Since no one can hit their target with their eyes closed, we are here to help eCommerce businesses to stay focused on the hottest Amazon seller news and trends. 

While getting actionable insights from your Amazon Account Health page, you still need a credible and relevant source of information to make your Amazon boat sail in the right direction. 

Every week we muster up the most important updates within Amazon and beyond to keep online entrepreneurs in the loop. From Amazon Terms of Service or recent Brand Registry News to seasonable Amazon Advertising strategies and upcoming Amazon Seller Conferences: we’ve got you covered.

Whether it is a quick catch up on Amazon policies, a golden nugget from Seller Labs experts, or any other news event affecting Amazon sellers, this is a place for you to study up, In Case You Missed It.

Amazon Fee Calculator by Seller Labs

The Hottest on Amazon:

👉 Donation Certificate

• Tax season is here! Any sellers who utilized the donations option for product removals during the 2022 selling year should head to this page to download their donations certificate to help with their tax breaks.

👉 A Quick Reminder: Amazon Fee Increases in February, 2023

You can find more information on the upcoming fee increases in our Definitive Guide to Amazon’s Fee Changes.

👉 New Amazon FBA Capacity Limits

• Amazon has announced they are retiring Restock Limits and Storage Limits and replacing them with Capacity Limits, a new system of storage management which, according to Amazon, will offer FBA sellers more predictability and control.

Effective March 1, 2023, the new Capacity Limits system will replace the weekly updates with one single monthly limit for each storage type. Amazon will assess and announce the estimated inventory limit on the third Monday of each month via the Capacity Monitor in Seller Central and an email notification.

👉 The New Inventory Ledger Report

• Starting January 31, 2023, the new Inventory Ledger report will replace the six commonly used inventory reports in Seller Central:
  • Daily Inventory History
  • Monthly Inventory History
  • Inventory Event Detail
  • Inventory Adjustments
  • Inventory Reconciliation
  • Received Inventory

According to Amazon, the new report will be more efficient and easier to understand, combining most of the information from six separate reports into one single source of truth.

The reports mentioned above will no longer be available. We recommend adjusting your daily processes accordingly to ensure you still have the information you need for your inventory reconciliation needs to avoid disruption to your business.

👉 Amazon Buy With Prime: No Longer Invitation Only

• Amazon has announced it will expand the Buy With Prime (BWP) program to all eligible retailers. In addition, a new feature will be rolled out to sync Amazon product reviews with the corresponding products on the website. In this press release, Amazon also provides stats about how BWP increases conversion on off-Amazon sites. On average, shoppers are 20% more likely to check out using their saved address/payment details with free shipping (Buy With Prime) as an option!

Updates to Amazon Promotions

• Amazon is introducing a new budget feature for Promotions (Percentage Off and Buy One Get One promotions). Previously, only Coupons were eligible to set redemption limits, but now sellers can apply limits to most promo types. Deals remain unchanged at this time.

Updated Amazon Supply Chain Standards

• Effective January 19, 2023, Amazon’s updated Supply Chain Standards will go into effect. These standards are updated every three years and apply to all vendors and sellers on Amazon, brand owners, and resellers alike. The standards detail the requirements for suppliers, supply chains, and selling partners who list products on Amazon. Not following standards’ requirements can result in items or entire brands being removed from the platform.

Time to Renew Liability Insurance

• For many Sellers, a new year means it’s time to update their business liability insurance certificate with Amazon. Per policy, sellers must obtain and maintain a valid commercial liability insurance policy with Amazon as a named insured within 30 days after they exceed $10,000 in gross proceeds in any month in the Amazon.com store. The Business Insurance page has all the details. If a seller still needs to get their policy in place, they can access the Amazon Insurance Accelerator for help getting started.

A-to-Z Claims for Buyer-Seller Messages

• Rumors are swirling about Amazon auto-opening A-to-Z claims for orders that have Buyer/Seller messages not responded to within 48 hours, even if a response is not required. A-to-Z claims can tank account health and result in refunds, but usually are only opened when a buyer cannot resolve a specific order issue with the seller. If this is happening, we want to ensure FBM sellers are 100% aware and ready to take action.

Vacation Mode Reminder for FBM Sellers

• If you’re taking time off over the holiday season, set your account to vacation mode to avoid overlooking orders that could affect performance. This setting temporarily removes your seller-fulfilled listings from Amazon product detail pages and search results, which could impact overall metrics and search relevancy.

To set up vacation mode, go to Settings => Account Info => Going on a vacation?

New Brand Dashboard

• The newest tool for sellers as Amazon continues to become more brand-centric is essentially a rebranding of the existing Brand Dashboard. The Build Your Brand page is a dashboard for Brand Registered sellers that breaks down the Brand Registry tools into four buckets:
  • Build brand loyalty
  • Grow your audience
  • Inform your strategy
  • Protect your brand

Thus, sellers can easily take action within their accounts to reach their goals and solve problems. As BR continues to grow, this landing page should make it much easier for brands to ensure they take advantage of all the available benefits.

Old Brand Dashboard

• Speaking of the existing brand dashboard, because the new interface covers much of the same content, the old Brand Dashboard is being renamed the Customer Experience Metrics page and relocated to the Performance tab in Seller Central. The current link on the Brands tab will be deprecated, date TBD. In perspective, this tool will focus more on the analytics tied to the brand and its performance vs. Amazon standards. Currently, it features Price Competitiveness, Prime Eligibility, In-stock Rate, and details about Brand Protection cases.

U.S. Multi-Channel Fulfillment: Fee Update and Faster Shipping

• In 2023, Amazon will update Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF) fees and launch some improvements, including faster shipping, free integrator apps, and enhanced shipment tracking functionality. MCF fees will increase beginning January 19, 2023. Rate increases range from 30-70% depending on size tier (to date, the fulfillment fee for a single unit order is $4.75, which will increase to $8.10 starting January 19!). The full rate card is available here.

As another change, standard shipping will be faster in 2023, with lead times reduced from 7 to 5 days. Also, Amazon recently launched new free-to-install integration apps for BigCommerce, Wix, and Magento.

New Seller-Fulfilled Exports Eligibility Report

• To provide a better customer experience for international buyers, Amazon is changing the process for some import/export order requirements. Previously, sellers were solely responsible for international shipping compliance checks and export decisions. Hereafter, applicable local laws and regulations or Amazon’s internal policies will determine products available for purchase by customers with shipping addresses outside the U.S.

Additionally, the new Seller-Fulfilled Exports Eligibility Report found via the Inventory Reports menu will detail any listings with export restrictions along with applicable countries where merchants can sell their products.

Changes to Shipping Charge Corrections for Seller-Fulfilled Returns

• Starting January 14, sellers will be responsible for any carrier shipping correction charges on customer returns of seller-fulfilled orders caused by incorrect return label information such as dimensions or weight mismatch, or invalid address. Amazon has previously absorbed these charges, but the sellers will soon be responsible for these fees in line with industry standards.

From January 14, your account will be charged, or credited, if:

1. Your product return’s dimensions, weight, or both, are incorrect. Suppose the product returned by the customer has physical attributes that do not match the product listing or outbound shipping. In that case, sellers will be charged or credited for the difference in cost between the label they paid for and the correct label cost.

2.The return address is incorrect or invalid. If your return address is undeliverable, the carrier will charge an $18 fee for every package that cannot be returned. Your return address must be in the same country as the store you sell in.

Amazon Inspire

• Amazon has rolled out its new Tik-Tok-like application for influencer shopping feeds — Amazon Inspire. This app helps shoppers quickly discover and shop for products personalized to the interests of other customers, the latest influencers, and a wide range of brands. For sellers, this is free real estate for advertising on their own product detail pages, on competitor PDPs, in an app on the home page for followers, and Amazon’s newest shopping app. Please note that there is no desktop access to Amazon Inspire at the time of writing.

At Seller Labs, we believe Amazon Inspire will likely become an excellent tool for brands to identify content creators they can reach out to and create partnerships to promote their brand on Amazon.

Additional Compliance & Regulations for Product Categories

• Automotive categories. Effective December 7, 2022, for new listings, (existing listings have 30 days to comply) sellers must provide proof of compliance documents for existing certifications from the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA). Please note these are not new testing or compliance laws. Amazon did not previously require proof of compliance. Sellers can find the necessary documents and due dates for each listing in the Manage Your Compliance dashboard on the Account Health page on Seller Central.

• Textiles. For many sellers, this will be a positive update! Amazon makes it easier to understand and qualify for the Climate Pledge Friendly Certifications in the textile categories. Sellers with impacted products that hold any of the certifications listed below can go to the new Control Union dashboard to register. Sellers in these categories that are not certified can learn more at the link above. Certifications include: Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS), Organic Content Standard (OCS 100 & OCS Blended), Global Recycle Standard (GRS), Recycled Claim Standard (RCS 100 & RCS Blended), Responsible Wool Standard (RWS).

• Fur. Effective January 1, 2023, the California Fish and Game Code will be updated with a new law prohibiting the manufacture, sale, trade, or distribution of fur products in California. As a result, Amazon will be restricting the sale of fur products to California from next year. Exemptions include faux fur (fake fur) and fur products used for any activity expressly authorized by federal law, but not products with real fur accents (boots, jackets, etc.). Sellers should have received communication from Amazon regarding any impacted listings. View the full policy on the sale of Animals & Animal-Related Products.

Small & Light Eligibility Updates

• Starting January 17, 2023, the pricing threshold for the Small & Light program will increase from $10 to $12. In anticipation of that update, new reporting is now available in Seller Central to help sellers enroll eligible items. This report will show up to 50 eligible items under the current program rules but will not include items up to $12 until they are actually eligible in January.

Growth Opportunities Explorer

• Amazon has released new training for the new Growth Opportunities Explorer tool in Seller Central. Recommendations are hit and miss, but CTAs are more helpful than previous versions of this dashboard (e.g., listing quality dashboard). This is worth mentioning to any seller struggling with organic traffic and sales. The dashboard quantifies in dollars the lift a seller might see from enhancing their listing with things like A+ Content or video, or enrolling programs that might help save money.

Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD)

• Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD) is a third-party logistics (3PL) solution that provides low-cost, long-term upstream bulk inventory storage in Amazon’s Distribution Centers and seamless replenishment to Amazon’s Fulfillment Centers and other sales and distribution channels. Currently in closed Beta, the AWD program has a new landing page where interested sellers can get on the list. We’re all excited about the AWD as it provides alternatives to high 3PL costs and helps to ease restock limit restrictions by automating FBA replenishments with a 99% in-stock promise.

Jessica Wright, the Senior Brand Strategist on the Seller Labs Services team, breaks down what the AWD program is in one of her Deep Dive digital content series:

Unbranded Packaging for Multi-Channel Fulfillment Orders

• Amazon announced that all Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF) orders are now shipped in unbranded packaging. Previously, orders fulfilled by Amazon for other channels using MCF may have been shipped in Amazon packaging, which created a confusing customer experience (and, in the case of Walmart.com orders, chargebacks). Because of increased Amazon orders due to enhancements made by attribution, referral bonuses, and Buy With Prime, Amazon has rolled out this change at no cost to sellers. Exceptions apply to no sortable items, apparel/footwear, and large/heavy items.

Product Detail Page Enhancements

• Amazon rolled out Product Detail Page BETA for “Other products popular for this brand” to help sellers increase their brand awareness and selling opportunities. The official announcement was about six weeks ago, but one of our Services team specialists finally spotted it in the wild for one of our Seller Labs clients. This test inserts a banner of the brand’s other products at the top of the detail page for easy click-through to keep exploring the brand.

This is exciting because anything that takes up PDP real estate helps keep competitors off your page. Additionally, this could become a paid placement in the future. Currently, sellers can’t take any action to request this banner which appears at Amazon’s discretion.

Updated A+ Content Practices Best Guide

• Though some might consider it too late to make changes to listings for this Q4, plenty of sellers are looking for any last-minute boost to Q4 sales. So, the A+ Content Practices Best Guide guide could be helpful for sellers who don’t have the budget for the “do it for you” A+ Content service. 

Account Health Assurance Is LIVE

• Account Health Assurance is a program that rewards higher-performing sellers with the promise of no account suspensions as long as they work with Amazon to resolve issues. It was announced at Amazon’s Accelerate conference in September and was planned for release in 2023. However, last week, some sellers started receiving emails that they were eligible, and we began seeing the banner in many Seller Accounts.

To be eligible, sellers must have an emergency contact phone number on file and maintain a min 250 account health score (out of 1000) for six months. Eligible sellers will see the banner on their Account Health page; ineligible sellers can check progress on the new dashboard.

Watch this deep dive to learn more:

2023 US Referral and FBA Fee Changes

• BREAKING NEWS: Starting January 17, 2023, Amazon is making updates to the U.S. referral and Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) fees. And while the referral fees won’t change, sellers using Amazon’s FBA fulfillment service will see significant increases in the new year. 

Let’s take a look at the side-by-side fee comparison charts:

Jessica Wright, Amazon Brand Strategist on the Seller Labs Services team sheds more light on the upcoming FBA fee changes:

Amazon’s Official Black Friday Press Release

• Amazon’s Black Friday event will start on Thanksgiving, November 24,  and continue through the full day Friday. Amazon has announced “Surprise deals” will drop every 30 minutes during select periods of the event from customers’ most-wanted brands, like Samsung, HP, Hasbro, adidas, and Calvin Klein. The press release also links to influencer pages, e-versions of physical catalogs like the Holiday Toy catalog, and a number of other curated lists.

Brand Profile Update

• Although there wasn’t any official announcement from Amazon, rumor has it that the name Brand Profile replaces the name on the Stores tab in the Advertising console for select Beta test sellers. The brand profile currently is just a version of the Seller Profile within Seller Central, a place to upload a brand logo, enter a description and tagline, etc. The inclusion in the Advertising console means opportunities for new ad placements in the future! Amazon has added a policy page for this feature, but it is pretty sparse.

Disruption of Counterfeit Operations

• Amazon recently investigated and seized over 240,000 counterfeit goods. This is great news for consumers (brands included BMW, Porsche, General Motor, Cartier, GE Appliances, WWE, Salvatore Ferragamo, Hugo Boss, Puma, and Under Armour), but even better for brands! Ten years ago, Amazon wasn’t as aggressively participating in preventing Intellectual Property infringement on its marketplaces. This shift has been a game-changer for brand owners in the last few years. And, while things still are far from perfect, sellers who have been around a while recognize how much better the environment is.

Holiday Shipping Deadlines

• All of the major shipping carriers have announced shipping cut-offs for Q4. Shipping deadlines are critical to the FBM sellers, but they also impact FBA sellers. Please keep in mind that these deadlines are the estimated dates. The actual deadline for these services can change based on where you’re shipping from, the end destination, and unpredictable weather conditions.

Here is a quick overview of the U.S. domestic holiday shipping deadlines:

USPS Holiday Shipping Deadlines

FedEx Holiday Shipping Deadlines

UPS Holiday Shipping Deadlines

Here are some insights from Jessica Wright, Amazon Brand Strategist at Seller Labs, on how these shipping cut-offs may impact sales at the end of the year:

1. Most carriers will cut-off ground shipping (non-expedited) orders around December 14-15, which means retailers will cut-off orders for the same a day or two before, suggesting a significant slowdown in orders by those dates. 
2. Carriers will cut-off guarantees for the 2-3 day expedited shipping options December 19-21, which means orders will come down to non-peak levels around the Monday before Christmas. 
3. Hanukkah dates align very closely with Christmas this year, so we won’t likely see much skewed by those dates as we have in some past years. 
4. Expect a spike again starting December 26 as people start shopping and spending monetary gifts and gift cards!

TikTok Is Opening Fulfillment Centers

• In a time when Amazon is closing Fulfillment Centers, repurposing FCs for non-FBA inventory, and having trouble staffing their FCs due to poor working conditions, TikTok has unofficially announced plans to start opening their own warehouses by way of a number of new job postings.

Volatile Restock Limits

• Since the Inventory Performance Index and Restock Limits go hand in hand with Amazon sales and storage, sellers must watch inventory daily and be very reactive in their stock management. If sales seem to be slowing, FCs are backed up, and pending containers get released from the port on the same day, sellers will see limits decrease. Likewise, if sales seem to be on an uptick, FCs are clear and processing quickly, and total inbound units drop, sellers will see limits increase.

The Amazon unBoxed Recap 2022

We were fortunate enough to attend the Unboxed conference, plus the bonus day of the Partner Summit, where advertising and other Amazon service providers gathered for 1×1 meetings with the Amazon team to learn about new advertising announcements. This year, unBoxed featured over 70 sessions, and we were able to attend 30 + unique sessions! To help you overcome your FOMO of not following the unBoxed conference this year, we are here to give you some actionable insights on the seven new advertising features.

1. Sponsored Display Ads for Brands Not Selling in Amazon’s store

• Before that, Sponsored Ads were only available for brands that sell products on Amazon. Now, businesses that sell products and services in verticals not available on Amazon, like restaurants and hotels, can use Sponsored Display to reach the highly engaged Twitch audience.

2. Stores as Landing Pages for Sponsored Brands Video

• Stores as landing pages for Sponsored Brands video (also in BETA) allow advertisers to provide a fully branded shopping experience within the Amazon store. When utilizing the stores and landing pages for video creative, advertisers can engage with customers early in their shopping journey and educate them about their products in their brand voice.

3. Amazon Creative Services

• Amazon has officially launched the Amazon Creative Services tool offering advertisers a hassle-free way to have policy-compliant and impactful creative assets.

4.Omnichannel Metrics in the Amazon DSP

• Omnichannel Metrics (OCM) enables advertisers to measure the aggregated impact of their ad tactics on shopping activities on and off Amazon while campaigns are still mid-flight. OCM insights can help advertisers adjust budget allocation, optimize campaign tactics, and maximize media investment ROI. This is HUGE, especially for more traditional brands that sell equally off Amazon.
• Available metrics:
  • Cross-channel view. The solution offers a holistic view of shopping activities on and off Amazon, online and offline. Advertisers can see total omnichannel sales in the reports and on-Amazon and off-Amazon sales breakdown.
  • Multi-source signal. The measurement provides de-duplicative metrics combining Amazon retail signals and third-party offline sales signals.
  • Line-item level reporting. OCM reporting is at the line-item level, allowing advertisers to see the relationship between ad audiences, placements, and creatives on outcomes.
  • Mid-flight actionability. Metrics are reported mid-flight, helping advertisers to change tactics or reallocate budgets to optimize business outcomes in time.

5. Multi-Country Sponsored Ads Experience

• With this feature, merchants can access any country from a single sponsored ads account.

6. Video Builder is Available for Sponsored Brands Video Placements

• Video Builder (BETA) will offer free creation of Sponsored Brands video content! With Video Builder, sellers can easily create product videos through a selection of ready-to-use customizable templates to experiment with different messaging.

7. Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC)

• Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) is a secure, cloud-based solution where advertisers can efficiently perform analytics across pseudonymized signals, including Amazon Ads signals and their own inputs. Amazon announced several updates to improve your ability to take action with these insights.

1. AMC has expanded a library of queries to help programmers take advantage of the vast data sets inside the tool.
2. The ability to manage audiences right from AMC which will come in Q4. This will allow you to create an Amazon DSP audience inside your AMC instance via SQL.
3. AMC announced the Partner Program with certified operators who work with advertisers. These certifications will be recognized in the Amazon Ads Partner Directory.

The Prime Early Access Sale Recap

• Since most sources keep comparing the Prime Early Access Sale results with the Prime Day earnings, the opinions on the sale event success are pretty mixed. For example, while CNBC flags a much lower marketplace revenue compared to Amazon’s Prime Day in July, Amazon claims this wasn’t its primary goal, calling the October sale a great kickoff to the holiday shopping season.

Let’ clear up the picture by breaking down some top stats:

July	October
300 million items sold Best selling categories were Electronics and Consumer Devices. The average spend per order during Amazon Prime Day was $60.29.	100 million items sold Best selling categories were Apparel, Home, and Toys. The average spend per order during the Prime Early Access Sale was $46.68.

Despite the drastic difference in numbers, we still can’t call the PEAS a waste of time and effort, given that the event was handled in a different manner and had other goals. According to Amazon, the main reasons for holding another sales event in October were eliminating the excess inventory and helping sellers make their promotions more relevant and significant to break through this holiday season.

Automated Inventory Removals

• Starting October 14, 2022, Amazon will automatically remove unfulfillable inventory that’s been in fulfillment centers for more than 14 days. After this date, auto removals will continue every 14 days throughout the holiday season. Sellers can specify if they want their inventory removed and returned to them, destroyed, liquidated, or refurbished via their Automated Removal Settings in Seller Central.

Product Detail Page Enhancements

• Amazon is beta testing enhancements to the product detail page to help sellers increase their brand awareness and selling opportunities ahead of peak season. The new widget with “Other popular products from this brand” will only display on the desktop. Placement will include three additional ASINs highlighted at the top of the PDP, taking up real estate that might otherwise go to paid advertising.

This new feature is rolling out to any brand-registered seller using Amazon Attribution to measure their Google Search Ads. Also, participation is automatic for all brands enrolled in the Brand Referral Bonus program.

Q4 Return Policies Update

• Amazon announced the extended holiday returns for items purchased between October 7, 2022, and December 31, 2022. Thus, customers who will make purchases during these days will be able to return most products until January 31, 2023.

Meltable FBA Inventory

• October 16 marks the start date for Amazon sellers to send in items considered “meltable” to be eligible for the FBA fulfillment during the holiday season. Normally, meltable items shipped into Amazon Fulfillment Centers for FBA outside the allowable window (October 16-April 14) are automatically disposed of at the seller’s cost. However, due to the increase in issues with meltables, Amazon will be conducting an FBA inventory sweep to remove any meltable items that missed the regular checks and are currently in stock at Amazon. Sellers concerned they may have items caught up in this sweep can check their catalog for anything flagged as meltable and take action before September 21.

unBoxed 2022

unBoxed is Amazon Ads’ annual conference where they announce new solutions to help big and small brands connect with customers, grow their brand, and prepare for the future. The event will include insights from industry leaders, training and certification classes, breakout sessions, interactive demos, after-hour events, and an exclusive musical performance.

Date: October 25 – 27, 2022

Place: Jacob Javits Center, New York

Cost: $349

Click to register:

Amazon Launchpad is Now Free

• The Amazon Launchpad program page now reflects there is no additional fee for utilizing the program. Previously, a 12-month contract for the program came at the cost of up to 5% of sales revenue, plus other Amazon fees.

With those terms, sellers viewed the program with the credible fear that it might not justify the costs. Now the eligible brand owners can have extra marketing and dedicated account support for free.   

Who is eligible? 

New or existing sellers with professional accounts who have listed their products in Amazon’s online store in the US for less than four years and have generated less than $5 million in gross merchandise sales in Amazon’s online store annually qualify.

Amazon Vine is Now 50% Off

• Big news for October! Amazon’s Vine review program enrollment is half off, just $100. Remember that this fee is per parent ASINs, and once an ASIN has been enrolled, it cannot participate in Vine again. So to get the most bang for your buck, include all child ASINs.

Extended Deadline for Prime Early Access Event Coupons

• We all thought that previous Prime Early Access Event deadlines had expired, and sellers were supposed to have already set up coupons using placeholder dates. However, Amazon announced that sellers can still set up coupons and prime exclusive deals until October 11, making it possible for more brands to participate in this event.

FBM Q4 Fee Hike

• FBM sellers aren’t exempt from the Q4 fee hikes hitting FBA sellers. Starting October 2, USPS implemented Peak Holiday surcharges that range from about  $0.25 to $6.50 depending on package type, weight, and zone. This will impact all sellers using FBM and selecting USPS as the shipment method. These rates will be in place until January 22, 2023.

Updates to Required Attributes

• Amazon has announced that they are updating required attributes for several categories. The current update focuses on Unit Count Type and Item Form across 33 categories. Although changes made now won’t negatively impact existing listings, sellers should be aware that they will have to address new attributes if they need to make any edits to their existing listings. This is especially tough for resellers who cannot necessarily control listing content.

Amazon Warehousing & Distribution

• Amazon Warehousing & Distribution (AWD) repurposes previous Fulfillment Centers into W&D-only facilities with a fee structure separate from FBA, such as flat-rate per pallet fees for inbound/outbound and storage. By starting the program in 2023, Amazon hopes to make its AWD program a one-stop shop for brands to manage their inventory for all Amazon marketplaces and off-Amazon wholesale and brick-and-mortar distribution.

Amazon Accelerate Highlights

• Amazon announced the expansion of free email marketing capabilities for sellers. The program is called Amazon Customer Engagement’s Tailored Audiences.

• Customers ask Alexa. This new feature helps Amazon businesses build their brands by allowing brands to answer shoppers’ questions and thus plays a significant role in driving customers to sellers’ listings.

• Buy with Prime Marketing Solutions. Sellers can now promote and send customers to their direct-to-consumer products and sites from within their brand’s store on Amazon.com.

• Small Business Badge. The Small Business Badge helps customers easily discover products they love from small business brands and artisans in Amazon’s store.

• Customer Review Insights. Sellers can now work backward from the customer by using customer feedback. With Amazon’s new Customer Review Insights tool, merchants gain actionable information from customer reviews that can help develop and launch the next top-rated product. 

• Amazon Seller Wallet. The digital wallet makes it easy for global sellers to hold, view, convert, and transfer money from the U.S. Amazon stores directly to the bank accounts, all within Seller Central.

• Veeqo. This multi-channel shipping software is designed to simplify fast-growth eCommerce by increasing the speed of fulfillment and giving Sellers access to discounted rates on USPS, DHL, FedEx, and UPS. No monthly fee for the software: sellers shipping via Veeqo will only pay for the chosen carrier labels. 

• FBA Centralized Dashboard. The new FBA Dashboard groups critical inventory management and performance pages together, making managing and optimizing your FBA activities easier.

• Manage Your Experiment. With the MYE update, brand owners can now increase the quality of their Amazon listings by A/B testing bullet points and product descriptions. 

• Account Health Rating. While the Account Health Rating bar goes from 0 to 1000, every new seller starts with a score of 200, which is considered healthy. Merchants gain points for every 100-200 orders and lose them for violations that fall into four categories varying by severity: critical, high, medium, and low. After sellers overturn or fix violations, they can have those points back. 
• Account Health Assurance. Higher Account Health Rating accounts with a valid emergency number on file can achieve “Account Health Assurance,” which means Amazon will not shut down their accounts if they are actively working on an issue.

Prime Early Access Sale Dates Announced

• Amazon has finally announced the dates for the first-of-its-kind sale event exclusively for Prime members in the fall season — the Prime Early Access Sale. The new 48-hour sales marathon starts on Wednesday, October 11 and will run through Thursday, October 12, till midnight.

The event will take place in 15 countries. These include the U.S., U.K., Canada, Austria, China, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey. Keep an eye on the Prime Early Access Sale page on Amazon for updates.

Updates to Restock Limits for Q4

• Amazon has been alerting sellers within Seller Central and via email that they are in the process of adjusting restock limits for the holiday season. Q4 updates will allow merchants to maintain a 4-month supply of stock across all ASINs, ensuring smooth fulfillment for the season. Based on these numbers, Amazon has stated that approximately 5% of sellers may see a reduction in limits but that all other sellers should maintain current limits or see an increase.

The announcement also came after the launch of Amazon Warehousing & Distribution (AWD), a low-cost upstream storage and distribution program that could rival independent 3PLs. So, by coinciding the return of restock limits with the launch of AWD Amazon tends to:

– make sellers more reliant on their storage, distribution, and fulfillment network

– take more customers from other 3PLs

However, while AWD looks like a good option to avoid restock limits, it may not be that seamless. So, we recommend proceeding with caution and weighing your logistics decisions thoughtfully.

New MFN Meltable Product Shipping Policy

• On September 21, Amazon implemented a new meltable product shipping policy for meltable seller-fulfilled products. Previously, sellers fulfilling their own goods were exempt from the April-October ban for meltable items enforced in FBA locations. However, per this new announcement, sellers who choose to ship meltables during the hotter months will be subject to possible listing removal and/or seller account suspension if consumers do not receive their items in good condition. For more information, see Changes to program policies.

Tailored Audiences in Customer Engagement

• Amazon is expanding seller options for customer engagement. Currently in beta testing, Tailored Audiences in the Customer Engagement tool will allow the U.S. registered brands to expand their email marketing reach and solidify brand loyalty.

Previously, sellers using Amazon Customer engagement were limited to marketing only to brand followers or shoppers who followed their stores. Now they can send email marketing campaigns to their repeat, high-spend, and recent Amazon customers. The solution is expected to be available in the next six months.

Buy with Prime Marketing Solutions

• Amazon’s Buy with Prime amplifies all-new marketing solutions to help sellers reach Amazon’s engaged shoppers and drive sales on their brand’s direct-to-consumer (DTC) eCommerce stores.

Amazon Introduces “Customers Ask Alexa”

Amazon has launched a new Alexa-powered capability geared toward helping brands answer common customer questions.

How Does It Work? 

When customers pose questions to Alexa, including queries related to a product’s features or compatibilities, Alexa responds with helpful answers provided by brands from those product categories.

Starting October 2022, Customers ask Alexa will be available to a select group of brands as an invite-only program. Amazon plans to make it available to all eligible U.S.-based brands in 2023. More information is on About Amazon.

Amazon Accelerate 2022

• Hurry up, the last days to register for the Amazon Accelerate 2022! The conference will take place in Seattle on September 14-15, 2022. Amazon Accelerate is the place for all Amazon sellers to gain insights on exciting innovations, grasp firsthand tips from seasoned sellers, and expand their networks.

This year Amazon combines face-to-face sessions with virtual experience and offers sellers two options to attend the conference: in-person and online. While the in-person access registration is no longer available, you can still jump on the bandwagon with free virtual tickets.

Amazon Unveils TikTok-Style Feed For Products

• Rumor has it that Amazon has closed beta-testing of a TikTok-like social feature that would show purchasers shareable photos and video feeds of products. Dubbed “Inspire”, the new tool is expected to integrate with the existing Amazon Posts program and will be available to shoppers in-app only.

Search Query Performance at the Product Level

• The new Search Analytics features are now available to all brand registered sellers via the standard Brand Analytics dashboard. The Search Query report provides brand-level insights into the search term’s performance based on shoppers’ search behavior. It presents metrics of the top terms of the seller’s catalog or ASIN for the selected time frame.

With the ASIN-level performance data insights, sellers can fine-tune their marketing strategies and enhance their listings by adding keywords that appeal to shoppers’ interests.

Amazon Fall Prime Deal Event

• Amazon announced a second Prime-exclusive sale in 2022 — the Fall Prime Deal Event. Knowing that Amazon usually gives sellers at least six weeks for product delivery and receipt, we can reasonably anticipate the event to land in the middle of November.

The company recently began notifying select third-party merchants of an upcoming shopping event. Sellers can find out if they opt in for a deal by checking their Deals page in Seller Central and looking for deals that note the Fall Prime Deal Event.

Amazon has also announced the first Black Friday/Cyber Monday deal deadlines. Sellers can opt in for Black Friday and Cyber Monday until September 2.

Coupon Guidelines for the Fall Prime Deal Event

• September 9 is the deadline to create coupons for the Fall Prime Deal event. As Amazon hasn’t yet confirmed the event date, sellers should set up coupons for “placeholder” dates that will be auto-adjusted to the actual deal date when it is announced.

To qualify for the event, coupons must:

✔ target Prime Exclusive Discounts

✔ offer a discount of 20%+

✔ include Prime eligible ASINs 

✔ the start/end dates of the coupon must be November 15-16

Free Promotional Period for Premium A+ Content

• Amazon is running a new promotion for sellers who have registered as a Brand Owner with Amazon Brand Registry – it’s giving them access to Premium A+ content at no cost for an extended promotional period.

FYI: Premium A+ content expands the visual aspect of the product page with enhanced features like video and image carousels which, according to Amazon, can increase sales by up to 20%.

Jessica Wright, Senior Brand Strategist on the Seller Labs Services team, sheds more light on the Amazon A++ Content:

Account Health Page Updates

• In August, Amazon began rolling out the new version of the Account Health dashboard for sellers in the U.S. and Canada, planning to proceed worldwide in 2023. According to the recent Amazon update on upcoming changes, sellers can anticipate:
  • Improved Account Health Rating: sellers will see a number rating instead of just a color rating. A “healthy” score is in the 200-1000 range, while 100-199 will put your account on watch, and anything below 100 is in the danger zone.
  • Violations will have a weighted rating which will help sellers understand how the violations impact their score and prioritize resolutions.
  • Amazon will reveal all the details at Amazon Accelerate 2022 on September 14–15 (free to attend virtually).

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No Changes to How Merchants Respond to Negative Reviews

• Given the Amazon announcement via Seller Central that sellers can now respond to customer reviews, we’d like to shed more light on this. There have been no changes to how sellers can communicate with buyers regarding reviews. Amazon is simply reposting updates that came out last year. Brand owners can reach out to buyers who left 1-3 star reviews via the Customer Reviews tool in Seller Central.

2022 Holiday Deal Deadlines

• If the upcoming holiday season is not yet top of mind for you, we are here to remind Amazon sellers of some critical deadlines quickly approaching.

Dates to know:

September 2, 2022: Holiday 2022 Promotion submissions for both Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals close 

November 2, 2022: Inventory cut-off date for FBA sellers

Holiday Peak Fulfillment Fee

• On top of the spike in storage fees, sellers should prepare for seasonal fulfillment fee changes. New rate card is in Seller Central:

Shipping Options for FBM Returns

• Starting September 5, 2022, through October 2, 2022, Amazon will be testing a program allowing shoppers to choose between USPS and UPS for returns on seller-fulfilled returns. The tech giant starts this experiment to study customer behavior and understand their preferences better. Since shipping with UPS may come at a higher price, Amazon will reimburse the price difference for every label created during the experiment.

You will find more information on the shipping costs in Seller Central. Although Amazon hasn’t provided any details on how to claim a refund for the difference, we assume this will be completed via SAFE-T claims.

Recent Reviews Display on Product Detail Pages

• Although there is no official update from Amazon, it looks like they have changed how reviews display on product detail pages. Brands are noticing that the “Top Reviews” showing in the Reviews module on the PDP are now all recent. This is potentially a game-changer for many brands previously plagued by outdated negative reviews.

Amazon Attribution Update

• Amazon rolls out a new Amazon Attribution feature to strengthen its partnership with brands conducting off-Amazon marketing campaigns and help them increase brand awareness and enhance cross-selling opportunities. Sellers can now replace the previously featured competitor ads at the top of their listings with other popular products from their Amazon store.

Currently in beta-testing, this new feature is available to sellers utilizing Amazon Attribution with Google Ads through January 2023.

Another ASK AMAZON Event

• Amazon hosted another Ask Amazon event on the topic of Selling Partner Apps. We suggest popping in to explore over 25 Amazon programs and third-party service providers.

A New Feature for Your Sponsored Display Campaigns

• Multi-asset creative management is now available for Sponsored Display. With this feature, advertisers using Sponsored Display can customize their creatives by adding a headline, logo, and lifestyle image together or individually.

FBA Shipment Creation Workflow Changes

• Starting August 31, 2022, Send/Replenish Inventory function in Seller Central will be replaced by the new Send to Amazon workflow. Although the new workflow is intended to be more simplified and error-free, Amazon seller forums show that merchants are unsatisfied with how the new system works and say they would prefer the old method of replenishing their FBA inventory.

Amazon Acquires One Medical and iRobot

• Amazon is expanding its reach into the health care and robotics industries. The tech giant announced its plans to acquire  One Medical, the primary care organization, and iRobot, makers of the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner. 

Amazon stated that the acquisition of One Medical would dramatically improve the healthcare experience over the next few years, making it more accessible and affordable for patients and providers. 

Meanwhile, the acquisition of iRobot is expected to deepen Amazon’s presence in consumer robotics after the giant made a bold venture into this field last year when it unveiled the Astro Home robot equipped with the company’s Alexa digital assistant.

Amazon Seller Wallet Launch

• Amazon announced the release of the Amazon Seller Wallet, a new tool to give sellers an easy, hassle-free way to manage their funds and payouts on Amazon. Details are slim at this point; we only know that the tool is now at the initial launch stage and available only to a select number of small businesses. Amazon is planning to collect first feedback and continue to refine the tool. Sellers are hoping the solution will alleviate concerns over disbursement dates, amounts, and reserves.

Automatic Disposal of Aging Inventory

• Amazon reminded sellers to update their removal settings to  prevent automatic disposal of aging inventory from Amazon’s fulfillment centers – make sure you either provide a valid return address or opt-out of automated removals for unsellable and aged inventory. Sellers who fail to do that are at the risk of having their aged inventory donated, recycled, or disposed of. We can reasonably assume that the announcement, coupled with the lead in to Q4 timing, means that Amazon will soon be doing a purge of aged inventory.

FBA Storage Fee Changes for Q4

• FBA storage fees will increase for peak season months of October to December. Starting October 1, 2022, an item that normally costs $0.53 per cu/ft. a month to store year-round jumps to $1.20 per cu/ft. Any items that have been in FCs for over 271 days are also subject to additional aged inventory surcharges. If you haven’t opted into automatic removals, you should take stock of your inventory now and take action on any excess. 

Sexual Imagery Policy Update

• Amazon updated its policy regarding sexual imagery and has given seller’s a 60-day warning to review and update impacted listings in order to stay compliant. Listings not in compliance as of the September 26, 2022 deadline may be suppressed or restricted, and policy violations could apply.

Account Health Page Updates

• According to the Amazon announcement, we will see new features on the Account Health page in the coming months. The Account Health Rating (AHR) will be displayed as a point value based on a scale of 0-1,000 (in addition to the color that exists today). The Account Health page will also display the degree to which any violations impact your account health, allowing you to prioritize addressing those most negatively affecting it.

Find more information on the upcoming changes in Amazon Seller Central.

Manage FBA Inventory Dashboard Phase-Out

Starting August 30, Manage FBA Inventory dashboard will be phased out. Amazon is rolling out a new FBA Inventory page to replace Manage Inventory Health and Manage FBA Inventory dashboards.

The new version is designed to simplify FBA inventory management. It provides a single view of inventory-specific metrics, actions, and recommendations across restock, excess, aged, unfulfillable, and stranded inventory types.

Amazon-Funded Fee Discounts

• Amazon is starting to offer referral fee discounts on select items with excess inventory. Amazon will discount the associated referral fee for the items with lowered price. So, to be eligible for a referral fee discount, one should create a sale or outlet deal on a product. Discounts are at least 30 cents per unit, up to 25% of the referral fee.

Q&A about Remote Fulfillment

• If you still have concerns about the Amazon Remote Fulfillment program, visit the Ask Amazon page on Amazon’s Seller Forums. In addition, AMA is an excellent resource that addresses the most obscure Amazon questions.

Jessica Wright, the Senior Brand Strategist on the Seller Labs Services team, expands on the Remote Fulfillment program in the video below:

2022 Remote Fulfillment with FBA Fee Changes

• Effective June 30, 2022, the fulfillment fee changed for Remote Fulfillment with FBA will take effect. All sellers will automatically opt into Remote Fulfillment in Canada and Mexico unless they opt out before July 1. Thus, we recommend merchants check the Remote Fulfillment program page and confirm their opt-out if they don’t intend to participate in this program.

Amazon Prime Day 2022 Early Results

• The annual two-day shopping marathon ended, and now it’s time for online merchants to analyze their sales, evaluate their profits, and draw first conclusions. According to Amazon, retailers managed to generate $11.9 billion in online spending, representing 8.5% growth compared to $11 billion in Prime Day’s total online revenue in 2021.

Going by CNBC, if Amazon could’ve figured out how to give away gas, it would’ve been the best Prime Day ever!

Hits:

• Great social ruckus. Many shoppers were flooded with organic and paid campaigns on social media and email campaigns highlighting Prime Day deals from brands.
• Attractive discounts across various categories.

FYI: Although home electronics, like instant pots and Roombas, are typically hot selling items during Amazon’s Prime Day, this year, consumers were more interested in dishwasher pods, diapers, and snacks.

• Prime Day deals were available off-Amazon. For the first time, Prime Day deals were available beyond the marketplace via the ‘Buy with Prime’ program.

Misses:

• Deal overwhelm. The abundance of deal types and Amazon’s focus on customer experience made it challenging for sellers to timely select which deals to run. 
• Caching issues on Amazon’s website. Caching issues thwarted some brands’ best-laid promotion plans on Amazon’s site, whereby some discounts didn’t show up.

To sum up, the early data from brands shows that Prime Day has delivered strong results despite minor issues.

The Brand Catalog Manager Phase-Out

• As of June 15, the Brand Catalog Manager page is no longer updated, so we expect it to disappear soon. A replacement, “Selection Completeness”, is in Beta testing and is available to some sellers via the Customer Experience Metrics dashboard.

Therefore, we recommend sellers who miss the Brand Catalog Manager dashboard ask Amazon support to add them to the Beta version of the “Selection Completeness” page.

Refund/Return Policy Update

• Starting August 1, 2022, all Return and Refund policies on the Seller Profile will default to the Amazon policies. Since Amazon policies cover restocking fees, sellers won’t see a disruption in the ability to charge refunds. However, there will likely be some initial buyer confusion since shoppers will need to click through a link to view policies instead of reading them on the seller page.

Prime Day Preparations

• Amazon hosted a series of seller webinars on Prime Day preparations to help online businesses get the most out of the annual sales event. The following advertising-focused Prime Day Prep webinar takes place on July 8.

Amazon Prime Day Checklist

Create a Prime Day Version of Your Store

• Use the Store scheduling feature to create a Prime Day version of your store and submit it for approval at least a week before the event. When submitting for approval before Prime Day, choose the date you want the Prime Day version of your store to be published and the day you wish to revert to another version.

Prime Day Small Business Promotions

• From June 21, 2022, until July 11, 2022, Amazon is holding a promotional campaign to support US-based small businesses and artisans. With Prime Day Small Business Promotions, Amazon incentivizes shoppers to purchase from small businesses by offering eligible customers an opportunity to win prizes. Once registered, shoppers will receive one additional entry in the sweepstakes for every $1 spent on promotion-eligible products with a Small Business badge.

• Pro: Small Business storefront is another way for customers to discover and support small businesses. 
• Con: Unlike in past years, buyers have no incentive to return and spend more money on Prime Day. Without an incentive for shoppers to return for Prime Day, sellers will hardly see much lift from the promo this year.

Send to Amazon Replaces Send/Replenish Inventory

• Send/Replenish Inventory function in Seller Central is now replaced by the new Send to Amazon system. Although the new workflow is intended to be more simplified and error-free, Amazon seller forums show that merchants are unsatisfied with how the new system works and say they would prefer the old method of replenishing their FBA inventory.

June 2022 Amazon Seller Summit

• Amazon Seller Summit will be broadcast on June 30, 2022, from 9 am-11 am PST. The main focus of this virtual event will revolve around home improvement, lawn & garden, and tools categories. Thus, registered visitors will access a series of category-specific webinars that would give sellers insights into how to level up their Amazon’s online stores.

You’ll find more information about the upcoming Amazon-hosted webinars on AWS Events and Webinars page.

2021 Amazon Annual Report

• Amazon Annual Report includes statistics on Amazon’s efforts to protect brands and reduce counterfeiting.

Same Day Handling

• Sellers struggling with long lead times can now configure same day handing as a default. Indicating that FBM products will ship the same day can decrease the delivery window giving FBM sellers an edge.

While opting into Same Day Handling sellers will need to modify handling time on any ASINs that cannot be fulfilled with that speed.

Signature Confirmation for FBM Orders

• Amazon now recommends signature confirmation for FBM orders. However, as signature service can add up to $6 per shipment, this can become pretty costly insurance. Although Amazon assures that this service can reduce lost orders by 35%, sellers will need to review their processes to see which is a more significant drain on their margins and make the best decisions for their businesses.

Amazon Prime Day FBA Inventory Deadline

• Amazon FBA inventory cutoff date is June 20. It’s time for sellers to double-check their inbound shipments and ensure everything is on track to deliver in time for the Prime Day deadline.

Updates to Brand Analytics Dashboards

1. Effective June 30, Item Comparison and Alternate Purchase Behavior reports will be eliminated.

2. Brand Analytics Dashboard has some new significant additions. Search Query Reports now have insights on category-level performance for a brand vs. the competition. 

Brand Referral Bonus Program

• Amazon pushes its Brand Referral Bonus Program to award up to a 10% bonus to sellers that drive sales to their Amazon listings from off-site traffic. To join the program, sellers should enroll in Amazon Attribution and have some non-Amazon traffic, such as social media, to redirect.

New In-App Augmented Reality Feature

• Amazon launches AR-powered Virtual Shoe Try-On in its iOS app. In this virtual try-on, customers can point their camera at their feet and scroll through different shoes to see how they look from different angles. However, the tool can’t be used to determine shoe size.

While the new feature is currently available for iOS customers with an iPhone 7 or newer, Amazon confirmed in its blog post that it would be available for Android customers soon.

As of now, this tool is only available to Vendors (namely, brands with a 1P relationship with Amazon), and only by an invite.

Updates to Amazon Local Selling

• For sellers enrolled in Amazon Local Selling, there have been updates to the Home Entry Compliance policy regarding background checks and employee verification completed with Amazon. Sellers enrolled in Amazon Local may opt to have Amazon deliver local items if they cannot comply with Amazon’s Personnel Requirements.

European Fulfillment Network Between the UK and the EU

• The European Fulfillment Network is now available to all EU and UK sellers with accounts in both regions. This program allows sellers to stock products in one European location and share them around Europe, including the UK. All sellers in these markets should have received notification of eligibility, program details, and fees directly from Amazon.

Another Amazon’s Press Release

• Amazon’s latest press release indicates that the company is still focused on building brands and removing bad players.

Current ongoing brand protection initiatives include:

• deterring and stopping bad actors 
• increasing adoption of brand protection tools 
• holding counterfeiters accountable
• identifying and seizing counterfeits 
• forging public-private partnerships (like Transparency) for additional protection

Amazon’s 2022 NewFront Replay

• The Amazon NewFront event for advertisers took place on May 2 in New York. If for whatever reason, you’ve missed this biggest Amazon advertising showcase, you can still make the most of it with Amazon’s 2022 NewFront Replay.

Know how to reach your target audience organically through Virtual Product Placement (VPP) on Amazon Freevee and Prime Video, optimize goals with Amazon’s marketing cloud, and engage with the viewers via interactive live streaming Twitch service.

New Invite-Based Ordering Option

• To help prevent inventory shortages of high-demand items with limited quantities, Amazon unleashes a new invite-based ordering experience. The company says its goal is to ensure that genuine customers can purchase these products.

The new program is launching in the United States, starting with PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X game consoles sold and fulfilled by Amazon.

Sponsored Display Reports Update

• Sponsored Display launches matched target reporting in the Amazon Ads console. New Matched Target Report shows what product detail pages (PDP) your ads display, which helps you analyze the performance of underlying categories and audience targeting ASINs.

Now sellers can identify the good-performing ASINs, and target them with Sponsored Display or other ad types.  

Like the Search Term Report, the ad needs at least one click against the ASIN’s PDP to show up in the report.

Understanding Amazon Buy with Prime

• As of April 21, 2022, Amazon has unleashed its Buy with Prime program to extend the convenience of Prime shopping to online retailers beyond the Amazon retail platform.

Going by the Amazon press release, Buy with Prime will initially be available by invitation only for merchants using Fulfillment by Amazon and will roll out through 2022 as merchants are invited to participate, including those not selling on Amazon or using FBA.

This newly introduced program allows millions of U.S.-based Prime members to shop directly from merchants’ online stores and help online sellers build customer loyalty and brand credibility while offering conversion-driving benefits like fast and free shipping.

Here’s another video where Jessica Wright, Senior Brand Strategist on the Seller Labs Services team, sheds more light on “Amazon Buy with Prime”, and gives helpful tips on how to start using it.

👉 Aged Inventory Surcharge

• It looks like Amazon is changing the name of LTS (long-term storage) to Aged Inventory and is introducing a new tier of fees. Effective May 15, 2022, the new Amazon Aged Inventory surcharge took effect, resulting in the increased storage fees on the items that have been in Amazon Fulfillment Centers for 271 to 365 days.

These items are now charged $1.50 per cubic foot during this period, increasing to $6.90 per cubic foot or $0.15 per unit once regular long-term storage fees kick in after 365 days. This update is impactful to any seller using FBA.

Seller Central Business Report Updates

• The Detail Page Sales and Traffic reports now have hidden filter Session and Page Views by platform (mobile and desktop). As part of the ongoing trend, more data will be available via Business Reports and Brand Analytics.

Updates to Amazon Marketplace Fair Pricing Policy

• Amazon has just released a statement regarding baby-formula pricing due to the ongoing baby formula shortage. The violation of the fair pricing policy with such products as baby formula, supplies during hurricane season, or essential items during the COVID pandemics won’t just get a pricing health notification. Instead, Amazon will shut down the account on the first infraction.

Amazon Ads Conference: unBoxed Returns In Person in 2022

• Amazon announced it would be hosting unBoxed 2022 at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City on October 25-27. Mark your calendars to discover the latest innovations and trends coming from Amazon Ads that can help your brand reach audiences, measure campaigns, and grow your business.

Attributed Purchases Report Updates

• The new Attributed Purchases Report is now available for Sponsored Brands Video, helping sellers get the info on the product that the customers purchased after clicking on the video ad.

With this report, Amazon merchants can get insights into the product sales driven by their Sponsored Brands ads, discover new advertising opportunities, and see which products engage new-to-brand customers.

👉 Keyword Ranking Within Amazon Metrics

• There is now the ability to see where the search term ranks within the suggestions in the keyword recommendations. This new feature could save a lot of time deciding how much focus and bid allowance to give to each term.

Amazon Prime Day

• Amazon finally confirmed that Prime Day 2022 would take place in July. Although the exact date is still unknown, we guess the event will kick off on July 18/19 based on the deadlines and past years’ dates.

Amazon Sales Slow Down

• Online sales have been slowing down for Amazon. After its boost at the pandemic’s onset, the eCommerce industry is now taking a hit since shoppers prefer a more typical, pre-COVID mix of online and in-person spending. However, Amazon’s other two segments (Amazon Web Services and Advertising) don’t show any decrease in profitability.

Amazon Digital Content & Marketing Innovations

• Amazon announced digital content and digital marketing innovations at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) NewFronts held on May 2-5, 2022. During its NewFronts presentation, Amazon unveiled its new content and advertising products, including virtual product placement into Amazon’s original digital content and updates on Amazon Freevee, Thursday Night Football on Prime Video, and Twitch.

Now brands can enjoy enhanced marketing opportunities and reach and engage streaming audiences with more intelligent and straightforward streaming TV campaigns.

Amazon’s Recent Earnings Update

• Check out this excellent summary for anyone interested in the TLDR of Amazon’s recent earnings update.

New Real Estate Space on Amazon’s Buy Box

• Amazon introduced a new section called “Another way to buy” that takes up space between the main offer and the secondary Buy Box (Other Sellers on Amazon). It looks like beta testing as it doesn’t show for every search. The seller under “Another way to buy” is different from the seller in the main Buy Box, even though they can offer the same price, and both are fulfilled by Amazon.

The “Another Way to Buy” section can be beneficial to third-party sellers as it allows them to show their offer to customers even when they are not featured as the main Buy Box winner. 

Also, it will help FBM sellers that don’t normally get the Buy Box because others are offering an FBA deal.

Multi-Channel Fulfillment Fee Updates

• As a result of increased logistics costs, Amazon will be increasing Multi-Channel Fulfillment fees for the off Amazon orders fulfilled using FBA inventory.

Effective May 9, 2022, the fees for the Multi-Channel Fulfillment orders will increase twice across all package types. 

Effective August 1, 2022, Amazon will also be increasing the fees for the packages shipped to non-contiguous U.S. states and territories. Visit the MCF fee page for a break-down of fees before/after the update.

Jessica Wright, Senior Brand Strategist on the Seller Labs Services team, sheds some more light on the Fulfillment Fee Changes in the following video:

Sponsored Brands Follow Button

• The follow button appears to be populating directly on Sponsored Brand ads on the Product Display Page. Apparently, the Customer Engagement tool will be one of the first Amazon tools to benefit from the increased “Follow Button” visibility.

Facebook News: Meta is Opening Its First Brick-and-Mortar Store

• The first Meta Store is set to open early next month in California near Meta’s Reality Labs research facility, where metaverse products are developed. In-store, consumers can try and buy the platform’s three metaverse products: the smart video chat device Portal, smart glasses Ray-Ban Stories and virtual reality headset Meta Quest.

Amazon Shareable Images

• As of now, Amazon is beta-testing “Shareable” Product Images on desktop. Many customers shopping on Amazon are now finding the ability to share product images via email, social, or direct link. This drives home the importance of creating helpful, valuable, and shareable content on your product detail pages.

Amazon Small & Light Program Updates

• Effective April 28, 2022, Amazon has updated its Small & Light program to increase the price threshold for qualified items from $8 to $10. This change allows more of your products to become eligible for the program and receive fulfillment discounts, which can be beneficial to the merchants who sell products with less-profit margins, as they can claw back some profitability.

FBA News: Extra Large Storage Type

• As of April 18, 2022, a new Extra Large storage type is available to Amazon sellers, in addition to the Oversize storage type. The new Extra Large category includes:
  • non-TV items sized 96 inches or more
  • TV items sized more than 40 inches
  • any item that measures more than 130 inches in girth
  • any item that weighs over 50 lbs

This change could negatively impact profits for merchants who sell large and heavy products. Since the items already in stock at Amazon Fulfillment Centers will automatically be moved into a new category and charged at this new fee structure, we recommend Sellers take a look at their Fee Preview Report to estimate any changes.

Virtual Bundle Updates

• A golden nugget from the Seller Labs team: Though it is not officially announced by Amazon, we can confirm there are two new changes that we’ve seen in Seller accounts:
  1. Virtual bundles can now appear as child ASINs on the component item pages. This update keeps buyers in one place to shop, allows bundles to take advantage of component item sales rank/velocity, and ensures that reviews will combine across items.
  2. Virtual bundles can now be advertised using Sponsored Product ad types.

Updates to Amazon’s Dangerous Goods Policy

• Effective April 25, 2022, dangerous goods can no longer be shipped to the U.S. island destinations through FBA, even in limited quantities. Starting on this date, online sellers should turn to third-party shippers to ship dangerous goods to those destinations.

Online sellers who have items categorized as hazmat should review their unfulfillable inventory in conjunction with these updates and ensure they are taking action on any impacted items. You can find more information in the Amazon Dangerous Goods Identification Guide.

Additional Prime Day Deals Deadlines

• Lightning Deals Submission Deadline:
  • April 29 – U.S. and Canada
  • May 13 – France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, and the UK
• FBA Inventory Cutoff Deadline:
  • June 20 – U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Portugal
  • June 29 – Japan
• Coupon Submission Deadline:
  • June 10 – U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, and the UK
• Inbound Shipping Cutoff Deadline:
  • July 8 – the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Mexico, Portugal, Australia, and Japan
  • July 19 – India, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates

FBA Fulfillment Fee Changes

• Effective April 28, 2022, an FBA fee surcharge of 5% will be implemented on each unit sold, including products purchased before that date. Amazon also said that this surcharge is subject to change, as it is still unclear if the inflationary costs will go up or down or for how long they will persist.

As of now, it averages from a $0.15 to a $7.55 increase, depending on product size and category. Since fee updates almost always result in mistakes, it is a good idea for Sellers to review their fulfillment reports for any anomalies.

Amazon Webinars on Brand Registry and A+ Content

• Upcoming Amazon webinars on Brand Registry and A+ Content are open for registration for all Seller Central users. Given that Amazon does not always offer recordings after the sessions, it’s good to pencil the event in if you are interested in any of these topics.

Updates to the Amazon Seller App

• Amazon Seller App now offers the new quick search functionality to its iOS users.

Amazon Advertising Updates

• Amazon is introducing a Suggested Products sort option available to vendors and sellers when creating Sponsored Products campaigns. So, how does it work? Amazon machine-learning models identify the products with a high likelihood of being clicked on if advertised and help online sellers to increase the chance of customer engagement.

Prosper Show 2022

Seller Policies Updates for European Marketplaces

• As of March 2022, Amazon introduced significant changes to program policies applicable to Amazon’s European marketplaces:

1. Selling Policies and Seller Code of Conduct. Amazon has updated the Seller Code of Conduct to include language explicitly prohibiting price-fixing and search rank manipulation.
2. Amazon’s Mediation Policy. In the case of mediation, sellers will choose to designate one mediator among a list of two provided by the Center for Effective Dispute Resolution.
3. Amazon Renewed Programme Terms. Negative Review Rate and Product Quality Return Rate are now the primary quality performance metrics, deprecating the Negative Review Rate and Renewed Quality Score.

Amazon’s Home Entry Program Updates

• Under the updated Amazon’s Home Entry program, no one is allowed to enter a customer’s home to deliver an Amazon order unless the order originated via Amazon ShopLocal or is being delivered by Amazon’s delivery network.

New Regulatory Fee Taxes

• As of April 15, 2022, new California tax rules came into force. However, the updates shouldn’t affect the sellers’ filing routines. New regulatory fee taxes will be collected automatically by Amazon to be displayed as a new column on existing Seller Central tax reporting.

Upcoming Changes to Buyer-Initiated Order Cancellations

• Effective May 10, 2022, Amazon is making changes to the process of managing Buyer-Initiated Cancellation requests to make it easier and more efficient.

Amazon Seasonal Restrictions on Meltable Inventory

• Starting April 15, any meltable products in stock at Amazon FCs will be destroyed at the seller’s expense. Any product with the “Is this Item Heat Sensitive” attribute selected as “TRUE”, and a meltable temperature set below 155 is subject to this deadline. So, the best practice is to schedule removals 24 hours before the deadline to ensure timely processing.

Online sellers that are unsure of meltable status on their items can review their category listing for meltable attributes to confirm.

New USPS Fees And Surcharges in 2022

• Effective April 3, 2022, the additional USPS surcharges were added for incorrect and non-standard package dimensions. This will impact the bottom profits for all FBM sellers whether they use Buy Shipping on Amazon or not.

Dimensional Non-Compliance Fee:  A $1.50 fee will be applied to any packages when manifested dimensions are either incorrect or are not provided. 
USPS Non-Standard Fee: The packages that exceed a certain dimensional threshold will incur an additional fee in addition to the postage:

• Parcels that are longer than 22 inches but less than 30 inches will see a $4.00 surcharge.
• Packages that exceed 30 inches in length will incur a $15.00 surcharge.
• Parcels that measure greater than 2 cubic (3456 cubic inches) feet will also see a $15.00 fee added.

Amazon Reporting Update

• As of March 29, 2022, Amazon expanded the available information in the Business Reports tool to include Amazon Mobile App data. Amazon sellers now have more visibility and access to mobile vs. browser sessions data, which helps them to quantify the importance of optimizing your product listings for the mobile shoppers.

New Features in Amazon Search Analytics Dashboards

• The Search Catalog Performance and Search Query Performance Dashboard is rolled out for all Brand Registered Sellers in Brand Analytics. With this new dashboard brand owners gain a powerful insight into how customers are interacting with their products with an emphasis on search performance.

Brands can now access their products’ search engagement metrics, including impressions, clicks, cart adds, and purchases. These metric values only include organic and sponsored products from search results, and are not related to external traffic.

March 2022 SP-API Release Announcement

• Collecting data from Seller Central Business Reports and Vendor Central Sales Diagnostics now got a whole lot easier. Amazon released an update to the selling partner API to provide access to business reports.

New Addition to the Amazon Product Opportunity Explorer Dashboard

• Amazon Product Opportunity Explorer is a helpful feature that provides data and insights to help sellers gain a better understanding of customer demand for new product ideas. As of now, trends dashboard allows you to see the niche trend for the Sales volume, Product Count, Average Price and Search Conversion Rate over the past 7 days.

Automated Fulfillable Inventory Removal

• Rather than simply bill clients a higher storage rate for inventory on hand at its fulfillment centers, Amazon is going to return those units to sellers automatically on April 15, 2022. This will also apply to ASINs on hand with no sales in the proceeding six months. Please, check to ensure you have a return address on file, otherwise units will be disposed of.

Online sellers who opt out will be charged increased long term storage fees.

Multi-Channel Fulfillment Fee Updates

• As a result of increased logistics costs, Amazon will be increasing Multi-Channel Fulfillment fees on May 9, 2022, and some supplemental fees for areas outside of the continental US on August 1, 2022. Check out the link above for additional updates to the MCF program that have happened or will be happening this year.

New Fee Category Guidelines

• Given that fee categories are changing, we recommend all Amazon sellers to take a look at the fee preview report to anticipate any updates and be prepared to dispute any mistakes.

Please note: fee categories reflect the category a product falls into for referral fees, not necessarily the category reflected on the Product Detail Page of the item. Thus, items will not be recategorized for display purposes as a result of these updates.

Another BRAND NEW Real Estate in Amazon Advertising

• Now you can see “Brands you might like” below the product listings in between “4 Stars & Above” and “Products related to this item.”

Sponsored Display Launches Bid Recommendations

• Suggested bids are now available for Sponsored Display Ads (SD) campaigns. This will help get some idea on what bids to keep, especially when setting up new campaigns.

Sponsored Display Launches Matched Target Reporting in the Amazon Ads API

• Amazon just released a statement announcing that sellers and vendors can access the brand-new Matched Target Report! With this report, you can dive deep into the performance of the product detail pages where your Sponsored Display ads were delivered at.

Amazon Helps Its Prospective Clients with a Perfect Launch

• New Seller Incentives are great tools that Amazon provides to its brand-new seller accounts. Within a Perfect Launch program, the newly-emerged Amazon sellers are offered free Amazon Vine items, free Transparency labels, credits to try cost-per click (CPC) advertising, discounted Amazon Prime shipping, and more with Fulfillment by Amazon. Additionally, Amazon has updated its Perfect Launch Playbook to include all these details.

Amazon Transparency Program Updates

• Here come some recent updates to the Amazon Transparency App. The consumers can now see instructional videos, product promotion, and current deals when they scan Transparency barcodes on the products they purchase.

Amazon Offers Sellers New Discounts on Shipping

• Amazon is passing along their discounted shipping rates! Amazon Sponsored Discount is now available on some buy shipping options for Seller Fulfilled orders, discounted rates can be identified by a blue “discount” badge on the Buy Shipping page in Seller Central.

Amazon FBA Recent Updates

• Similar to the New Seller Incentives, FBA New Selection now offers incentives for new items on the platform, available to any seller regardless of their Amazon seller experience. The new perks include  5% rebate on sales, Global enrollment, and Free Liquidation.
• Have you heard about the recent updates to Amazon US referral and FBA fees? Amazon’s making some adjustments to the current year’s fee structure.
• Amazon is raising the annual price of its Prime shipping club to compensate for the increased pandemic costs. Effective February 18, the new pricing jumps $20 to $139 per year.

Amazon Seller Central Updates

• Amazon is making many improvements in how they communicate with sellers. You can now schedule a call to talk to Amazon support.
• Amazon sellers that have enrolled in the Brand Registry can now communicate directly with buyers that left their brand a critical review. This update was released in June 2021 on Customer Reviews on the Brand Dashboard.
• Marketplace Appstore and Service Provider Network are now combined in the ASCPN (Amazon Seller Central Partner Network), where sellers can discover over 5,000 third-party software and service partners.
• Say hello to a new Competitive Price feature on the Manage Inventory Dashboard. You’ll be able to see the relevant data in the Price + Shipping column. This information refers to OFF AMAZON pricing for the item and allows Amazon sellers to gain deeper insights and make healthy decisions while setting prices.

New from Seller Labs & X-Cart

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