Momentum Commerce announced the release of the Momentum Commerce Amazon Brand Index. The Index is a free interactive software tool that tracks over 3,500 product categories on Amazon.com, scores how discoverable over 80,000 brands are within the Amazon search results and reveals to what extent sales for these categories and brands are driven by Sponsored Amazon Advertising placements or organic, free listings. The Index classifies brand participation on Amazon into four different classes: Leaders, Incumbents, Challengers and Laggards. The index functions on mobile devices but offers more robust data visualization to desktop browsers.

“One of the most common questions we are asked by brand and private equity business partners is ‘who within a given category is really good at Amazon?'” said John T. Shea, Momentum Commerce’s Founder and President. “With the Momentum Commerce Amazon Brand Index, we set out to provide a free and interactive software tool that could help answer this question in real-time, with a transparent methodology and enough granularity and specificity to be useful to a wide universe of Manufacturer and Direct-to-Consumer brands.”

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Momentum Commerce’s Amazon Brand Index tracks how discoverable over 80,000 brands are within the Amazon search results

“Amazon’s retail and marketplace businesses are fundamentally a collection of algorithms that connect consumers to products. Because 90% of all transactions on Amazon.com are preceded by a search event and most searchers never scroll beyond the first page of results, the algorithm that ranks products against consumer search queries is the ultimate arbiter of success. As a result, a particular brand’s ‘Share of Voice’ within the top ten search listings for their category tends to be the most effective metric to evaluate brand success and the one we selected to anchor the index to,” said Jay McQuillan, Momentum Commerce’s Chief Technology Officer.

The Momentum Commerce Amazon Brand index classifies brand performance into four different classes:

Leaders: These are brands that command a relatively high total share of search for the universe of keywords aligned to the department selected. They are brands who are highly visible in both sponsored search results (Sponsored Product and Sponsored Brand ad formats) and organic search results.

Incumbents: These are brands that command a relatively high share of organic search but a relatively lower share of sponsored search on Amazon. These brands may rely more on brand equity or price advantage to maintain their visibility and may be at risk of losing share as Amazon continues to increase the presence of advertising within the search results.

Challengers: These are brands that command a relatively low share of organic search results but a higher share of sponsored search results. These brands may be newer in a category and pursuing an aggressive paid media strategy to gain share. If their products have good pricing, compelling content, consistent availability and positive customer reviews they will likely earn organic visibility over time and may be viewed as the biggest threats to incumbent brands.

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Laggards: These brands have a relatively lower share of both Organic and Sponsored search on Amazon. Most categories have thousands of brands competing and these brands are visible enough to earn inclusion in the Index so their performance is still noteworthy. However, these brands may struggle to gain significant share given their current level of discoverability on the platform.

“Share of Voice within Amazon’s search results is the best single metric to score brand performance on Amazon because it encompasses all the components of successful operations on the platform in one single metric. To achieve a high share of search on Amazon, a brand must have consistent product availability, good content relevancy, strong customer reviews and ratings, compelling product photography, competitive pricing, compelling fulfillment speed, strong advertising performance, good brand equity and of course consistent sales velocity.” Said Molly Doe, Momentum Commerce’s Vice-President of Client Development.