Amazon Growth Feels Broken?

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In this newsletter, you’ll find:

🚨 Why Amazon Growth Feels Broken (And How Smart Traffic Fixes It)

📈 Smarter Controls in PMax

🏆 Ad of the Day

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Together with SEMrush

Mobile, Visual Ads, and AI: Win in 2025 with Key Growth Drivers Found Inside the New Report from Semrush & Euromonitor

Consumers are shifting—and fast. In 2024, mobile drove 60% of FMCG ecommerce traffic, display ads spiked 156%, and AI referrals soared 1138%.'

Semrush and Euromonitor International unpack the data reshaping the digital shelf, from mobile-first strategies to the rise of visually-driven shopping and AI-powered discovery.

Want to see how leading brands are adapting—and where the biggest opportunities lie?

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🚨 Why Amazon Growth Feels Broken (And How Smart Traffic Fixes It)

You’re scaling spend, optimizing bids, refreshing creatives. But your organic rankings? Stuck. Your ACOS? Creeping up. Conversion? Unchanged.

This isn’t a media buying problem, it’s a traffic quality problem.

Most DTC brands treat Amazon like a faucet. Turn on the ads, expect flow. But Amazon doesn’t just rank based on volume. It ranks based on behavioral intent what shoppers do once they land on your listing.

The Traffic Amazon Ranks Higher

Amazon’s A9 algorithm quietly favors products with “purchase-like signals”:

Time on page, Scroll depth, Add-to-carts, Low bounce rates, Fewer back-to-search exitsCold, indifferent ad clicks tank those signals.

But traffic from a trusted YouTube demo or curated product guide? That shopper shows up pre-sold. They engage like buyers, not browsers.

That behavior doesn’t just convert it tells Amazon:

“This listing is the right answer.”

And Amazon rewards it with rank.

What the Smart Brands Already Know

Brands like Caraway and Goli don’t just run affiliate programs, they engineer performance-based traffic funnels with one goal: send the kind of click Amazon wants more of.

They’re:

• Partnering with content-first creators and publishers
• Sending traffic that aligns with high-converting keyword searches
• Matching pre-sell narratives to listing angles
• Paying only when it converts

It’s not about gaming Amazon, it’s about feeding it the kind of traffic it’s designed to reward.

Amazon’s not broken. But your mix might be. With Levanta, you tap into a vetted network of 10,000+ creators, optimized for Amazon growth. Track performance, match messaging, and scale what converts. You can get your free Projection here.

If your rankings are slipping and your margins are evaporating, more ads won’t save you. But smarter traffic will.

📈 Smarter Controls in PMax
Insights from Google

Google’s Performance Max is rolling out powerful new features to help advertisers optimize every part of their campaigns. From deeper customer insights to more creative control, these updates make it easier to drive results while steering AI with precision.

The Breakdown:

• Lifecycle Goals Get Smarter -  Retention goals are now fully available, allowing advertisers to prioritize high-value lapsed customers with customized bidding. You can define which users offer greater lifetime value, and see new customer acquisition costs directly in reports.
• Better Control Over Image Assets - Performance Max can now pull images from your landing pages to expand creative variety automatically. You’ll have visibility into these assets and can remove or disable the feature if needed.
• Stronger Creative Variation Tools -  Image enhancements now allow Performance Max to auto-generate alternate versions of your images using smart cropping. Future updates will unlock even more options, like uncropping and animating creatives.
• Expanded Negative Keyword Limit - Google has increased the campaign-level negative keyword limit from 100 to 10,000 giving advertisers more flexibility to filter out irrelevant traffic and steer AI more effectively. 

With smarter goals, advanced creative controls, and deeper search filtering, Performance Max is evolving into a more customizable and precise tool. These upgrades help advertisers fine-tune automation while improving performance across every stage of the customer journey.

🎥 Ad of the Day

What Works:

The headline “Meet the toothpaste that’s 100% toothpaste” is a smart reversal hook—it instantly highlights how mainstream toothpastes are not truly clean. This tactic subtly exposes the industry’s hidden toxins without directly calling out brands.

The scratched-out ingredients—“NO plastic waste,” “NO filler ingredients,” etc.—visually and psychologically signal purity by elimination. The eye-catching green highlight adds a memory hook and builds trust through contrast. 

The earth-toned props (rock, bamboo toothbrush) establish an eco-conscious vibe, while the bold yellow “100%” pops just enough to disrupt the soft color scheme.

This ad leverages clean-label psychology—the trend where consumers reject products with complex or synthetic ingredient lists. It also uses value alignment: those who care about sustainability, wellness, and minimalism will feel this brand aligns with their identity. That builds emotional buy-in fast.

Broader Insights:

This is a masterclass in negative framing used positively. Instead of bragging about what it contains, it wins hearts by showcasing what it doesn't. For a category filled with greenwashing, this ad keeps it simple, honest, and strategic. That's how you sell hygiene through integrity.

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