Connected Commerce: Amazon Growth Is No Longer Just About Ads

Hai Mag 00:08

Welcome everyone to the new episode of the Connected Commerce Podcast. And here is your host, Hi Meg, and the CEO and founder of Eva Commerce. And today I have a a distinct guest. I'm very honored to have Yulia Arseniook Arsenio together with us.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 00:29

Yeah.

Hai Mag 00:31

And Yulia with two eyes, you know, that's important because I know many Yulia's, but they have one eye and this is what two eyes, you know, is important to say.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 00:40

Hehehehe

Hai Mag 00:41

Julia is also joining to our podcast from Kiev, Ukraine. And thank you very much, Julia, for being in our podcast.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 00:51

Thank you so much. I am so excited and so honored by introductions. It's our first connections in this show. And I'm very grateful for these invitations and happy to be here. And briefly introduce yourself. I am Amazon and e-commerce leader of growth with 50 plus experience.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 01:15

in the international marketplace, retail, digital marketing, e-commerce across USA, Canada, and Europe. And like I told, I am founder of the White Label Agency.

Hai Mag 01:31

Now it's very interesting and very important to say that. First of all, it is not easy to be a woman founder. Guys, it's easy to be a man and founder things, you know.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 01:40

It's a little crazy. It's sometimes a little crazy.

Hai Mag 01:44

Yes, I mean being the woman founder, it's not easy, first of all. Secondly, let's not forget that Yulia is in Kiev, which is still there are some drones and some, you know, some some attacks, you know, it's it's a war.

Hai Mag 01:58

going on for the last five years. It's not easy for the American people to understand exactly how

Yuliia Arsheniuk 02:06

Yeah

Hai Mag 02:06

how it works to live in a city which is in a constant attack. So and the third thing is, you know, like helping the Amazon sellers, small and medium businesses, their demands are equal to any big company.

Hai Mag 02:21

But they always also want to pay less, less spee less, you know, open.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 02:25

Yeah.

Hai Mag 02:26

So it's not a very, very easy, easy business at the end of the day. so thank you very much for Yulia again joining us. And also, you know, it's it's a very, very difficult task and you are doing it for many years now. and

Hai Mag 02:42

white label agency, you know, you mentioned that you have more than fifty people, fifty connections. It is also excellent, you know, because if somebody needs any type of primarily Amazon services, creative services, expansion maybe into European markets like especially for the US brands, that would be a very interesting, very convenient way to work maybe with Yulia and her team.

Hai Mag 03:08

So the idea about this podcast is really to talk about like some connected commerce stories and probably you work with different type of sellers in Europe, etcetera. So that's very interesting. So Yulia beg to you tell us because your tell us please your first story.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 03:28

Yes, am a helpers-sellers, companies who want to scale and launch brands on Amazon or international marketplace in Europe, USA, and Canada. My next story today is so interesting and so innovative. I wanted to talk about Amazon Creative in the AI era, designed for human and AI.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 03:52

one of the most interesting trends in the e-commerce today. I saw how Amazon AI is changing the way the people create Amazon content, including listing image, A plus content, brand story, everything what you need to launch your first product, the first brand on the Amazon. And this is…

Yuliia Arsheniuk 04:14

I am working on right now, it's really changed the way how we create Amazon content. For many years, when we started to create Visuals, yes, and work it with the first products, we asked one question only, does this image look good? And we often used only general and abstract language.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 04:41

Currently, we need to ask it more different and more important questions. Does this content clearly explain the products for both customers and AI? And as we will see, Amazon is becoming increasingly AI-focused. And the first we saw was the rise

Yuliia Arsheniuk 05:03

Amazon power shopping with tools like Rufus, while Amazon was also a developed system like Cosmo. And next steps on my 2026, this year, Amazon took another step by branch Rufus and Alexa Plus into what it's called Alexa for Shopping.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 05:29

And this shows for us how Amazon is moving below traditional keyword search and creates visual content to AI-powered shopping where the systems can better understand both customers' intent and product information.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 05:52

Today, customers can ask it, compare products, get the AI-generated overview, receive information, recommendations. And beautiful listings is not enough anymore. Sorry, guys. Nietzsche brands provided the clear, detailed, and consistent information.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 06:15

not only for customers, but also in the way that AI systems can to understand your listing via image. And I think this creates a new challenge for brands today with questions. How do we create content that customers can to understand easily?

Yuliia Arsheniuk 06:38

and AI can to understand, interpret, and use effectively.

Hai Mag 06:46

Just to

Hai Mag 06:46

recap, you know, because I think it's very interesting concept. I mean, in the past, maybe even six months ago, we create listing optimization based on what customer wants to see, but also based on search engine optimization.

Hai Mag 07:04

And search engine optimization is for the algorithm. It's for an algorithm which is primarily

Yuliia Arsheniuk 07:09

Yeah, yeah.

Hai Mag 07:10

rule based. And the idea was with that search search engine optimization to match to the search terms that the customers are looking for. What you are saying now is with the Amex Amazon Alexa.

Hai Mag 07:24

you know introduction which kind of replaced amazon rufus in us i think in europe they still use this amazon rufus but now it is about ai visibility about answer engine optimization and this is also something now we we do for example as a as a company as eva we score the customers listings

Hai Mag 07:48

based on their AI visibility. Now very interesting. Yesterday I was with a twenty million dollar brand and they have like fifty listings and the scoring that we had on AI was almost like two out of ten. Meaning that if somebody is looking for that product and the product it's not always super easy like

Hai Mag 08:11

It's like even people, for example, very interesting in the US people speak Spanish, a lot of people, they search

Yuliia Arsheniuk 08:17

Yeah, but not

Yuliia Arsheniuk 08:19

and not only Spanish in the USA live a lot another citizens with is other countries. Yes, not Spanish. I Yeah, yeah in search to

Hai Mag 08:31

And then they search, right? They search with these things.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 08:35

not Spanish I remember the period when the all sellers was all need to

Yuliia Arsheniuk 08:42

just make the research and include the Spanish language. Guys, yes, good, but it's more wild because USA is so big. It has different citizens, different countries, and everyone tries to use their native language.

Hai Mag 09:02

Abso absolut and also now in the past maybe you look for something specific, just two or three words, but right now you need to construct a a a sentence, like you need to talk to this Alexa, and everybody prefers to talk to Alexa in their own

Yuliia Arsheniuk 09:19

Yeah.

Hai Mag 09:20

language, and nobody is like addressing this particular area, for example. So that's a very good point that you made

Yuliia Arsheniuk 09:27

You

Hai Mag 09:27

as well.

Hai Mag 09:28

So yeah, like so basically you think now AI visibility, AI together with what the customer wants to see becomes the most important, right? That's kind of the essence.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 09:39

Yes,

Yuliia Arsheniuk 09:40

it's so important in my current work. I am connecting Amazon AI, CEO, CEO, product information, benefits, and creative designing. On Amazon, I look at content and visuals. It's one connect system that includes image, infographics, AI plus content.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 10:06

product information, benefits, use case, relevant search terms, and everything need to work together, tell someone's story, yes, and make the product easy for both customers and Amazon AI system to understand. Because Amazon tried everyday update each

Yuliia Arsheniuk 10:27

Yes, the eye systems can check your image on Amazon that give correct recommendations for your potential customers about your products which you sell on the marketplace. For example, if skin care products are designed for sensitive skin, we need to

Yuliia Arsheniuk 10:51

communicate that constantly across customer journey. Yes, that in the copy, in the visuals, brand story, AI plus content, post, yes, we can to make the story and show people.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 11:11

can't understand and AI system can't understand what we sell. It's helped more easy and more easy work with products for me. Not for maybe for beginners sellers because sometimes for them so crazy. Some sense my backgrounds more deeply with many years here.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 11:32

When I show it's a visual image and mention in the product's copy and details, explain the relevant benefits and to reinforce the message through some I plus content, brand story, post, we work like it's one story. We not everything need to work together not separately.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 11:56

It's so interesting because the biggest part is the technical side. My goal and my main mission is not that I read listings word to word. I need to understand the key benefits of our products and to get recommendations. Our customers, when we ask it in the

Yuliia Arsheniuk 12:19

Alexa Shopping.

Hai Mag 12:20

Right. So what you're saying is and I work with I mean as a computer engineer now I've worked with AI for almost twenty years or even a little bit more. And what you're saying is like the key value pairs in terms of like what is the exact benefit

Hai Mag 12:38

And how it solves a problem like this kind of things are how AI understands the product. But also you're saying that if, for example, that skincare product is for a sensitive skin. So, you know, one of the things that we always discuss with the customers, the first the first point is like to understand who is your ICP, who is that consumer that you are addressing now.

Hai Mag 13:03

the consumer is, I don't know, let's say twenty to forty years old woman with sensitive skin. And now we do that full story, right? Like for AI to understand.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 13:08

Yeah, Yes, full story. And

Yuliia Arsheniuk 13:15

before, yes, we focused only our audience for our products. Currently, we create our listings, our image for two audiences, for customer and for system. It's sometimes a little have trouble because

Yuliia Arsheniuk 13:34

OK, we create image and how we need to use our image easily and clearly that not only humans can to understand needs that and AI system understand it.

Hai Mag 13:50

Very good. Yeah. I mean, excellent under explanation. So which means that from brand story to these images and to your A plus content, now the story, the consistency of the story is even more important for that AI visibility and AEO effectiveness. That's also what you're saying. So

Hai Mag 14:11

That's context is very clear, Julian. Thank you very much.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 14:14

Yeah

Hai Mag 14:15

I think you hit a very important point also last week in Amazon Accelerate. We talked a lot, you know, they they talked a lot about this concept, so it was just the right time to mention

Yuliia Arsheniuk 14:27

Mm-hmm.

Hai Mag 14:27

this story very much and and we also like try to do this scoring for ai visibility. Seems like ninety percent of listings are not optimized yet for AI. So tell us more,

Yuliia Arsheniuk 14:39

Yeah.

Hai Mag 14:40

I mean if you have another story maybe, you know, to the based on all your experiences.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 14:47

Okay, maybe my second connection, I want to talk about inventory and advertising.

Hai Mag 14:55

Okay, okay.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 14:57

It's so interesting story too, because of how many times advertising and inventory we treated separately, even though they are connected. And thinking was so simple. We need more silos.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 15:14

Let's increase PPC. But PPC does more generate silos. It also creates demand and can to increase speed of each product sale. You can to have a great PPC campaign, strong traffic, good conversions. But if you don't have enough inventory,

Yuliia Arsheniuk 15:36

You can create the big problem. You can sell your inventory faster around after stock. Yes, lose silence and potentially lose momentum in your build with your advertising. And Goel is not just to generate more silence.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 15:59

It's to make sure you can support the demand, keep our products in stock, protect profitability, and deliver your products, your customer on time. Is this change the way we make the advertising decisions?

Yuliia Arsheniuk 16:18

Instead to look at the PPC, we also consider inventory level, sales velocity, demand, margin, restocking before increase or reduce advertising. That means inventory needs to be ready for these demands that advertising creates. And after analyzing these situations, yes.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 16:44

I started to look at PPC inventory, sales velocity, demand, and profitability like one system, yes, one connect system. And don't look only across all roads. I look at how much inventory we have right now, how fast we are sailing.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 17:07

how much demand we are creating with advertising, how we restock fast enough, and how we keep enough inventory available while scaling sales. It's helped us make PPC decisions and avoid increased advertising when our

Yuliia Arsheniuk 17:31

inventory can to support demand delay and because PPC can to directly often how fast your product will sell and when you increase advertising you usually get to more traffic. More traffic can to mean more sales and more sales mean your inventory sell out fast.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 17:53

Sometimes, and sometimes

Hai Mag 17:54

Nice. Mm, correct.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 17:56

right decisions are not to spend more. Sometimes right decisions is protect your inventory and show you enough products available to meet demand. Also is dependent where our product made and storage.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 18:15

how long restocking takes and how quickly we can get a new inventory. Coil is a balanced advertising demand, inventory and sales. We can grow through to run auto stock and make sure customers get their product on time.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 18:35

That's why it's interesting, interesting topic like and connect like one system because if the big company has big brands, we have the department, department, PPC department, logistic department, department and they need to connect it because PPC team launch a lot, a lot, campaign and not check.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 19:00

our inventory. It's a need to connect together and work it together that we protect our advertising spend

Hai Mag 19:10

Makes sense.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 19:10

too.

Hai Mag 19:11

I think that I mean you hit a very another very important point here. So one aspect of it is like you said, advertising, sales, sales mean, sales velocity, ranking and inventory decisions and profitable

Yuliia Arsheniuk 19:24

Yeah, yeah.

Hai Mag 19:25

decisions all are connected together.

Hai Mag 19:28

So that is very important dimension. And if the inventory is low, because you are doing a sales, a lot of sales, and then you should be playing with the advertising. So advertising needs to be inventory a bear. Another thing, yeah.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 19:40

Yeah.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 19:42

And this biggest mistake of the beginner sellers who don't plan in their inventory and just run the advertising campaign so fast and after stock, step by step need when you have a lower inventory.

Hai Mag 20:00

very good. There is another interesting point just to add. Like also people do replenishment forecasting, you know, inventory replenishment forecasting, for example, we do that too. But most of the time, as you said, the inventory guy just knows how many are available, how many units are available, and kind of orders what can replenish that, but ignoring the fact that there is advertising.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 20:24

Yeah.

Hai Mag 20:25

going on with this account, meaning if there is a good push on advertising, maybe inventory will be much less compared to the previous

Yuliia Arsheniuk 20:35

Sure.

Hai Mag 20:36

previous I don't know month or two. So replenishment forecasts need to be done with advertising in mind rather than without.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 20:47

Yeah, and sometimes when we have inventory low, you can slow down and control place of the advertising. And it's helped for us to everything. understood. We can to increase our PPC.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 21:11

little protect, little protect spend, little protect inventory and check where our products, how we can to get so fast to FBA or for our customer.

Hai Mag 21:30

So thank you very much for being a guest of the Connected Commerce podcast, Julia, and hope to see you again in our podcast or in person. Thanks for you know being our guest.

Yuliia Arsheniuk 21:42

Thank you, Harry, for these invitations and thank you for me opportunity to tell this interesting story and maybe it's helpful for beginners sellers for advanced level, yes, work and create their resources, their PPC more effectively and make the right and correct decisions.

Hai Mag 22:05

Thank you.