Amazon Takes a Crack at Solving the Attribution Problem

Amazon’s Attribution program aims to provide brands with data on which ads are best converting to sales on the Amazon platform. This information will allow brands to allocate funding between search, display, and video channels. The program is still under beta and enrollment has closed but will be unveiled to opened up to more brands in the future.

Brands are able tracking pixels on other sites which would redirect the user to Amazon and Amazon is able to let the brand know who ended converting, who left an item in the shopping cart, or who did not make it past the product page.

Although the Amazon Attribution program is a nice step forward in the attempt to close the last mile attribution gap but for digital marketers, it is not the holy grail which many marketers. For example, the classic attribution program remains where any level of prior engage the consumer had with other ads from the brand are not accounted for. Additionally, due to their rivalry Amazon is not able to gain access to whether a consumer was shown a display add on Facebook and then decided to browse to Amazon.

With Amazon, Facebook, and Google are all fighting for ad revenue, will they ever want to share their data to give the advertisers a complete picture of the attribution problem?

Will Amazon finally be present in NYC?

If you are reading this, there is almost no chance that you do not know what a giant Amazon is. Recently I visited 12 fashion/tech companies and a couple of conferences, and Amazon was mentioned as a strong competitor and the main concern every single time.

One of the biggest plans of the company is to build 2 new offices in Arlington, Virginia and New York, New York. While Virginia’s government is excited to host such a company and even promised to provide $750 million in cash incentives, New York’s situation is more complicated, because this activity is combated by some politicians as well as activists. Recently this fact led to some rumors saying that Amazon is going to reconsider this decision and will take a look at another possible options.

What kind of benefits are going to be provided?

1.     One of the most obvious is that 25,000 to 40,000 jobs with average salary of $150,000 will be created. Additionally, Amazon plans to resume workshops at Queensbridge Houses starting in 2020 as well as open a training center focused on engineering courses, giving an opportunity to underprivileged New Yorkers to get higher paid jobs;

2.     Now I notice a trend of tech-savvys to move to the Bay area in order to find a job in a well-know and respectable companies as Facebook and Google. So Amazon’s presence will help to preserve these talents;

3.     Expected tax revenue of more than $10 billion over the next 20 years

4.     Even though Bloomberg already refers to New York as “the best place on the planet for technology. This happening will help to secure the name of a developed tech city;

5.     Local businesses also find this idea plausible since new residents will bring more revenue.

There are also downsides that make politicians and activists unwilling to accept the offer.

1.     There is no guarantee that transport system will be able to handle so many commuters;

2.     There is a strong concern that real estate prices as well as living costs will rise, making income gap even bigger and more noticeable;

3.     For low income citizens blue-collar jobs are going to be created. It is a noble intention, besides the fact that quite often work conditions for this kind of jobs leave much to be desired;

4.     Mentioned training program aims to address the issue 3, but it is highly possible that cost of living will rise at faster pace then salaries and skills of trainees.

Taking into account all the information, this deal seems to be questionable. Let’s stay tuned to know what the result is going to be.

FYI 

Amazon Prime Air

Amazon has revolutionized retailing since its inception and keep innovating in order to provide consumers with a better service.
It is widely known that the company has been working on delivering packages using drones, and a couple of days ago they announced Amazon Prime Air. The new service will allow the company to deliver your order within 30 minutes.

Here is the new ad released:

To learn more about the service visit: http://www.amazon.com/b?node=8037720011

Online going Physical: Amazon just opened its first physical bookshop

Amazon got its start as an online bookseller, and now, over 20 years later, it's decided to sell books the old-fashioned way. Last week Amazon opened a store in Seattle called Amazon Books.

One may ask why the company that destroyed the physical bookstore industry would now want to operate a physical bookstore…But there a few facts that might make this a good strategy.

First, Amazon says that it won't entirely be doing things like a traditional store, however; it'll be relying on Amazon.com data — including customer ratings, sales totals, and Goodread's popularity — to decide which books to stock. As a physical retailer, to have this combination of information readily available is great competitive advantage.

Moreover, Amazon has the capacity to create an offline customer experience that is relatively consistent with the online one. In a multichannel marketing environment, to have the ability to create a consistent customer experience is also a great advantage.

Second, in addition to selling books, Amazon is also going to be putting its devices on display. Visitors will be able to try Kindles, the Echo, the Fire TV, and Fire Tablets

Finally, a store can be a same-day delivery hub.

Further reading:

http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/2/9661556/amazon-books-first-physical-bookstore-opening-seattle

http://www.vox.com/2015/11/5/9672394/amazon-books-physical-store

Here's Where Amazon and Google Could Make Their Next $100B

Forrester predictions establish that "public cloud services" is the key to future revenue making opportunity, which would establish Amazon and Google as even bigger players than they are today. Microsoft is also set to win but not to the same extent, as enterprise adoption of cloud services ramps up at an increasing rate meaning that the key to growth will be in "public cloud" rather than "private". What Amazon and Google do and can continue to do is set cloud services that are not only available to them, but also to other consumers, allowing businesses to "set their own software without having to build hardware to support it". It is likely that Amazon will leverage its platform and customer base to expand in the space and establish itself as one of its leading players.

Original article: http://www.wired.com/2015/10/amazon-google-make-next-100-billion/

Advertising on Alibaba Marketplaces heats up

According to an article published by the WSJ this week, advertisers are jockeying for position on Alibaba properties; tbao and tmall where daily banner ads run as much as 180,000 yuan ($29,242).

From the various seller responses, it is not clear that future will include the same vibrant diverse marketplace as it does today, which was perhaps the primary driver that led to Alibaba's success.

The article paints a picture where Alibaba offers an auction environment, where sellers with the deepest pockets will outlast the smaller players that cannot keep pace with necessary spend to maintain ideal product placement on Alibaba properties.

But this is not a new story.  Sellers on Alibaba can draw from the experiences of eBay sellers, who at first prosper, yet as the relationship dynamic shifted in favor of eBay, sometimes find themselves increasingly at odds with eBay's policies.

Hence, if Alibaba continues this path, will it also face a similar path to growth as it's US counterparts eBay and Amazon, which depend on both volumes and community growth across both buyers and sellers?

Amazon to Launch Hotel Booking Site

Travelling to New York, Los Angeles or Seattle soon? Starting in early 2015, you can book your stay at curated independent hotels on Amazon Travel. 

Hotels will be able to load their availability, room types, photos, and pricing information into an Amazon extranet and would be charged the standard 15% commission by Amazon. Upon receiving a booking through Amazon, the properties will get email notification and will be able to chance their calendars through the extranet. Payments from Amazon will come in two different installments and Amazon had opened up the potential for discussion of lower commission rates. Many hoteliers are eager to sign on for Amazon's new service foreseeing the potential to leverage Amazon's widespread membership base and marketing power online and on mobile. 

A hotelier heavily weighing signing up for the service states: "first and foremost, it's Amazon.com," adding that Amazon plans to use TripAdvisor ratings as criteria for choosing which properties to include on their booking site. Only those with four stars and above would be considered. Amazon Travel also plans to include editorials per destination listing top attractions and must-see-events. 

Amazon states that its mission is "to create a marketplace for retailers who might have difficult finding customers, and a high-profile section of Amazon.com in the form of an Amazon Travel would offer such a marketplace for independent and boutique hotels who don't have the marketing power of big hotel chains or online travel agencies at their disposal." 

With the immense amount of customer data Amazon has accumulated over the years, they potentially have a strategic advantage to OTAs and hotel booking sites. Pairing information about a customer's interest to travel alongside retail offers such as a camera could prove highly beneficial. 

Amazon's success in disrupting online travel will depend on how great the user experience is and whether it manages to drive traffic. They may just be able to sign prominent hotel brands by putting margin pressure on online travel agencies, providing more hotel-friendly payment terms and maintaining lower distribution costs. Read more about Amazon Travel's future plans here. 

Amazon is King for Subscription Services

These days it seems that everyone has started offering subscription services. From CBS, to Apple, to Microsoft, companies are continuously looking for new ways to monetize, now turning to subscription services as the next step. Ad Age recently declared Amazon the top player in this space, having recently launched Kindle Unlimited, a book subscription service. This addition brings the number of subscription services Amazon offers to nine, proving that the organization knows the value of a customer tethered to a particular company. Amazon’s current subscription lineup includes FreeTime, Amazon Prime, Prime Instant Video, Prime Music, Amazon Mom, Cloud Drive, Audible Membership, Kindle Unlimited, and Subscribe & Save. 

Amazon brands each of its services differently to make consumers feel as though they are gaining added value from each of the subscriptions, and to allow consumers to interact with their company in a way they see most fit. Forrester recently launched a report urging companies not to jump on the bandwagon and offer subscription services unless they can answer these three questions affirmatively:

1. Does your customer need this frequently? – The best models exploit a behavior that’s already frequent.
2. Can the experience be made more emotionally engaging?  - Companies like Dollar Shave Club have seen initial success because they were able to engage consumers in a humorous and novel way.
3. Will your solution be more convenient than the alternatives? – Hulu Plus, for instance, struggled at first, because it was only available on a small number of devices and did not add enough value beyond their standard offering.

Read all about Amazon’s strategy and further details surrounding subscription services.

Political parties seem to disagree on everything....except Amazon

Anyone that has watched the news in the last…forever…knows that political parties rarely agree on anything. In the YouGov Brand Index released lately, however, studies have revealed that individuals from both sides of the political spectrum do agree on one thing – they love Amazon.  

YouGov recently interviewed 600,000 people about 1,200 brands and ranked them by their level of positive and negative feedback. Amazon came in #1 for Democrats, #1 for Independents and #2 for Republicans, just behind Craftsman. Other brands that landed in the top 10 across all political parties include Johnson & Johnson, Craftsman, Clorox and Dawn.

While the company did not report on the bottom 10 list, there were some brands that only appeared for one party, including Dove, PBS and Barnes & Noble, which appeared on the Democrats list only.  Some companies, like Dove, whose ads focus on female empowerment, played into many of the issues of a particular party; others, however, are head-scratchers.

Read the article to see thefull Top 10 list as well as some interesting notes on particular brands. 

Amazon enters the 3D printing business

Almost anything can be bought on Amazon and be shipped in a few days to your doorstep. Now, they opened a 3D printing store. The store does not sell the products to print at home but rather sells products from 3D printing companies that will ship the product to you. The difference to an ordinary product is that it can be customized on Amazon's website.

The offering covers various product categories, such as jewelry, home & kitchen, electronics, and toys & games. Most of the sold objects cost less than $40, the jewelry often retails for $100 or more.

Source:http://mashable.com/2014/07/28/amazon-3d-printing-store-2/

Is Amazon As Smooth As Silk?

Amazon announced that it's getting into the web browser game this week with the launch of Silk which will be featured on the new Kindle Fire. I personally didn't expect Amazon to ever make this move, but given its push to cloud computing and Silk's split browser construct, it actually does make a lot of sense. The real win here for Amazon deals with the advent of super data collecting above and beyond what the retailer already knows thanks to purchase behavior. With an overlay of browsing behavior, Amazon can build even more robust customer profiling, which at the end of the day can generate more sales. The kicker for the consumer is that Silk uses predictive technology to pre-cache the next potential move for the customer based on usual behavior. Definitely an interesting move. I'll be interested to see how successful Silk proves in the long run.

www.mashable.com/2011/10/01/silk-smooth-amazon

Amazon, Foursquare, etc.

One day, someone will take a picture of me and they won't need to ask my name because they will in one minute receive an email identifying my name, affiliation, and probably address. If this person is interested in me, they won't have to go to Craiglist's Missed Connections, they will cold call me. If this person is a stalker, I will experience one of those Bruce Willis futuristic psycho-thriller situations. That day, effectively, is now.

Amazon has introduced a video recognition feature where you can take a picture of any object, send it to Amazon, and within minutes receive that product, as listed on Amazon, and a one-click step to ordering that product. Crazy.

And in other news they are putting Kindle on the Blackberry. One more step in the right no-more-new-devices direction.

My clustermates are obsessed with foursquare.com. From what I understand, it allows you to live the SimCity reality by letting you figure out where your friends are and use your social habits for the imaginary benefit of earning rank and points for the territories you cover.

We had a guest speaker for marketing who is developing www.webook.com, specifically, a program called Page to Fame. his idea is that publishing needs to evolve in the direction of being allow consumers to purchase editorial in bite size chunks, like a poem, an essay, etc., instead of a 300 page situation. As part of that logic, he's started a site where authors pay to have the first page of their literature read by the people who obsessively peruse blogs, editorials, and the like, for the opportunity to advance in a competition where agents will end up reviewing a few chapters and ultimately offer a book deal.

I think the idea is cool, though I have my questions. But it inspires my interest in expand on-demand programming. I think that there is a lot of money to be made on a lot more movies by bundling and distributing quality arranged video content. (See the recent piece on willingness to buy: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1964604,00.html) And a lot of his ideas on viewer participation means that more people would want to pay for self designed catalogs of digital video content.

And related to last week's class. If Buzz signals what it looks like for Google to become Facebook, I wonder what the internet would look like if Facebook were to become Google. Perhaps content will be organized by most poked.

Word of the Year

As companies scramble to catch up with the wave of increasing social media usage among their consumers, many marketers are turning to tweets.

Twitter, named the 2009 word of the year by the Global Language Monitor, is proving to be a new way for companies to flex their experimental marketing muscles. When Twitter first became popular, companies were using it to monitor buzz and strengthen customer service. Now, many companies are using it as a core component in their overall marketing campaigns.

In our social media discussion in class, Professor Kagan spoke about the importance of keeping unfinished content in new media to create a dynamic environment where users can experiment and discover new ways to use the media. Twitter appears to have adopted that philosophy, as it is largely letting its users decide what to use it for and how to use it. It recently opened its free application programming interface, and already companies are using it to create their brand applications.

In class we also referenced Amazon's popularity due in large part to the consumer-reviews function, as consumers are more likely to buy products if they see what other consumers think about the products first. Marketers are finding that Twitter is increasingly being used in a similar way, as people are tweeting about what they like and don't like about various brands.

With its low barriers to entry and open-ended "What's happening?" motto, marketers are finding new ways to listen to and engage with their consumers through Twitter.

Read more here:

http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/digital/e3i21640ce071c3e4ce8104011a6045e77a

Amazon launches mobile shopping service

Amazon is putting text messages to a new use allowing for comparison shopping on-the-go for users with any cell phone service. Amazon's new service "TextBuyIt" lets customers send text messages to find products on Amazon's web site.

Here's the company's guide on how the service works:


TextBuyIt enhances Amazon's current mobile solutions, two mobile sites, one of which is for iPhone users. While Amazon's executives claim to target the new service at impulse shopping, such as the guy leaving a concert and deciding to buy the band's CD before getting home, the blogosphere frames the service as another way to compare prices next time you are in Borders or CircuitCity.

Source: FoxBusiness, Techcrunch