Zoe Lu, SVP, SMB at Pacvue chats about the state of adtech and how modern advertising is evolving in this MarTech Series catch-up:

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Tell us about yourself a few of the latest enhancements from Helium 10 that are addressing current user demands

In today’s competitive landscape, advertising is essential for Amazon sellers to stay ahead. A great product and effective listing optimization are no longer enough for brands to reach potential customers, influence them to purchase, and convert them into loyal advocates. Amazon advertising has become a critical growth tool for brands, yet sellers often struggle with the complexities of managing paid campaigns at scale.

At Helium 10, we’re focused on giving our customers the resources they need to run, grow, and expand their businesses, which is why we’ve released several advertising innovations over the last few months. We’ve brought our advertising solution into our Diamond plan for sellers at no cost, launched our AI Advertising feature which allows sellers with limited advertising knowledge to quickly launch paid campaigns, and just released advanced analytics with Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) which gives customers the audience insights and analytics they need to understand how their ads are performing and adjust accordingly.

The future of advertising is the ability to tell compelling stories that resonate with distinct customer cohorts. Personalization will be the key to building customer loyalty and driving conversions, allowing brands to connect more deeply and authentically with their audiences at each stage of the customer journey.

We’d love the top highlights from your latest AI Advertising tool, how is it enabling better ad cycles?

Our goal with AI Advertising is to take the complexity out of running ads on Amazon. Sellers can choose their product, ACoS target, and daily budget, while Helium 10’s AI launches your campaigns, harvests new keywords, and optimizes bids on your behalf.

We know that understanding and taking actions on advertising performance is a common challenge, which is why our comprehensive reporting covers performance across both paid and organic orders, budget utilization, and ROI. It’s our priority to empower our customers with clear insights into the impact of their ad campaigns, so they can make informed, confident decisions based on this data.

As the path to purchase becomes less linear, Helium 10 is also incorporating deeper AMC analytics into its ads platform now that AMC data is no longer restricted to advertisers solely using DSP. We’ve recently incorporated AMC’s overlap analysis directly in the Helium 10 suite, allowing customers to quickly understand conversion rates based on different combinations of ad interactions. AMC insights are a significant unlock sellers can use to gain deeper visibility into how Amazon shoppers engage with their products, revealing which ad types may not directly lead to sales but still play a crucial role in driving conversions.

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What about the current state of AI powered adtech interests you most?

AI powered ad-tech democratizes digital marketing. What used to take large teams can be done by an individual leveraging technology. As we see the barriers to entry come down in commerce, it will be interesting to see how storytelling and branding improves across product categories. We’re in a world where there are more options than ever, so the methods a brand uses to effectively communicate and connect with their audience, wherever their audiences are (ex: social channels, commerce sites, watching videos), will build a strong customer base and loyalty.

The flip side to this on the Pacvue side is with democratizing creative and advertising strategies, it is more important than ever to lean into storytelling and audience connection. AMC and more nuanced segmentation unlocks the ability to create connections in a personalized way and technology allows us to do this at scale, through increasing high-quality, personalized, optimized output.

How are rules-based advertising templates making it easier for end users to drive ad campaigns?

It’s another way for sellers who are running paid ads campaigns to save time and money during key sales periods. Rules based advertising templates are great for the seller who is looking for more control over their campaigns to build customizable templates based on best practices and tailor the automation to their goals and preferences.

This feature is especially valuable during the holiday season when brands can have specific return on ad spend (ROAS) or advertising cost of sales (ACoS) targets, so utilizing templates helps streamline adjustments that would otherwise require manual calculations and updates in Seller Central.

What should early users of AI powered ad tools keep in mind before deploying AI driven campaigns?

85% of marketers have used AI already, so the question is, how can sellers and brands use AI features to drive even better results?

AI campaigns are powerful when it comes to finding the right keyword for your product, setting bids at the right level, and changing bids over time as the market changes. But that’s only half of the equation. We’re seeing the most success from customers who already have a strong, optimized listing and are then using AI campaigns to drive more traffic to products.

AI Advertising allows sellers to run ads without learning all the ins and outs of Amazon ad campaigns, but it’s critical for sellers to know how to read top line metrics like Advertising Cost of Sales (ACoS) and Total Advertising Cost of Sales (TACoS) and understand how these KPIs contribute to their bottom line.

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