Stratably’s Amazon Advertising Benchmark Report, with Russ Dieringer - Episode 275

INTERVIEW WITH RUSS DIERINGER

DESCRIPTION

In today’s episode, Kiri speaks with frequent guest Russ Dieringer, founder of retail insights company Stratably, about Stratably’s new Amazon Advertising Benchmark Report.

Make sure you tune in to find out more!

Russ Dieringer is the founder of Stratably, a company dedicated to elevating the digital IQ of leading consumer brands. Each week, Russ creates impactful, practical, and easy-to-digest research that speaks to all layers of an organization, helping them see further around the corner of what’s coming in retail.

“Brands that continue to invest in Amazon despite the slow-growing environment are going to be winners. And brands that use these new analytical tools to have more refined strategies, are also going to be the outperformers.”

— Russ Dieringer

KEY TAKEAWAYS

In today’s episode, Kiri and Russ discuss:

Stratably just released the Amazon Advertising benchmark. They discuss what prompted them to do the research.
- Over 50 brands, consumer brands, ranging from 40% ’big’ and the remainder med & small (<$10M).
- Forward-looking view of how brands are thinking about Amazon (not just backward-looking)
- Building on existing reports that share historical metrics like CPC and ROAS each quarter.
They plan to use this benchmark in the future by doing this throughout the year.

The most insightful or surprising themes from Russ’s POV:
- The growth outlook for ‘23 - accelerate vs decelerate growth on AMZ? Net 12-13% expect an acceleration.
- Amazon compared to other retail channels - AMZ is expected to outperform and the gap will in fact widen, even if their growth rate slows.
- Surprised by how much share Amazon is likely to attract vs other retail media players. This contrasts with a tendency to believe that reversion or share loss is inevitable.

This all contrasts with the news that Amazon is laying off staff, their growth is slowing, etc.

Kiri’s top themes:

Companies funding Amazon Ads out of Brand budgets (as opposed to Trade budgets) are more likely to fall behind in 2023. Because brand budgets are shrinking in this macro environment.
Russ claims that there’s a strong argument to say that the brand should fund Amazon advertising (because of upper-funnel capabilities), but a slowing economy puts pressure on these brand budgets.
17% of brands have reduced their Amazon ad budget in response to the potential recession, BUT 10% have actually increased it. Kiri is surprised that the % of "shrinkers" is not higher.

To learn more, listen to the full episode!