Amazon Advertising Will Be Soon Equal for Vendors and Sellers

Amazon announced it some time ago, and now it is being implemented: the entire Amazon Advertising Management division is moving from SellerCentral to the Advertising Console. This division means that all advertising functions, ad (groups) regarding click-based advertising (PPC) and also the recently launched sponsored display ads (quasi Amazon DSP “light”) will be successively located in a central platform also for Seller. This move will probably take a few months but will come for all sellers. At the same time, new functions such as notifications, a new vertical menu arrangement, and a simplified multi-account control will be introduced.

Briefly at a glance – what changes for Amazon Seller:

• All advertising campaigns move from the SellerCentral to the Advertising Console
• Bulk processes and reporting are also moving.
• Brand stores and advertising-related billing functions will be relocated.
• New notification function available.
• A new menu with simplified access to campaigns, brand stores, invoice and bulk uploads will be available.
• Multi-account control will become easier to manage.

Advertising Console – Nothing New for Vendors

For brands and manufacturers that are active as vendors on Amazon, this technical move is relatively unimportant, because they have been working with the Advertising Console for a long time, where they run all their campaigns in terms of performance marketing. Programmatic advertising campaigns run in their Demand Side Platform (DSP) anyway and are not affected by this. This “innovation” is therefore rather unimportant for vendors – but not for marketplace sellers. Until now, they were used to manage their campaigns as well as their product-related data and promotions in only one environment, SellerCentral. From now on, they have to serve two platforms.

Hybrid Vendor-Seller solution is now much easier

Some brands and manufacturers have been using a “hybrid” approach on Amazon to sell their products. As a vendor, you are heavily dependent on Amazon’s purchasing behavior. There is little or no direct influence on sales price, product range, and general purchase quantities. As a Marketplace Seller, however, you have much more freedom and opportunities. However, many sellers do not want to give up the vendor option completely, which is why they have started a parallel seller account and use both channels for sales.

The problem with this, however, is that technically speaking, you then manage two advertising accounts: One in the Advertising Console (as a vendor) and the other in SellerCentral. The administration of two separate campaign structures has not only an administrative aspect. In fact, for Amazon, these are two different advertisers bidding against each other. If you want to sell the same product range as a brand via SellerCentral and VendorCentral, you will compete with two advertising platforms in terms of click-based campaigns.

The announced move to just one Amazon Advertising Management environment simplifies the hybrid vendor-seller solution enormously from this perspective.

Advertising Console – A relief for agencies

A salesperson should almost not care where he places his advertising campaigns as long as the environment itself reflects the same functions. Indeed, there will be another login for Seller, but nothing else will change in principle. For an Amazon agency, however, this move of the PPC campaigns to the Advertising Console is a great relief. An agency often serves many customers at the same time, and the way into SellerCentral with guest access is still an absolute “horror”. As a service provider, you have to drop off your pants in addition to all your personal and demographic data. You also have to deposit a copy of your ID and often even an invoice from your private household to verify the authenticity of the user behind the guest account. This process takes a long time and is too “bulky” if your goal is simply to manage the advertising campaigns of the customer.

The technical move of PPC campaigns to the Amazon Advertising Console is, therefore, an enormous relief, especially for agencies and freelancers. Although a guest user still has to be created and activated here, this is usually done quite simple and without problems using a regular double-opt-in procedure and subsequent 2-factor authentication.

Amazon consolidates its platforms

If you have been dealing with Amazon Marketing, Sellers, and Vendors for a longer time, this change will be very beneficial for you. In the last 1-2 years, we have seen how Amazon has been merging, renaming, and consolidating its platforms and features for sellers and vendors. This transformation is an essential improvement because up to now, there has been a real uncontrolled growth of Amazon on the matter. This recently announced move of the PPC campaigns and simplification of Amazon Advertising Management is now a further step towards sensible structures and processes within Amazon. Anyone who has been working with Amazon for some time knows how exhausting the support side alone is: Seller Support, Vendor Manager, PCS, SVS, Account Manager, Ticket System – or in one word – proliferation. This is now a vital and good step to slowly get a grip on one’s platforms and to improve and simplify support structures within the group.

For too long Amazon has relied solely on the credo “consumer first”. This is still the case, but letting its partners and B2B customers starve to death on the outstretched arm in terms of support is not a good way to go long term.

It will certainly not be the last major change on a technical level that Amazon will make here. In the long term, it is also possible to merge or at least simplify the seller and vendor levels, although this would be a much larger and much more complex step from a technical point of view. The consolidation of the own advertising platforms, however, is already a good step in the right direction. It is to be hoped that in the future, there will also be some changes and improvements in the in-house support structures.

Ronny Marx

Ronny beschäftigt sich seit einigen Jahren intensiv mit dem Thema Suchmaschinenoptimierung, ist regelmäßig auf Konferenzen als Speaker unterwegs und bloggt gerne über seine Kernkompetenz SEO.