Patricio Robles says, “Can influencers and affiliate marketing be a match made in heaven? Online retail’s 800-pound gorilla is apparently interested in finding out. Last week, it was revealed that Amazon has launched a beta of an invite-only Amazon Influencer Program “exclusively designed for social media influencers with large followings and a high frequency of posts with shoppable content.” According to TechCrunch’s Sarah Perez, the program functions like the company’s affiliate program in that participants are paid a commission for product sales that they... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “By one estimate, nearly 40 cents of every dollar spent in the US on online purchases is spent on Amazon. Some 65 million Prime members spend an average $1,200 a year on Amazon. This eclipse of one marketplace over the orb of e-commerce has forced brands big and small to reevaluate where to put their energies and invest their resources. Amazon’s scale, coupled with consumer trust and one-click shopping, has proven a potent combination. The sales volume can be intoxicating, outweighing margin hits from seller fees and advertiser costs paid to Amazon. Amazon’s dominance... [...]

Allison Enright says, “Amazon.com Inc. will begin collecting state sales tax on orders from consumers in Hawaii, Idaho, Maine and New Mexico starting on April 1. In doing so it will conclude a near decade-long story about sales tax collected on online orders, regardless of whether the e-retailer selling the goods has a physical presence, or nexus, in the state. Amazon has no physical presence in these four states and thus is under no legal obligation to collect sales tax on orders from residents in those states. It also doesn’t have a physical presence in Iowa, Missouri, Louisiana, Mississippi,... [...]

Annie Pilon says, “These days, it seems like just about every offline business is working on creating some kind of online presence. But the biggest name in ecommerce is now trying to do the exact opposite. Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), the ecommerce giant that originally gained notoriety from selling books online, is now breaking into the brick-and-mortar bookstore business. It’s not exactly a booming industry — big names like Borders have had to close up shop in recent years. But Amazon has brought some unique elements into its retail store. Located in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood, the... [...]

John Lincoln says, “Want to ask a question and get a fast answer? There’s a skill for that. In this case, skill is the term for “app” in Amazon Alexa’s voice ecosystem. In case you missed the news, Alexa is Amazon’s digital assistant. It’s capable of voice interaction, offering reminders, playing music, streaming podcasts, playing audiobooks and providing up-to-the-minute news. Alexa is also open to a variety of solutions that have yet to be created. To foster their invention, Amazon recently launched an online hub that can help brands get started with creating skills for... [...]

Patricio Robles says, “Don’t look now: while PayPal continues to be the dominant online payments service, Amazon’s Pay with Amazon is growing rapidly. In a press release last week, the ecommerce giant revealed that 33m of its customers have now used Amazon Payments to make a purchase, and last year Pay with Amazon transaction volume doubled. All told, Amazon customers in more than 170 countries used Amazon Payments last year and Amazon says that more than 50% of them are Prime members. The average purchase for Pay with Amazon transactions was $80, and the largest purchase... [...]

Matt McGee says, “Amazon wants more brands and marketers in its Alexa voice ecosystem. The company has launched an online hub to help them get started with creating “skills” (Amazon’s word for apps) for the Echo device family. The hub currently lists 20 agencies “with expertise in designing, developing and optimizing Alexa skills,” including Razorfish, Mobiquity, VaynerMedia and others. For brands wanting to build their own Alexa skills, the hub connects them to the Alexa Skills Kit and three other development frameworks. There’s also a section listing three voice analytics providers... [...]

Allison Enright says, “The e-retailer generated $136.0 billion in 2016 revenue and its net income grows by nearly 300%. Strong growth of 22% in Q4 contributed to the gains, and 49% of units sold in Q4 were by sellers on its marketplace. It was a good year for Amazon.com Inc., which today reported its 2016 full-year and fourth quarter financial results. The e-retailer generated $136.00 billion in revenue in 2016, up 27.1% from $107.01 billion in 2015. Its net income also grew nearly 300% to $2.37 billion from $596 million in 2015. Excluding revenue from service sales, such as computing power... [...]

Shira Ovide and Leila Abboud say, “Advertising tools and deep insight into consumers’ buying and browsing habits put Amazon in position to expand its reach. (Bloomberg Gadfly)—From Amazon.com Inc.’s origins as a virtual bookstore, it became an online mall for every product imaginable. Then the company stealthily built a computing utility business that now generates the majority of its profit, and it seemingly has ambitions to do much, much more. Without much fanfare, CEO Jeff Bezos has set his sights on yet another market: the $200 billion online advertising industry that is dominated... [...]

Jason Del Rey says, “Some deals are too good to be true. And, for Amazon, they will cost the company. A Canadian enforcement agency announced today that Amazon Canada will pay a $1 million fine for what could be construed as misleading pricing practices. The investigation centered on the practice of Amazon displaying its prices compared to higher “list prices” — suggested manufacturer prices (MSRPs) designed as marketing gimmicks to make people think they are getting a deal, even though it’s often the case that no shopper ever pays that price. “The Bureau’s investigation concluded... [...]