Good morning search marketers, brands keep spending more on Amazon.
That shorter holiday season didn't slow Amazon's advertising business last quarter. The company's ad revenue grew some 41% year-over-year to top $4 billion for the first time. For 2019, advertising increased roughly 40% to $14 billion, up from $10 billion in 2018. The company highlighted unpaid features such as Stores and Posts as part of its efforts to support brand marketing programs on the platform.
While Amazon doesn't give details on how advertisers are spending, Merkle reported ad spend on Amazon Sponsored Products shot up 63% year-over-year in the fourth quarter and average ROI from the search ad format rose 26% compared to the previous period a year ago, among the agency's client base. At Tinuiti, client spend on Sponsored Products increased 30% year-over-year and sales attributed to the format increased 21%, the agency reported.
If you've used Google Tag Manager to verify your sites in Google Search Console, you should double-check that your properties are still verified. Google confirmed yesterday that it had fixed a bug that affected that verification process.
Keep reading for a Pro Tip on winning pitches for new PPC tests and more.
Ginny Marvin,
Editor-in-Chief