Welcome to our weekly roundup of the top five Amazon news stories of the week.
Amazon says facial recognition bias claims are ‘misleading’: Zoe Kleinman at BBC News reports that Amazon has defended its facial-recognition tool, Rekognition, against claims of racial and gender bias, following a study published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The researchers compared tools from five companies, including Microsoft and IBM. While none was 100% accurate, it found that Amazon’s Rekognition tool performed the worst when it came to recognising women with darker skin. Amazon said the study was “misleading”. Continue reading…
How to make money as an Amazon influencer: Lauren Johnson at Business Insider reports that for two years, Amazon has run an affiliate program that lets social media influencers earn a cut of sales generated from Amazon links within YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. The program has largely flown under the radar, but there was recently an uptick in social chatter as new people have signed up for the program and marketing firms like Influence.co have reported that Amazon is increasingly expanding it. One product that’s gone viral is a panelled puffer coat that sells for $130 and is so popular that it has its own Instagram account. Continue reading…
Amazon added a first-ever warning about counterfeit products to its earnings report: Eugene Kim at CNBC reports that Amazon is warning investors of one of the biggest problems facing its online marketplace: counterfeit products. Under the “risk factors” section of its annual report, Amazon added a new line addressing counterfeit problems on its marketplace. “We also may be unable to prevent sellers in our stores or through other stores from selling unlawful, counterfeit, pirated, or stolen goods, selling goods in an unlawful or unethical manner, violating the proprietary rights of others, or otherwise violating our policies,” the filing said. Continue reading…
Amazon Expedited Shipping scrapped from March 2019: Chris Dawson at Tamebay reports that Amazon is to cease offering customers Amazon Expedited Shipping from March, this will also impact Merchants as the option to offer Expedited Shipping will be removed from Seller Central. Amazon’s reasoning is that they currently offer Standard Shipping, Expedited Shipping and Premium Shipping and the expected delivery dates for the three services have a large overlap. To fix this and make the proposition cleared to customers they will simply scrap Expedited Shipping leaving just Standard and Premium shipping options. Continue reading…
Jeff Bezos used to hate spending money on ads, but told employees in November he ‘changed his mind’: Eugene Kim at CNBC reports that Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has admitted to changing his mind about ads during the company’s all-hands staff meeting in November. Amazon’s CEO once famously said ads are “the price you pay when your product is unremarkable.” The company’s promotion of everything from its Echo devices to Amazon Web Services led to a 72.5% increase in U.S. ad spending last year to $1.8 billion, according to Kantar Media. Continue reading…
Bonus: What FBA Sellers Need to Know About Amazon Sales Rank
Quote of the week:
“I intend to live life, not just exist.”
George Takei
Have a great weekend!
