ADVERTISING
Amazon Advertising is larger than LinkedIn, Twitter, and Snapchat
Monday is one of those days when we teach you something you (probably) didn’t know before. Here’s one:
Amazon has just released their quarterly earnings report and one unit, in particular, caught our attention: “Other”. It’s a unit that’s primarily made up of advertising revenue generated by Amazon’s ad network.
Here are some juicy stats about it:
- This unit generated $7.9 billion last quarter
- That’s a pretty healthy rate of growth (41 percent up compared to the quarter last year and 77% up from last quarter)
- This figure is far bigger than Twitter, Snapchat, and LinkedIn’s ad revenue from last quarter (1.19B, 982M, and 1B dollars, respectively)
It’s evolving as well: According to Amazon’s official press release, “Amazon Advertising launched over 40 new features and self-service capabilities”. The company expanded its ad platform to Australia, Europe, India, Japan, and Saudi Arabia.
Why you should care: People are returning to the real world (see more about that in the following section), which is slowing down e-commerce growth.
If you got the majority of your sales from simply being listed on marketplaces like Amazon, you’ll probably need to take proactive measures (like running ads) to keep your sales volume in the long run. Amazon Ads could be a good acquisition channel to start with.
E-COMMERCE
E-commerce is slowing. The reason: People returning to the “real world”
And we have two recent data points to show this:
- After 11 quarters of consecutive user growth, Pinterest has reported a decline of users in Q2 2021, losing 24 million users in the past 3 months. Why: Reductions in in-person pandemic restrictions.
- Amazon’s revenue growth has also slowed to 27%. A year ago, this growth was 41%. The reason for this is similar to Pinterest’s: People going back out to shop in the physical world.
Reversal: 2020 was a great year for e-commerce. Demand vastly outpaced supply.
Now the situation is reversed.
Many entrepreneurs have entered e-commerce due to the pandemic, but now actual demand is decreasing.
What you can do about all of this (The Crew’s take): Out-compete everyone. When demand decreases, the ones who adapt the fastest win. Many people are doing that with Amazon Ads, as you can see from the previous article.
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- Custom spend rules to automatically ensure your media buyers never overspend past your budget.
- Easily manage budgets across multiple ad accounts and networks.
- Up to 30 days interest-free float on your ad spend.
AdCard also comes with everything you expect from a modern card. No annual fee, no employee cardholder fees. No over the limit fee. No interest. And built-in fraud protection.
Get more cash back on your ad spend in Q4 this year. You just need 5 minutes to set up an account.
COPYWRITING
Copywriting tips for startups
Here are some quick and sweet lessons learned by Matt Maiale after rewriting 300+ startup websites.
Start with an action verb and talk directly to your persona:
Tax credits for growing startups → Get +$50k back from the IRS in 20 minutes
Turn your feature sections into narratives:
- Dig at your audience problem.
- Twist the knife by expanding the problem and showing real-life scenarios.
- Explain how the feature fixes the problem.
Show users how easy it is to get started by handling objections:
“Join our Beta. It’s free.”
“No credit card required.”
“Cancel anytime.”
Be specific about the value users get by clicking forward:
- “Get started” → “Sign up now to automate Slack”
- “Join us” → “Start learning”
Jump on the thread to see examples from real companies.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
E-C0MMERCE: QVC-like shopping may be the future of e-commerce. US consumers seem to like livestream shopping.
AMAZON: Poor Amazon. After reporting slower growth, they’re getting a slap from the EU worth $887M. Yeah, million.
SEO: Google has been merciless in removing non-HTTPS links from Chrome, penalizing them in search rankings, etc. Google is still crawling non-HTTPS URLs, though.
SNAPCHAT: Marketers are scientists; they’re running ad tests all the time. Snapchat has launched “Campaign Lab”, hoping to make running tests easier.
GOOGLE: Raise your hand if you used a Google product that died. Google has realized this is becoming a competitive disadvantage and has taken action.
BRAIN TEASER
If a rooster laid a brown egg and a white egg, what kind of chicks would hatch?
You can find the solution here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Do you work at home? There’s a 38% chance you’re reading this from your bed
When it comes to working from home, the couch is our best friend, according to a study from CraftJack.
Here’s the scoop:
- 45 percent of American teleworkers regularly work from a couch
- 38% of them regularly work from their bed
It’s not all doom and gloom though; 20 percent of respondents reported they work outside. Turns out we’re not all couch potatoes, after all.
In fact, one of our crew members is a proud example of this; he wrote this article while outside on a vacation in Bulgaria…while sitting on a couch.