Amazon Product Ads Stumbles Into Q2 2013

5 months ago, we compared Amazon Product Ads (APA) against Google Shopping. It was an analysis of 2 of the biggest names in the comparison shopping industry, with Google Shopping doubling its traffic from Q3 2012 and Amazon seeing a 57.5% increase in conversion rate from a year ago.
Historically, Amazon Products Ads is at home near the top of our comparison shopping report, but Q2 2013, this most recent quarter, tells a different story.
This year, Amazon lost its position in almost every performance category. While the data may not be startling, it sure isn’t flattering.
Check out the table below, which highlights APA’s performance from Q2 2012 to our most recent quarter, Q2 2013:
Amazon Product Ads Performance |
Q2 2012 |
Q3 2012 |
Q4 2012 |
Q1 2013 |
Q2 2013 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Traffic |
1st |
5th |
5th |
4th |
4th |
Revenue |
3rd |
3rd |
3rd |
2nd |
3rd |
Conversion Rate |
4th; 1.7% |
4th; 2.0% |
1st; 2.8% |
3rd; 2.7% |
7th; 2.1% |
Cost of Sale |
5th; 26% |
2nd; 16% |
2nd; 16% |
2nd; 15% |
4th; 20.5% |
*Note: Rankings are out of 10.
There are 2 takeaways from this table.
It’s certainly possible that Amazon Product Ads’s traffic may be becoming less qualified. By this I mean that despite a lot of people continuing to go to Amazon to shop, less of these shoppers are actually going through with sales or having an intent to buy. This could account for the lower conversion rate and higher cost of sale.
Contrarily, an alternate analysis can be made by looking at Q2 2012 vs. Q2 2013. This highlights that the increased performance from Q3 2012 to Q1 2013 could be due to preparation pre- Holiday shopping season and the beneficial hangover that follows it in Q1. Merchants should note that from this time last year (Q2 2012 vs. Q2 2013), Amazon Product Ads increased its Q2 CR by 23.53% and decreased its Q2 COS by 21.15%.
Despite how the data plays out, our experience working with hundreds of retailers on many CSEs tells us that at the end of the day, Amazon Product Ads is still a lucrative shopping engine for most.