In its Prime Day forecast, eMarketer projects Amazon will sell $9.9 billion in goods worldwide–including nearly $6.2 billion in the U.S., which is just about as much as consumers spent on Black Friday 2018. While we’ve seen estimates emerge after the event in previous years, this is among the first–if not the first–estimates leading up…
Within hours of the year’s first nationally televised presidential debate on Tuesday night, T-shirts with the words, “Stand back, stand by,” and the Proud Boys logo were selling on Amazon. President Donald Trump coined the phrase during his heated, 100-minute exchange with Democratic candidate Joe Biden. Asked by moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News whether…
After Prime Day didn’t take place this past July due to Covid-19 issues, no one really thought Amazon would cancel its biggest shopping event of the year. Last week, rumors of a new date began to circulate, and now the brand has finally confirmed that Prime Day will take place on Oct. 13… and Oct….
Bad news for anyone excited about the prospect of a $500 Peloton alternative in the so-called Prime Bike: Amazon says it simply isn’t true. Connected fitness brand Echelon issued a press release on Monday announcing a collaboration with Amazon on what it called Amazon’s first-ever connected fitness product. However, in an emailed statement on Tuesday,…
The first free preschool funded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ $2 billion Bezos Day One Fund will open on Oct. 19 in Des Moines, Wash., which is about 16 miles south of Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle. Bezos announced the opening date with a classroom photo on Instagram. Known as the Bezos Academy, he said it…
We may finally have a start date for Amazon Prime Day 2020: Tuesday, Oct. 13. That’s according to CNET, which cited “four people with knowledge of Amazon’s plans.” CNET also linked to a Reddit thread on Reddit from the Amazon fulfillment center community in which users discussed why there was a vacation blackout in Amazon…
There’s a new Peloton alternative in town. Three-year-old connected fitness brand Echelon has launched the Prime Bike, with none other than ecommerce giant Amazon. Officially known as the EX-Prime Smart Connect Bike, it’s $499, or nearly one-quarter the price of Peloton’s $1,895 base model. It’s also a significant markdown for Echelon, which sells its own…
One year after debuting actor Samuel L. Jackson as an add-on for select voice queries on Echo devices, Amazon has upped the ante with a Jackson-themed wake word: “Hey, Samuel.” In a blog post, Amazon said this makes it “more natural and intuitive to bring Samuel’s iconic voice to your Alexa-enabled device.” Multiple “top reviews”…
Key Insight: It’s a new channel for luxury brands who have lost distribution via struggling department stores. Amazon, which has made a name for itself providing easy access to a huge array of goods at hard-to-beat prices, has launched an in-app storefront with luxury brand Oscar de la Renta offering more or less the exact…
Twitch inventory is now available on the Amazon Advertising platform, meaning media buyers can now purchase ads programmatically on the esports streaming site. Previously, advertisers had to undergo a more manual process of purchasing ads on the streaming site, which attracts an average of 17.5 million daily viewers, but as of earlier this week, Twitch…
Another report is out questioning the safety of Amazon products, which has prompted the typically tight-lipped ecommerce platform to fire back with a blog post highlighting its efforts to “ensure our products are safe.” This time, the investigation comes from CNN, which found at least 1,500 reviews for more than 70 Amazon-branded products include comments…
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has issued Amazon Prime Air a Part 135 air carrier certificate for using unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), clearing a big regulatory hurdle toward drone deliveries for commercial packages. Amazon said it will use the certification to begin tests, with the goal of using drones to deliver packages within 30…
In what seems to be a defining cultural moment, as brands, including PepsiCo and the NFL, assess and revamp mascots or names deemed racially or culturally offensive, platforms such as Amazon and Facebook are under pressure to proactively address hateful content. Amazon recently announced a $10 million donation to organizations “working to bring about social…
Key Insight: Besides objective data such as activity, sleep and body fat, the band claims to be able to understand “how [you] may sound to others.” Good news for anyone sad to see Amazon’s body-scanning Echo Look device retire earlier this year: The ecommerce giant has a new body-scanning technology as part of an overall…
Amazon’s first Fresh grocery store in Woodland Hills, Calif. is officially welcoming “a select group of invited customers” and will open to the rest of us “in the coming weeks.” Like traditional grocery stores, it offers produce, meat, seafood and prepared foods, along with national and local brands, as well as private label brands like…
Key insight: Increasingly, fast delivery speeds may not be sustainable given existing fulfillment networks. As the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) continues to struggle with what postmaster general Louis DeJoy described as “a financially unsustainable position absent significant fundamental change,” President Donald Trump is again singling out ecommerce giant Amazon as the root cause. According to…
At the high-profile Big Tech congressional hearing last week, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos called counterfeits a “scourge” that harm customers and “honest third-party sellers” on the platform. His testimony came as Amazon puts more muscle behind efforts to grapple with this scourge and hold not-so-honest third-party sellers accountable, including an enhanced seller vetting program and…
On the heels of CEO Jeff Bezos’ first congressional testimony, ecommerce giant Amazon announced its Q2 2020 results with net sales up 40% year over year to $88.9 billion and net income up $5.2 billion. In prepared statements and commentary during an earnings call today, both Bezos and CFO Brian Olsavsky called Q2 an unusual…
Viewers had to wait 96 minutes to hear Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos field questions during his Congressional debut on Wednesday. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., finally did the honors in the second hour of the highly anticipated House Judiciary Committee hearing on online platforms and market power, revisiting a familiar topic: how Amazon uses internal seller…
Dominance in overall search does not equate to dominance in product search. That’s a hard truth Google may have learned too late. Now, however, it’s trying to win back brands and customers by establishing itself as an Amazon alternative in ecommerce. And, in its latest bid, Google announced the sellers who use its Buy on…
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