Tech devices have been in the top five most purchased gifts for the past two years, according to a Google/Ipsos survey. Those tech gifts may live in an interconnected “smart home” system–devices that work in tune with Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google’s Assistant or other, similar, personal tech tools. Device communication embodies the main problem…
When 2019 wraps, Amazon’s advertising business is projected to be more than 50% bigger than it was a year ago–when advertisers spent nearly $5 billion–as it continues to challenge its much bigger rivals, Google and Facebook. Meanwhile, the agencies that work with brands on the platform say Amazon’s advertising ecosystem is itself becoming more competitive…
Amazon has forbidden its third-party sellers from using FedEx ground delivery for Prime shipments starting this week, FedEx confirmed. That’s according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited an email sent to merchants noting “a decline in performance heading into the final stretch of the holiday shopping season.” Jonathan Weber, a third-party seller focused on…
Amazon Prime Video consistently gets creative with its experiential marketing campaigns for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. For Season 1 of the period comedy series, the streaming service revived Jewish delicatessen Carnegie Deli in New York. For Season 2, the brand hosted Maisel Day, rolling back pricing to 1959 at 40 retailers in Los Angeles. To…
Lawyers for Amazon’s cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services, filed a 103-page document in U.S. federal claims court to protest the U.S. Department of Defense awarding its $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract to Microsoft. Citing intervention by President Donald Trump and his personal vendetta against Amazon and its founder, Jeff Bezos, the…
The NFL isn’t known for being easy on players’ bodies or brains. But a new health and safety initiative in partnership with Amazon Web Services hopes a simulated player will help the league better predict the risk of player injuries and, hopefully, prevent them. The NFL will work with Amazon’s cloud computing unit to develop…
What were Amazon’s more than 100 million Prime members doing with their ever-faster shipping and ad-free streaming this year? The Best of Prime 2019 list is out with all the details. The report remains slim on specifics like, say, an updated membership figure (it was last reported in April 2018), beyond noting that it added…
The Federal Trade Commission is reportedly expanding its investigation into Amazon to include its cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services. That’s according to Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the matter. Amazon declined Adweek’s request for comment. A spokesperson for the FTC said the agency does not “comment on or confirm the existence of investigations.”…
Amazon continues to be the demand-side platform (DSP) of choice among advertisers, while the Trade Desk bumped Google to the No. 3 spot in research firm Advertiser Perceptions’ latest Programmatic Intelligence Report. Nearly half–46%–of the advertising professionals interviewed said they have used Amazon Advertising in the past 12 months. That’s down slightly from 48% in…
In addition to sharing wine pairings and hacks for a stress-free Thanksgiving with its 4.4 million followers, Amazon’s upscale grocery chain Whole Foods Market had to repeatedly clarify over the long weekend that it did not name Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell its 2019 Person of the Year. It was the monthly trade magazine WholeFoods…
Before an event like Prime Day, Amazon’s major annual sale, the ecommerce giant calls on advertisers to increase their budgets to appeal to shoppers looking for deals. This got the team at Amazon seller tool Sellics wondering if the additional spend is actually worth it. And, after reviewing the data–which included ad spend, returns, conversion…
Amazon’s first iteration of the Dash button, which consumers were meant to tap to instantly order a variety of household products, didn’t quite work out the way it wanted. Mainly, people didn’t buy into it. But that hasn’t stopped the everything company from giving it the old college try again. Amazon announced a new Dash-enabled…
Amazon shipped more than 10 million smart speakers in Q3 2019–10.4 million to be exact–marking nearly 66% annual growth and making Amazon, once again, the top manufacturer of smart speakers worldwide. Ecommerce platform Alibaba came closest with 3.9 million units in the quarter, followed by Chinese search engine Baidu with 3.7 million, Google with 3.5…
Throughout 2019, Amazon has made concerted efforts to acknowledge the contributions of its third-party sellers, who CEO Jeff Bezos noted are “kicking [Amazon’s] first-party butt” in his 2018 shareholder letter. Earlier this month, Amazon announced a new program to help small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) build their brands and grow online sales though seminars, webinars…
Nike will no longer sell any of its products on Amazon, becoming the latest brand to forgo access to the platform projected to control 40% of the U.S. ecommerce market by the end of 2019. “As part of Nike’s focus on elevating consumer experiences through more direct, personal relationships, we have made the decision to…
Amazon is many things–including a search engine. And when it comes to product queries, consumers flock to it. Research from Amazon optimization platform Feedvisor shows 66% of consumers typically start their searches on Amazon when they’re looking to buy a product or researching what to buy. Yet, while the art and science of search engine…
Amazon is planning to open its first grocery store in 2020, according to a spokesperson with the retail giant. The concept, opening in the Woodland Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, will be distinct from the upscale Whole Foods Market chain Amazon acquired in 2017 and will not be an outpost of the cashierless Amazon Go….
Walmart recently patted itself on the back for reaching what it called a “grocery pickup milestone,” with 2,000 stores in 29 states now including alcohol as part of their online grocery offerings. The retailer can also include alcohol in deliveries from nearly 200 stores in California and Florida “with more being added in accordance with…
It probably won’t come as a surprise that digital marketing agency Tinuiti found 82% of consumers plan to use Amazon in some capacity to shop online for holiday gifts this year. It is, after all, the Everything Store. Tinuiti’s research also found Amazon is consumers’ preferred starting point for holiday shopping–so much so that it…
Amazon hopes its singing smile boxes will tug on even more heartstrings this holiday season as they return in another upbeat spot–this time to the tune of preacher and singer Solomon Burke’s “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love.” Amazon debuted the 90-second version of its 2019 holiday ad in the U.K. on Nov. 4 during a…
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