Everything on Amazon is an Ad
Advertising has replaced product recommendations and personalization on Amazon and other retailers' websites. They are no longer trying to guide product discovery, letting ads instead lead the journey.
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Target’s Marketplace Still Tiny Two Years Later
Two years since launch, Target's invite-only marketplace has less than 300 sellers, despite traffic on the website growing more than 50% last year. For those that are on it, naturally, it is often the fastest-growing channel.
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US E-Commerce Sales Nearly $800 Billion in 2020
U.S. e-commerce grew 32% in 2020 to reach $790 billion, up from $598 billion the year before. According to the Department of Commerce, e-commerce represented 14% of total retail spending, a significant increase from 11.3% in 2019.
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Shopify Is 40% As Big as Amazon Marketplace
Shopify is now the size of 40% of Amazon Marketplace after nearly doubling in 2020. It was just 25% two years ago. The important thing is not whether Amazon and Shopify are comparable - they are not - but the readiness of brands to sell directly to consumers.
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First Product on Amazon With One Million Reviews
Amazon Echo Dot smart speaker became the first product on Amazon to amass over a million reviews. Popular products on Amazon have exploded in the number of reviews, thus changing their perceived value after the company introduced one-tap ratings in late 2019.
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eBay's Renaissance in 2020
eBay increased gross merchandise volume (GMV) by $14.4 billion in 2020, more than in the past seven years combined. However, despite the platform benefiting from surging online sales, growth had slowed towards the end of the year.
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Amazon GMV in 2020
In 2020, sellers on the Amazon marketplace sold $300 billion worth of goods, adding a staggering $100 billion net growth since 2019. The total gross merchandise volume (GMV), including sales by Amazon itself and by the marketplace, was almost $490 billion, according to Marketplace Pulse estimates based on Amazon disclosures.
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On Amazon You Are Probably Not Nike
Most brands aspire to be Apple or Nike, but on Amazon, they are closer to AmazonBasics. That is, shoppers buy their products when searching using unbranded search terms. Rather than explicitly looking for the brand, like they do for Apple and Nike.
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The Disappearing Amazon Resellers
Amazon conceived the marketplace to bring brands it couldn't convince to sell onto the site. Thus, for years most of the sellers were large resellers with tens of thousands of products. However, increased competition and brands going direct has eroded this opportunity.
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Minimum Viable Amazon
Amazon's last retail innovation came in 2005 when it introduced the Prime membership. Since then, it has announced hundreds of new offerings and experiments, but the core commerce experience remains virtually unchanged. It learned it doesn't need to do more.
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