Ads Series: Allocating Marketing Spend For Optimal Results on Amazon and Other Marketplaces - Episode 186

INTERVIEW WITH MELISSA BURDICK

DESCRIPTION

The last episode of our Ads Series with Stefan Jordev is bringing you a very insightful talk with Melissa Burdick, the Co-Founder & President of Pacvue. This episode is all about the high adoption of Instacart, as well as new tools, services, and reports within Amazon, and Pacvue.

Make sure to tune in to find out more!

Melissa Burdick is the Co-Founder & President of Pacvue and is an expert in designing for online and e-Commerce marketing strategies. With her 10-year Amazon experience, Melissa helped launch the Amazon CPG/Health & Beauty retail business, building a business from the ground up with an evolving strategy to sell profitably online.

“You need two things, you need really smart people and a tech stack that really helps automate those strategies and tactics that those smart people are coming up with. Because everything else is pretty much changing all the time.”

— Melissa Burdick

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Pacvue is a leading ecommerce technology solution provider. It unifies retail media through a user interface that adopts API's of Amazon, Walmart, Instacart, Criteo, integrates robust reporting, and data insights. Last but not least is, automation and optimization of campaign management.

Spend time on strategy, not in spreadsheets.

There's been a lot of success within the Amazon platform, a lot of profit with AWS and advertising.
Advertising is a really great source of revenue for retailers.
Pacvue recently released its Q1 report, along with quarterly CPC reports. The average ad spend in Q1 was significantly higher, which indicates the rise of ecommerce in general.
Top keywords in Q1 were Valentine's Day gifts for him and her, Bluetooth headphones, and puppets.
Some of the recent changes within Amazon include the Early Reviewer Program not being available anymore, and brands no longer being able to comment on product reviews. Buying Reviewer Program is still available for brands.
Amazon is about to release brand following, and Amazon posts, as a part of the social program. The posts are working towards building a brand following. There are several, individual separate different programs that Amazon has released, which will probably get unified as a part of a big social campaign, or a campaign type for a certain feature, where brands will be able to communicate directly or just send one-way messages to their brand following.
It takes a village to do ecommerce.
Pacvue recently launched Amazon DSP service, and self-service tools on top of DSP, which already has high adoption. A lot of Amazon advertisers who've been using sponsored ads for years now have really begun exploring DSP and really putting some budgets behind it.
You can't advertise if you don't have inventory.
There is an incredible adoption of new platforms, like Instacart, which is important for grocery brands. It's even more important on Instacart, to be on the top three slots than other platforms. 2021 is looking positive for Instacart advertising, just judging by the numbers of advertisers adopting it on Pacvue.
Instacart gives a lot of additional data. They have a treasure trove of data, like data down to lost sales and who they lost to, that they provide to brands. Data is critical for brands to measure success. If you know who you’re losing sales to, you’re going to react by investing more heavily in advertising.

There's a need to be a little bit flexible with your budget. When there's this huge opportunity of Instacart popping up out of nowhere, to be able to advertise on it, you need to be able to test on that platform and get a budget for it.
The ability to seize the opportunity is going to be really important for brands.
If it's a CPC-based model, or if it's a CPC-based auction, you can only gain by being among the first ones to advertise.
We need to get access to the data, but then putting it into action and automating it.
Get an easy workstream, get everything into one place, where you can have all these disparate data sources, and analysis, so that you can see what's performing. Then test and learn. The only way to know what's working is to test it.