Cliff Condon says, “Wall Street followers found much to be concerned about in Amazon’s quarterly earnings. Shipping costs went up 43%, operating costs are up 29% overall and the company’s operating margin fell to a ghastly 1.8% (down from 4.2% the quarter previous). In light of all this, the stock is down 6% in after-hours trading. Which makes the stock a buy, in my book. (Disclosure: I’m not a financial analyst, I’m a consumer market analyst, so don’t take my investment advice. Oh, and I don’t own any Amazon stock outside of mutual funds.) Amazon’s... [...]

Amy Gesenhues says, “Amazon released its Q3 2016 earnings report today, announcing $32.7 billion in sales for the quarter – a 29 percent year-over-year increase compared to the $25.4 billion it generated in Q3 2015. Among the highlights listed for the last three months, the e-commerce company referenced the expansion of Amazon Fresh – it’s online grocery delivery service; the launch of Handmade at Amazon in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain; and the new version of its Echo Dot home assistant device, along with the launch of its Alexa, Echo, and Echo Dot devices in Germany and... [...]

Greg Sterling says, “An analysis by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) reports that Amazon Prime has 65 million US members. That’s up from 63 million Prime members in July. According to the firm, 52 percent of US Amazon customers are Prime members. That number remains unchanged from figures released by CIRP in July. The firm also points out that Prime membership growth has slowed to three percent sequentially vs. seven percent last year. A year ago, Amazon had roughly 47 million Prime members, according to CIRP”. Amazon should generate more than $78 billion from Prime members... [...]

James McQuivey says, “In 2010, I wrote: “There’s a critical lesson to learn from the most recent changes in the media industry. … while most have been distracted by the form, price, and user experience of their new digital products, a few companies have quietly overhauled the media business by focusing on something else entirely; instead of digitizing the product, these companies have digitized the customer relationship, creating a relationship that can survive the transition from traditional analog media to digital.” I was talking about Netflix, which in 2010... [...]

Matt McGee says, “Amazon is telling online retailers that are new to its Fulfilled By Amazon shipping service that they won’t be able to send their inventory to Amazon warehouses until December 19. One merchant affected by the new policy posted the text of Amazon’s notification in the seller forums: Hey everyone, I got my amazon account and I got all the items I had for sale up into their system, and I wanted to send in my first FBA shipment, and I get this message: “We are restricting shipments from new-to-FBA sellers to ensure we have the capacity necessary to receive and store inventory... [...]

Greg Sterling says, “A consumer survey recently conducted on behalf of retail personalization platform BloomReach found that Amazon has increased its lead as the product search engine of choice for US consumers. Last year, 44 percent reported starting their search for products on Amazon; this year, it’s 55 percent. The “State of Amazon” study polled 2,000 US consumers in September. A survey released earlier this year by PowerReviews (n=1,000 consumers) found a narrower lead for Amazon (38 percent) vs. Google (35 percent) as the starting point for products. Amazon is utilized as a starting... [...]

Tim Peterson says, “Amazon announced its Q2 2016 earnings, reporting $30.4 billion for the quarter – a 31% jump over its Q2 2015 revenue. As reported earlier this month, this year’s Amazon Prime Day was the biggest day ever for Amazon, with Prime Day worldwide orders up more then 60 percent over last year’s Prime Day. Other highlights from Amazon’s earnings report included the launch of Amazon Prime in India, more than 1,900 third-party skills for Alexa, 50 new Dash Buttons and AmazonFresh, the e-commerce giant’s grocery delivery service, now available in London. “It’s been... [...]

Barry Levine says, “Video analytics service Visible Measures is out today with a new tool that allows brands to see the future of competitive video campaigns and plan accordingly. The new Industry Forecaster is available in the premium version of its True Reach video benchmarking and planning platform, which tracks viewings, shares and other performance measures of video content or video ads released by more than 7000 brands in 240 industry verticals on the web or in apps. The company said the new capability is the “first predictive video analytics tool for media planning.” It extrapolates... [...]

Matt McGee says, “Almost three out of every four e-commerce dollars spent by US consumers on July 12 were spent with Amazon. You may recognize that date as Amazon’s second Prime Day, and this new data from Slice Intelligence supports Amazon’s own claims that Prime Day 2016 was its “biggest day ever.” Using its panel of more than four million online shoppers and tracking about 400 online retailers (including all of the major players), Slice estimated Tuesday that Amazon owned 74 percent of all US consumer e-commerce on Prime Day — that’s almost double its normal 38-percent market... [...]

Christina Warren says, “Prime Day is back! Amazon has announced that its faux holiday, Prime Day, will return on July 12, 2016. This means that for one day, Amazon Prime members can save money on products across categories. Last year the event was a huge success for Amazon – even if plenty of the deals were weird as h*ll. In its second year, Prime Day will be even bigger, with more than 100,000 deals worldwide. Amazon says new and existing Prime members in the U.S., UK, Spain, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, Canada, Belgium and Austria will be able to access deals throughout its massive... [...]