say it's made in the USA. So, you know, you really, if you're going to say that, you really need to make sure you understand the claims and be able to substantiate that if somebody asks, because even a lot, you know, even if there is a lawsuit that comes up, even if you win, that could wipe you out cash flow wise. So, you know. Speaker 1: Yeah. It's like an argument with your wife. Even if you win, you lose because you're still sleeping on the couch. Speaker 5: Yes. Speaker 1: I think Kevin and I, Kevin and Neil are like, Hmm, yes, this is, I don't want to touch that one. Speaker 4: But sometimes my wife does too. I see designed in like designed in California. Now that's okay, right? That's totally fine. I sweep through a lot of listings and check out what other sellers are doing and there is a lot of leaning into that USA company. I don't know, now that I'm thinking about it, I don't know if it's actually, they're claiming the Made in USA, but there is definitely that America First movement that's going on within America, right? And so sellers are trying to draw attention to that somehow, and I see lots of American flags on the listing, and just because there's an American flag there, doesn't mean that it's a, I would say that's not a claim, right? That's just, you can just throw an American flag on there and call it good. Speaker 1: It could be American business, or it could just be, Merica. I'd probably put that under the flag. Merica. Speaker 4: So one of the things I was thinking of is just like, you know, there's the small business badge. Amazon should just have an authenticated Made in America badge, right? Where it's like you go through a process. I agree. Yeah. Submit your documentation and then anything that ends in that. Speaker 1: Is there something? Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaker 1: I recall seeing something. Yeah. Amazon Made in America. Keep talking. I'm going to look for this. I'm almost certain I've seen this as a badge. Speaker 4: I don't think I've ever seen it. I don't think I've ever seen it, but I see lots of American flags. I see lots of I'm a small company or American company or whatever. And so like just there needs to be like a differentiation because at the end of the day, you know, with the American first movement, I feel like consumers would rather support an American business than a Chinese factory, even if they are coming from the same place. Speaker 5: And I pulled up the FTC website and it says a Made in USA claim can be express or implied. Examples of express claims include Made in the USA or products that are American made, USA, manufactured or built in the USA. But it also can be US symbols or geographic references. For example, US flags, outlines of US maps or references to US locations, headquarters or factories may convey a claim of US origin either by themselves or in conjunction with other phrases or images. Yeah, so I'll put that in the comment. Yeah. So you know, they think there can be a little bit of a where that you can end up getting bit if you do that, so. Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm not finding the Made in America. I know I've seen it on Amazon before though. I know I've seen it. Just like back in the day, you used to be able to filter in Amazon with a single click American businesses only and they removed that. So I don't know if anyone remembers that. You used to be able to choose a flag, the American flag for American businesses and it would filter out everything else. Kevin, you've been awfully quiet this whole time. I want to know what you have to think about. Speaker 2: No, I was just waiting for my turn. So I would say In law, I'm not a lawyer, but I know that there's a reasonable person standard that most things use. With the point Robyn was making about the implied art that the FTC was worried about, Would a reasonable person look at your flag? Just because we know pictures are for people, the text are for robots. So most people aren't reading the text to hear your justification buried into your product description. So if they just see an American flag, especially on your main image, it implies that it is made in the USA, even if it doesn't have the word made in. Now, if it was designed in the USA, Be crystal clear that like, you know, Amazon has a, you know, country of origin field that it says China or Mexico or India or wherever it is you're getting that product. And then you have some other language in there. And then one standard that's always a good standard is, you know, we've probably all heard the New York Times test of whatever you're doing, would you want the New York Times reporting about it on the front page? Another standard is the your honor test. Whatever you're saying to justify, oh, this is fine, add the words your honor to the front of that. So as if you're in front of a judge trying to explain what you're doing, and if you still feel comfortable with it, then go with it. Because a lot of these things really are gray. Easily said for an honest individual. What's that? Speaker 1: Easily said for an honest individual. Speaker 2: I try to be honest and it keeps me out of trouble. Speaker 1: Yeah, just ask my wife. Don't comment on that, honey. Unknown Speaker: She's sitting next to me. Speaker 2: Hi, Damon's wife. Speaker 1: We were just talking about if you can't be in front of a judge and honestly say whatever you're saying and not be honest, true, and able to be backed up. I was just telling Kevin, I agree with you, but that's easy for an honest individual to say. I'm going to get a little political. I'm neither here nor there as far as all of you are concerned. Speaker 2: Are we going with files here? Speaker 1: Guns. Take away all the guns. Only criminals own guns now. Make guns illegal. Only criminals own guns, right? The thing is that I agree with you, but there's so many There's a percentage of dishonest individuals that they don't care about you as an individual. They don't care about your experience. They care about making those dollars, right? If you ask me, let's take children and baby stuff. Who in their right mind would ever produce a product that's dangerous to a child? Speaker 3: Hey, Amazon sellers. Tired of losing money on storage and shipping fees? Well, Amazon Storage Pros is here to take the headache out of logistics. We manage everything from inventory and creating efficient shipping plans to working with 3PLs and Amazon's AWD so that you can focus on growing your business. Start with a free storage cost audit and discover exactly where you're overspending and how to fix it. Don't let logistics eat into your profits. Visit AmazonStoragePros.com. That's AmazonStoragePros.com to get your free storage cost audit and start saving today. And now back to the show. Speaker 1: Nobody, but somebody, these manufacturers, they still do it, you know, and because of cost, because of money, right? And yet you put a baby in danger. Like if I had my way, Nevermind, we won't get into that. Speaker 5: And I think you could take that same thing. A lot of those brands will be like, oh, I didn't know. I didn't know I needed to make sure my pajamas were not on fire, like they were made out of kerosene. I didn't know. There's an expectation that if you're going to sell in a category or make a claim, that you've done the research or you've hired somebody to do the research to help make sure that, yeah. You know, yeah. Speaker 2: Your Honor, I didn't know. Speaker 5: That's still not going to go well for you. Speaker 2: Right. Speaker 1: Exactly. Speaker 2: Is that going to go well? And probably not. And so that does not meet the Your Honor test. Speaker 5: And you can ask Bigelow Tea about that. Your Honor, tea bags are made in the USA. Speaker 4: With only four cases being launched here, it seems like this is an eye on Amazon's list of policing. But I mean, at least they're, you know, saying, hey, we are trying to clean up the platform around here and make sure that we are holding everyone as to a high honor status as possible, right? Speaker 2: I would imagine they're going after the most egregious cases first. But eventually, if they're getting pressure, there's going to be fewer and fewer low-hanging fruit, and they might start going after the ones that just have an American flag. They're like, we're proud American-domed. Maybe that tricks people. Speaker 4: Those plots could pull American flags very, very quickly. If you have an American flag, send us an email, validate your claim, yes or no, you have 48 hours to approve it. Speaker 1: What you're going to get is an email from Amazon saying your account is approved. Or account wide because that's false claims that I would say it's probably going to be a count like you're at risk of suspension. Speaker 4: Yeah. Section three for BSA. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah. So, yeah. All right. Well, cool. Let's go on to the next subject. I just have to say one thing. Unknown Speaker: Oh boy. Speaker 1: I know. I know I'm not Todd. And Todd, if you're listening, I apologize because I get a lot more heated and passionate than you do on this stuff. Speaker 2: Here we go. Speaker 1: FTC smacks around Amazon a little bit, says, hey, we found that even you, Amazon, manipulated your own reviews on your own products to display above the people that made Amazon great again, right? And Amazon goes, we're terribly sorry about that. We'll hide the reviews. And make them so that nobody can see them, right? I don't see change from Amazon. I just see them, once again, incrementally making changes that actually just prevent people from seeing the information that incriminates them. So taking into account reviews, it used to be public data, right? Anyone could see the reviews. You had a hundred reviews, a thousand reviews. You could see a thousand reviews and read through them, right? And you could keyword search them and stuff like that. Now you have a thousand reviews. Well, you only actually are showing 100 of any one star, which means that they're hiding the data. It's not viewable. You can't find it anywhere. All that exists as far as we're concerned is a link URL that we have no idea what that's associated with unless we find that link URL and then find the product that is based on. So they're hiding data that is responsible for the most important flash reaction on a product, which is your star rating. Nobody can view it. That was the result of the FTC backhanding Amazon. So, you know, these FTC warnings and stuff like that, yeah, they make great news. I don't actually see change from Amazon for the better. I don't see them actually resolving the problem. I see them going, ah, crap, we got caught. Let's make sure we can't get caught by shredding the papers. Alright, moving on to the next subject here. So this is a little more in my wheelhouse and let's share. This is from Isaac Gross. He really knows his stuff. He does a lot of research. He's really very good. He says, Amazon releases custom analytics, a real business intelligence dashboard. This is not something I've ever expected from Amazon, me neither. This looks way better than most third-party tools. I have to see it myself to see if I agree with that. And they let you create your own dashboards with hundreds of metrics to choose from, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So this is very interesting. Early days Amazon, all they really did was give you Excel spreadsheets. They were basically CSV files, right? And that was what Managed by Stats and Helium 10 and Jungle Scout were born out of is somebody understood the numbers and could take that data and build it into tables and into dashboards and metrics that we who are not data scientists can actually look at something and understand the trend up or down. So, It's taken them only a decade to actually build this into Seller Central. Now, I find historically that the graphs, and I want to get all three of your opinions on this, but I find that the graphs are Can be helpful, but are not as historically, it doesn't give you a good enough picture to be able to see and make full-blown decisions on. I see my numbers equals this. This is what's happening. This is what I did. This is what I'm going to do, which is the whole purpose of statistics is to see the past. The present so that you can predict the future based on actions or inactions, right? So this is really interesting to me because if you can customize these graphs, and I'm hoping you can overlay statistics and stuff like that, you'll be able to see associations, but Um, Kevin, let's start with you and tell me, have you ever used Amazon's metrics for managing your business? And then second up, okay, yes. Second up to that, do you use a third party? Today, we're going to talk about a tool to manage business by metrics. Speaker 2: Yes. So I use a tool called Gorilla ROI, which pulls a lot of data and you put it into a Google Sheet so you can create your own. I have not had a chance really to play much with the custom analytics just yet. It is a little bit of overwhelm of, you know, you are able to take more data points. The thing I will say, I'll give Amazon credit here, is that a lot of times when you get more data, it feels like it's just so you can spend more money on ads because they give you more money. Certain metrics like, are you at top of search? What percentage? Things like that. I feel like it's just kind of inching people towards spending more money, whereas this is At least at first glance, what I've looked at, and again, I haven't played with it all that much, good analytics, which people have been complaining about for years, like why doesn't Amazon give us good data? The one question I do have, and again, I should probably have known this, but Do you have a lot of control over date ranges or do they have fixed date ranges like they do with search query performance? Speaker 1: I've not played with it yet. I saw this post when Isaac put it out. My wife is the one that manages our Amazon account, so I don't really log in that much. Truth be told, I really should have. Given my tenure at Manage My Stats and even helping direct some of the dashboards that were built, Here's the thing. Here's what I think. This is wonderful. If you've got granularity, you can change date ranges, right? Not only date ranges, but I want to be able to look at, okay, daily, what's my metric for this? Speaker 2: Sweet. Speaker 1: Weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly. And I want that as a click of the button. And I don't know if it does that. Hopefully it does. Speaker 5: Because- I think you can do weekly and monthly data. Speaker 1: Okay. Weekly and monthly. And then, Yeah, I'd also want to know yearly at a snapshot. Oh, here's the other thing. How far back does that data go? Does anyone know? Speaker 5: I'd have to go look. Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm playing in it right now. Speaker 1: Okay. Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to log into my Seller Central on this computer because I look at so many people's accounts and reviews and stuff like that. I just don't want to play with that fire. But hey, honey, could you log into Seller Central? See if you can find the graph section and then just start playing around with it. And I'll ask you what you found so far. There should be custom graphs now. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: Uh, but I don't, I don't know the link to it. Speaker 5: What do you want? Speaker 1: Well, I want to know, can you look at, uh, how far can you look? Can you do daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, and today, yesterday, week to date, month to date, year to date, which is all that's they've been doing that for years. Yeah. And custom. I'm in custom, but you can't change it from daily. Okay. Thank you. Speaker 2: I'm just curious. Like the custom, you can only go back like 30 or 60 days with like a lot of reports you can, or can you say, I want to look at, you know, Black Friday of 2022. Speaker 1: Yes. See, that's exactly my question because via the SPAPI, you can only go back, if I remember correctly, two years, right? That's correct. And that's correct. Okay. Yeah. So two years of data. Great. This year, Well, two years of data is not a trend for me. It's not a yearly trend. It's either you're up or down from the one before, but it doesn't tell me my business health, right? In Managed by Stats, I've got data all the way back to 2010, and I can filter on yearly, and I can see, is my business uptrending or downtrending? Speaker 2: Is that because Managed by Stats was housing this data that it pulled over time or is the API go back further? Speaker 1: No, the API goes back two years. Speaker 4: They would have a data warehouse. Speaker 1: Yeah. So all my data is stored because I started with Amazon on their beta. I mean, I started with Managed by Stats on their beta and downloaded all that data. At that time, back then, they didn't prevent you from getting all the years past because it was through MWS and not the existing SPAPI. So I have my entire business history on Managed by Stats. If I lose Managed by Stats, I lose everything except for the last two years. So, you know, being a 15-year Amazon seller, it just doesn't make sense to me that I can only see the last two years. It doesn't tell me how I'm doing overall. What'd you find, Rob? Speaker 5: A year and a half. On Amazon's side, storing that much data for that many sellers would be very expensive. Yeah. Speaker 1: Say it again, Robyn. Speaker 5: To store that much data for the number of sellers and that, you know, the data that is, you know, so let's say knowing what our Prime Day was in 2015, I don't remember if they started it then, is that really going to help sellers? So there's a, you know, point where the data is so old, it doesn't actually have any reference on today because the platform has changed. So, you know, I think it comes down to a cost point. Where is that cost worth the left? For somebody to be able to see year over year for one or two years, that provides a lot of insight for sellers. For them to be able to see five years back, the number of sellers that would be able to get clear actionable insights is a lot smaller, I think. Speaker 1: Yeah, you're probably right about that. And quite frankly, most sellers even started, they started five years ago. So, you know, two years does make a lot more sense. For me as a business over a 15 year period, like I used different strategies for customer and product acquisition. And so I'd be able to tell, hey, do I need to go back to this strategy or that? You're absolutely right, Robyn. There's less use for that old data Then there is for later data. And by the way, you can only go back two years. Jade just checked. You can go back two years on the custom stuff. So it's exactly what you get from the SPAPI, which is exactly what everybody gets through their existing statistics systems. The question is, is will you be able to build your own dashboards? If Amazon starts building alerts out of this stuff. Speaker 4: That's exactly where I was going to go with it. Like the dashboard. So like at the, you know, reputable ages, we have built out all these dashboards already. We have all of this already. But for the average seller, this is a very big thing for them, right? Because Amazon does make it extremely challenging for you to track your metrics. Like I think about how Today, we're going to be talking about the SKU economics section inside of Amazon. That section could use an overhaul as well, where you're allowed to look at a parent, right? Instead of just an individual SKU, look at a parent because I get emails all the time where it's like, hey, I'm looking at my SKU economics right now. This SKU is showing me as a negative profit because that's the one we're advertising on. Amazon is extremely profitable and they don't, and so they don't aggregate that data properly and display it properly. And it makes it very hard for, you know, tracking refund rates, tracking the amount of refunds over time. And like seeing that inside of Amazon is an excellent step to say, you know what, we are recognizing that there is a data Production or data access lacks issue. And we're moving probably one step closer to Amazon actually displaying tacos inside of the advertising console. Right. That would be or even in the business reports, like if I see that. Oh my God, I'm going to be jumping for joy because I probably spend more time calculating tacos, even if we do already do have it automated. But like when we think about attribution from the different ad types and how their Amazon calculates it, it gets to be very messy. But if Amazon starts giving us direct attribution for everything, then it makes it quite a bit easier because that ad spend has to go somewhere. And sponsored brands is the hardest to attribute. Speaker 2: I think they have all this data. Like I think it goes back to when you started in 2010 or whatever. Like I think it's all there. It's just the I think it's more of a resources of pulling the data. Somebody's muted. And so I think it's just It probably takes a lot of resources to pull that data out, which is why, you know, like for example, like in sponsored or campaign manager, you can go lifetime and look at your campaign history. You can go year to date. But if you said, what was it over Prime Day last year? You can't. And so that's three months, right? Because you can only go back, you know, three months with granularity. So I just, if anyone from Amazon is watching, I know it probably gives a lot of It takes resources if somebody said, I want to pull 10 years of data, and that probably might crash not one individual seller, but it'd probably be a lot of strain on the system. But at least let us maybe have a rolling period of time of maybe two years or a year or six months or something for some of these data points to be able to pull custom reports. Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be nice. Speaker 4: Wouldn't it be seven years for tax purposes anyways, right? Speaker 2: I mean, the tax, I mean, you're 1099s in there for, I think I've got all my 1099s. Speaker 5: Hey, your 1099s stay in there long enough. Yeah. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: But you can't verify that data. I mean, there's, there's this company called Amazon that owns a, a, uh, this system called AWS. Um, and you know, But I don't know, maybe the servers are too expensive for them to give us that data. Speaker 2: It's not like they had any overage in space that they decided to sell off. Speaker 1: Exactly. Speaker 4: But like taking through those mega enterprisable brands, like if they were to request two years worth of data, like that is an enormous amount of data to try and go through, right? Like if, you know, if your catalog has 10,000 SKUs and each SKU spends, you know, $1,000 a month, that exponentially just becomes an insurmountable amount of data to produce for 10 years back, right? Speaker 5: I have a client that's got over, you know, 10,000 SKUs and they've been with us for about seven years and so just the amount of data that we've generated for that little small company is a significant amount of data. Speaker 4: And that's just one company, right? Like if you think about like the major brands like Dyson or Anchor or you know, some of those big mega brands that are moving millions and millions of units a year. It's crazy. Speaker 2: The flip side to that is how much did those big brands Spend in referral fees, how much they spend on FBA fees, account inventory fees, sponsored ads, long term storage fees, Amazon reps. Speaker 1: Yeah, why else would Amazon make the data disappear? They have it. If even in cold storage and you had to request it later, they've got the FTC asked for it, they'd get it. Oh, yeah. Speaker 4: Yeah. Speaker 1: It's all put together. It's all saved. Speaker 5: I don't think it's nefarious. I think it's a resources thing and honestly Amazon could have that data available or they could use that resource to work on, I don't know, making seller support case escalations better or putting tacos in the reporting. I would rather have them do that. So of the things that we can pick on Amazon for, I don't know if this is the number one thing on my list. Speaker 1: It's just another thing on a long list. Speaker 5: It's good to have dreams, though. Speaker 4: It's good to have dreams. Tacos in our business or 4-8. All we want is tacos. Speaker 1: I mean, look, I'm not saying that they're nefariously hiding the data. I'm just saying I've been in this business a long time. I see these types of activities over and over and over and over again in different sectors of Amazon. I, as a business owner, I'm incapable of accessing my data for which I paid Amazon to be there to do business, right? I cannot access that data. Speaker 5: You could have if you had been downloading it as you went. Unknown Speaker: Right, which I did. Speaker 1: Yes, which I have, right? Speaker 5: Of the people that I know that work on the back ends of Amazon, they all have been generous and wanting to support sellers. They don't have time to be like, some of them really do have awesome mustaches and those mustaches definitely could be part of a super villain thing. But even one of the ones with the really cool mustaches, I don't see them being like, whoa. Speaker 1: Literally every individual I've met at Amazon has been awesome. It's not that. Speaker 2: It's a bunch of teams running in different directions. Speaker 5: I just want us to remember that all of these things are real people that they have put their blood, sweat and tears to try to make things better. There's lots to pick at. Speaker 1: That's why I am not going after individuals of Amazon or even teams of Amazon. I recognize that this is the corporate structure of things making Overall decisions that do not necessarily, it's like putting in a law, like 10 people kept driving on the sidewalk and so they made a law. Now nobody can drive on the sidewalk, right? That's a bad example. That is beneficial, but let's say it wasn't, right? All right, Robyn, I'll stop jabbing at you here. On one side, I agree with you. On the other side, I'm so salty about the way I've been treated by Amazon as a business. I've got a lot of wounds from that, you know. However, you're absolutely right. Speaker 5: I have a great trauma therapist I can refer you to, so. Speaker 1: Is it Marketplace Blueprint? Speaker 5: No, no, no. Unknown Speaker: All right, cool. Speaker 1: Let's get on our last topic of the day. It's all about AI. Let me share my screen. And so this is an interesting one for me because it says AI search is expanding the funnel, not replacing it. I agree with that. And there's a section down here called the new full funnel playbook. So basically, awareness. Search, video, and display still drive reach, but messaging needs to be tailored for early stage exploration. It's always been that way. Consideration and conversion. AI platforms are emerging as high intent environments. People are asking for recommendations, comparisons, and plans. We need to meet them there with content built for action. It's also always been that way, right? So, People are using, and I do the same thing, using AI to find, well, okay, what are the top rated products in this category, right? You just used Google before that, but now Google is filled with bestat.com, right? And it's just these articles that are written with affiliate links so that they can make money based on referrals. You know, so you get social proof. So we went from SEO and websites that suggest products to social proof. And now you have 14.8 billion influencers that get a free product and do a video. Then we're now in the next stage. This is my opinion, folks. We're in the next stage where it's AI, which can access gargantuan amounts of data and hopefully get real responses based on that data and give real suggestions. What I'm seeing here is that we're actually shortcutting the search to find brands that you think would be a fit for what you're looking for. And so that's how I've personally used it. And I want to know, how have you guys used AI? Have you used AI to search for products and what's been your method and your net result? Speaker 4: I'll go first if you guys don't mind. So I use AI all the time. I use AI for shopping regularly. I say, hey, I recently bought a bicycle. I said, I'm 5'6". I want to do this, this and this. What are some bicycles that I should move to the top of my list for consideration? Bang, bang, bang. Rattled all three out and why I should be doing that, right? Or why I should be looking at those specific bikes. And it made me, you know, cut through a lot of the noise and be like, okay, yeah, you know what? This makes sense. This is like, you brought up very valid reasons why I want this bike and like the uses that I need. It all meets that, right? I just shared a link in the chat here where it's actually, so we probably have some sellers on the call right now. Get your products registered with ChatGPT. So there is a link here where you can register with OpenAI and you can start to get your product showing up on the OpenAI registry. So they are OpenAI, GPT is starting to move towards sponsored products and advertising there. So this is a one where, you know, we can be at the front of the curve and help GPT understand your products and get them recognized in their database. So it could potentially make help make these recommendations, right? Because when I was searching for this bicycle, Guess what? Only a large brand showed up, right? Only the large, very well-known brand showed up. And there may have been some other bikes that fit my needs maybe a little bit better, but because they weren't registered with GPT, they didn't come up in the top of first search funnel. I didn't end up going to like any blogs. I relied solely on GPT to make recommendations. Speaker 2: This is ChatGPT or Rufus? Speaker 4: This is GPT, ChatGPT. So this is a, you know, they're already starting to expand. And so this is a, you know, kind of tip of the iceberg where consumers are starting to use AI to help make them better Purchasing decisions, right? Narrowing it in. And so it's happening on Amazon and it's also happening off of Amazon. And that's what we were talking about now is just like the awareness stage. So getting your products registered for awareness with GPT, you know, getting in early might be like getting in early with Amazon. I don't know. Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I did see something a few months back saying that OpenAI was doing some kind of deal with Shopify. So I don't know if it's a full integration or what, but it makes perfect sense to me for them to do that because if you go into the Shopify network, you have everything you need for D2C brands. So that would make a lot of sense. I don't know if that deal's happened yet, but cool. So Neil, I'll take it one step further. I will actually ask for GPT to locate me a video on YouTube having to do with a subject matter that I've asked about. And so that is something that I've used to vet what GPT is coming back to me with because The answers with GPT are only as good as the data that it goes and seeks out. And we know that there's a whole bunch of fluff on the internet, right? And so I use, like some people use TikTok for social proof. I use YouTube. I have used YouTube for many years. I am a YouTube influencer for the off-road space and have done product videos for the off-road space and product placement and stuff like that. I use organic videos, kind of like what I create, organic videos to go, Oh, what was that in that video? And then from there, I'll go on a product search and then search for reviews on different brands. And you can use GPT for that as well. So I've historically used GPT to, exactly like you have, funnel it down to where should I start. And then I will individually check everyone. Because you're 5'6", I'm 6'2". You and I need different bikes, right? And I'm also 250 pounds. So yeah, I might have a couple of pounds on you. Um, you might be able to wear me as a fat suit. Don't recommend it. But, uh, you know, I, we have to have different bikes. And then of course there's the different styles, mountain bikes, road bikes, uh, bikes. Yeah. Hybrid bikes, full electric bikes. Um, yeah, I mean it's, I use it to shortcut. Kevin, have you ever used it to purchase products? Speaker 2: Not direct purchase of a product, but I have used it. Like, for example, on Mother's Day, we used it to come up with ideas to put into like a basket for my wife. I have used Rufus a couple times, but I wasn't totally in love with what Rufus came back with. But ChatGPT, at least with ideas, seemed to work pretty well. I haven't used it for find me a product. I have heard ramblings that Sam Altman is looking to go that direction instead of with ads, but maybe like a small referral fee. Speaker 1: Would make sense. Speaker 2: Yeah, it would make sense. I have a feeling eventually it's going to go that way, but the hard part is right now it's so early. Like, is it worth it probably to do a feed submission if you have a Shopify store to OpenAI? Sure. Speaker 1: Yep. Speaker 2: You totally redo your business model based on everything yet? No. You know, so it's like, yeah, we're still very early. Speaker 1: Yeah. I guarantee you OpenAI is going to start selling ads. I mean, it's, it's part of the most successful playbook of, of the Google, the Amazon, all of them. Like, Facebook, that's what they did. They acquired the users and ChatGPT, OpenAI, we freaking pay them to be their user. So not only are they making money on us, they'll be able to make money on them as well. And it would make sense to me to I have some semblance of that, but right now, ChatGPT claims that it is completely organic results. There are no paid anythings. And they're also, I read this in an article, they're also not looking at paid ads, but only organic search results to bring the data back. So to me, what that means is, You could call it full circle in marketing, but SEO has always, always, always been super important. Content is king. It always has been. I believe it always will be. And in the world of AI, you can now generate tons of content. So I'll probably modify my statement that real content is king. Speaker 4: Yes. One of the interesting things. So sorry. Rufus. Rufus is now starting to generate how to's in the Amazon search bar. Right. So that is starting. Like we're starting to see how to. Apply nail polish or whatever in the Amazon search bar, right? So there is a shopping trend change there because consumers are starting to go to Rufus. Rufus, Kevin, I agree with you 100%. Rufus needs a lot of work. It still doesn't understand the brand that it's referencing in the response. It gets the brands. When you're on the product detail page, it will get the brand owner of that product detail page wrong still. So there's still a long way for Rufus to go, but we are starting to see that trend in how, how to, how to, how to. Speaker 1: Is that coming from the Amazon influencer network? Speaker 4: No. Yeah. Speaker 5: So, can I bring it. So, when I'm talking with SMBs one of the conversation is, you know, like, let's go international let's do this let's do that. And sometimes it's really important to focus in on what's going to yield the best fruit. So one of the things that we've talked to, I personally don't think Rufus is there. I agree with you. I haven't been impressed. I think that we as marketers can sometimes have a skewed version of reality because the people that are in marketing are much more AI forward in general. So that doesn't mean that, you know, if you have a product that is geared towards 60 year olds, probably not need to focus too much on AI right now, maybe. It's going to depend on how much research for like a mountain bike, a very technical mountain bike. Yes, I think that it might be much more worth the lift than say, you know, a spatula. People aren't researching which is the best spatula, right? So I think it depends on- You don't know my wife. It depends on the age, it depends on the amount of research that goes into your product, and it depends on really the avatar of your client. And so I will occasionally go to my normal friends and say, tell me, have you, and they'll be like, what's a Rufus? And I was like, this little thing, they're like, oh, I just thought that was, they don't even see that it's there, right? Speaker 1: Yeah, we discussed this before, Robyn. I think we all agree, nobody really knows who Rufus is except for us. Speaker 5: I know some really brilliant SEOs that are already looking at how can they influence AI. Some are a little bit more black hat, some are a little bit more white hat. Ryan Jones is amazing. If you're not following him, he's brilliant. There's so many great people that are really starting to better understand these LLMs, how the tokens work, how to influence them. There's a lot of really great people to follow. And I think that one other thing we need to think about is the. The level of trust that somebody would have with AI, I think that for a lot of people, the hallucinations make it so they feel like they need to verify that information afterwards. You're also going to want to look at the level of skepticism. The other thing is you want to think about prejudice against AI. For example, my daughter is an emerging artist. She loves to paint. For her, any company that uses AI heavily is a company that she does not want to purchase from. Because from her perspective, AI is taking the work of artists, right? So there are certain segments of the population that if you go really AI heavy, you can actually alienate your primary audience. So I think it's important to really think through who you're trying to sell to, where they're at and how they feel before you go really heavy in any of these directions. Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going to make an overarching statement that I hopefully don't ever have to revise, but if you want, my opinion is this. Sure, there's always going to be hacks. There's always going to be tricks. There's always going to be blah, blah, blah, black hat do this, blah, blah, blah, right? That'll always exist. That'll always change. It's always going to be the new trend. And Amazon sellers are always very interested in this. No matter what though, It always comes back to knowing your customer, having the data on your listing that they want to know about your product, and having a really well-built listing. If you wanna optimize, this is my opinion, I'm not an AI expert, but if you wanna optimize for Rufus, you wanna optimize for ChatGPT, find out what questions your customers are asking and have an FAQ with that in there and make sure that it's on a webpage, whether it's Amazon or Shopify or WooCommerce or whatever, make sure it's on a webpage that can be crawled by the bots. Try to get that question exactly what is being asked or very close to what is being asked by your ICP. That is going to give you the best chance of getting recommended, I think, by AI is if, once again, you are the most relevant to the questions or data being requested by the user. This is the new version of SEO. That's all there is to it. It's just shortcutting the search engines and referencing the search engines for you and giving you a succinct response to what you're asking for, but you still need that data there and accessible. That's my opinion. Speaker 5: Rand Fishkin and Mike King are really two great people to watch. I was at a presentation from Rand Fishkin at SMX Munich and he really broke down the percentage of searches that are happening on traditional engines versus ChatGPT and other LLMs. And right now, still a lot more searches are happening on those traditional search engines. One thing that I think is good to remember is that sometimes people forget about Bing. If you're interested in looking at advertising for Bing, Nava Hopkins is a great person. A lot of people forget about that channel. But with the number of people using Edge, there's a lot more traffic there than you might think. Speaker 1: Cool. Well, thank you all for coming in. I appreciate you being here on behalf of Todd Welch and the Amazon Seller School. He thanks you. And anyone that's watching, yes. Anybody that's watching, we will be here next week on Friday, 1 o'clock EST once again. All right, everyone. Have a good day. Thanks, Neil, Kevin, Robyn. See you guys next week. Speaker 5: Thank you. Speaker 1: Bye. Unknown Speaker: This has been another episode of the Amazon Seller School podcast. Thanks for listening, fellow Amazon seller. And always remember, success is yours if you take it. Speaker 3: Hey, if you made it this far in the show, I really hope you enjoyed it and I'd like to ask you a favor. Could you head on over to Apple or Spotify or wherever you're listening to this and leave us a review? It would be greatly appreciated and would help us continue to grow the show and offer more episodes for you. Thank you. God bless and have an awesome day.