Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Jungle Scout CEO Greg Mercer (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: We just did a piece on Amazon that starts to look at Amazon’s forays into advertising. Amazon is becoming quite a force in advertising. One of the things that we have observed in that piece is that, unlike Facebook and Google that are starting to lock horns with Apple because of data collection, Amazon doesn’t have to fight with anybody.

Amazon’s data is first-party data. They have deep data on consumers. They are not doing anything that anybody else can interfere with. As such, they are building quite the advertising business. Now based on what you are saying, I wonder if there is more data that Amazon is starting to reveal because there are now foraying into advertising. 

Greg Mercer: The short answer to that is no, not really. There aren’t new data sources that Amazon has released ever since we have been in the industry. They are not releasing more data. That is one of the reasons Jungle Scout is valuable for getting these insights. We understand consumer behavior well on their platform. A lot of people are able to get information and insights from Jungle Scout that Amazon does not provide. 

Sramana Mitra: That is interesting. You know how Google provides the keyword tool, including for SEO purposes or Google Adwords advertising, where you can do significant research on keyword searches on Google. There is no equivalent of that in Amazon. Is that what you are saying?

Greg Mercer: That is correct. There is no equivalent of that in Amazon. If you are advertising on their platform, they will give you some recommendations on what keyword you should bid on and things like that, but they do not give indicators or impressions on the search volumes of different keywords on a daily, monthly, or weekly basis. 

Sramana Mitra: Can you take us through a case study where one of your clients has done well on Amazon? Take us through the steps in that engagement. What happened and how did things pan out?

Greg Mercer: We offer a ton of different functions which includes everything from researching a new product to understand consumer behavior but also managing and optimizing your business. We recently acquired an ad tech platform to help users better manage their ads on Amazon. Let me give you some examples that are similar to the use case that I was talking about earlier. Are you familiar with these funds that have recently been popular and that they are rolling up a bunch of Amazon names and brands? 

Sramana Mitra: Yes, I know of those.

Greg Mercer: If you were to talk to any of those companies, 99% of them are Jungle Scout users. They have brands that these new funds are interested in purchasing. These Amazon native brands for example. If you are thinking, “Okay, I want to take advantage of the Amazon platform.” It is important and valuable for you to know what is selling on Amazon. If you are building a new business there, you want to know what customers want. What are they shopping for? What should you sell them? Jungle Scout helps them tremendously with that. 

This segment is part 2 in the series : Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Jungle Scout CEO Greg Mercer
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