Connected Commerce: Stop Treating Your Ad Channels Like Silos

Hai Mag 00:08

Hi everyone, welcome to the Connected Commerce podcast by EVA Commerce. So today I have a privileged guest, a person that I worked for the last couple of years, Auckland, who manages our advertising at Eva. So welcome, Auckland.

Oaklyn Gale 00:26

Thank you, thank you for having me. I'm so happy and excited to be here.

Hai Mag 00:30

Sounds great. So Auckland, maybe we start first by telling us about yourself and what you do at Eva and then we move forward to discuss about the connected commerce.

Oaklyn Gale 00:45

Yeah, yeah, sure. I've been in e-commerce for over ten years and I also build my own business on e-commerce, my own brand. I'm I'm still doing my own clothes and so I can tell like I'm the one who actually spending the money and you know living with the results, not just the one who spends right now. and at Eva now we run advertising across pretty much every channel, Amazon, Walmart.

Oaklyn Gale 01:11

Google Meta, TikTok, Chibi. And that's the part I find fascinating because once you are operating across that many channels at the same time, you know start seeing things you would never catch inside any single of them. So yeah, that's how we are doing at Eva with the advertising team.

Hai Mag 01:30

Right, so you are managing the team. I know that you are managing more than two hundred brands at Eva. They are advertising both PPC and DSP, and that

Oaklyn Gale 01:40

Yeah.

Hai Mag 01:41

is super exciting. Also, you mentioned about like the expansion, like Google, Meta, TikTok. I mean Chi Wee. I love Chiwi personally because I am interested in the doc supplement space now very much.

Oaklyn Gale 01:55

Yeah.

Hai Mag 01:55

as

Hai Mag 01:55

I'm investing into a dog supplement brand. And one of the things that I see is as you know like starting this brand, it is important not to not to look at the channels as silos. So what you do on Amazon can impact TikTok or Google or Meta. So before we go into that connected commerce stories which is the

Hai Mag 02:21

essence of this podcast, can you tell us a little bit on how you see that connected commerce but from an advertising perspective like Amazon,

Oaklyn Gale 02:32

Mm-hmm.

Hai Mag 02:33

Walmart, Chiwi, Google, Meta, TikTok, like how do you manage it now all together? What is the difference than managing them in silos?

Oaklyn Gale 02:44

Mm-hmm. So actually what we are doing on the e-commerce platform when it comes to Amazon and Walmart, let's say and the TV, so you are you are trying to catch the audience by targeting the keywords, category, or products. So what you are doing, you are trying to catch the customers when they are in the journey. you are doing with the different type of targets. But on the Google and Meta side,

Oaklyn Gale 03:06

you are trying to target the audiences mostly. And you know, you are trying to reach the customers who potentially buys your product with the audiences. But on the e-commerce side, you are doing with the different type of campaigns.

Oaklyn Gale 03:21

basically like shortly you are trying to target the audiences but on the e commerce platform you are trying to target their journey because they have the they are the audiences who have the highest

Oaklyn Gale 03:33

intent when it comes to buy something, right? So no one like waking up to open their TikTok or you know Meta to buy something. But when they have the intent to buy something and to do that they they can find you with the keyword, with the category or, you know, with the product. But in the other platform you are trying to catch their attention first.

Oaklyn Gale 03:56

and you are tr you need to convince them to buy your product. But th this is the main difference when it comes to different channels.

Hai Mag 04:05

I see your point. So basically what you're saying is there is a high intent when people are on e-commerce marketplaces and there is more of an interest when it's about Meta or Google. I also see that n right now more and more discoverability happening on TikTok or AI platforms. So that is probably another you know, another

Hai Mag 04:30

a logical block that kind of adds into that journey too. So

Oaklyn Gale 04:35

Yeah.

Hai Mag 04:36

it makes a lot of sense. And my assumption is now these are all this building blocks of managing the entire advertising starts from that discoverability on TikTok, Chat GPT, perplexity, and then there is

Hai Mag 04:51

the interest, more interest on the Google and Meta, and then there is the intent when somebody is already on the marketplace. So managing this holistically, like what you do, what we do at Eva makes now more sense than ever. So let's kind of jump into the stories then because I think the stories will even be a proof point of why a holistic management

Hai Mag 05:16

makes more sense compared to managing Amazon, Walmart or Meta in a silo. So tell

Oaklyn Gale 05:23

Yeah.

Hai Mag 05:23

us kind of like the first story that you have in connected commerce, please.

Oaklyn Gale 05:28

Yeah, sure.

Oaklyn Gale 05:30

let's say there was a brand like who are selling like vegan protein powder and they were running a meta ads, Google Ads, and they were all visible on the Amazon as well. And they wanted to sell to the audience who are from eighteen to twenty five, the girl lives in New York, like who who is interested in yoga and stuff.

Oaklyn Gale 05:50

But when you run your ads and your business on Amazon, Amazon tells you

Oaklyn Gale 05:55

is your actual audience with the, you know, who is the converted one. So all the effort that you are putting to reach the audience that you wanna reach with your product, you are targeting, you know, the audience and you are just losing like using the look alike interest and stuff that you want to reach. But

Oaklyn Gale 06:13

What Amazon data shows you, your actual buyers is actually from 30 to 35, mostly men, you know, who lives in that area. So using that audience who is converted most with the highest intent on Amazon and targeting those specific audiences with the meta and Google, like it's it shifted a game, you know, on when it comes to meta effort on the same brand. So

Oaklyn Gale 06:40

Yes, you can have the you know, stereotype that you want to reach, you want to tell your story and you know, you want to reach that kind of audience, but Amazon tells you who actually buys your product. And you know, it gives you the real audience data that you actually need to target and you can easily convert and you can easily increase your ROAS and decrease your custom requisition cost when it comes to Meta and Google.

Oaklyn Gale 07:07

So that was that's one of my story when it comes to connected commerce using the Amazon audience data to, change the audience target on meta specifically. So that shifted the game and that's lower the customer acquisition cost on the meta and increase the return of investment on meta side as well.

Hai Mag 07:29

Now that's a very nice story because just last week I was talking to a brand and they were telling me that to make the audiences better on meta, they are just paying like a couple of thousand dollars every month to a a software plus some type of a consulting firm. And I thought about the same thing, like why do you spend money

Hai Mag 07:54

To sharpen your audience on meta because that's exactly the reason why they are doing it, trying to find the high intent audience rather than just the interested ones. But what you're saying is instead of doing this, use Amazon Marketing Cloud, AMC, AMC audiences, find the high intent audience and leverage that with thin meta. Can I assume that this can all also be

Hai Mag 08:20

utilized with Google too.

Oaklyn Gale 08:23

Yeah, yeah, definitely. any place that you are specifically targeting the audiences. I gave as an example meta because you know when it comes to audience targeting, you're only targeting the audience on meta. On Google you can, you know, target the keywords and there is a still room on Google, but on meta you are mostly targeting with the audience. So that's why it was a huge difference when it comes to

Oaklyn Gale 08:47

meta. But it's it's the same with the Google as well. Yeah, you're right.

Hai Mag 08:51

Okay, I mean that's also good to know. So which

Oaklyn Gale 08:53

Mm-hmm.

Hai Mag 08:53

means that like the Amazon marketing cloud audiences can be leveraged with Google or Meta. Just a question that comes to my mind, like can you then also use anything that is already used within Google or Meta in Amazon in some way or not?

Oaklyn Gale 09:11

Yeah, actually the builds vice versa. You know, you can also do the same proven format on Google or Meta and you know to convert to on Amazon you know advertising strategy or the opposite of them because they are already connected to each other because your customer is you know switching platform to platform. So if the one is working well.

Oaklyn Gale 09:34

in one platform, there is a room to try in another platform. Based on their, you know, conditions, the the platform conditions for sure.

Hai Mag 09:44

We can say that probably the interest, the funnel is a lot larger. And then when it comes to the intent, it's or maybe consideration, it's getting narrower. And finally, when there is high intent, it is the most likely to convert audience. Now, when it's at the intent level, there are maybe more audiences in your pipeline, as your pipeline is a lot bigger.

Hai Mag 10:11

Now from these audiences, which it might be easier to create them or maybe test them on meta, but which one is kind of be the successful one that is more the data that Amazon is giving you. So that is kind of like the the I think is a very exciting way to look into these different audiences in different platforms and decide what to do. So

Hai Mag 10:36

I love this example,

Oaklyn Gale 10:37

Yeah.

Hai Mag 10:38

Oakland, so it's great. please tell us one more.

Oaklyn Gale 10:42

Yeah, sure. the other one, so like you know, when it comes to running your sales on Shopify and on Amazon, for Shopify you're running mostly Google Ads, Meta Ads, and with the Google, for example, you are running with the generic terms and you are trying to get the traffic to your Shopify site, and you know, you of course you want to increase the sales, but as a customer I have

Oaklyn Gale 11:04

No idea about your platform, and you know, I have trust issues when it comes to lending your platform because I need to enter my credit card and all the information and everything. So especially the brands that are not well known yet, you know, let's say on the awareness level still, the Amazon can fix the the trust

Oaklyn Gale 11:24

on my case. For example, I I did one of my brand. we were, you know, we are still spending on the generic terms to the Shopify side, but we just tested a little campaign with the same generic terms from Google to Amazon one of product RPDP. And we were generating 0.4 rues with the generic keywords from Google to our Shopify site, but when we switched to the

Oaklyn Gale 11:49

Amazon, same product, you know, with the same keyword and everything is the same, the budget is the same. Our ROAS was three. So the results was impressive. why? Because Amazon is the place where the high intent and the trust live, right? So if if you are not the brand that well known yet and you know if you if you are not

Oaklyn Gale 12:11

converting well with the especially when it comes to generic category terms that's the that's the smart move to test like giving a little budget from google to amazon in this way and if if you are running your ads in us amazon is also giving you brand referral bonus and everything so you are also covering the part of your ad spend so that was the thing that I tried and

Oaklyn Gale 12:36

We are trying the other brands as well. we are seeing pretty good results when it comes to conversion and the ROS.

Hai Mag 12:42

So what you're saying is like it was seven point five times better ROAS as you switch the you know the the the the landing page from Shopify to Amazon. It doesn't mean for the you know for the the audience that is listening to us, it doesn't mean that we are saying switch all Google to Amazon, but a part of these campaigns can be

Hai Mag 13:07

leveraged in a much better way if they were landing on Amazon. That's one thing. But it's not only the 7.5 X, there is also a brand referral bound bonus, which is 10%. Not bad. Like because that is typically what you spend as a tacos 10%. Now that 10% is already paid back to you because of Amazon. So it is better to have that strategies together where you use Google

Hai Mag 13:35

primarily for Shopify but also leverage that with Amazon as well. Now that's a really, really nice

Oaklyn Gale 13:41

Yeah.

Hai Mag 13:43

story. I love it. I'm just thinking if that is the case, you know, like if if you can leverage Google to and you bring some like you bring the traffic to Amazon. I mean

Oaklyn Gale 13:55

Mm-hmm.

Hai Mag 13:55

counter argument is I mean do it

Hai Mag 13:57

just inside Amazon. Now it's kind of a counter argument. Like you're you can only spend a bit more on Amazon and you can probably get a similar result. So tell me more what you think about that counter argument.

Oaklyn Gale 14:10

Yeah, you know, you can do that, but from Google to Amazon, you are also increasing your organic traffic as well. You are increasing your sessions as well. when you run ads on Amazon, of course it also like with the hello effect, you are always increasing your visibility and your sessions and so. But from Google to Amazon, you are also redirecting traffic outside of to Amazon to your landing page. So it will

Oaklyn Gale 14:35

it it is increasing your sessions and your visibility and after customer ending ending buying your product you are also increasing your sales velocity and you know you're increasing your brand searches because you know after they solve you maybe they will also come by searching your brand or your product you know you are also like investing long term value of the customer that you wanna gain in the

Oaklyn Gale 14:59

you know long run. So I I know like most of the PPC Google and meta PPC manager hate to run from Google to Amazon but I'm a bit opposite of that because I'm not telling let's switch all the ads from Google to Amazon. But giving a little budget it will help your Amazon business as well because increasing the organic rank

Oaklyn Gale 15:22

on Amazon is, you know, something else. like being at the your BSR if it's on the one of the, you know, if if you are first top ten as BSR on the category is something else. Increasing organic rank and organic visibility is something else more valuable on your business. So yeah it you know you can still run ads, spend more, but it will help your

Oaklyn Gale 15:46

i it will help you with your sessions and your sales velocity and organic search as well.

Hai Mag 15:52

Sounds great. So just I mean, I look at it typically things a bit like high level. That's because my name, you know, I look at it high level. Okay, that's how I do. And at

Oaklyn Gale 16:00

Yeah.

Hai Mag 16:01

the high level, I would say this that person, that consumer who is now on Google, is not on Amazon. Like it's not the same person, it's not the same consumer. That guy is searching the product on Google. And when that

Hai Mag 16:17

Traffic comes into Amazon, that's an incremental traffic. It's not the same. Again, we are not saying just switch all your Google spend into Amazon landing pages or something like that. But you want that specific audience that wants to search on Google.

Hai Mag 16:35

But wants to buy on Amazon. That is exactly what you're targeting here. And you also, you know, mentioned a very important thing, which is what I see like the last 20 conversations that I have on brands, the D2C, Shopify. I am telling you guys, I am so sorry that I'm telling you this. But one of the enemies of your business is your Google and Meta Manager.

Hai Mag 17:01

I tell you

Oaklyn Gale 17:02

Mm-hmm.

Hai Mag 17:02

this because they look at it in silos and I've seen that seventy-seventy-five percent of the budget is spent to Shopify and to to Google and Meta just to bring more fresh business to Shopify store while we are while there is a complete ignorance of organic.

Hai Mag 17:22

Traffic bringing possibilities to Shopify. That's one part of the things like using TikTok, you know, SEO, you know, the AI visibility and all that stuff. And the second thing that I'm seeing is that Google Meta Manager is just wants more money. And with like

Oaklyn Gale 17:38

Yeah.

Hai Mag 17:38

ROAS is like one or 1.5, maximum two. These are not the numbers even with Amazon. If you do two ROAS.

Hai Mag 17:47

probably we're gonna be get fired, you know? So

Oaklyn Gale 17:50

Yeah.

Hai Mag 17:51

well I'm not saying it is it can be improved because there is the nature of Meta and Google that there is low intent and you're trying to convert interest into intent. But what I'm saying is definitely blending it with marketplaces, Amazon, you know, Walmart, even for the pet supplements with Chiwi.

Hai Mag 18:14

We see like five to eight ROAS with Amazon DSP, it can be again between five to ten ROAs. Again, it doesn't mean put all your money into Amazon DSP. No. But when you have a holistic strategy, you can you know define a better way of you know distributing, placing the money into the right channel, and that has to done that's that has to be done.

Hai Mag 18:38

Holistically, I see at least a 30% inefficiency. One of the things that also Oakland is doing, she is the chief product officer of Viria, which is the platform that Eva is using for Amazon account management as well as Amazon advertising management. So, Auckland, maybe you tell us why Viria. I mean, Eva is very happy to use Viria, but

Hai Mag 19:03

all the other brands and agencies are all welcome to use the Viria platform. What will be the gain from Viria? Can you

Oaklyn Gale 19:12

Mm-hmm.

Hai Mag 19:13

just make it like a summary of that?

Oaklyn Gale 19:16

Yeah, definitely. basically we are solving two main problems with Viria. when it comes to Amazon advertising management and when it comes to tracking the competitors, seeing the real profit and everything. with Viria, we are actually solving those problems. with our, you know, advertising solutions with the automation and the ad manager that we developed. We are reducing the manual work and we already

Oaklyn Gale 19:40

I can tell remove the exporting Excel's, no more exporting Excel from the Amazon. So all the data is in the platform and you have full visibility in the school level, profit visibility, you know, and also especially the most important thing when it comes to tracking the competitors, or when when they run out of stock, you you know, you just need to check everything manually. And so we automate we automated all the account management and

Oaklyn Gale 20:07

The most important part of the when it comes to managing the accounts. So yeah, shortly we are, solving the the huge problem when it comes to advertising management. There is no manual work anymore with the Burea, no exporting exile, no try to analyze the data. All the data is already there with the analyzed version. You always have the audited version of your

Oaklyn Gale 20:30

account and you have full visibility regarding the competitor tracking and all the other related stuff, SQPR data, keywords and everything.

Hai Mag 20:38

Thanks a lot for that because also we are very happy at EVA to use Viria. I think I mean as the CEO who is also looking into the operational efficiency, what I can say is like right now a PPC specialist can look after three times more accounts compared to before. That is the the biggest efficiency. I'm not saying we were we were

Hai Mag 21:03

like able to reduce the number of PPC people by thirty percent, but we were able to increase the number of accounts that they that they look properly by three times. So that was kind of the biggest advantage from our side. And we see a ninety nine percent customer satisfaction because you can always

Hai Mag 21:23

have more accounts assigned to the PPC specialists, which can end up in some disasters. In our case it actually increased our customer satisfaction levels. Viria is amazing and thank you for being the chief product officer of Viria Oakland and thanks for also joining us and telling your two stories.

Oaklyn Gale 21:46

Thank you. Thank you for having me again.