If You Can't Beat Them, Temu Them

Amazon decides that the best way to battle the low-cost Chinese retailers is to become one.

Amazon Fights Temu… with Temu

Reuters is reporting today that Amazon will soon offer a Temu clone on its web site.

It will be a new discount section, featuring cheap items that ship directly to overseas consumers from warehouses in China. The move, of course, is the e-commerce giant's most aggressive response to the growth of bargain sites like Temu and Shein.

The new marketplace will offer unbranded fashion, home goods, and daily necessities, with products delivered between nine and eleven days to customers. Amazon plans to start signing up merchants this summer and begin accepting inventory in the fall.

According to the report, sourced from a closed-door meeting with major merchants, sellers joining the bargain site will be able to determine their product selection and pricing, and can produce in small batches to test demand for new products.

Still unclear: if these shipments will use a U.S. trade provision that exempts individual packages worth less than $800 from U.S. customs duties. Both Temu and Shein depend on that expedited clearance process, which is available for direct-to-consumer shipments.

The Identity Crisis of Social Networks

A seachange in how social media platforms think of themselves is underway, but advertisers aren’t moved.

An interesting thinkpiece today at Digiday (“Don’t call them social media networking sites: Why these platforms are distancing themselves from the social media label”) looks at why social media sites would rather you not think of them as social media sites.

The piece notes that Pinterest refers to itself as:

Snapchat’s been using the tagline:

Even Reddit tried to spin its way out of its category, using muscle-straining gymnastics:

Which is ridiculous, of course. You don’t talk to communities, you talk to people in communities. And the majority of people still using Facebook aren’t spending their time following Cardi B, they’re hanging out in in their local “What’s happening in the south end” groups, yelling about whose kids are using dirtbikes on the hiking trails. That’s Facebook today.

In fact, that’s a lot of social media — legacy and new — so little wonder those platforms are trying to reposition themselves.

The whole piece is definitely worth a read — it goes into some good detail about the impact of brand safety missteps at some platforms.

You can find the article at Digiday.com and it’s called “Don’t call them social media networking sites.”

Import Your Other Site’s Data Into GA4

A big update coming to Google Analytics 4:

Users will be able to import third-party ad data from Pinterest, Reddit and Snap into GA4. The other sites’ data will be dropped into the cross-channel performance report and mapped to dimensions like “ads cost,” “ads clicks” and “ads impressions.”

Notably, neither Meta nor TikTok is not on that list.

Some other updates announced today:

They’ve also released cross-channel budgeting, though the release is in beta. It includes a projections report to track media pacing and projected performance against a target objective, like revenue.

GA4 also will start importing aggregated impressions from linked Campaign Manager 360 accounts

And finally, what marketers have been clamouring for — more AI! 😑 Google says its system will use machine learning to find reporting patterns and report them as recommendations. So basically what it’s been doing for years, only now it’s powered with magical pixie dust. Or something.

Google’s Forthcoming tROAS Insights

You may soon be able to get better insights into your Google Ads’ pMax and shopping campaigns.

A new Target ROAS Insight Box is popping up for some people, showing if your Actual ROAS is within the expected range.

PPC pro Thomas Eccel spotted it in his account and said:

Like other platforms, Google will average this out. A little note on that screen reads:

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