'Amazon Adaptation: Opportunities for Prime Day 2020 and Beyond' Webinar Replay - Episode 144

CONVERSATION WITH NICH WEINHEIMER

 

DESCRIPTION

Today we bring you an interesting conversation with Nich Weinheimer, General Manager of ECommerce at Kenshoo, the digital advertising platform. In this episode, we’re talking about Amazon’s adaptation to the COVID-19 challenges, Prime Day 2020, differences in reactions to the pandemic between large and small brands, opportunities for growth, and other topics.

Tune in for more!

Nich has over a decade of experience in digital advertising, eCommerce, and retail marketing technology in venture-backed startups in Seattle. Nich spent the majority of his ad-tech career helping grow companies like AdReady and the Amazon-integrator, Mercent Corp., now a division of CommerceHub. Building on expertise developed integrating major brands and retailers onto Amazon's Marketplace at Mercent Corp., Nich started an Amazon Consulting firm helping brands run their businesses and advertising on Amazon's complex marketplace.

Later, after launching his own brand on Amazon, Nich joined forces with BuyBoxExperts to lead their Amazon Advertising business, supporting top-tier brands' PPC and DSP efforts on Amazon. Nich joined Kenshoo to help lead the eCommerce business unit, pointing the industry-leading search technology toward the erupting Retail Advertising opportunity. Nich holds a BA in Music Theory and History from Whitman College.

“There’s a different set of opportunities that smaller brands have now in the competitor space.”
— Kiri Masters

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Two classes of brands were noticed during the pandemic - the ones that benefited from the pandemic, and the ones (e.g. luxury apparel) that weren’t in high demand.

  • One of the observed changes are large brands moving to online marketplaces  - it remains to be seen in the following months how long is this going to last.

  • A certain percentage of shoppers will continue to shop online, and this data is not limited to young shoppers, but baby boomers confirmed this as well in a number of surveys.

  • In the midst of the pandemic, a large number of brands managed to take key paid and organic positions in Amazon search results, mostly due to competitors being out of stock.

  • Smaller brands spotted a good opportunity here and moved on that, which resulted in a climb in the organic ranking.

  • Trend - at first, large advertisers pause their past strategies to determine the next steps. Now that eComm has been blasted to the future by 2 years, huge budget swings are coming to eCommerce and Amazon. 

  • ECommerce needs to be seen as a demand driver, customer acquisition channel.

  • There’s never been a better time in terms of tools and programs brands can use to better the performance of their listings.

  • Large Brand Advantage: budgets can shift, smaller sellers can’t pivot - they need a plan to meet unexpected opportunities. 

  • Walmart announced a partnership with Shopify - what this means for the marketplace?

  • Retargeting capabilities is Amazon’s response to pullback on ‘Brand’ (spend on Amazon up 12% from April 11th).

  • Prime Day predictions:

    • Brands need to pay close attention to inventory projections.

    • This will be the most Amazon focused Prime Day.

    • Brands may downgrade their investments in this year’s Prime Day, due to its closeness to Q4.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Season 3Kiri MastersComment