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"If you have top organic placement, having always-on paid is probably not the best use of dollars. But what happens if you don't is, you'll see your organic ranks start to come down … a slow in and out strategy is actually how you can keep your balloon up in the air." — Aisha Khan, VP of strategy and insights, Momentum Commerce
So many of today’s most impactful ecommerce strategies are driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) — and those, in turn, are driven by data.
Having access to large amounts of data to leverage for performance deep dives or predictive analytics is a critical factor in digital shelf success. Aisha Khan, VP of strategy and insights at Momentum Commerce, understands this well.
Momentum Commerce has built one of the largest data lakes of Amazon U.S. data ever, and it applies ML and AI to this data to help brands gain and maintain bestseller slots on Amazon.
Khan explained the innovative new ways her company is using Amazon data — and what that data is revealing about the Amazon retail media network — in the "Unpacking the Digital Shelf" episode, "The Crystal Ball for Retail Media Success is Taking Shape."
This post explores some of the insights Khan sees in that proverbial crystal ball.
Momentum Commerce uses the term "durable dominance" to describe its goal for its customers: to dominate their product categories, and to remain dominant over the long term.
Khan explains that with Momentum Commerce’s data lake, her team can analyze all the factors that impact durable dominance, looking beyond basic factors like price and reviews to more targeted metrics like share of branded search or paid share of voice.
Armed with these more specific metrics and their sub-metrics, brands can find niche strategies for staying ahead of the competition.
Brands can also develop targeted funding strategies that could free them from constantly asking for more budget.
"It's not always about getting the most amount of dollars," Khan says. "It's getting that right amount of dollars."
With the highly detailed data she provides and equally detailed strategies that data reveals, brands can determine what the right amount is.
For example, Khan advocates for something she calls the “balloon approach” to spending on the Amazon retail media network.
"If you have top organic placement, having always-on paid is probably not the best use of dollars," she says. "But what happens if you don't is, you'll see your organic ranks start to come down like a balloon, and then you need that paid placement to get you back to the top ... Whether that be every month you do that or every other month, just a slow in and out strategy is actually how you can keep your balloon up in the air."
Nimble and targeted strategies like this are the types of approaches that help brands achieve durable dominance.
Through her work analyzing and consulting on Amazon data, Khan has noticed some interesting trends in the state of Amazon today and how brands should be adapting to it.
For example, Momentum Commerce can track the percentage of each search results page that’s sponsored versus organic. In 2022, sponsored links made up about 35% of an Amazon search page. Today, it’s often more than 50%.
This highlights the importance of participating in the Amazon retail media network.
"The data on click share still tells us that the first [product] above the fold has more than 50% of the clicks and 50% of the conversions," Khan says, and this is regardless of whether it’s sponsored or not.
Organic search still has its place, especially as a validation metric or chance to appear on a search page twice. The best approach is to try to win at both — and that’s where Khan’s "balloon approach" comes into play.
Another interesting trend Khan noticed is the rising importance of branded search. In the past, Amazon has been a place for consumers to search for deals regardless of brand. But in recent years, brands have become more important to consumers.
"What happened is, you had all this proliferation of knockoff brands or low-quality brands, and it has just become such a mess that [consumer priorities] have gone back to quality. So, it has actually benefited brands to have this proliferation, because now in the long term, I do think consumers care, especially when every dollar matters." — Aisha Khan, VP of strategy and insights, Momentum Commerce
In response to this trend, Khan says there’s a lot of value in tracking the share of branded search on Amazon, not just for Amazon sales, but for general brand health.
"In this battle for profitability, and the fact that you're now 55% ad density in subcategories, this is where I think starting to convert on branded search is really important," Khan says.
According to Khan, it’s also crucial to understand how much to put toward defending brand search versus unbranded search.
These examples illustrate just some of the many creative approaches to success on Amazon that Khan has developed with Momentum Commerce’s data. In the future, uncovering specific data points like these will determine digital shelf success, and brands will need to be able to act on data analytics results quickly.
Khan believes that as ML and predictive AI become more fundamental parts of ecommerce planning, brands will need to put more trust in the experts who can deliver those analyses.
Rather than every department carefully deliberating a decision, organizations must move quickly and have a small team of "trust czars," according to Khan.
The mindset organizations need to have with this approach, according to Khan, is that If people vetted the data, it's in the data lake, and it shows up, it's going to be right and it's going to be accurate.
"Understandably, all marketers would want to be brought along in decisions, but at some point, there may be too many factors at play, whether it be AI, ML, the Metaverse, or Amazon," Khan says.
For competitive advantage, you just have to trust others and move quickly, according to Khan.
The landscape of Amazon is constantly shifting, but using ML and predictive AI on large datasets can help brands not just stay aware of new trends, but take advantage of them — and, in doing so, master durable dominance on the Amazon retail media network.
For more on what Khan has discovered in her data-powered "crystal ball" into Amazon’s future, listen to the full episode.
