This will certainly inject more competition into these auctions, and competing retailers who gained in Amazon’s absence may see some impacts to performance over the coming weeks. That said, there are many moving parts when it comes to Google ad auctions with Amazon only one of those, and it’s typically quite difficult to definitively quantify the effect of Amazon in and of itself.
For Amazon, this is yet another signal that it is returning to its normal level of service and order capacity. While it began to allow shipments of nonessential products to its warehouses again back in mid-April, initial shipments were limited in quantity and which products were permitted, and it took time for Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) to really open up and for delivery time estimates to return to previous levels. With things now more or less back to normal for Amazon, its willingness to invest in Google ads is a sign that it is fully confident it can handle more volume moving forward. Almost three months ago we reported on Amazon’s decision to pause Google text and Shopping ads as it focused on essential products in the early days of restricted movement stemming from COVID-19. The move made sense at the time given that Amazon needed to hire over 100,00 workers and make other efforts to ramp up its order fulfillment capacity. While it has yet to return to the impression share levels observed in early Q1, Amazon appears on its way to regaining its presence among Google paid listings.
In a sign that things for the eCommerce giant are returning to normal, US advertisers in a variety of product categories started seeing Amazon creep up in Google Auction Insights reports last week, with June 10 the most common date of first arrival back in the auctions.
For one advertiser that competes against Amazon in a number of product categories, Amazon’s Google Shopping impression share went from non-existent on June 9 to over 20% by June 13.
