[News] Investigation shuts down “Sold by Amazon”

Legal Battles

The “Sold by Amazon” program allowed the marketplace to dictate minimum prices to a certain degree. This results in third-party seller products appearing more costly than Amazon’s own.

How unfair was the program?

Amazon Top Terms

Like every week, EcomCrew gives you an edge by providing you with the top 10 keywords on Amazon. Today, we’ll be introducing to you the top 10 terms taken from January 9th to January 22nd to show you what the latest opportunities are on Amazon. 

Every year, on the third Monday in January, America celebrates MLK Day. This holiday marks what would have been the 93rd birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., who fought racism and organized for worker justice.

The keyword "martin luther king" is positioned at #6 of our top 10 mover’s list and products related to this term have taken advantage of this day, going from selling 34 units to 273 units a day.

A new hack is gaining popularity on TikTok and it isn’t exactly about how to conquer Amazon, but it’s caused a drastic increase in sales in the marketplace. Taking our slot #7 is "heatless waves" and has already sold 75 units per day.

Logistics as a Service

Despite how big Amazon already is, it’s still working towards a better logistics system. However, it’s not alone in this endeavor.

FedEx and Microsoft recently revealed more about their partnership and their efforts towards creating a cross-platform “logistics as a service” offering. This will allow retailers and e-commerce business owners to deliver faster and more cost-effectively, with nearly real-time delivery status reports.

The program will use data from FedEx and integrate them with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and will be available to US-based customers later this year.

Where U At?

Just like a controlling parent or a really persistent stalker, Google apparently wants to know your location at all times. This is the gist of the allegations of the complaint filed by the states of Texas, Washington DC, and Indiana as they call out the company for its alleged “deceptive tactics.”

The complaint is for alleged violations of the Consumer Protection Procedures Act. It stems from a 2018 article by the Associated Press that revealed Google still tracks users’ location even when the Location History feature is turned off. This means that your movements and locations are still recorded even when you tell your phone not to.

After the article was published, the District of Columbia investigated the matter and found that Google offers settings that are misleading and ambiguous. The complaint alleges that users “have no option but to allow the company to collect, store, and use their location.”

The motive behind this is obvious. As pointed out by the plaintiffs, the data collected are used by Google’s advertising business.

This isn’t the first time the company is being sued because of location tracking for ads purposes. In 2020, the state of Arizona filed a similar lawsuit that’s still awaiting judgment.

Google, on the other hand, insists that the case is based on “inaccurate claims and outdated assertions” about their settings.

Features like location tracking are helpful to advertisers, but the government is doubling down on these privacy issues, which may limit sellers’ advertising campaigns further.

FLoC to Topics

Speaking of Google’s data collection for ad profits, remember when two years ago the company announced that they are going to eliminate third-party cookies from Chrome in 2022?

It has since moved that deadline to 2023, saying they need to move at a responsible pace. This is understandable since the biggest part of the company’s overall revenue is from advertising.

During the process of trying to eliminate third-party cookies, Google was playing around with Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC). It works by Chrome tracking users’ browsing habits and then categorizing them into groups or cohorts.

Now, the company is switching from FLoC to Topics. When users browse, Google will take note of the topics they search for. For example, a user may search for a lot of fitness-related topics, so the system will tag one of their interests as “fitness” and fitness-related companies can show them their ads.

Topics differs from FLoC in that the former doesn’t put users into groups. They also differ in terms of the data sent to advertisers. FLoC shares a cohort ID while Topics shares—surprise, surprise—topics.

So sellers and advertisers can show their ads to individuals, but this time, they will have no idea about the identity of those individuals aside from the fact that they may be interested in their products and services.

Other News

Away on Lunar New Year? Amazon is reminding sellers to set their accounts on vacation mode to avoid performance issues. They’re also closing Account Health Support at these times.

Call me now. That’s not a command. That’s the name of the support feature Amazon is opening to all Professional sellers this year.

Experienced sellers. More than half of eBay’s top sellers have been selling on the site for 10 or more years.