[ BDSN ] Amazon lets you get reviews before launching

💰 ONLINE WAR BEGINS THIS WEEK - LAST MINUTE CHECKS

Prime Day isn’t just Amazon’s biggest sales event, it’s the summer Super Bowl of e-commerce.

• $14.2B+ in sales and 300M+ items sold during 2024’s 2-day Prime Day

• This year, Amazon has expanded Prime Day to FOUR days (July 8–11), giving sellers more time and pressure to perform.

• Competitors aren’t standing still: Walmart (July 8–13), Target (July 6–12), TikTok Shop (July 7–19) are stacking the deck against you.

This means cross-channel buyers, price-checking behavior, and mass advertising noise. It’s not just about discounts, it’s about winning attention, trust, and the algorithm.

🧨 THE STRATEGY: WHAT WORKS (AND WHAT DOESN’T)

✅ DO THIS

1. 💰 Dominate Sponsored Products - Not Just "Try It"

   • 85.8% of Prime Day sales in 2024 came from Sponsored Products.

   • Stop overthinking it. Sponsored Display and DSP are add-ons, not the main course. DSP reports fake attribution via views, SP requires a click.

2. 📈 Maximize Sales Velocity Early

   • Amazon rewards fast movers with deal page rankings and visibility.

   • Use deep discounts on hero SKUs or best-rated variations to anchor attention and pull up the rest of your catalog.

3. 📊 Stack Your Promotions

   • Combine Lightning Deals, clippable coupons, and Prime-exclusive discounts.

   • Why? Stacked deals often earn multiple badges, increasing click-throughs and trust.

4. 🔎 Targeting: Layered, Intent-Driven, Aggressive

   • Use a combination of automatic, manual keyword, and product targeting.

   • Brands using 2+ targeting types saw 5.3% higher ROAS and 19% higher CVR.

   • Build out exact match keyword campaigns now, and add negative keywords to eliminate budget drain.

5. 📉 Keep Profitability Front & Center

   • Run SKU-level margin analysis before discounting anything.

   • Use TACoS (not just ACOS) to evaluate long-term lift vs short-term spikes.

6. 📱 Use Influencers Where It Makes Sense

   • Amazon is doubling commissions for influencer sales in categories like beauty, tools, jewelry, and home goods.

   • Tools like Creator Connections can match you with active influencers ready to push high-volume content July 1–20.

7. 📈 Track in Real-Time and Act

   • Use tools like Marketing Stream, PacVue, Intentwise, and Keepa for hourly pacing and competitor pricing.

   • Set automated performance alerts, use schedule-based bidding, and adjust campaigns hourly if needed.

8. 🔮 Predictive Commerce Post-Prime Day

   • Use Search Query Performance, Brand Analytics, and AMC to identify trends and build audiences for Q4.

   • Retarget non-buyers with subscribe-and-save offers, limited-time coupons, or re-engagement campaigns post-event.

❌ AVOID THIS

• Blanket discounts across catalog – They wreck margins and confuse customers. Target proven ASINs only.

• Launching new products cold – Unless they’re bundled with proven winners, unranked products will drown in the noise.

• Over-optimizing bid rules too early – Platforms like Intentwise or PacVue might shut off strong campaigns if logic isn’t adjusted for Prime Day volatility.

• Thinking DSP replaces Sponsored Products – It doesn’t. DSP counts impressions. Sponsored Products require clicks = real buyer intent.

🎯 PRIME DAY IS A TEST RUN FOR Q4

Smart brands treat Prime Day as a predictive flywheel, not just a sale.

• Track which creative assets, offers, and keywords convert under pressure.

• Use that data to:

  • Refine Q4 keyword targeting

  • Scale winning campaigns for Black Friday

  • Build audiences in AMC for retargeting and upsells

Download Helium 10’s Prime Day checklist

Use this as your battle map. The real online war starts tomorrow, July 8.

🕹️ WHERE AI is LISTENING

If you’re still pouring money into SEO blog content hoping to rank on Google’s new AI Overviews … bad news.

According to new data from Profound based on 10 million citations, Google’s AI isn’t quoting your site. It’s quoting the crowd.

• Reddit: 21%

• YouTube: 18.8%

• Quora: 14.3%

That’s over 54% of citations coming from community-driven platforms.

Brand websites? Barely visible.

🧠 What this means:

AI Overviews are learning from where people talk, not where brands sell. That means if you're not part of public conversations in forums, reviews, and UGC platforms … you're invisible to AI.

To stay relevant in an AI-first search world, stop blogging like it’s 2015. Start participating where the conversation is happening.

🏴‍☠️ AMAZON is HIJACKING TRAFFIC for PRIME DAY

Amazon’s Not Just Running Ads for Prime Day … They’re Hijacking Your Traffic to Do It

Amazon isn’t playing fair this Prime Day.

They’re playing smart. And if you're a DTC brand, this might sting a little.

Over the weekend, eagle-eyed marketers noticed a new kind of Amazon ad popping up all over Google:

🔍 Someone searches for “[YourBrand] Protein Powder” on Google
➡️ But instead of your site, they see a headline like:
“Prime Day Deals on Protein Powder | Amazon.com”

Click it, and the ad takes them to a generic Amazon Prime Day landing page, not even your brand.

The trick? Amazon’s bidding on YOUR brand terms … using a broad Prime Day offer to siphon traffic, steal clicks, and out-convert you with convenience, reviews, and 1-click checkout.

🧠 Amazon isn’t just bidding on product keywords, they’re targeting brand names.
That means you pay for awareness, they pick off the conversions.

🛒 Shoppers searching for your DTC brand now land inside Amazon’s walled garden.
And once they’re in? They’re hit with competitor listings, Subscribe & Save, and cross-sells galore.

💰 Amazon wins with scale.
They’re using “Prime Day” as a high-intent, high-conversion excuse to blanket Google Shopping with generic offers—without needing your permission.

What You Should Do:

1. Defend your brand terms on Google.
   If you’re not running branded search ads, you’re giving Amazon the keys to your front door.

2. Use branded landing pages with strong DTC hooks.
   Highlight what makes buying direct better (exclusive bundles, loyalty rewards, limited drops).

3. Track where your branded traffic is going.
   Tools like Triple Whale, Northbeam, or GA4 can help you monitor the leaks and recover the sale.

4. Leverage Amazon Attribution + Pixel retargeting.
   Fight fire with data. If they’re tracking your traffic, track it right back and build retargeting audiences.

🗜️ NEW VINE UPDATE: GET REVIEWS BEFORE YOU LAUNCH!

Amazon just handed sellers a powerful new weapon—and most don’t even know it exists.

As of July 2025, you can now get up to 30 Vine reviews before your product ever goes live.

That’s right—pre-launch reviews are officially here.

No more “zero-review” uphill battles on day one. You can now hit the ground running with rank momentum.

You’ll find the option under “Enroll a product in Vine” in Seller Central.

Want to scale up your new product launches into listings that make $100K+ yearly revenue in less than 2 months?

Sending free products to Micro-Influencers using the platform Stack Influence which automates influencer collaborations at scale (get thousands of collabs per month) will help increase your new product Amazon ranking, generate UGC, and boost up your recurring revenue like never before.

Top Amazon brands like Thrasio, Unilever, and Magic Spoon have turned their new Amazon product launches into listings with monthly revenue on pace to break $100K over the year,

 Here are the top reasons why brands love to work with Stack Influence:

• 📈 Increase Amazon listing search positioning (drive high volume external traffic sales) 

• 🤑 Pay influencers only in products (stop negotiating fees with every influencer)

• 📸 Generate branded image/video UGC with full legal rights (no timeframe or usage restrictions)

• 🤝 Develop affiliate relationships (easily identify top influencer candidates to work with in the long run)

• 🤖 Automate influencer collaborations from A-Z (save over 175 management hours per month)
  
  Don't believe it?
  Check out the results from this Micro Influencer campaign which went from 0 to 447 avg monthly recurring sales and is on pace to break $150K in yearly revenue on Amazon.
  
  Take your new product launches to the next level by increasing your Amazon listings organic search positioning sending free products to Micro-Influencers in 2025.
  
  Get 10% OFF by signing up this month

😱 HELIUM 10 UPSETS its AFFILIATES

Affiliate commissions are a major revenue source for many gurus, course creators, webinar promoters and agencies. When they recommend a tool like Helium 10 for example, they can earn 20-40% of the selling price.

It’s a two way street: the affiliate makes money for sending eyeballs, and the company being promoted grows without having to invest in upfront advertising that may or may not work, as affiliates are usually only compensated based on actual sales.

Webinars typically pay 50% of the selling price to the person referring the registration. Companies like Rapid Crush made millions by promoting the Amazing Selling Machine when it was the hot course from 2013-2019. Top webinar consultants and writers can earn $25,000 to $150,000 just for helping craft and/or host a good webinar.

Here’s an example of how much an email promoting Helium 10 last December has made so far in commission for this newsletter to help keep it free for you ($16,220.21):

Armies of affiliates are behind the success of most of the top software tools in the Amazon space, including powerhouse Helium 10.

Late last month Helium 10 announced as of August, they will no longer pay an ongoing commission (usually 25%, but can go higher). The commission is currently for the lifetime of the subscription. As long as the customer stays, the affiliate makes money every month.

Helium 10 said due to a technical issue with carrying data forward to a new system, effective August 1 they will pay affiliates 100-150% upfront based on monthly new subscriber volume rather than string it out over a customer’s lifetime.

Helium 10 has been using a legacy tracking system, and is changing to Impact, a more current modern system used by enterprise companies like Walmart, etc.

Under the new tiered system, a $100 monthly subscription that previously netted an affiliate $25 per month until the buyer canceled their Helium 10 account will now return a single one-time payment of between $100-150.

Many Helium 10 affiliates are upset because this month (July) is the last month they will earn a monthly commission for past referrals. They feel they have are being slighted. Linkedin posts and Whatsapp groups are full of complaints.

From Helium 10’s point of view, this should help keep affiliates regularly promoting to get faster and bigger upfront paydays. From the older affiliates point of view, they see it as a monthly revenue stream suddenly cut off for a promo they did, say a year ago.

Some Helium 10 affiliates make 5-figures per month in recurring revenue, and this will be a big shift in their strategy on how or if they promote Helium 10 in the future.

📛  FAKESPOT REVIEW DETECTOR SHUTS DOWN

What happened?

• Fakespot, the popular AI-powered fake-review detection tool founded by Ming Ooi in 2016, officially shut its doors on July 1 after nearly nine years of spotting suspicious reviews across Amazon, eBay, Walmart and more.

• Acquired by Mozilla in 2023, it had been integrated into Firefox as the “Mozilla Review Checker,” but was discontinued due to Mozilla’s shift toward core browser development and other AI initiatives.

Why it mattered

• Fakespot claimed ~90% accuracy in flagging suspect reviews, with reports showing 43% of best-selling Amazon listings had unreliable feedback, with up to 88% in jewelry and clothing categories being fake. 

Funding & exit

• In November 2020, Fakespot raised $4 million, bringing total venture funding to $7 million. 

• Mozilla acquired them in 2023 but, struggling for cost-effective sustainability, announced Fakespot would be retired in May 2025 .

• Firefox’s built-in checker ended on June 10, and the standalone service ceased on July 1. 

What’s next?

• Alternatives like The Review Index, and new AI tools (including TrueStar, being built by the same team behind Fakespot) may help fill the void, but the market is still fragmented.

• Sellers and buyers alike are now on alert: with the absence of Fakespot, the importance of independently vetting reviews has never been higher.

✌🏼 See you again Thursday …

The answer to today’s STUMP BEZOS is
Google AI Overviews cite Reddit most - 21% of the time