Ginny Marvin says, “Amazon released a flurry of performance stats for 2015 on Tuesday, including updates on just how popular sponsored product advertisements have become on the e-commerce platform. The company says global adoption of Sponsored Products grew by 100 percent among Amazon sellers in 2015. The ads drove more than $1.5 billion in sales globally last year, according to Amazon. During the holiday shopping season, clicks on Sponsored Products in the US increased 200 percent year over year. Amazon made several updates to Sponsored Products that helped drive these increases, including... [...]

Antony Maina says, “You would think that in 2015 – a year in which personal drones, so-called hover boards, autonomous cars and virtual reality were major hits – all the hottest sellers on Amazon would be making a killing selling the latest high-tech gadgets. But that wasn’t entirely the case. Hottest Sellers on Amazon 2015 Amazon released details in its press release on how its holiday deals went and it turns out that some of its best sellers were a bit “old-fashioned.” For instance, among the hottest sellers on Amazon were top-selling home audio products such as turntables while... [...]

Jay Lagarde says, “Product reviews are a major reason why consumers love Amazon. Where else can you go to read hundreds of candid testimonials — or complaints — about every aspect of an item? In this post, we’ll show why product reviews matter to sellers, too. 1. Consumers love online reviews. Study after study has shown that consumers are increasingly reliant upon online reviews when making purchasing decisions. In fact, a recent Nielson study found that 70 percent of global consumers trust online reviews, up 15 percent within a four-year period. Industry experts project... [...]

Allison Enright says, “Consumers can pick up their Amazon orders in more locations and find Amazon gadgets in stores this holiday season. Amazon.com Inc. this week continued to set up for holiday season sales, announcing distribution agreements and new order pickup options for consumers. It also began marketing its discounts for Black Friday. Amazon news for the week ended Nov. 13: Echo distribution: Consumers will be able to buy Amazon’s voice-activated personal assistant device Echo in more than 3,000 physical stores this holiday season. Certain locations of The Home Depot, Sears, Brookstone... [...]

Allison Enright says, “Amazon discontinues AmazonLocal, refines its family leave policy and announces holiday plans. Amazon.com Inc. cleaned house during the past week, announcing plans to shut down several services and strengthening its employee policies. Amazon news for the week ended Nov. 2: Discontinued services: Amazon is shutting down AmazonLocal, its take on the deal-of-the-day voucher model popularized by Groupon Inc. A message posted to local.amazon.com says deals will not be offered after Dec. 18 through the site or the AmazonLocal app. AmazonLocal launched in 2011. Amazon this... [...]

Edwin Bos says, “A couple of weeks ago, Amazon sued over 1,000 people for posting fake reviews on its site. The defendants in question had offered their services on fiverr.com. But is Amazon addressing the symptoms, not the cause? Let’s go back to the future for a second. In 2012, Gartner said that by 2014, 10-15% of social media reviews would be fakes, paid for by companies. According to the BBC program Rip Off Britain this year, it’s been estimated that as many as one in five reviews online might be fake. It’s a big problem with even bigger ramifications for those playing... [...]

ReadWrite team says, “Two years ago VMware president Carl Eschenbach snidely suggested that he found it “really hard to believe that we cannot … beat a company that sells books.” Two years later, the truth has become blindingly clear: He can’t. What’s less obvious is just how big Amazon Web Services has become, in terms of overall value of the business. Logging $2.09 billion in its latest quarter, AWS is on a $8 billion run-rate, booming 78% year over year. So, if AWS were a standalone company, what would it be worth?“. Amazon’s Cloud Business Is Worth... [...]

Matt McGee says, “Amazon has filed a lawsuit accusing more than 1,100 members of the freelance marketplace Fiverr of offering to post phony product reviews on Amazon.com. As Geekwire first reported, today’s lawsuit comes on the heels of an Amazon sting operation in which the company paid some of the Fiverr members named in the suit. Posting phony reviews goes against Amazon’s terms of service, and Fiverr’s rules also ban its members from performing work that violates a third party’s terms of service. The lawsuit isn’t targeting the merchants who may have hired these defendants... [...]

Victor Luckerson says, “Amazon is closing its hotel-booking service Amazon Destinations, the company disclosed Wednesday. Bloomberg reports that the travel site had only been in operation for six months. Amazon Destinations was a play at the $960 billion tourism market, where lodging bookings are currently dominated by sites like Expedia, Priceline and Airbnb. Amazon’s service included maps, deals on hotels and user reviews of restaurants in the area. The site listed locales near New York, Seattle and Los Angeles. Customers who have already made reservations through Amazon Destinations... [...]

Paul Miller says, “The hordes gathered in Las Vegas this week, for Amazon’s latest re:Invent show. Over 18,000 individuals queued to get into sessions, jostled to reach the Oreo Cookie Popcorn (yes, really), and dodged casino-goers to hear from AWS, its partners and its customers. Las Vegas may figure nowhere on my list of favourite places, but the programme of Analyst sessions AWS laid on for earlier in the week definitely justified this trip. The headline items (the Internet of Things, Business Intelligence, and a Snowball chucked straight at the ‘hell’ that is the enterprise... [...]