Prime Day 2023: How To Prepare, Part 2 With Ross Walker - Episode 291

INTERVIEW WITH ROSS WALKER

DESCRIPTION

In today’s podcast, Kiri talks with a recurring guest, Ross Walker, Sr. Paid Media Manager at Acadia.

Kiri and Ross recapped the trends and themes observed during Prime Day 2022, noting the competitiveness of tentpole events, the strong conversion rate that helped balance ad performance, and the significance of PD and PEAS as the biggest days on Amazon.

They discussed the likelihood of another Prime Early Access Sale event in 2023, and new tools which are available for ads in 2023 such as AMC reports on complementary ASINs and custom audiences based on "add to cart" data.

Make sure you tune in to find out more!

Ross manages the advertising strategies for many of Bobsled’s large and enterprise brands. Ross has been in e-commerce and digital marketing for over six years, primarily focusing on Amazon for the last 5 years. He is based in Toronto Canada and is a massive data and advertising nerd.

“Now we’re two months out roughly before Prime Day. At this point, you’ve got to know what products you’re going to have on promotion so that you have all the campaign planning in place. So you’ve got to know what kind of deals are going to be running on what day, and for which products you want to make sure you have your campaign set up.”
— Ross Walker

KEY TAKEAWAYS

In today’s episode, Kiri and Ross discuss:

  • A recap of Prime Day 2022. The trends and themes from an ads standpoint:

    • Tentpole events being competitive

    • The conversion rate is strong so it balances out

    • PD and PEAS are generally the biggest days of the year on Amazon. 

    • Long SB review time - worked into our process move ad creation 

  • What were the strategies we recommended to our clients in 2022, and how did they perform: 

    • Heavy investment in SP on PD, manual, and auto. Because auto campaigns work well with deals, the front page on AMZ. 

    • 3 stages of ad strategy: Lead-up, day-of, and post-event

  • The likelihood of another PEAS event in 2023

  • What new tools do we have available this year with ads:

    • AMC Report 1 - complementary ASINs report 

    • AMC report 2 - custom audiences, add to cart. Wishlist not available 

    • SP video store placement - a video that lands on a store page, and the placement is TOS brand placement. So right at the top of the search. Video in this placement was only in beta last year. The first time we can use it over PD 

    • SBV - this ad type has gained over the past few months. SBV shows on PDPs now sometimes.  Control whether it shows in search, TOS, or off-site.

  • How will our ads strategy differ this year:

    • What’s in our prep deck, overview

    • Featured product page - sub-page on the store

  • They also discuss what should brands be doing now (2 months out), 1 month out, and 2 weeks out from PD.

  • BFCM 2022 - a cautionary tale. Brands lost visibility into what they were spending. Many brands got burned here and Amazon ended up crediting many brands for this.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

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