Helium 10 Buzz 1/31/25: Microsoft Buying TikTok? | Amazon Ads Brand+

Helium 10 Buzz 1/31/25: Microsoft Buying TikTok? | Amazon Ads Brand+ Bradley Sutton: Is Microsoft going to purchase TikTok? There is a new offering for those who use DSP called Amazon Ads Brand+. A UPS change with Amazon might change how much you have to pay to send inventory to Amazon. These stories and more on today's version of the Weekly Buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, 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, TikTok shop, and e-commerce world. We let you know what new features that Helium 10 has, and we give you a strategy of the week that'll give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let's see what's buzzing. Very few articles today. Usually there's like this calm before the storm. So let's see what happens next week. But this is probably like as far as in the entirety of e-commerce, the kind of like least buzziest time I can remember in like maybe three or four months. But let's go ahead and hop right into the news. The first article is from BBC and it's actually entitled Microsoft In talks to buy TikTok, Trump says. Now, you know, there's nothing confirmed here. We don't know what's going to happen, but it's just interesting to see the different companies that are kind of bidding for TikTok out there. This article says, hey, President Donald Trump has said that Microsoft is in discussions to acquire TikTok and that he would like to see a bidding war over the sale of the social media app. There are definitely other people who are looking into it. Remember, there's a 75-day reprieve from that ban, but this article says that the president has been pressuring ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, to sell the app. Others who have been mentioned as wanting interest, you'll see like Frank McCord, a billionaire, Kevin O'Leary from Shark Tank, Mr. Beast from YouTube has been showing interest and some AI companies, etc. Again, TikTok by itself doesn't necessarily have a direct impact maybe on you Amazon sellers, but I know a lot of you are selling on TikTok shopping. Whatever happens to the core TikTok is also obviously going to have ripple effects on TikTok shop. Some things that people are worried about is, well, maybe we don't think that there's going to be a ban, but hey, what happens if TikTok is sold and the Chinese parent company doesn't want to give up full control of the algorithm? Will the algorithm change? And if the algorithm changes, will TikTok shop have less virality? I'm not sure. I think the algorithm on other platforms is pretty good too. I find myself on Instagram Reels and even YouTube Shorts, sometimes just as much as TikTok. So I think other platforms have bridged the gap. So even if the full algorithm isn't released, I don't think TikTok is going to come to a screeching halt. But again, I am no expert on any of this stuff. I don't know algorithm from schmalgorithm, but don't take my word for it. But let's just stay tuned. To see what's going to happen. Next article here, well actually this is from Deadline.com but Amazon made this announcement called Brand Plus and actually Jeff Cohen, evangelist for Amazon ads in his LinkedIn actually had a pretty good summary so I'll just start quoting that instead of the Deadline article. We'll include both of the links. In the comments below, but brand plus is what is now in beta for Amazon DSP. And it's called an industry first AI driven optimization capability for brand awareness campaigns. And it said, hey, this could revolutionize streaming TV and online video advertising. So what it is, what is this available in beta is It's a video advertising solution that combines advertiser and Amazon signals to deliver ads to high potential customers across inventory, optimizing brand awareness and driving improved business outcomes. What's different about it is that it combines your conversion signals with Amazon's shopping and entertainment signals to deliver ads to users who are most likely to engage with your brand over time. Maybe in the past, your targeting on some of these platforms is pretty broad. But now you can combine whatever data you have with Amazon's data to really make sure your ads are getting in front of the right people on these platforms. In some of the early beta, it says that Jeff says that early adopters have seen significant improvements with one shoe retailer reporting 11% increase in sales and a 70% boost in another key metric. So Jeff is definitely excited about this and like I'm not doing DSP yet. I'm definitely not doing sponsored TV ads for Coffin Shelf, but who knows? Maybe if another kind of spooky show comes out like Wednesday, Adams from Netflix all of a sudden is on Prime TV or something like that, it might be a good way to launch my DSP for Coffin Shelves. You never know. Next article is from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and it's entitled US Announces Major Cutback In Amazon Relationship. Basically, TLDR says that they're going to cut the volume it moves for Amazon, UPS is, by more than 50% by the second half of 2026. This caused UPS shares to plummet a little bit. Why I thought this is interesting because obviously on the delivery side, you know, you got to think that, hey, if UPS cuts back on the delivery side, might not affect too much, you know, Amazon Prime deliveries. Amazon has such a robust system of their own delivery network, right, that, you know, maybe you don't think that's going to affect it. But what I'm curious about is, does this affect how we ship inventory to Amazon? For me, I don't do LTL most of the time. I have my own warehouse so I can drip inventory in to Amazon. It's a lot faster to not use LTL. I do SPD. What's the carrier that I use? 100% of the time when I send inventory to Amazon, it's UPS. The rates are ridiculous. Sometimes if I'm sending to the West Coast, I'm here in the West Coast, I have a full box of coffin shells that's humongous, like oversized and everything. It's like $10 to send that. It's ridiculous. So that's maybe something a little bit concerning. Amazon does not have a really kind of set-up network for replenishment shipping. They've got their own freight systems and things like that, but if you're not doing LTL and you're wanting to do SPD and send five boxes here, ten boxes there, etc. like I've been doing and I can't use UPS in the future or the UPS options are going to be a lot less, this could drastically change how much I'm paying I'm going to be taking a look at this. I'm going to ask Amazon too, what does this mean for us sending replenishment orders? Are you going to make a deal with FedEx? Are our prices about to increase? Or is Amazon going to come out with a new feature where their delivery trucks will pick up the shipments from your warehouses? It's definitely worth noting. Our last article of the day is from TechCrunch and it's entitled, Flip, the TikTok shop rival, launches a creator fund that grants up to $100 million of equity value. I'm going to have Carrie on the podcast soon as a guest because she told me that she's selling on another website. It might be this one. I thought she called it Flip Shop or something like that. But she said that she's doing way more on this other website than on TikTok Shop, sometimes like 20, 30, 40 orders a day. And I think it might be this platform. I personally have never heard of this platform. You guys ever heard of this platform? But hey, if something can be selling 20, 30 units a day, that's pretty darn good, right? But anyways, what this article says, it says, hey, Flip is a social commerce app that lets shoppers become creators. I'm almost positive this has got to be the one that Carrie is selling on because it sounds very similar to it. It says they can share honest reviews and earn cash based on engagement on the platform. So it's competing with TikTok shop and it's introduced a new creator fund that offers a unique opportunity to help it stand out. So this creator fund provides up to $100 million worth of equity to participating creators over the next five years. These are grants that go from like $6,000 to $100,000 depending on how engaged a creator is. And they're trying to distribute up to a million dollars a day for the first 30 days of the program. Now, this sets Flip apart from different competitors. Amazon and TikTok don't have anything like this because it gives the users equity value. So it's something very interesting. Now, for those influencers or creators who want to participate in this program, they have to have 4,000 followers and at least 10 videos posted in the last 30 days, each gathering about 3,000 reviews. And Flip also accepts creators with at least 20,000 followers on other platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. So, this is interesting because it's another platform that maybe you can sell on and it's a unique concept. What I'd be curious about is If this is almost like a UGC-based platform to sell on, I'm just wondering then, what about these videos that they're creating for that platform? Can I take those videos and upload those to Amazon or upload those to TikTok? If it's all UGC almost, that seems like it would be a pretty cool thing to do. I'm not sure if that's going to be allowed, but again, I'm going to try and get Kerry in on the podcast soon. We're going to talk about that platform. All right, that's it for the news this week. One quick shout out, I want you guys to, those of you who have a Helium 10 starter, platinum, diamond, any paid plan, You have access to this training course, you probably didn't know, it's called the Amazon Influencer Bootcamp. So where you find it is you go into your main menu in Helium 10, under learning, hit the Amazon Influencer Bootcamp and you'll see this very, you know, like a few videos that we did, myself and somebody else here at Helium 10, Michelle, she's an Amazon Influencer and it tells you about how you can make money with the Amazon Influencer Program. Now maybe you're not, you know, you're a big time Amazon seller, you're not interested in that. But maybe you've got kids who want to get their feet wet in e-commerce or significant others or maybe you're just starting out. You're not selling on Amazon because you're trying to build up money and you want an easy way where you don't have to pay money in order to get some money from Amazon. The Amazon Influencer Program could be for you. Michelle there, she works full-time for Helium 10 and she does this on the side and she's still doing 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 sometimes a month just making videos of stuff that are around her house. And so that's something definitely to look into. Amazon Influencer Program, it's a free course for those of you who have Helium 10. Let's now get into our new feature alerts and it's actually along the same lines as what I was talking about with the Amazon Influencer Program. Helium 10 has been kind of like expanding on our tools. that are for Amazon influencers. So let's say you hop in, you're into that program, what kind of tools are available to you? By the way, just right before I recorded this, I went in and I got fully approved on their platform because I went in and I did six videos right here around my desk of stuff I have. Like I have a portable monitor, my podcasting software, I have some games behind my green screen here like some arcade games so I do like literally six videos and let me show you how that comes up. You can see I literally did these videos just last night. Now, what Helium 10 has launched is you're going to see on your creator page where you're getting the video placement. Now, obviously, I just record these videos. My videos are not showing up anywhere, but this is going to show influencers, hey, where is your video showing up? Is it showing up in the top carousel? Is it showing up in the bottom carousel? Is it showing up in both or it's not showing up? At all. Helium 10 is also adding some columns here like, hey, what are the ASINs? What is the placement? What is the Helium 10 estimate of how many units are sold? Because remember, if a product, the more product is sold, And your video is on that page, the more chance you have to get sales. So that's one of the updates that we have. In addition, it's now easy to switch to the influencer mode. So if I click here, I can actually go into the influencer mode for the Chrome extension with just a click of the button on the right hand side of the screen. And then now, like, for example, here I am on the arcade one search results. All right. This is what I have a lot of games on. And I can look here and I can see, hey, how many of the products here on page one have influencer videos in the top Karen's carousel and how many have it at the bottom. So here there's not too much opportunity because as you can see, it says there's 11 out of the 16 16 listings on page one have influencer videos on the top carousel and 16 out of 16 have it on the bottom carousel. So you know like maybe I'm like hey maybe there's not that much opportunity here. Now where's one of the games that I had Pac-Man? Pac-Man is one of the games I just recorded a video for. Now I could see with the Helium 10 Chrome extension that there's actually five influencer videos on the top and my video is not showing up there. If my video was, which hopefully will in the next few days, it will show up here. So this is all showing up automatically now with the Chrome extension. If I click on this listing, there's also some other data that comes up if I'm an Amazon influencer. Right here at the very top of the page, I can see, hey, what's the Amazon commission? On-site commission is 2%, but look at this. Some products are different. Now I know that if I make a video on YouTube about this arcade game and somebody goes to Amazon from my YouTube video or Instagram video, look at what my commission is, $20 on this, 4%. That's pretty dang good, right? I just sold 10 of these. That's $200 a month I get just for making a video. So as you can see, you get all this data for Amazon influencers that you might not have had before. And so it's like I said before, the Amazon Influencer Program is really cool to be able to make some extra side money for some of you out there, for some of your kids to make some money. So look into this program and This is just the beginning. Helium 10 is going to be expanding what kind of tools and features that we have for Amazon influencers out there. Now let's get into our strategy of the week, and this is going to be about checking if you're indexed on keywords. Now, first of all, it's important to understand the difference between indexing and ranking. Some people say they're wrong. Definition indexing is a something that is a standard definition in the SEO world but even in the Amazon world the first person to use it was actually the founder of healing 10 many codes like 8 years ago basically indexing means you are potentially searchable for a product. Ranking means you are actually showing up in the search results so so for example you know in the search results sometimes you'll see. Hey, page one has 1 to 48 of 286 results for coffin shelf. That means there's only 286 products that are indexed for that keyword. Now, if I were to look at collagen peptides, it'll say, Hey, here's 1 to 48 out of 30,000 that are indexed okay that means there's 30,000 products potentially searchable for the word collagen peptides but there's only 300 to 310 that are ranking because remember Amazon only shows you seven pages of search results for each keyword so ranking is different than indexing all right you can be ranking and you have to be indexed you can be indexed but you don't have to be ranking does that make sense like I could be the 20,000th I'm a product searchable for collagen peptides. Am I showing up in the search results? I'm not because Amazon only shows 300. First of all, that's important to understand, the difference between indexing and ranking. Now, how can you actually use indexing? When is it important? Let me give you just one or two use cases here. Let's say I'm doing some research here, coffin shelf, and I notice that there's another coffin shelf selling better than me. What I can do is I can run x-ray on this coffin shelf page. And then I'm going to select my product first. So I'll select my coffin shelf first, Managed Mysterious Oddities. Let me go ahead and select it right here. And then for the second product, maybe I'm going to pick, hey, which one is actually selling better than me? So I'll go ahead and do this brand analytics one. Maybe they're selling better. And I can go ahead and just run that in Cerebro. And then what I can do here is I'm going to say, hey, this is just a Cerebro kind of like strategy here. But I can say, hey, where am I not ranking at all? What are keywords where my position is zero to zero? So when you see position rank in Cerebro, you put minimum zero, maximum zero. But where my competitor rank average is is in the top 15. Now you want this to be zero. You don't want to be not ranked for keywords that are probably bringing sales for your competitor, but it's not always zero. So for example, here are four keywords that came up. There's only four keywords that I'm not ranking for at all but my competitor is potentially getting sales from. One of these I can see is their brand name, Gothic Curiosities. The question I have is, here are these four keywords I know I'm not ranking for. That's what I put in Cerebro. Am I indexed for? Why is that important? If I'm not indexed for it, I can't just drop these into a PPC campaign and start trying to show up in search results. No, I have to be indexed for the keyword first. Sometimes it means I have to put in the keyword. So let's go ahead and copy all these keywords. We're going to copy this and I'm going to copy to the clipboard and let's go ahead and put it in index checker. Now I have to put my ASIN into index checker because that's the ASIN I'm checking the indexing on. So right here, let's go ahead and drop my ASIN in. And I have four keywords here. Now, I went ahead and put the competitor brand name. I don't care if I'm indexed for the competitor brand name, but I just want to show you how this tool works. And so here, I'm going to go ahead and click, and it's going to go ahead and come through here. It says it has finished. Now, what I want to see is, am I indexed for these keywords? And actually, you see this line here that comes up? This means I am not indexed for these keywords. All right, so there's multiple keywords right here I am not indexed for. Now, here's the thing. Usually, it is a single keyword that is causing me to not be indexed. So, for these keywords that I'm not indexed for, like for example, shelf. I'm pretty sure I'm indexed for shelf, but the full keyword is sourpuss shelf. So, without using index checker, I probably know it's probably sourpuss that's driving that. Same thing here. Lawyer's coffin liquor table. I'm not indexed for that phrase, but I know I'm indexed for a coffin. So I'm like, what about these other words? Is it lawyers? Is it liquor? Is it table? Which one here is driving me to not be indexed? So the way I can actually do that is going back with a list of keywords that I'm not indexed for. Coincidentally enough, somehow I'm indexed for my competitor's brand name. I take off the maintain phrases and then I hit check keywords again and now that is checking the individual keywords and now right here I can now see which keywords am I not indexed for. I can see it's sourpuss, I can see it's steampunk, I can see it's lawyers, I can see it's liquor. The other keywords, coffin, table and display, I'm indexed for and shelf obviously. So now what did I just do here? I discovered some keywords, phrases I'm not indexed for and then from those, or I'm not ranking for, I'm sorry, and then from those I discovered which ones am I not indexed for and of those phrases, what are the individual keywords that is making me not indexed? You cannot do this with any other tool, guys. Only with Helium 10 you can do this and so this is a super, super important tool. Index Checker was one of the first ever tools that Helium 10 had back in 2016. It was actually called 5K Checker back in the day. So guys, this is super important. Make sure you are using Index Checker to see if you are indexed before you go try and advertise because like I said, you try and advertise keywords you're not indexed for, it's a completely useless thing because you're not going to get impressions on it. Alright guys, that's it for this week's Weekly Buzz. Hope you enjoyed the show. Make sure to tune in next week to see what's buzzing.