What is Amazon Marketing Stream and how does it improve RoAS?
Amazon recently launched a beta for Amazon Marketing Stream, a cloud-based solution which ultimately allows sellers to improve RoAS and conversion rates. The initial responses from the beta participants have been largely positive, including lower ACOS and higher conversion rates – however, these benefits may not prove to be sustainable in the long run.
This new (beta) advertising solution also integrates a strategy to upsell towards AWS solutions at some point as sellers become increasingly successful.
What is Amazon Marketing Stream?
JungleScout conducted a study in 2021 which claimed that up to 59% Amazon sellers are worried about increasing advertising costs which are suppressing their RoAS (Return on Ad Spend). Amazon’s current advertising solutions may eventually put sellers off as it often drives CPC bids higher, forcing the latter to expand their ad budgets and, thus, have their RoAS diluted.
This can potentially discourage sellers from taking advantage of Amazon’s advertising solutions or even stop them from selling on their marketplace altogether.
This is why Amazon has revealed Amazon Marketing Stream – currently available in beta only and a cloud-powered ad solution to help sellers enhance the agility of their marketing campaigns.
Amazon Marketing Stream leverages Amazon’s leading-edge cloud technology to improve and enhance the seller’s ability to drive better conversion rates and RoAS. In fact, advertisers/sellers can now ‘fine-tune’ marketing campaigns based on live changes in performance – essentially allowing them to augment RoAS in a far more agile way.
To activate Amazon Marketing Stream, sellers need to create an AWS account to truly benefit from Amazon’s most advanced advertising tool – and it makes sense as Amazon Marketing Stream encompasses a strategy to upsell towards AWS solutions eventually once sellers become better known and more successful.
By deeply integrating important advertising metrics into each seller’s core marketing operations via AWS, sellers can expand their operations even more by accessing unique AWS functionalities which are not accessible otherwise.
Therefore, Amazon Marketing Stream can potentially improve the e-commerce giant’s ability to attract more advertisers and sellers to their platform – helping those advertisers/sellers to better understand ongoing online shopping trends, for instance. Furthermore, Amazon believes it is an invaluable tool for sellers to help them understand how they can best optimise marketing success once they have access to real-time granular performance metrics to improve customer acquisition, for instance, among other things.
Are there any potential downsides to Amazon Marketing Stream?
Initial responses from the beta have been largely positive – participating sellers have reported lower ACOS and higher conversion rates – but these benefits are unlikely to carry over to every seller once Amazon Marketing Stream is officially rolled out.
There are a number of reasons for this:
- The widespread adoption of Amazon Marketing Stream means that bidding wars will be more competitive than ever, noticeably driving up CPC during busy or popular shopping hours;
- The initial results of Amazon Marketing Stream in beta form is based on only a handful of sellers testing out the new advertising solution;
- Resultantly, it may not resolve every seller’s concerns around increasing advertising costs once Amazon Marketing Stream is officially rolled out – RoAS will most likely become diluted over time as CPC bidding wars intensify.
Closing thoughts
Amazon must continually innovate to deliver far more cost-effective advertising solutions which boast more sustainable RoAS. We believe this is absolutely necessary as it will discourage sellers from turning to alternative advertising channels (such as Shopify).
Do you personally think you can benefit from Amazon Marketing Stream as a seller? Will it help you improve RoAS? Chris and his team are always available to relay their expert thoughts on the matter based on current Amazon selling trends, the solutions available to sellers, and their decades of experience as Amazon marketing specialists.