EP #295] [ENG] - How Amazon ppc is evolving 2025 - George Meressa

EP #295] [ENG] - How Amazon ppc is evolving 2025 - George Meressa Unknown Speaker: Welcome to The Ecommerce Lab By Ecomcy. This is the place for everything related to Amazon private label and e-commerce. Learn exactly what you need to start or scale your business. Get insights from the top industry experts who will discuss the latest trends and best practices in the world of Amazon. From choosing products and sourcing from a supplier to setting up your Amazon account and marketing your business, you will hear it here. Let's get started. Here is your host, Vincenzo Toscano. Speaker 2: Hello, guys. Welcome to another episode of The Ecommerce Lab By Ecomcy, the place where everything related to Amazon, FBA, Parallel and Ecommerce. My name is Vincenzo Toscano, founder and CEO of Ecomcy. And today we'll bring you for a second time now, a close friend of mine, George Meressa, founder and CEO of Clear Ads, which I would say one of the top agencies out there when it comes to helping brands scale on Amazon. And today the conversation is going to be about, you know, how Amazon has been evolving, especially when it comes to advertising. It's fun. Every single time I go back to 2014, those easy times, and I remember how PPC was compared to now, man, it's like black and white. It's completely different. Before you could get away with just some, you know, auto campaigns or sometimes not even advertising. Now it's completely different. Like you really need to master advertising to have a success on, you know, journey on Amazon. So we're going to be talking about that evolution. And of course, just dive a little bit deeper about what is coming in 2025. George, welcome to the show. How are you doing? Speaker 1: I am good. Thank you so much for having me for a second time. I must have done something right. Speaker 2: For sure, for sure. So, man, it's a pleasure. Thank you so much for being on the show. I guess let's start with a quick intro by yourself for those that, you know, might not know you. Tell us who's George a little bit about Clear Ads. And then, of course, let's dive into the conversation. Speaker 1: Yeah, sounds good. So I'm George, the founder of Clear Ads. The company's been going since 2011, so 14 years from January. So we specialize in helping brands with their advertising on Amazon through pay, pay-per-click and also Amazon's demand side platform. We now also work on kind of full service element of Amazon too. So helping with the listings, launching images, backend, anything to do with health as well with the account. So I kind of segwayed into that in the last seven months. And that's been another area where we've seen some So some good growth and a real transformation on performance when it comes to advertising. Speaker 2: Yes, that's awesome, man. Like, you know, you're one of the OGs. I've been seeing this face for a while now. In fact, I remember when I was getting started, I look up to you, man, your content and everything. So, you know, I've definitely been seeing your growth. So it's great to have you on the show today. And now let's dive a little bit more into what has been happening since then. I mean, when you started the company, Amazon FBC was completely different. I'm sure you have seen everything from A to Z, everything that happened. Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, the campaigns were so basic when we first started. I mean, we didn't have as much reporting access, the access to reporting data that we have now. So that's been a big benefit that we have now, more so than before. Support has improved to some degree. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm in the performance. You're paying pennies per click and you were able to achieve single digit ACoS numbers. Speaker 2: That was crazy. Speaker 1: I remember. And that was kind of very common and normal. You can run auto campaigns and they would work a tree. I mean, exact match keyword targeting. They were exact match. There weren't any variations of those terms. It was exact match. Yeah, they were kind of starting points. And they were great. I mean, the returns you were getting was just uncomparable to other platforms. Speaker 2: Yes, I agree. I think at the same time, I know people keep going back to those times, but I know people say now, yeah, there's more competition, mice are paid to win, but at the same time, I think that's an opportunity because before, I'm sure you know many of them, a lot of people became successful Amazon sellers, it wasn't because they were super smart, it was pure luck. What's pure because early to market. Now it's about you being strategic and actually launching a product that is adding value. And you essentially know how to run a business, which to some extent, I prefer that, you know, environment, because that means actually the best is going to win compared to before. That was a matter of luck. I mean, what is your take on that? Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, the barrier of entry is really a lot higher now. So, yeah, I think in the past, there was a kind of, yeah, I remember jumping on calls with people who didn't know what they were doing, and they were seeing sales just coming in. And they just got lucky, and they picked a product. And they were kind of quite fortunate with that. But yeah, now, Yeah, there's a lot more sophistication to it. You know, if you start to see success, I mean, the next big question is how can you create a moat around that success? Because there are now so many tools that can track any products that are just flying in. And before you know it, you will have competitors coming in at a better rate than you. But yeah, so that's kind of been a big change. Speaker 2: I agree. I think as well what I'm seeing when it comes to advertising, maybe we can talk a little bit about that, is how also I feel Amazon is starting to push advertising from being traditional only search-based to now based on behavior and essentially the journey of a customer with things such as Amazon Marketing Cloud, And DSP being a bigger push than ever from Amazon. Do you feel like that's where Amazon is going? Like we're going to come into an era where it's all about how actually you identify the right avatar rather than focusing on search or what is your take on that? Premier2Meta essentially would look like audiences and all of that, you know. Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the audience target and all that is great and the amount of information and data we have access to is brilliant. I think those who really benefit from that information are those that are pushing volume, right? They have kind of awareness campaigns going and they're really pushing hard. They're going to really benefit from that information. I think those Who are kind of seven figures, six, high six figures. I mean, they really just need to focus on the product, I think, in my opinion. I think, like, these are all shiny, fancy things, but actually, Yeah, we just found that those who really, really obsess about their products, they tend to do better because if they obsess about their products, then it's more likely to get a better review, it's more likely for them to repurchase. It has such a knock on effect. And yet fine, you know, if you have access to that data to show you that, but like, first focus on the product. And what I've noticed a lot of now is as well as people who are just Unaware of Amazon, they were selling their products wholesale or to other businesses. They then come onto Amazon and they see a great deal of success because their main focus has always been the product and actually the strength of having kind of a logistics foundation of knowing how to get their products outside of Amazon, FBA. So that's kind of given them a big edge. So yeah, the data is great and it's exciting, but Really focusing on the product I think is probably one area that I see time and time again neglected. I mean, and that's the biggest difference now as well compared to before. Before you could just, I don't know, go and find a product from China, get it out and then it does really, really well. Now you really have to kind of look at the ingredients, look at kind of all the features of the product and how does it differ from What's out there right now and have kind of a real kind of edge and then and then and then once you put ads on to them, those kind of products, then yeah, it will fly and then everything will just have a knock on effect in it. Speaker 2: Yeah. So now when it comes to this, which is very, very well said, like, I feel the same when it comes to brands are actually having a successful journey on Amazon. Especially brands that come from D2C, brands that have a big retail explosion. I don't know why, but the last six months, maybe you can also jump into this and see more and more interest from these brands to jump to Amazon. And what I'm also seeing is that all these brands are coming from outside of Amazon that already have huge successes outside of Amazon. They're starting to have a huge market share penetration because they have, what you just mentioned, they have already an awareness, they have a good product, they have managed to master logistics, which is sometimes where most of the profitability is gone. And now these brands that were pure Amazon-driven brands, they're having a struggle because they don't have the awareness, they don't have the expertise of being somebody else besides FBA. And I think that this era is starting to happen already, where now big brands like, you know, corporations and all that, they have seen the potential of Amazon. And now these small brands, if they don't catch up to that, they're going to have a tough time. Speaker 1: Yeah, it just adds another layer of difficulty, doesn't it? Seeing these brands now taking Amazon as a channel seriously because it wasn't done so in the past. Now they are jumping in. I've seen that as well. And not only do they have that brand Kind of that branding advantage that, you know, the smaller brands may not, you know, are likely to not have. But they also have a different mindset as well. They're not really thinking about, oh, what's my return on ad spending, what's my ACOS? They're thinking, okay, how can I maximize my market share on this platform? And like, You know, if they're going to, they would happily reduce, you know, some of their product prices, because they have a whole range of other products on different channels. That's making them enough money anyway. So they'll do that to kind of cut people out anyway. So this is kind of what I'm going to say. I can see happening more and more. And I think another big thing about with these brands is it doesn't matter if they're organically ranked number four, or number three, or number two, you know, if someone recognizes that brand, and it's a household name, they're gonna, they're gonna click on buy and they're gonna buy. And again, I think this is where The product quality is probably going to be the only way you can really be a brand like that. Because when I get brand awareness, I mean, they're going to have years behind them. They're going to have so much more going. And then if you're trying to beat them on price, I mean, one or two dollars may not make that big of a difference for certain products. But if you have a superior brand, which you're more likely to have because these bigger brands are going to be slower to move, to innovate, whereas a smaller brand, you can very quickly find out all of the pain points of that brand just by looking at their reviews. I mean, if you're going to Product Opportunity Explorer. Speaker 2: Is that what it's called? Yes. Speaker 1: Yeah. Go into that and it will just summarize beautifully for you all of the things wrong with these products. And if you did that and actually worked really hard to hone in and fix it, that I think would probably, well, is likely, is more likely to do more than anything else. Speaker 2: Yeah. And I think the beauty as well of artificial intelligence is like, Now, within minutes, you can extract all these data, as you mentioned, reviews, historical data, and all of that, put that into something like ChatGPT, and you will know within five minutes what are the things you have to improve, what are the things you have to avoid, and how to make a branding to highlight those issues. So there's no excuse now. Like before, that would take you weeks and months, but now it's like with AI, which I'm sure maybe you are seeing a lot with your clients, it's completely changing the game and the speed to market when it comes to some of these things. Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think one of the big things that's neglected is the detail. I mean, you can imagine, you know, there's going to be so many brands who just put a listing up, it's done, tick the box. Okay, now let me look at the data and let me look at the reports. But actually, when's the last time you really had to kind of read through all of the bullet points again, and the title and then actually looked at, okay, when I actually search for my product on Amazon, what message are these other products conveying? How does this fit what I'm putting out? Are every single one of my images optimized to the very best? Have I got the keywords in the back end placed properly? Am I happy with those terms? And actually, you know, chipping away in those basic details could also go a long way. Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. In fact, another thing that I have seen that is super, super important when it comes to that is that Rufus now is playing such a key role in this that if you don't make sure that your images And you're copying a message you're conveying is effectively tapping into a specific kind of relevancy. Then you're going to have also a big issue because now it's not anymore about having the right keywords. And you know, this is also about what is the message? Your bullet points, your title, and everything you listen is conveying to target the right avatar. And I think that's the direction Amazon is going. They want to make sure that they understand your product inside out and based on what they understand when we listen, they recommend it to the right person, you know. Speaker 1: Yeah, and one of the science papers I read mentioned that actually they're putting more weight into the content provided with the reviews and the questions asked and the answers of those questions. I think Rufus is going into that as well quite a bit. So, I mean, the question and answer section is a very good way to optimize your listing and put more into that. I mean, reviews, you know, there's not much you can do there. Again, To the highest quality you can make it and constantly just build it in your product. Okay, what can I do to improve it? How can I kind of make it better and stand out? What added piece of value can I put that they weren't expecting? That's just going to make them happier. Those things because if you can get a positive review and some more content in that in that aspect, that's going to, you know, that in itself can provide you with such a moment. And I think that's what I'm seen with AI. I think when AI first came out, people thought, OK, it's going to be great. We've created content for you, but now we can kind of see when something is written by AI and when it's written by real people. Actually, where the strengths come in is these large learning modules. They are able to pick out which products have really gone into the detail, which products have fleshed out and have so much information behind them. And it's easier to draw those products out. So if you have everything really put well together with a particular ace in, then yeah, this is more likely to do well. And I'm seeing again and again, A brand north of like six, seven million a year. And they have fantastic listings, but then there's four or five that do a decent volume of sales. I've just been neglected. They have like two images or three images and like they haven't really got bullet points out. So there's still quite a lot of scope. And I've seen this with a lot of the big brands as well that have a vendor central account. I mean, they have They put no effort into the titles and the bullet points. Obviously, they're just kind of leaning so heavily on their branding that's getting them to sales. But again, with kind of AI's integration into Amazon, which again, it's been around for a while, but it's now with Rufus and kind of just how it's advancing. That's another way you can almost certainly get an edge is actually Using AI to create the content, actually just reading through and going, OK, is this conveying all of the benefits of the product? What are they likely to get from buying this product? Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: How is it going to make them feel and really putting that out there? Speaker 2: Yeah. And I think this can also be leveraged from an advertising point of view, because now what you can do with AI is, let's say, especially within such a sponsor brands, you know, that you need creatives and also DSP. Now you can practically, by understanding your avatar, come with taglines or images that will actually tap into the emotion or the actual action of that person to buy your product, which before would require a lot of thought and years of experience. Now I will tell you, you need to make this message, this image here and there. You know there's no excuse when it comes to that. Now another thing I want to bring to the conversation is with everything going on around Amazon and the fact that you know it's getting competitive and at the same time we have these big brands coming on board, the conversation now is getting more and more open when it comes to exploring other marketplaces such as Walmart, such as TikTok, So just target MercadoLibre and so on. So tell us a little bit about what you've seen. What are your thoughts? Like, do you feel now definitely you have to be in our channels to start, you know, spreading your risk? Or you still feel most of the effort has to still go towards Amazon? Speaker 1: I mean, Amazon has the benefit of piggybacking on the trust that they've built over the years. So it's a good place to start. I think The benefits of going onto your own website and getting that out of the ground. And actually speaking to this, there's a lot of people doing really well outside of Amazon through their websites. And actually, one of the big areas that they can leverage that you can't have Amazon is having this built-out email list when you have new products, like sending it out to the customers and actually getting kind of a flood of sales coming in. But again, it's a lot harder because you're not taking advantage of all the traffic that's coming in like you are from Amazon. You're having to make the traffic and build the traffic. TikTok's been interesting. I think for certain products, it does really well. I think there's a lot of talk right now about just TikTok lives and people making a lot of money of just having their products live and just recording it and someone just talking about the features on it. And what's fascinating about TikTok is you do not need the followers to get the views. Something could just go viral and you might have just a few followers. And so I think there's no harm in trying it. I mean, we've had one or two brands that have kind of completely run out of stock on Amazon because they've just actually exploded on on TikTok. So, but that's not, it's not a cheap, it's not a cheap method. And there's going to be a lot of giveaways that you're going to have to do to a lot of influencers. And it's going to, it's a lot more legwork as well, just to kind of create content, making sure that it's of a good quality. But I mean, there's resources out there, but I always advise, you know, go into the other platforms and see how your product pans out on there. Speaker 2: Good. Now when it comes to influencer market, just to piggyback a little bit on that, which to some extent connects to advertising. Do you also lately are seeing this as a good alternative to overcome expensive PPC? Like maybe given that your CPC is so high, you might say, you know what, I'm going to take some of that money, I'm going to put it in influencer marketing, I'm going to potentially get a bigger reach, and it's going to be less expensive because not a lot of people are doing influencer marketing. So is that something you're also seeing people doing lately? And if so, what are some of the outcomes you're seeing with that approach? Speaker 1: It's a completely different type of advertising, so the way you're going to measure it is going to be so different. So with pay-per-click, you're catching people who are actually looking for your product the second they're looking for your product. So you've got a captivated audience, right? Whereas with TikTok and paying an influencer, right, you might spend, you know, you might take a proportion of your budget and pay that influencer But there's a whole range of things that could potentially go wrong. You know, they might put a video out and it might get no reach. They might not do a good of a job really conveying the product and the qualities of the product. So it might not be a success or you might just strike gold with the first two influences and it absolutely skyrockets and you're like, wow, my return on ad spend is like way higher than I must then put all of my budget in. But it's not like, you know, it doesn't mean you're going to get the same results again. It doesn't mean that, you know, paying a little bit more is going to equal similar results. You know, I mean, there's one brand. I mean, they spent $100,000. On giveaways, and they were just about to give up. And then they had, they put another video out. And that basically covered and paid for everything that all of their costs because it, the product went viral on TikTok. And then people were searching for the brand name on Amazon, which then increase the sales velocity on Amazon, and then improve their ranking. And then it kind of saw an uplift in sales for Amazon. So it all had a knock on effects. I mean, That's kind of one example of, you know, how much they have to spend to really get it to work. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I know that. I think that's what I'm seeing as well. Like a lot of times influencer marketing, given that you have some of these home runs from people around you, you might think that it's actually easy. But trust me, it's very difficult to sometimes keep Not only find the success on some of these influencers, it's keeping the success coming because you can get one or two home runs. That's not an issue. The issue is like, it's not like traditional PPC that you build on top of data with influencers. Like every single time you started from scratch and hoping that works, right? It doesn't have some momentum that you can start like a baseline, if you see what I mean. So it's tough to create systems, find people, sending the products. Yeah, I just wanted to highlight that because I know it's something people has been discussing a lot lately. Now to start concluding, I will say when it comes to advertising, especially in 2025, what are going to be some of your takes or recommendations for people watching and hearing this? Is there some insights that you're lately discussing with your team, with your clients? What are some of the things you would recommend? Speaker 1: I mean, putting a lot more effort into the design of images. I mean, that's always a good place to start, because that's a place to move your budget away. Speaker 2: Right. Speaker 1: Let's just say, you know, if you wanted to Move a grand or two grand of your budget out of advertising in the short term, if you were to put that into having your listings really well optimized and kind of really conveying well the products that you have. And if that's to kind of have an uplift and conversions, you've effectively, you know, you could be getting way more sales and way more money back. For every, you know, for every ad spend, and that's going to be a good, a good place to start. So that's a really good place to go. And I would also just recommend in a even if you're working with an agency you're comfortable with just Just maybe reach out to one or two others just to get some insights because in the same agencies have been working on your account for some time. Like it's not that they're doing a bad job, but they could get blindsided. Speaker 2: Yeah, and second opinions. Yeah, and you have second opinions as well. Speaker 1: It could be two or three here. Well, here's a few other things that you could do and then you could pass it back to your agencies. Hey, I'd love to see this improved and done. I think I'm The big thing I'd also say is find out where you get your best return, your highest return and focus on those areas and don't neglect them. But then put a small portion of your time into finding other areas to try out and test. It's going to be my My feedback in terms of what to do in terms of what to expect. I mean, one thing I really I'm looking forward to is that Amazon is going to be introducing a multi-touch attribution this year. So that should then give you an idea of, you know, there might be one keyword that might not, you know, have had the last click to the conversion, but it played a role In that customer, like viewing the product and yeah, you've got AMC now and you've got that in place, which is great. But actually, it's been able to see that on the dashboard because we had that with Google. Now you can see a proportion of the clicks actually that may not have resolved in the sale actually did bring in customers that then eventually did end up buying. And actually, them could be actually quite fatal to what you've got going. Having that idea and understanding is going to be really, really helpful. Speaker 2: Awesome. Thank you for that, George. I appreciate the insight. So, awesome. So, in case, you know, somebody wants to reach out to you, work with you guys and talk more about this, how people can find you? Speaker 1: Yeah. So, I mean, you can search my name, George Meressa, on LinkedIn. You can find me there. That's going to be probably the easiest way. Or you can go to clearadsagency.com If you just search Clearads on Google, we should come up first. If it comes up all pink, it's this Australian company. Speaker 2: It's not us. Speaker 1: So it's clearadsagency.com. But if you search Clearads and you're not in Australia, it should be the first company. Speaker 2: Awesome, George. Pleasure to have you on the show. I'm looking forward to seeing you soon at upcoming events. Yeah. Thank you for being here. It's been a pleasure. Speaker 1: No worries. Likewise, my friend. Speaker 2: Bye bye. See ya. Unknown Speaker: Thanks for listening to The Ecommerce Lab By Ecomcy. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. While you are at it, we would appreciate it if you could leave an honest rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. That will make it easier for others to find out about the show and benefit from it. Want more? Visit our website at www.ecomcy.com where you can get your first consultation for free or find us on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn at Ecomcy.