On an earnings call with investors, he announced eBay revenue and gross merchandise value (GMV) grew in the marketplace’s fiscal third quarter, ended Sept. 30. EBay GMV grew to nearly $18 billion in Q3, he said. And much of its GMV in the past year has come just from collectibles.

“We generated over $10 billion in GMV from collectibles over the last 12 months, and more than one in four eBay buyers purchased at least one collectibles item over the past year,” Iannone said. “These buyers carry some of the highest conversion, repurchase, and retention rates on eBay. And they are also among the heaviest cross-category shoppers on our platform, which supports our other categories.”

In the past 12 months, eBay GMV reached about $72.8 billion, according to financials listed in its most recent earnings release. Based on those figures and Iannone’s statement, Digital Commerce 360 estimates eBay collectibles accounted for about 13% of GMV in the past 12 months.

EBay ranks No. 6 in Digital Commerce 360’s Global Online Marketplaces database. The database ranks the 100 largest such marketplaces by 2023 third-party GMV. Digital Commerce 360’s 2023 Global Online Marketplaces Report includes key insights into the biggest players in the database.

eBay capitalizes on collectibles in Q3

Iannone said eBay’s goal is to remain “the world’s most loved destination for passionate collectibles enthusiasts.” Working toward that goal, he said, eBay launched direct submissions to its vault.

“This enables any U.S. resident to send in trading cards valued at $250 or higher from their personal collections to the vault, even if they were not purchased on eBay,” he said.

Additionally, in July, eBay announced what it calls Vault Enhanced Submission. It enables eBay “to gather large amounts” of valuable trading cards in person at events. In one weekend, eBay added “tens of millions of dollars of assets under management to the eBay vault,” Iannone added. That includes a signed Jackie Robinson card valued at about $1 million.

The marketplace describes eBay vault as “a secure, climate-controlled, physical storage facility for graded trading cards available to eBay customers. In addition to best-in-class storage, the eBay vault offers opportunities for seamless buying and hassle-free selling with the confidence that comes with Authenticity Guarantee.”

The eBay collectibles category includes sports trading cards, toys and figures, sports memorabilia, comic books and more. The category accounts for more than 10% of eBay GMV.

eBay revamps condition grading system for trading cards

Iannone said eBay “revamped” its condition grading system for trading cards. It improves transparency for collectibles in the subcategory, he said. New listings now carry more precise details, he added. That includes whether a card has been professionally graded and the numerical grade, or one of several predefined card conditions.

EBay will also migrate existing listings to the new standard “over the coming months,” Iannone said. “Sellers have been asking us for this feature for some time, and we believe it will drive improved trust for buyers, better and more consistent price realization for sellers, as well as more robust data and insights around individual card values for eBay.”

Making the shopping experience more interactive

Although still in beta, eBay launched eBay Live last year in response to its growing community of collectors and enthusiasts, Iannone said. The interactive live-shopping feature is available within the eBay app, and the marketplace continues to expand its availability to more sellers and categories, he said.

Using eBay Live, buyers can interact with sellers and checkout in real time without leaving the livestream, Iannone added.

“Q3 marked an inflection point as we hosted over 1,000 live events, saw our millionth buyer tune in, and grew GMV from eBay Live by 4x quarter-over-quarter,” Iannone said.

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The bridesmaid dress retailer revamped its blog in Q2 2023 with a strategy, plan and one goal in mind: to have Azazie.com show up higher in search engine results, says marketing manager Keily Hernandez. 

Azazie has had a blog on its site since 2019, with search engine optimization as one of its goals as well as using it to promote giveaways and promotions without significant financial investment. But SEO wasn’t the primary focus, and the merchant didn’t have a team dedicated to managing it. As a result, Azazie did not rank highly in search results for its targeted keywords, Hernandez says. 

Now, Azazie updates the blog one to two times a week. Each month, Azazie picks a keyword to focus on, such as “bridesmaid” or “bridal gown,” and focuses all its marketing content, including social media posts, influencer content, content across the website and its blog, on that keyword.  

“We have everything point back to us as the leader of that keyword,” Hernandez says.  

This focused and integrated effort has led to a 24% increase in sales revenue attributed to organic search (which includes blog content) from April until September 2023, compared with that same period in 2022, Hernandez says. And the content is resonating with shoppers, as sales from shoppers who viewed Azazie’s blog content increased 50% from January through September 2023, compared with the year-ago period.  

Azazie is among the roughly half or so retailers that offer a blog or editorial content on their site, according to Gartner data. A Gartner analysis of 300 U.S. retailers (75 luxury retailers, 105 multi-brand retailers and 120 monobrands) in March 2023 finds that 47% of retailers have a blog or editorial content on their site, such as articles related to the products they sell, content about that category’s trends, company history or policies.  

Merchants cite several reasons why investing in editorial content can help their bottom lines, including more traffic from search engines, higher conversion rates and low return rates. But execution is key, as retailers will not see any return on their investments if they are not thoughtful and thorough with their strategies. And investments can be significant, as merchants may have to invest in internal employees to generate the content or hire outside agencies. 

Only 6% of online shoppers say blog content is an important feature for a well-designed and functional online shopping experience, according to a Digital Commerce 360 and Bizrate Insights survey of 999 online shoppers in October 2023. But shoppers put a higher value on similar content, which retailers could publish on a blog, such as how-to guides, at 19%, and an About Us page, at 12%. 

Data from research firm Forrester Research Inc. also finds that only a small subset of consumers consult a blog before a purchase. 3% of U.S. online adults who purchased clothing or footwear (online or in person), and 5% who purchased furniture or home improvement products in the past six months visited the retailer’s blog in the past month, according to data fielded between November 2022-March 2023. 

Yet, only 17% of shoppers say online retailers have met or exceeded their expectations with providing detailed product information such as origin story, history, business policies and sustainability. And only 12% said online retailers have met or exceeded their expectations with additional content such as how-to guides and blogs.  

Retail blogs boost SEO value, organic search traffic

While shoppers may not rely on blog content to make a purchase, retailers and analysts still believe it can be an important component in the online shopping journey. In fact, shoppers may not realize that a blog post was how they landed on that retailer’s site to begin with. If brands write their blogs and editorial content with search engine optimization in mind, it can have a large impact on bringing in organic traffic, says Brad Jashinsky, director analyst at Gartner.  

And organic traffic is important for Azazie. The wedding apparel retailer says about 10% of its site traffic and sales come from organic search, which includes shoppers finding its site from the blog articles. 

“I would think and I would hope that every company and every brand in every industry has a blog,” Hernandez says. “It’s kind of like the low-hanging fruit of organic content.” 

Chip Malt, CEO and co-founder of cookware brand Made In, says that roughly 25% of its site traffic comes from organic search, which includes shoppers who come to Made In’s robust blog. On average per month, its blog receives 2 million page views, and each reader views about six pages in the blog, Malt says. This shows good engagement, Malt says. On average, this is about 20% of the site’s overall page views, he says.  

What’s more, when Made In sends content-focused emails, the click-through rates are three times higher than its selling-focused emails, Malt says. Similarly, its content-focused ads on Google produce click-through rates at four to 10 times higher than selling-focused ads, he says. 

Education through content has been a part of cookware brand Made In’s strategy since Day 1, Malt says. Made In launched a blog six months prior to launching products on its cookware site and the fourth employee the brand hired was a part-time content contributor, he says.  

“Education is a part of the brand’s story,” Malt says.  

Made In sells high-end cookware that’s designed for cooking enthusiasts and is popular among professional chefs. For example, its 10-inch blue carbon steel frying pan is $109, and the brand’s average order value is $330, according to Digital Commerce 360 estimates. The blog helps to explain the value of its cookware.  

Today, the brand has 10 full-time employees on its content team, it publishes roughly 50 blogs per month and the blog ranks for 56,000 keywords within Google Search, Malt says. About 50% of these keywords are in the top 20 search terms on Google, with 25% of those on the first page of search results, he says.  

One of the top navigation tabs on MadeinCookware.com is “Learn,” where the brand publishes its founding story, recipes, care for its products and cooking techniques. As Made In has expanded its product lines to include bakeware and wine glasses, it also has added content to support these products as well.  

“If we are offering this line of cookware, we also want to keep up the pace of content. …. It’s something we wanted to do for our community,” Malt says.  

Retail blog content connects to shoppers post-purchase 

This large breadth of content distinguishes the brand from its competitors, such as All-Clad, Malt says. 

“Long term, we believe if you are shown All-Clad or Made In, and you walk out the door and you are on your own, and you went with Made In, you have all this helpful content behind you. And that makes the consumer go with us overall, because they see us as a value-add,” Malt says.  

All-Clad has a blog on its site with recipes and other product content. All-Clad did not provide a comment as of press time.  

Top online floral merchant 1-800-Flowers.com Inc. also invests in editorial content as a way to engage with shoppers, says chief marketing officer Jason John.  

It operates six blogs across its 17 brands, which include a variety of giftable products such as cookies and chocolates as well as flowers. The goal is to deepen the relationship with shoppers, so they don’t just view the e-retailer’s ecommerce sites as shopping destinations, John says. It updates each blog multiple times per month.  

“It takes us beyond one transaction and helps solidify us as a part of the customer relationship,” John says.   

1800Flowers.com addresses themes within each brand’s product assortment and customer base to appeal to shoppers. For example, topics that have resonated with consumers are about how to write sympathy cards, including pet sympathy cards, for its 1800Flowers.com blog, and articles about hosting holiday dinners for its food and gifting brand HarryandDavid.com.  

Results from retail blogs 

Web visits to its blog have increased 70% year over year, John says. Even more telling is that shoppers who view a brand’s blog content convert at a 3%-5% higher rate than shoppers who don’t. This speaks to the quality of its blogs, John says.  

“You need a North Star with content,” John says. “A lot of companies, you can tell they are putting out content to put out content, and they are putting out content for a commerce outcome. We don’t believe there is authenticity in that type of content.”  

While conversion metrics are a clear performance indicator, Made In says privacy regulations can make it difficult to track a direct conversion to a blog post, because many shoppers don’t accept cookies and may visit the site several times before deciding to make a purchase. The path to purchase becomes more muddled especially with products that are high-ticket and more considered, like Made In’s relatively pricey skillets and knife sets. Instead, Malt describes its investment in content as a “brand tax that we absorb,” meaning a cost of doing business for higher-end products.   

Besides increasing site traffic, results from investing in a blog shows up in other ways, Malt says, such as aiding in the customer journey, helping its customer service team and low return rates. If shoppers are more informed about the products they buy from reading the blog, they are more likely to purchase the right product for their needs and not return it. He points to its stainless-steel products, which have a less than 2% return rate, without sharing more. 

Roughly a third of the visits to Made In’s blog come from shoppers already on the website, and the rest from outside the site, such as search results, emails and ads. If Made In was only doing the blog for SEO purposes or completely focused on that as the goal, Malt would expect 99% of the traffic to come from outside sources. But that’s not Made In’s primary goal.  

The fact that a third is internal traffic shows that the content is providing value to shoppers as they consider the brand’s products. Instead of having an article only live in the blog section, Made In peppers relevant content throughout the site to aid in the shopper journey, Malt says. For example, on the search results page, it may surface a post about the difference between nonstick and stainless-steel cookware.  

“We believe content should be intertwined in the customer journey and are happy to have internal traffic get there,” Malt says. 

Using blog content in multiple ways is smart, Gartner’s Jashinsky says.  

“If you are going the extra mile to make great content, you need to make sure it’s discoverable, across social, across search, and product pages and search pages,” Jashinsky says.  

How retailers know what to feature in blog content

Made In surveys its shoppers via email and uses that feedback to inform its content strategy. Based on 20,000 comments, Made In determined it needed more blogs about how to care for its products post-purchase, and now publishes such articles regularly.  

“The nice part of being a direct brand is that people tell you exactly what they think,” Malt says. 

Made In’s editorial team plans the focus of its blog posts for each month. Each of the brand’s departments, such as its product, customer service and marketing teams, give input on their teams’ current priorities. For example, the product team may say that it is launching a bird beak’s paring knife that month and request at least two articles featuring the product. The customer service team might say it’s had an influx of shoppers calling in about how to season their carbon skillet and propose a video blog and step-by-step instructions on how to do this.  

“Customer service acts as a very direct line to our actual customer. So our customer service team has direct input into the content calendar,” Malt says. 

The customer service team’s input gets particularly high priority when planning the blog’s editorial calendar, as the articles they suggest can help them assist customers much faster, Malt says. For example, with the “how to season the carbon skillet?” question, instead of taking 10 minutes to write out tailored instructions for each shopper, agents can direct shoppers to a video or blog that addresses their need.  

“It’s an efficiency play,” Malt says. While Malt doesn’t have a direct KPI figure to tie to its retail blog, he knows speeding up solving customer service issues keeps agents and shoppers satisfied.  

Azazie also taps its customer service team for input on what it should include in its blogs.  

“If they have a question about a trend, we can respond and create a content strategy to that, that tying into what’s trending, and what we are also offering,” Hernandez says. 

For example, a common question shoppers call in about is sizing for a bridesmaid dress while pregnant. Azazie has a blog that provides examples and tips on this topic, but it was first published in 2016. So, the content team refreshed the blog with examples of Azazie’s current maternity dresses and relevant links to its products. The customer service team refers to this blog while helping shoppers and directs shoppers to read it.   

Azazie also looks to any interactions it’s gotten on social media and trends in the bridal industry to inform its content strategy.  

The blog is under the purview of its digital marketing team, and Azazie also employs an SEO consultant to help determine its content and execution. Overall, the blogs that gain the most traffic and lead to the most sales are the ones that are integrated into its overall marketing strategy and are tied to press releases and influencers, she says.  

“It’s a lot of moving pieces and work, in order to put a campaign behind a keyword, but those are the most successful, the ones with a content strategy,” Hernandez says.  

Involving multiple departments in content creation will serve retailers well, Gartner’s Jashinsky says. Retailers would also be wise to track which types of content shoppers click on, and use that information to personalize product recommendations and for ad targeting. This is a way to gather first-party data directly from the consumer, which is especially valuable now that cookies that track shopper behavior across the web are increasingly being phased out, and can greatly benefit retailers in the long term, he says.  

If retailers do decide to make a focused effort on improving SEO through blog content or guided selling tools like a quiz to match shoppers with suitable products, they should expect it could take a year or two to see results, not months, Jashinsky says.  

“We always tell clients, this is not something you can get up and running in a week or month,” Jashinsky says. “This takes many months to get up and running, and takes a year or two to start to see significant payout. So you really need to make sure you have a long-term strategy and you are ensuring you reallocate this content as many places as possible to make sure that investment pays off.” 

For something like a quiz that guides shoppers through a series of questions and links to relevant product pages, retailers should expect to pay thousands to tens of thousands of dollars to a vendor to build it, Jashinsky says. But to do an editorial program at scale — which may take a team of writers to publish content daily and collaborate with different teams, plus the technology to plug into personalization software — that could take hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions, he says. 

For Made In, these marketing costs show up as the salaries for 10 employees dedicated to digital content instead of spending these dollars on ads. Similarly, the cost of the blog for Azazie shows up in its marketing staff resources. 1-800-Flowers also has an editorial staff that “fluctuates” depending on the time of year, John says without revealing more. 

Retailers that do strategically invest in content often see an increase in traffic from organic search, and small increases in basket size and conversion rates for shoppers that engage with this content, Jashinsky says. This, of course, varies by how well the content strategy is executed and product category.  

“Whether you are selling online or in-store, it is a pretty cost-effective way to increase SEO and increase conversion rates, and typically almost every retailer is already creating content and already has a lot of these pieces in other parts of ecosystem,” he says.  

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The online furniture retailer reported a larger increase in U.S. net revenue, which grew 5.4% to $2.6 billion. Meanwhile, international revenue declined 7.0% over the same period. Net loss was $163 million.

Wayfair ranks No. 10 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest online retailers in North America.

“We executed further in the third quarter to produce consistent profitability — with Adjusted EBITDA now positive on a trailing 12-month basis — while also driving demonstrable market share growth, as evidenced by our gains on customers and orders,” CEO Niraj Shah said in a statement. “Even with a turbulent macro, we remain committed to our profitability goals in good times and bad.”

Wayfair leans on promotions

Consumers are careful with their spending this year, and reluctant to make a purchase until they see a good deal, Niraj Shah told investors in an earnings call. Once the deal pulls them in, though, they start to shop around, he says. During promotional events, less than one-third of revenue comes from the featured products, he told investors.

Wayfair is using promotions to draw in customers year-round, Shah says. For example, the online retailer created a promotion in its app for National Dog Day over the summer that drove double-digit increases in click-through rates, conversions, and sales, he says. The retailer also held a second Way Day event in late October.

Wayfair’s suppliers are also discounting products as a way to clear out inventory. That allows Wayfair to purchase the inventory at lower prices and mark them down for consumers, gaining market share.

Wayfair says a slow housing market isn’t a dealbreaker

While a slowdown in the U.S. housing market has hurt home goods retailers, Shah says that doesn’t have a major impact on Wayfair. While some customers do go to Wayfair to outfit a new home, that’s not the typical customer experience, he says.

The average Wayfair customer spends $540 with the retailer annually, spread across two orders.

“This isn’t someone that’s typically refitting an entire room or house. Instead, they’re a shopper that’s going through their home item by item, project by project making small updates on a much more frequent cadence,” he says. Moreover, Wayfair is well positioned to be the retailer consumers choose when they redo a room in their existing home, Shah says. 

Headwinds facing the home category were largely offset by Wayfair’s gains in market share, according to an analyst note from consumer research firm Baird Equity Research.

Wayfair earnings

For the fiscal third quarter ended Sept. 30, Wayfair reported:

• Total net revenue grew 3.7% to $2.9 billion.
• Net loss was $163 million.
• Active customers declined 1.3% to 22.3 million.
• Repeat customers made 79.7% of all orders, up from 77.8% in Q3 last year.

For the nine months ended Sept. 30, Wayfair reported:

• Net revenue declined 2.5% to $8.9 billion.
• Net loss was $564 million, down from $$980 million in 2022. 
• Active customers declined from 23 million to 22 million.

Percentage changes may not align exactly with dollar figures due to rounding.

Check back for more earnings reports.

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U.S. consumers will spend more than $12 billion on Halloween celebrations this year, according to The National Retail Federation. About one-third of Halloween spending will be through ecommerce, NRF says. Retailers shared these tips for making the most of the holiday.

1. Build anticipation for new products before they launch.

“We teased the drop of our Halloween collection before it went online, and they create engaging content that gives Halloween fans a behind the scenes look at our collection,” says Lance Allen, senior merchant of decorative Holiday at Home Depot.

2. Introduce new products, but keep classics around.

Home Depot’s 12-foot-tall “Skelly” has been a viral success since 2020. The retailer still sells the skeleton, and it has since introduced other giant decor items to build on its success.

3. Use TikTok and other video platforms to display new merchandise.

“One of the biggest changes we’ve made this year is with short-form video. We are producing and deploying more video than we ever have in the past,” chief marketing officer at Fun.com Mark Bietz says. “It’s been amazing to see how customers have responded to having more rich experiences with our brand.”

4. Experiment with new advertising avenues.

Lingerie brand Adore Me is seeing success with digital out-of-home advertising on subways and billboards, with plans to continue investing, says vice president of strategy Ranjan Roy. Meanwhile, Fun.com says connected TV ads are driving “excellent results.”

5. Give consumers as many fulfillment options as possible.

Walmart offers late-night express delivery and pickup options ready in between 30 and 90 minutes. Walgreens has 30-minute pickup, one-hour delivery, and 24-hour delivery, a spokesperson says.

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On Oct. 25 and 26, Wayfair will stage its second Way Day of the year. It will feature deals on more than 1 million items for the home, up to 80% discounts on top-selling items and a sweepstakes with a chance to win a $50,000 home makeover.

Wayfair is No. 10 in the Digital Commerce 360 Top 1000. The database ranks North America’s largest online retailers by web sales.

Wayfair holiday shopping push

The push for early holiday shopping comes at a time when Wayfair could use a boost to its 2023 financial performance. Wayfair won’t break out third quarter revenue until Nov. 1, but for the first six months of the year, the online home décor and furniture retailer reported revenue of $9.45 billion, a 5.3% drop from sales of $6.277 billion in the first two quarters of 2022. Net loss was $401 million compared with a net loss of $697 million in the prior year.

With early holiday shopping days and deals, Wayfair is using a mix of steep discounts, sweepstakes, mobile commerce, and artificial intelligence to spur web shoppers to buy. Specific initiatives include:

• Customers who shop starting today through the end of Way Day will be entered in the Way Day Home Makeover Sweeps for a chance to win $50,000 toward a home makeover with Wayfair’s design services.
• Beginning Oct. 23, Wayfair will feature an additional 20% off eligible products, exclusively on its app.
• Way Day items will be available in Decorify, Wayfair’s generative AI-powered virtual room styler. Decorify uses an AI model that creates realistic images from another image. By simply uploading photos of their spaces to Decorify, customers can see product recommendations from the sale in the room style of their choice.

“We’re excited to kick off an extended season of deals with our second Way Day of the year,” says Wayfair chief commercial officer Jon Blotner.

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Amazon is betting that Prime members will spend heavily on deeply discounted items. It looks to lure web shoppers in with deals that range from seasonal decor starting as low as $6 to invitation-only deals like 60% off 50-inch smart TVs and savings on brand names such as up to 50% off Sony products and 30% off Lego items.

But exactly what Prime members are looking to purchase and how much they will spend will vary widely by age, income, and other factors, says new research from market research company Numerator and industry survey.

Amazon is No. 1 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest North American online retailers. Amazon is also No. 3 in Digital Commerce 360’s Global Online Marketplaces Database. It ranks the 100 largest such marketplaces by 2023 third-party GMV.

Amazon Big Deal Days closely precede holiday sales period

Nearly one-third of all consumers are expected to shop online during Amazon Prime Big Deal Days. While those won’t be as big as the 37% of consumers that shopped and bought this summer during Amazon Prime days, Prime Deal Days will “bring a significant boost to ecommerce sales in general, “with the first day of the sale potentially surpassing Cyber Monday in online shopping,” Numerator says.

Other research firms also suggest that while Amazon Prime Big Deal Days will generate big business for Amazon and other big chain retailers this week, many budget-conscious shoppers will choose to shop later and closer to online retailing’s biggest days: Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Nearly half (44%) of consumers who plan on shopping during the 2023 winter holiday season say they plan to do so during a preseason sales event like Amazon Prime Big Deal Days, says research firm Mintel.

Shoppers remain budget-conscious

But Black Friday and Cyber Monday remain popular (45%) as consumers’ budget-focused mindset continues, says Mintel.

“Over a quarter (28%) of winter holiday shoppers agree that it is even more critical to shop on Black Friday or Cyber Monday because of inflation/rising prices,” Mintel says. “When asked how inflation impacts their spending, 42% of winter holiday shoppers say they purchase fewer gifts, while a quarter (24%) say they switch to lower-priced retailers.”

Even with Amazon and other retailers pushing big deals and deep discounts this week, consumers may remain more budget-minded than in earlier years, Mintel says. Three in five (59%) consumers who plan to do winter holiday shopping in 2023 say they want to spend the least amount of money possible, says Mintel.

“Consumers will participate more in preseason shopping sales, such as Amazon Prime Day, to take advantage of the deals and discounts,” says Mintel retail and ecommerce analyst Brittany Steiger. “They remain value-conscious and look to spend as little as possible.”

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The tool allows J’evar’s jewelry designers to input information about the product’s materials and specifications, and the generative AI will produce an image of that product. The tool saves the brand weeks of manual design time on products, says Amish Shah, founder and CEO of the direct-to-consumer brand of jewelry featuring lab-grown diamonds.

J’evar began using its jewelry product AI generator last year in 2022. The retailer feeds metrics and images into a knowledge bank — or a database of text, images and metrics for materials that include the weight of gold and silver, among other key details — for the generator to refer to before it produces an image. Shah jokingly refers to it as “JevarGPT 1.0” and “AI for Jewelry 1.0,” the former a reference to OpenAI consortium’s ChatGPT.

For example, Shah says if he wanted to make a bangle, he could input a text prompt to the generative AI, specifying how much the weight of gold should be for that piece, how thin or wide it should be and what design style he would like. He can even ask it to produce 50 iterations from that single prompt. In return, the generative AI will output complete designs, some of which might be ready to turn into tangible products. Other product designs the AI outputs require J’evar designers to modify the design until it can be producible.

Shah says one key reason J’evar can’t produce all the designs is because of the inability to cut diamonds into the shape the AI generates. But even this ability is coming soon with new machinery, he says.

Exploring generative AI for design

“You’re looking at optimization, efficiency, speed — which is of course going to lead to cost reduction in the longer term,” Shah says about using generative AI. “But importantly, from an output perspective, we’re looking at precision and a higher level of creativity.”

In the past few years, developers have trained artificial intelligence to do more than analyze data and tell its users what to make of the data. They’ve trained AI to generate writing, images, videos and sounds. This is called generative AI, and online retailers have already begun to design new products and produce new variations of existing products — and do so quickly. With generative AI, retailers can create and test multiple product ideas in just minutes, much faster than the weeks or months it might take to design now. Online retailers, including J’evar and Auricle Technology, are learning how to use generative AI to assist their product designers, making the process more efficient. But because generative AI is still new, it has limitations on what it can do.

J’evar uses its own generative AI technology to help its human designers speed up the creative process.

Gen AI’s value outshines its current limitations

While generative AI is excellent for learning and processing massive amounts of data, it is not yet at a point that it can understand movement through space, says Brendan Witcher, vice president and principal analyst at research firm Forrester. It doesn’t think about engineering and structural elements or physical viability yet, he says. Although generative AI is not at that point yet, he says, that doesn’t mean it can’t be eventually.

“You want to design a shoe. Great,” Witcher says. “Well, a shoe’s a shoe until you put it on and have to run in it, then it falls apart on you because you didn’t think about the physics of how movement happens.

“The big question is when do we bridge the gap between the work that needs to be put into generative AI to understand the movement through physical space that objects need to go through often, and the commercial viability of doing that.”

Informed assessments

However, even with its current limitations, Witcher says generative AI’s value comes from the assessments it already has learned to make. He says people do their jobs based on the knowledge they receive in their training, and “AI kind of works like that too.” But generative AI “takes it to the next step” and looks at more data than humans can process, and then make assessments about what the best subsequent steps are. It can also come up with ideas humans couldn’t or wouldn’t think of because the human mind doesn’t process information the way artificial intelligence tools can, he says.

“We can’t absorb that much data and extract from it an idea. It’s just impossible for us,” Witcher says. “It shouldn’t be lost that just developing an image of something that you wouldn’t be able to think of because you weren’t trained to think that way has huge possibilities.”

Witcher says generative AI’s value extends beyond production speed to unique creations.

“A lot of people talk about generating imagery with AI, but what to me is most important is the ability to do it over and over and over again until you get something you like,” Witcher says.

Will generative AI replace human designers?

Generative AI is not here to replace humans in the design phase, Shah says. Especially not in the jewelry industry.

“Human intelligence supersedes artificial intelligence, at least I can say that for jewelry,” Shah says.

Generative AI is more like an assistant to human designer, Shah says. It’s not the technology that’s telling designers when a piece has been finalized. It’s a human making that decision, Shah says. Just like Adobe and Corel are graphics software tools for designers, generative AI is a design tool, not a human replacement, he says.

“Once we get the initial output, it is then modified to be producible,” Shah says.

Forrester’s Witcher agrees that AI should be used as a tool and not a replacement for creative individuals.

“If all the people learn how to do things on generative AI, then no one learns how to do it beyond generative AI,” Witcher says. “Over time, you start weeding out the expertise from the low-level individuals and nobody becomes a high-level individual.”

Witcher adds that the majority of AI use isn’t leaving artificial intelligence “to its own devices.”

“It’s more assisted intelligence — the AI standing for assisted intelligence — where we’re using it to be more productive in our own jobs that we currently do today,” Witcher says.

J’evar uses generative AI to speed up the design process

Traditionally, Shah says, jewelry design is a long process that can take a few weeks or even more than a month. In the case of commissioned designs, J’evar designers would first have to understand what kind of product a customer wants before going into iterations. In the example of designing a bangle, the designers would have to first determine if a customer wanted a wide cuff or something they could stack, something lightweight or heavy, thick or thin, if they wanted diamonds or gemstones, and so on.

Then, the designers would do initial mockups to ensure they understood the customer’s request correctly. This process would typically be one to three weeks of showing designs to the customer and sketching accordingly, Shah says.

In one case, Shah says he and his team had gone through 55 variations before a customer said, “I love it.” After that, his team would then go to computer-aided design (CAD). From there, it would go to rendering.

“By using AI, we are able to take that process down to pretty much hours and in some cases, literally within minutes,” Shah says.

Moreover, when working manually, the designer has to move every single diamond into place, making sure they are in the correct position. AI speeds up that process, Shah says. In milliseconds, the generative AI processor can move diamonds and gemstones, raise or lower gold weight, or change the width or thickness.

“It’s almost like putting a thousand designers and the type of work they would have done into the knowledge bank and then letting the system do a combination from those thousand designs to give you back results,” he says.

J’evar fed years’ worth of jewelry data into its generative AI platform. The platform produces images that human designers then adjust in the design phase.

Developing a custom generative AI processor

Shah says his family’s 90-year history in the jewelry business gives him an advantage over others in developing custom generative AI technology for J’evar.

“It sounds complex, but you have to keep in mind: We’re in the business,” Shah says. “We’re in the jewelry business, so the core bank or the core information that’s required is sitting with us. It’s not something I have to go outside and source.”

J’evar feeds text and imagery into its generative AI to teach it what to output. When inputting prompts, J’evar designers primarily use text to generate an image.

“That knowledge bank is sitting there,” Shah says. “Now, it’s all about organizing it and feeding it into the system in a format that can then be analyzed and the GPUs can run and start combining things and getting them back to you.”

Iterations at scale

Sometimes, what generative AI produces needs less human modification than others. For example, Auricle Technology uses generative AI tools to swap out logos and colors on its different products.

Auricle Technology founder William Cooksey says he created his electronics accessory brand out of necessity. He uses Apple AirPods for long hours most days, and the hard plastic begins to hurt his ears after a while. That led him to create AirPod skins made from silicone that are softer and anchor better into his ears.

When his manufacturer sent back prototypes, it printed Auricle’s logo on them. That led Cooksey to realize the importance of branding and how he can “pivot and get into the licensing game.”

The direct-to-consumer brand launched in 2021 now creates customized merchandise including AirPod skins, AirPod charging case skins, phone cases, wireless chargers and mouse pads. And through licensing agreements, it prints these products with logos for more than 90 teams in Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League and Major League Soccer, as well as about 130 college teams.

Rather than have a designer manually change the colors and logos for each team, the brand has integrated generative AI into its design process, Cooksey says.

Unlike J’evar, however, Auricle does not have the budget nor the in-house capacity to develop an all-new generative AI engine. Its business model is also different, focusing on customization rather than new product development.

New technology, but make it affordable

Cooksey instead works with Goals Media Group to use generative AI into its product iterations. Goals uses technology Microsoft for Startups provides, says Goals founder and CEO Aubrey Flynn. This means it receives access to Microsoft’s resources, including technology and tech experts, among other benefits. Microsoft has announced it would invest $10 billion into OpenAI — the company behind text-based generative AI brand ChatGPT and image-based DALL-E.

Cooksey says his lead designer and Flynn determined generative AI was the way to go from designing products with one team logo to hundreds “in a short period of time without breaking the bank.”

Auricle also uses Goals and its generative AI offerings to develop marketing materials like images for social media that highlight products from different teams at different stadiums. The generative AI creates an image complete with Auricle branding, the team’s branding, and any copy it needs.

“Being a small business, not having a lot of capital, it’s really exciting me that we can still come up with quality images without breaking our budget,” Cooksey says.

“When you deal with those leagues, they want you to be able to launch all the teams at the same time,” Cooksey says. “I just wouldn’t have been able to afford to do that.”

Generative AI’s impact on metrics

Goals has about 650 clients and nearly half are online retailers, Flynn says.

Flynn says that social media marketing creatives that generative AI produced can increase consumer interactions with the ad by more than 35% compared with that brand’s normal creative, according to data from its clients.

This includes creatives entirely generated through AI, visuals that already existed that AI has augmented, and copy that generative AI has helped develop for those types of visuals.

“I’ve seen AI-powered creative outperform to the extent where cost per click on a certain product may have been 30%-40% less expensive based on some of the guidance from AI on the copy and the imagery,” he says.

He adds that brands like Auricle — which lack access to capital, resources, infrastructure and more that large brands have — need to adopt technology like generative AI early on because it’s less expensive than some alternatives like hiring designers or manufacturers from the start.

Early results are insightful, but ‘is this just another buzzword?’

Shah, Cooksey, Witcher and Flynn all expressed the same idea: It may be early, but the application of generative AI in product development is promising.

While some may say generative AI is another buzzword, Witcher says what separates this technology from other tech fads is that companies are already allowing individuals in their organizations to play with, understand and experiment with generative AI.

“They’re almost crowd-sourcing proof of concept,” Witcher says. “It’s a unique characteristic to generative AI that it’s so easy to do and work with that almost anybody can do it.”

Although results are limited in some ways and sometimes imperfect, online retailers are using generative AI imaging to design new products essentially from scratch, customize existing products and develop marketing content. They can develop multiple iterations of these images at once or continue iterating on the same image multiple times until they’re satisfied with how the image looks. They can then take the design that generative AI produces and tweak it manually, saving them the time of doing each iteration manually — and saving them the creative energy it takes just to design a new product iteration.

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The FTC seeks to stop the company from abusing its powers to raise prices for consumers and fees against sellers.

“Amazon violates the law not because it is big, but because it engages in a course of exclusionary conduct that prevents current competitors from growing and new competitors from emerging,” according to an FTC press release about the lawsuit.

Amazon is No. 1 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest online retailers in North America. It is also No. 3 in the Global Online Marketplaces Database.

Khan: Amazon is now exploiting its monopoly power

In the release, FTC chair Lina M. Khan said: “The complaint sets forth detailed allegations noting how Amazon is now exploiting its monopoly power to enrich itself while raising prices and degrading service for the tens of millions of American families who shop on its platform and the hundreds of thousands of businesses that rely on Amazon to reach them.”

“We’re bringing this case because Amazon’s illegal conduct has stifled competition across a huge swath of the online economy,” said John Newman, deputy director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition. “Amazon is a monopolist that uses its power to hike prices on American shoppers and charge sky-high fees on hundreds of thousands of online sellers.”

Amazon responds to FTC lawsuit

In response to the lawsuit, Amazon released a statement from David Zapolsky, Amazon senior vice president of global public policy and general counsel.

“Today’s suit makes clear the FTC’s focus has radically departed from its mission of protecting consumers and competition,” Zapolsky said. “The practices the FTC is challenging have helped to spur competition and innovation across the retail industry, and have produced greater selection, lower prices, and faster delivery speeds for Amazon customers and greater opportunity for the many businesses that sell in Amazon’s store. If the FTC gets its way, the result would be fewer products to choose from, higher prices, slower deliveries for consumers, and reduced options for small businesses — the opposite of what antitrust law is designed to do. The lawsuit filed by the FTC today is wrong on the facts and the law, and we look forward to making that case in court.”

Lawsuit widely anticipated, says analyst

Colin Sebastian, senior research analyst at financial services firm Baird Equity Research Internet, said the lawsuit “is a relatively benign scenario for Amazon.”

The lawsuit includes fewer charges than expected, including any call to break up the company. “Probably because the FTC realized this was unlikely to pass judicial scrutiny,” he said.

“At best, the FTC could hope for some modest changes to Amazon’s pricing policies, fewer requirements around Prime shipping, and presumably improved search results,” Sebastian said.

Small and medium-sized retailers say selling on Amazon is necessary

Amazon charges sellers a referral fee for products sold on its marketplace. Sellers pay either a percentage of the sales price or a set fee of $0.30, whichever is higher, according to Amazon. Fees range from 8% to 20% for most categories, and up to 45% for Amazon device accessories. Those fees are in addition to other seller fees of either $0.99 per item or $39.99 per month.

Sellers also pay to use Fulfillment by Amazon, the online marketplace’s shipping and delivery service. They pay by shipping weight and dimensions of the products. This ranges from $3.22 for small standard packages to $158.49 for oversize products.

Products priced under $10 are in a separate tier, starting at $2.66. That’s after the marketplace ended its small and light program and implemented new pricing in August 2023, blindsiding some sellers.

Pros and cons

But smaller retailers often feel the benefits outweigh the costs — especially when trying to stand out from the competition. Amazon sales drive profit for men’s grooming brand Huron, says co-founder and CEO Matt Mullenax. Consumers make different purchasing decisions on the marketplace than they do on the retailer’s DTC site.

“It’s pretty rare that you get a customer who is a subscriber or multi-time purchaser on usehuron.com that then reverts back to jumping on Amazon to buy [a single item],” Mullenax says.

Average order value is higher on usehuron.com, but the conversion rate is higher on Amazon, he says.

Plus, a large portion of consumers frequently purchase from online marketplaces. 44% of online shoppers said they make purchases from online marketplaces at least weekly, according to a May 2023 survey of 1,039 consumers from Digital Commerce 360 and Bizrate Insights. 76% of those respondents reported purchasing from Amazon in the past year. 46% of respondents said they’d purchased on Amazon without noticing if the product was sold by Amazon or another seller.

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The post What retailers need to know about the FTC’s latest lawsuit against Amazon appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

Babylist, an online marketplace and baby registry aggregator, treats generative AI as a “co-pilot,” and not necessarily a time-saving tool, says Lee Anne Grant, chief growth officer.

Lee Anne Grant, chief growth officer, Babylist

“It’s a tool to help generate ideas, content and copy,” she says. “In some ways, using it is taking us more time.”
This is because Babylist’s creative team uses the technology to inspire rather than outright write complete blog posts or other marketing content. Marketers ask AI questions and then think about how the results can help them create.

“We had an all-hands meeting [in early 2023] with the goal to approach the technology in an educational development way,” Grant says. “You’re not only allowed to use it for your job, but you’re also expected to.”

More retailers are likely to follow suit as the technology continues to advance and retailers learn how to wield it. 56% of U.S. marketing or advertising decision-makers already use generative AI in their marketing efforts, according to consulting firm Forrester Research Inc.’s June 2023 business-to-consumer marketing survey of 154 executives. These large language models, chatbots and image generator vendors include ChatGPT, DALL-E, Stable Diffusion and Midjourney.

Digital marketers are learning that the more they test, the more the technology learns. This affordable tool can help — but not replace — marketers. Babylist uses ChatGPT to test copy for newsletter and marketing email campaigns. Online florist UrbanStems uses generative AI to write blog posts, and it creates images for social media marketing creative. And men’s footwear brand Koio uses AI-generated copy for brainstorming email and ad ideas. The costs are low, and retailers like UrbanStems are mindful that if they aren’t using it, their competition certainly is.

Retailers must consider the potential upsides — and pain points — when using generative AI

Digital marketers are using generative AI to draft ideas and examples for emails, SEO and other marketing materials. While the potential benefits are vast, there are also concerns, says Jay Pattisall, vice president, principal analyst at Forrester.

Marketers must consider how brands, retailers and agencies are using the technology, Pattisall says. Copyright law does not protect AI-generated art, for example.

But the potential for how brands can use AI is exciting, he says. Advertising agencies are building platforms for their clients as part of their own proprietary technology. Retailers are building in-house, too, he adds.

“But at this stage, it’s more practical to buy because there are more options available on the marketplace. That may change in the future,” he says.

Babylist tests ChatGPT-generated email campaigns

Babylist uses ChatGPT to test newsletter marketing email campaigns. In 2023, Bed Bath & Beyond Inc., owner of major baby products retail chain Buy Buy Baby, filed for bankruptcy. Babylist saw this as an opportunity to acquire Buy Buy Baby’s customers.

Babylist ran a test for an email marketing campaign on April 29 with ChatGPT for its two newsletter audiences. It sent out one test to 10% of its “pregnant” newsletter recipients (about 59,000 subscribers out of 589,000 on the total list) and 10% of its “parent” newsletter recipients (222,000 recipients of 2.32 million).  Half of each group received one email written by a Babylist editor and the other written by ChatGPT.

The results? For the pregnant group, the editor’s email won with a 2.9% higher open rate compared with the generative AI’s version.

• The Babylist editor’s subject line: “buybuy BABY Bankruptcy & Your Registry: What to Know.”
• The ChatGPT’s subject line: “What the buybuy BABY Bankruptcy Means for Parents.”

For the parent group, ChatGPT gained a slight edge over the human editor with a 0.37% higher open rate.

• The Babylist editor’s subject line: “buybuy BABY Bankruptcy & More Parent News.”
• The ChatGPT’s subject line: “What the buybuy BABY Bankruptcy Means for Parents.”

Babylist found that ChatGPT-generated subject lines increased open rates in half of their tests. It concluded that ChatGPT is a “great resource for when the team needs subject line inspiration or help writing one,” Grant says.

AI helps retailers brainstorm ideas

ChatGPT-generated content helps Babylist’s creative team create better content, Grant adds. The value is in the brainstorming.

“If a copywriter is feeling stuck on a new concept for TikTok video, they can ask ChatGPT to generate a bunch of ideas,” she says.

Using generative AI allows retailers to scale and personalize marketing based upon the brand’s approach, says Forrester’s Pattisall.

“Let the people be in charge of the creativity and let the machines help scale and volumize the marketing,” Pattisall says.

Retailers must consider copyright and liability issues

Babylist employees are instructed not to share proprietary or confidential information with ChatGPT or any other public generative AI platform, Grant says.

This is important because retailers must also take care about what materials they use to “train” the AI model, Pattisall says.

“If those inputs are using data points that are copyrighted material, then the model potentially is violating the copyright by using rights-protected materials,” he says.

One example of this is between visual media company Getty Images and Stability AI Inc. Getty Images accused Stability AI of using more than 12 million photos without permission or payment to use those images. The complaint, filed in February 2023, says that Stability AI unlawfully used Getty’s copyrighted images and text, including metadata, to train its AI text-to-image tool Stable Diffusion.

Metadata is the information used to summarize how and when the data was created as well as the source, type and owner of the data. Stable Diffusion is a text-to-image model that uses deep learning to generate high-quality images from written descriptions.

“All of Getty’s images are copyrighted images,” Pattisall says. “So the liability is a concern for marketers.”

UrbanStems jumps onto generative AI to keep up with competitors

Competition prompted online flower retailer UrbanStems to focus on generative AI, says Katie Hudson, content director. In early 2023, the retailer was already using generative AI to create notes to accompany its flowers. Hudson says she noticed competitors doing the same — and she read about it in the media.

Katie Hudson, brand marketing and content, UrbanStems

UrbanStems decided to look into how it could use the technology beyond brand awareness, Hudson says.

Mother’s Day is UrbanStem’s busiest holiday. It accounts for 15% of the retailer’s total annual revenue. For Mother’s Day 2023, the retailer used ChatGPT to write a blog about the 10 best brunch spots for Mother’s Day in Washington, D.C.

UrbanStems marketers wrote the introduction, AI wrote the rest of it, and the article appeared in the retailer’s blog section on its website.

“During May, which includes Mother’s Day, we saw this local post drive 5% of our organic blog traffic. It was in our top 10 performing posts for the month,” Hudson says.

Blogs are not intended to drive conversion, but rather, improve organic search results, she says.

“Our blog had our highest ever non-brand search traffic during Mother’s Day,” Hudson says.

This could be attributed to the brunch blog, among other marketing efforts, she says. Over the two weeks leading up to Mother’s Day, UrbanStems’ organic search’s conversion rate increased 17%, she says.

UrbanStems used AI to write a top 10 best brunch spots for Mother’s Day in Washington D.C. in April 2023. The post increased organic blog traffic 5% in May. It was in the top 10 performing blog posts of the month.

UrbanStems has not drafted enough generated-AI posts on its blog to truly compare performance, Hudson says. Part of the reason is because it typically takes several months for its blogs to gain traffic and views in search engines like Google, she says.

Digital marketers use AI to automate content creation tasks

Not only did this ChatGPT-post drive traffic to its site, but it saved its marketers time as they did not have to manually research brunch places.

The retailer is drafting at least one AI-generated blog post a week to test how the posts perform, Hudson says. UrbanStems marketers use templates to help guide the AI. Marketers can use saved templates and copy and paste information like name insert and word count requirements, she says.

“We don’t have to do everything from scratch,” Hudson says.

What’s left is copyediting.

“I find where it’s saving us time is truly the structure of the blog. It builds it out. We give it all the key questions you might want answered and it will give us some interesting facts. We then go in and tweak as needed,” Hudson says. “Instead of a blog post taking a couple of hours, it will take 20 minutes.”

AI results need human assistance

The AI results aren’t perfect, as sometimes the AI will make up descriptions for products it does not know, or it will not write in the tone UrbanStems’ brand voice, Hudson says.

“We asked ChatGPT to write about a bouquet with a certain kind of flower and the description was way off. It didn’t know our products at all,” Hudson says, without revealing more. “It was kind of guessing. So, we had to go back and do tweaks.”

UrbanStems is feeding ChatGPT its own product descriptions. This will help it better understand the tone of the “brand’s voice” as it learns, Hudson says.

“We’re still working on having AI understand our brand voice. AI tends to create cheesy writing [for descriptions],” she says.

So for now, UrbanStems is still writing its own product descriptions.

“We are using AI to draft all our SEO content, some of our blog content, and all our meta descriptions and title tags for SEO purposes,” she says.

Retailers use AI to generate marketing content

Babylist also uses generative AI for search engine optimization. The online marketplace uses Frase, a generative AI content writing software vendor.

Typically, marketers log into Google Webmaster Tools to search what to use for SEO, Babylist’s Grant says. Now, Frase generates frequently asked questions keywords that Babylist should use to make sure an article they’re writing is SEO-optimized, she says.

“That frees up our editors to take the time to write an article and create better quality content,” Grant says, without revealing more.

Forrester’s Pattisall says generative AI will allow retailers to send more relevant communication. Marketers can uncover new ways to grow and acquire new customers. They can also use the technology to keep existing customers at a cost that does not exponentially increase year after year, he says.

“[Retailers] can maintain their business margins,” he says “They can provide the type of marketing services that they’re good at in a way that doesn’t break the bank. [The technology] allows them to be profitable,” he says.

Generative AI produces images for social media

Another way marketers can use generative AI is to create images. UrbanStems uses AI software program Midjourney that creates images from text prompts. Marketers ask it to create an image of a 10-stem red and white arrangement of peonies, in a glass vase on a white background.

Hudson says the results were encouraging.

“While it still looked like AI — not quite like a true image — it was a great starting off point,” Hudson says. “I sent that off to the merchandising team and they were able to use that image for vendors to use as a reference. That’s a huge value to us.”

AI-generated images allow UrbanStems to experiment and create new bouquet designs quickly. They do not have to buy the flowers and conduct a photo shoot to mock up new designs, she says.

Hudson says the retailer uses the standard tier of Midjourney, which means it has limits on how many images it can have the AI create in a month. Businesses can also pay more to have the AI generate images in seconds or create images in 10 minutes for cheaper.  A basic plan can cost $10 a month to $120 per month for a mega plan.

UrbanStems uses Midjourney to create images of flower arrangements to use as product mock ups to share with vendors.

Using generative AI to generate social media images

During the summer of 2023, UrbanStems ran a test via social media to see if it could gain consumers insights using AI generated images.
The test used products UrbanStems already sells, but the goal was to see if it could gain insights before actually creating new products.

The retailer launched “This or That” polls using Instagram Stories, where viewers could vote on which bouquet they preferred. The stories were live for 24 hours. UrbanStems paired similar bouquets together that have similar price points and color schemes.

The retailer’s average interaction rate for Instagram stories is 20% of its 233,000 followers view the story.

The poll’s results reflected real-life sales, Hudson says. The winning bouquets had higher
online sales compared with the bouquets with fewer votes, she says. The bouquets Sol vs. Neon Lights polled from July 12-13, 2023, with Neon Lights as the clear favorite with 79% of the vote compared to Sol’s 21%.

In UrbanStem’s Summer 2023 summer poll “This or That,” in its Instagram Stories, The Sol received 21% vs. The Neon Lights (79%).

These results give Hudson confidence that the brand could do a poll like this with AI-generated images so UrbanStems will know what shoppers’ preferences are before going to market with those products.

What’s more, it’s insights like these that Hudson believes will lead to further investment from its management team in Midjourney and generative AI applications in general.

“I feel confident I could get our company on board investing in [higher-cost plans],” Hudson says. “It will take some of the heavy lifting off our junior marketers that no longer have to be in the weeds looking up SEO terms, for example. We want our employees to grow in their role and not be bogged down.”

Marketers test and learn from AI

Another way retailers are using AI is to help alleviate the workload for junior marketers. Some retailers like men’s footwear brand Koio are just getting started using generative AI.

For about six months, Koio has used ChatGPT for email subject lines, says Joe Anhalt, vice president, marketing, growth.

“It’s one of the first places we go for inspiration,” Anhalt says. “It might take a few times and we have to make tweaks on our own, but the prompts are showing us results.”

The shoe retailer uses the AI-generated copy for performance ads on Facebook and Instagram, he says, without revealing more. The brand uses software vendor Zenlytic with generative AI tool Zoe. Zoe answers questions and generates reports about how marketing campaigns and specific promotions are performing.

While Koio hasn’t tracked how AI is performing compared with human marketers, the tool has saved it considerable time, he says.

“The larger win for us has been not needing a full-time employee to produce some of these tasks,” Anhalt says.

AI has helped marketers free up time to do other tasks, Anhalt says. However, there is a learning curve for junior marketers, he says. The retailer typically pairs a junior marketer with a copywriter until they are confident the junior marketers can use ChatGPT or a similar tool to craft emails, banner ads and other site content, he says.

What does it cost to use AI?

Overall, Babylist, UrbanStems and Koio said the cost to use generative AI technology is affordable. For certain applications, ChatGPT is free and services like Midjourney and Frase charge “reasonable” rates, according to UrbanStems and Babylist.

It’s not about the cost, Forrester’s Pattisall says. “Retailers’ knee-jerk reaction tends to be, ‘how much money is this,’ or ‘how much money will this save us?’” Those are the wrong questions, he says. “The better way to think about this is how effective it’s going to be.”

Generative AI continues to evolve at an accelerated rate. As marketers learn how to use it, the technology itself improves. It’s an idea generator if nothing else, Babylist’s Grant says.

“An editor might ask ChatGPT to come up with 40 ideas for an Instagram post,” Grant says. “30 out of 40 of those ideas might be bad — but you end up with a gem of an idea from all the wacky weirdness.”

The post Why digital marketers should not fear generative AI  appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

This year, the event will be called Prime Big Deal Days, according to a LinkedIn post from Doug Herrington, CEO of Amazon Worldwide Stores. Amazon sellers previously told Digital Commerce 360 that they’d been given an Aug. 11 deadline to submit deals for the event.

Amazon is No. 1 in the Top 1000. The database is Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest North American online retailers. Amazon is also No. 3 in the Online Marketplaces database, which ranks the 100 largest global marketplaces.

How many countries will Prime Day take place in?

Amazon Big Deal Days will take place in 19 countries, including:

• Australia
• Austria
• Belgium
• Brazil 
• Canada
• China 
• France 
• Germany 
• Italy 
• Japan 
• Luxembourg
• Netherlands 
• Poland
• Portugal
• Singapore
• Spain
• Sweden
• The United States
• The United Kingdom

How much did Amazon make on Prime Day 2022?

Amazon’s Prime Early Access Sale in October 2022 underperformed compared with the more established July Prime sale. The October sale generated 46% less revenue than the July sale, according to Similarweb data. For comparison, July Prime Days in 2022 led to $12.09 billion in sales, per Digital Commerce 360 estimates, up 8.1% over 2021. 

Prime members purchased more than 100 million items during the first iteration of the fall sale, Amazon said. That’s well below the 300 million products purchased during the July sale, Amazon said. Laneige Lip Sleeping Mask, Apple AirPods (2nd Generation), Vital Proteins Collagen Peptides, and Crest 3D Whitestrips Professional Effects Teeth Whitening Strips were among the best-selling products in the U.S. 

Shoppers largely avoided big-ticket items in favor of smaller purchases. 58% of purchases in a period of the sale monitored by research firm Numerator cost less than $20, indicating consumer preference for inexpensive products.

The summer Prime Day sales event in 2023 grew less than in the previous year, up 6.7% to $12.9 billion, according to Digital Commerce 360 Research.

When is Prime Day 2023?

The next sale will be held on October 10 and 11. In 2022, it was held on October 11 and 12.

Amazon Prime Day 2023 was held Tuesday, July 11, and Wednesday, July 12. We’ll update this page regularly to reflect new information. 

Dates for Amazon Prime Day in the past:

• Ninth: July 11-12, 2023
• Eighth: July 12-13, 2022
• Seventh: June 21-22, 2021
• Sixth: Oct 13-14, 2020
• Fifth: July 15-16, 2019
• Fourth: July 16-17, 2018
• Third: July 11-12, 2017
• Second: July 12, 2016
• First: July 15, 2015

How often is Amazon Prime Day?

Until 2022, Amazon Prime Day was once a year in the summer. In 2022, the retail giant added another Prime Day event in October. So how many times a year is Prime Day? The answer used to be once. Now, Amazon has established a two-year pattern of two separate sales events. 

How do you sign up for a Prime membership?

You can join Prime or start a free trial at Amazon Prime Day. Amazon has recently faced a lawsuit from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission alleging the ecommerce giant duped consumers into signing up for its Prime membership service and deliberately made it hard to cancel. 

How to prepare to find deals on Prime Day 

The value of Prime Day to retailers both small and large is undisputed, as millions of shoppers visit the site in search of once-a-year deals.

• Sign up for the Prime Insider newsletter to hear about Amazon Prime member benefits and find updates on deals and events.
• Create deal alerts for recommendations. As an Amazon Prime Member, you can subscribe to receive deal alert notifications related to recent Amazon searches and recently viewed items. All you have to do is visit the Prime Day event page on the Amazon app before Prime Day to create deal alerts. Once Prime Day arrives, members will receive push notifications on any available deals.
• Get deal notifications from Alexa. Alexa can make sure you don’t miss any Amazon deals. Members can add products to their Wish List, Cart, or Save for Later, and then ask Alexa to notify them about the deal.
• Set a reminder so you don’t miss the multi-day event.
• Check back here to see the latest updates.

What are Big Deal Days, and how are they different from Prime Days?

Amazon is calling this year’s fall sale Big Deal Days, a new event. It’s still exclusive to Prime members. The online retailer also held a fall sale in 2022 for the first time, called the Early Access Sale. Amazon hasn’t shared specifics about how this year’s Big Deal Days might compare to the previous events.

Prime Day is now Amazon’s biggest sale of the year. It is usually held during the summer months. In 2023, it was July 12 and July 13. The annual two-day deals event is for Prime members only. 

Amazon said Prime members ordered more than 100 million items from merchants during the Early Access sale. The sale was held on October 11 and 12 in 2022, exactly three months after the summer sale.

Prime Day, which features deals on many products on Amazon.com, began in 2015 as a celebration of Amazon’s 20th year in business. It turned into a summer sales holiday designed to drum up additional business for Amazon — and the retailer’s marketplace sellers — before the holiday shopping season. In recent years, other large retailers have offered promotions on their own websites around Prime Day to take advantage of the additional online shoppers.

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