Big changes to Amazon advertising!? Bugs from those years may come back

Amazon recently announced that it would be making large-scale layoffs in its advertising department. It is reported that the senior management of the advertising department has received internal notification!

According to internal sources, the layoffs involve advertising department employees across the United States. The layoff news has been officially announced by Paul Kotas, vice president of Amazon's advertising business. As soon as the news was released yesterday, two advertising employees received dismissal emails. However, both of them signed confidentiality agreements and could not disclose the specific compensation and work content.

However, it is still unclear how many people will be laid off this time. According to Andy's letter to shareholders last week, there will be a wave of layoffs involving about 9,000 people, distributed in retail, logistics and human resources departments, etc. Unexpectedly, the popular department of advertising business was the first to be laid off. Employees who received layoff emails will be given a transition period of about 60 to 90 days, the same as the previous layoff policy. If the laid-off employees can apply for positions in other departments internally, they can continue to stay at Amazon, otherwise they will leave after the transition period.

Speaking of advertising, we have many sellers discussing advertising-related issues in the group, such as:

Seller A: Why is the advertising budget automatically increased to several thousand dollars?

Seller B: I advertised a new model but the order was placed on the old model. What should I do?

After the epidemic, the advertising department has become Amazon's fastest growing business, surpassing AWS to become Amazon's hottest cash cow business.

Among all retail platforms, Amazon is the most popular platform for advertisers for two reasons. First, the cost of advertising on Amazon is low, and second, the traffic is large. The platform can use data and positioning capabilities to accurately place advertisements, which makes Amazon a platform with a relatively high cost-effectiveness.

Amazon's advertising system is one of the sections in the entire backend where bugs frequently occur. In 2019, a major bug of budget overflow occurred. Sellers set a budget of US$10, but could spend US$70 to 80 in a single day.

This data was not updated in a short period of time, and many sellers thought that they could not spend their budget, so they increased their bids . As a result, the real data was finally updated a week later, and the sellers' budgets were exceeded again.

Therefore, it is inevitable that such an unstable system will require a large number of programmers to maintain it. Even Paul, the vice president of the advertising business, said, " This process (layoffs) will involve slowing down or even stopping the maintenance of certain programs and functions." He almost said that you can wait and see, and there are still bugs to come. So especially recently, everyone must pay more attention to the advertising data.

If you find any data anomalies, you must first preserve the evidence and take screenshots in time to prevent Amazon from making subsequent modifications.

Then, when writing a complaint letter, be careful to write down the serious consequences of the problem. For example, explain to the customer service that this is a serious violation of the wealth law, and the exponentially increased budget also brings a bad shopping experience to customers. Attach your screenshots and ad group name and other information. If there are some chat screenshots that can prove that you plan to increase the budget after seeing the ACOs and low spending, you can also attach them.

Amazon is a very cunning company. With a huge number of sellers, a single bug on Amazon can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, so it will not take the initiative to admit its mistakes and refund the money. Sellers who are affected can try to file a case with Amazon to appeal. Maybe the evidence will be conclusive and it will work.