Key takeaways from Amazon Accelerate 2024

Now that Amazon Accelerate – Amazon's annual conference specifically for sellers – has ended, it’s time to digest everything that was announced at the conference.

With over 25 different product and tool launches, it’s important to understand which will drive the most impact and the motivations behind why Amazon is making certain investments.

The most important takeaway from this conference is that both Amazon and sellers know winning in commerce goes beyond advertising. While past Accelerate events have centered around Amazon Ads, this year was different – with innovation across checkout, supply chain, Gen AI, advertising measurement, and reporting.

Let’s get into it below!

Buy with Prime continues to shine  

Amazon has been using its strong brand to help expand Buy with Prime as a checkout option on non-Amazon sites. Amazon knows that shoppers like to purchase from brand websites too, and programs like Buy with Prime continue to provide additional revenue for Amazon when they choose these channels.  

The number of merchants offering Buy with Prime has increased by 25% year over year resulting in an increase of 45% in Buy with Prime orders – and there are few signs of slowdown here. SOURCE

At Accelerate, Amazon announced multiple enhancements to the Buy with Prime program. These include:

New advertising traffic solutions

• Amazon DSP for Buy with Prime – Buy with Prime merchants can now launch ADSP campaigns that leverage Amazon product-level shopping signals to drive traffic to their ecommerce websites. By combining insights from their Amazon.com listings with shopping signals from their own websites, merchants can remarket to these shoppers with ads across thousands of third-party apps and websites.

Why we're excited: Driving sales is a function of increasing page visits and conversion rate. Brands’ own websites allow them flexibility they don’t get on their Amazon PDPs. This gives brands more power in customer experience and value communication. When this is combined with Buy with Prime, brands can experience high conversion rate without customers leaving their site.

Additional ways to pay with Paypal and Shopify

• Paypal is now available in Buy with Prime checkout – For brands using the Buy with Prime API, PayPal is now available at checkout after shoppers log in to their Amazon account.  

• Purchase items with Prime and without Prime in one Checkout via Shopify Stores – Using the existing Shopify cart and checkout, shoppers can now purchase items with Prime and without Prime, together in one order.  

Why it matters: Shoppers trust Paypal as a secure payment method, and Amazon is signaling their willingness to collaborate by expanding to other parties' payment platforms. Many people already have saved payment information with Shopify and PayPal, and this seamless experience should drive higher conversion rates.

Amazon wants to be your supply chain, from beginning to end  

Amazon announced two new supply chain initiatives, these being enhancements to Amazon’s multichannel fulfilment program and Supply Chain by Amazon - showing Amazon’s mission to be involved in every area of commerce, even if it’s not on Amazon.com. These enhancements followed Walmart’s launch of multichannel fulfillment last month, showcasing the ambitions of both retailers to expand their supply chain capabilities and create new revenue stream across commerce.

Amazon MCF

If you are unfamiliar with the program, Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfillment allows merchants to leverage Amazon’s fulfillment network to pick, pack, ship, and deliver their orders from channels beyond Amazon.com, including their own website, other ecommerce marketplaces, and social media channels. SOURCE

Amazon MCF has grown to serve over 200,000 U.S. merchants and seen a 70% year-over-year increase in total orders fulfilled by the service so far this year. Below are the notable announcements:

• Speedier delivery: Increasing MCF delivery speed by 40%, from 5 days to 3 at no extra cost for merchants/sellers

• MCF Fast Badges: These badges can be placed on non-amazon websites, building trust with the consumer of Amazon’s shipping and delivery speeds even for merchant websites

• Delivery Estimates on Google and TikTok: Google Shopping and TikTok ads can show the viewer estimated delivery dates right then and there, which is likely to increase conversion rates on these platforms and build awareness of Amazon’s fulfilment capabilities

Supply Chain by Amazon

Supply chain by Amazon is Amazon’s full suite of automated supply chain capabilities available to brands and sellers. This combines services through Amazon Global Logistics (AGL), the Partnered Carrier Program (PCP), Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD), Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF), and Buy with Prime. SOURCE

Increased utilization of Amazon as the full supply chain provider could significantly shake up the transportation and logistics industry. When the ability to manage and track all of the pieces of a supply chain within one portal and a reliable track record of getting packages where they need to go are combined, this program serves as an intriguing consideration for brands and sellers looking for simplification in logistics.  

Why we’re excited: Winning the digital commerce landscape involves so much more than advertising. We expect to see Amazon continue to innovate across every part of the ecommerce value chain, building additional revenue streams and striving to provide every service that a brand or seller could need.  

Amazon Ads continues to enhance measurement & reporting capabilities for Sellers

Of course it wouldn’t be Amazon Accelerate without the announcements of enhancements to measurement and reporting within Amazon Ads. Check out our favorites and why we’re excited about them: SOURCE

• Customer Journey Analytics - This tool maps an end-to-end view of the customer journey, from awareness to consideration to intent and purchase, helping sellers understand and more effectively engage with high-intent customers.

• Enhanced Audience Tailoring - provides opportunities to cross-sell and refine offers so you reach customers who are ready to buy.

Why we’re excited: While customer journey analytics are exciting, we still encourage sellers to dig into AMC for more custom yet simplified views of complex analytics – more on this (and an exciting upcoming announcement) in the last section. Enhanced audience tailoring gives more ownership over customer experience, which can help with driving loyalty and therefore increase the lifetime value of a shopper.

Gen AI for every element of your business

Amazon showcased significant dedication to both improving the Seller Central interface and the content (both written and visual) creation process, all with the help of Generative AI.

Amazon launched Project Amelia, a generative-AI powered selling assistant to help you find information scattered around Seller Central. According to Amazon, this model learns your business needs and provides recommendations and insights to help boost productivity and drive growth. Project Amelia is currently available in beta release to a select group of sellers and will progressively roll out to additional US sellers in the coming weeks. To learn more, read the announcement.

Additionally, Amazon announced AI-powered, personalized product listings and Gen AI-created videos for advertising.  

AI-powered product listings

• This new generative AI capability makes your listings more engaging to customers by personalizing how product titles appear. The feature works in the background to craft titles that help match your products to shoppers’ searches . This can help customers more quickly determine whether a product fits their needs. To learn more, read the announcement.

Why we’re excited: Personalization is great for consumers, but it’s fair to be hesitant on accuracy of these recommendations as a brand, and this tool will require diligent monitoring to ensure brand reputation is maintained. We haven’t yet had a chance to test these Amazon recommendations, but we do currently experiment with AI for title-building today and can attest to improved workflow, but needed monitoring of outputs. We hypothesize that this AI will also be scraping PDP content to inform its decision as Rufus does – meaning that accurate content on site is still as critical as ever.

Gen-AI Ads Videos

• With Video Generator, brands or sellers can select a product to advertise and Amazon’s generative AI-powered tool will add motion to the images. Video Generator is now available to a select group of sellers for no additional cost and will become broadly available to all US sellers in 2025. To learn more, read the announcement.

Why we’re excited: From what we’ve seen, this tool creates high quality video assets, which helps eliminate the need for time-consuming studio production videos that are needed in the fast-moving world of digital advertising. This tool can help level the playing field for small brands or sellers without studio production teams who want to create visually appealing advertising creative that helps capture attention with motion.

If you recall from unBoxed last year, Amazon announced a Sponsored Brands AI-driven image generator with a similar goal of increasing access to tools that can help sellers build appealing creative across ad types. This tool (and subsequently the new Gen-AI video tool) can’t build an entire brand identity for you, but we have seen success with building basic lifestyle imagery or seasonal assets on a much quicker timeline than ongoing studio production asset creation.

AMC is for everyone

Last but certainly not least - there was an emphasis at Accelerate on the importance of holistic, full-funnel measurement, no matter the size of your Amazon business or advertising investment. We often talk about AMC from the enterprise lens, but AMC is a no cost tool available currently to any sellers that run Amazon DSP that should absolutely be taken advantage of. Without utilization of AMC, a clear view of the full impact of your advertising investments and strategy is impossible to achieve.

While running ADSP may be a prohibitor for some sellers, keep an eye out for expanded access coming soon as Amazon teased AMC access for Sponsored products-only advertisers this October.

Flywheel on stage for a breakout session covering how AMC can help optimize your holistic advertising portfolio.

‍