AMAnews August 2025 — SEO Tools Mature, B2B Ad Splits, Stricter Reviews, Q4 Deal Deadlines

The heat isn’t only outside. August lands with a stack of Amazon-native tools getting sharper, ad tactics that finally need a B2B split, and a hard reset on how reviews and seller feedback are supposed to work. If you’ve been cruising on third‑party estimates or set‑and‑forget remarketing, this month is your nudge to modernize—before Q4 locks in.

Let’s get into the concrete changes, where they live in Seller/Vendor Central, and exactly what to do now.

Platform & SEO: Use Amazon’s own data first

Category Insights (Marketplace > Growth)

Amazon’s Category Insights has evolved into a deep pulse on your primary category—seasonality, sales, and how the niche behaves around events. Expect:

• Revenue trends and comparisons across 7/30/90/12 months (high-level views)
• Signals on whether your niche is Prime Day/Second Prime Day/Black Friday/Cyber sensitive
• Top products and how they’re positioned

A new slice shows “höchste Umsätze” and “neu eingeführte” lists. The value: quick reconnaissance on who’s winning and what just launched. The catch: the current windows are long.

• “Letzte 12 Monate” for top sales can over-weight Prime Day and Q4, obscuring recent momentum. One example view showed “10 Produkte der letzten 12 … 16 Millionen Umsatz, 47374 Einheiten verkauft.” Useful, but not a proxy for current share.
• “Neu eingeführte” is set to 6 months—still includes Prime Day for much of the year.

Action Item: Treat these as directional. Use them to shortlist ASINs for targeting and content benchmarking, then corroborate with monthly Search Query Performance (below) to validate current relevance.

Product Opportunity Explorer (Growth)

Two core workflows keep paying off:

• Keyword-first: Explore a niche and its related Search Terms. Amazon reports pool-level volumes and exposes the Search Terms with counts and 360/90‑day changes. You’ll routinely spot pools with 500–1000% growth.
• ASIN-first: Enter a target ASIN to see Amazon’s inferred competitive set and adjacency. Many are obvious, but you will uncover non‑intuitive competitors. There’s a small black Download button—use it—to export ASINs for precision product targeting.

Warning: Don’t misread the giant headline volume numbers. That “500 Millionen” you sometimes see is the cumulative niche pool, not per‑term demand. Use the Search Terms table for reality.

Trends view (inside Opportunity Explorer)

A newer “Trends” area gives 7‑day cumulative search volume series and a bit more texture. It’s not perfect, but it adds useful recency. Be cautious with any tool that claims to turn Amazon’s cumulative metrics into “daily volume”—that’s not what these datapoints are.

Brand Analytics: Search Query Performance (SQP)

SQP now anchors monthly diagnosis of where Amazon deems your brand/ASIN relevant—and when. Two practical observations from real accounts:

• Deals temporarily change relevance: Participating in events (e.g., Essential Deals or aggressive coupons) has pushed an ASIN to rank and register relevance for a major head term—only for that week. SQP lets you see when Amazon briefly “considered” you relevant.
• Correlate with spikes: When you run a strong price/promo, you’ll see massive Impression/Session/Sales spikes for that primary term in SQP. This is gold for timing content and ads around known lift windows.

Listings & Stores: Benchmarks and dynamic product nets

Content benchmarking in Category Insights

Beyond sales lists, use the “höchste Umsätze” section to benchmark:

• Price point clustering and surprise outliers in your niche
• Brand/vendor dynamics (e.g., a brand like Philips with 228 items via vendor + resellers dominating breadth)
• How newly launched competitors structure copy and explain features

This isn’t a substitute for hands‑on PDP analysis, but it’s a fast triage for where to dig.

Stores: hiding OOS and auto‑maintained product “nets”

Two Storefront levers quietly reduce buyer friction:

• Account-level Store setting to hide out‑of‑stock items. Keep it on to cut dead‑ends.
• Newer ability to build “nets” of products: define must‑include/exclude ASINs, and Amazon will auto‑update the remaining tiles as your catalog changes. Items flow in/out as availability shifts.

What’s missing right now: robust rules. The dream is “only price > 30 €” or similar filters. Those rules aren’t there yet, so you may still wade through large ASIN lists to curate. The automation logic is functioning; filtering controls lag.

Action Item: Turn on OOS hiding, stand up at least one dynamic net per key family, and pre‑plan manual refresh passes until rules arrive.

Advertising: Split Retail vs B2B, and fix your SD fundamentals

Separate Retail vs B2B delivery

Ad Console increasingly lets you decide whether to serve to Retail (consumer) or B2B buyers. Many accounts toggle both in a single campaign—creating duplicate auctions and cannibalizing budget.

• B2B often shows higher basket sizes and stronger conversion rates—but different query/product mixes drive it.
• Segment by keyword/product. Use your reports to identify B2B‑leaning search terms and SKUs.

Action Item: Build distinct Retail and B2B campaign sets. Don’t co‑mix delivery. Calibrate bids to the observed B2B economics rather than copy/paste Retail CPCs.

Sponsored Display: 59 B2B audience options exist—use them

In Sponsored Display audience targeting, type “B2B” and you’ll unlock rich profiles:

• “Admin, hat Zugang zur Kreditkarte”
• “Revenue, Low Revenue”
• “Mitarbeiter … bis 50”
• And many more—59 B2B Ausrichtungsformen in total

These live under SD audiences, not within Sponsored Products/Brands. Use them to complement keyword/product targeting with true firmographic reach.

Warning: Optimize for performance, not vanity reach. Don’t default to vCPM buys if your goal is sales. Stick to CPC-driven SD where possible for accountable outcomes.

Sponsored Display remarketing: the must-haves

Turn on SD audiences that reach shoppers who interacted with products tied to your selected criteria. Two canonical sets:

• Viewed: reach people who “angesehen” relevant products. Lookbacks: 7, 14, 30, 60, 90 days.
• Purchased: reach past buyers who “gekauft” products aligned to your criteria. Lookbacks: 7, 14, 30, 60, 365 days.

Start wide at low bids, then keep the segments that actually win auctions and convert; pause the rest. Accept that each segment clears at its own CPC—then increase where ROAS holds.

Pair this with brand defense:

• Sponsored Display targeting your own ASINs to hold PDP real estate
• Sponsored Products defensive targeting for the same catalog

Amazon Marketing Stream (quick reminder)

If you’re still manually dayparting, you’re doing it the hard way. Stream provides hourly signals and longer lookback attribution than the Ad Console UI, and supports feedback loops that automate bid checks. At a minimum, monitor hourly conversion rate and CPC and let automation re‑weight to conversion‑strong windows. Manual micromanagement loses to math here.

Pricing & Deals: Coupons and always‑on Prime, plus Q4 deadlines

Percentage coupons now apply to up to five items per order

Previously, percent‑off coupons applied per product. You can now extend a percent‑off coupon to up to five items per order. Great for multi‑unit categories and “complete the set” merchandising.

Action Item: Where basket‑building makes sense, relaunch existing percent coupons with the five‑item setting to nudge AOV.

Year‑round Prime exclusives, and what’s imminent for Q4

Amazon highlights that you can create Prime‑exclusive offers across the year. More practically, mark these dates now:

• Sommeraktion: 3. bis 7. September (registration still open at the time of recording)
• Black Friday: Reichen Sie empfohlene bis 24. Oktober ein
• Prime Big Deal Day (auch „Day 2“): Sie können Angebote bis 5. September einreichen

Warning: These cutoffs are real. Miss them and your slot evaporates. Build inventory and promo mechanics now; SQP shows how much a single promo week can change your perceived relevance.

Fees & Finance: Clearer fee breakdowns

Amazon is rolling out a function that decomposes fees for better understanding. Covered initially:

• Prozentuale Verkaufsgebühren (referral)
• Abschlussgebühren
• Gebühren erfolgreich verkaufte Artikel
• Kundenrücksendung
• Remissionsgebühren

Amazon notes more fee types will be added this year. Finally, the line items that quietly eat margin become easier to audit.

Policy & Reviews: Seller feedback clarified; product reviews tighten hard

Seller feedback collection: clarification after a messy announcement

Amazon briefly announced changes that sounded ominous, then re‑published for clarity. Net‑net:

• When a buyer leaves a less‑than‑perfect star rating for seller performance, Amazon can require a reason.
• If the reason is outside the seller’s control (e.g., FBA shipping), Amazon suppresses that feedback—it never goes live.
• In Amazon’s tests, this increased average ratings and reduced unfair negatives.

This is a win for FBA‑reliant sellers. Keep an eye on your feedback panel; expect fewer rogue shipping complaints sticking to your account health.

Product reviews: enforcement escalates, definitions broaden

A broad crackdown has triggered waves of suspensions. The policy text is now blunt and expansive. Prohibited behaviors include:

• Writing your own reviews or having employees/family/friends do it
• Offering refunds, rebates, free/discounted products, gifts (yes, even small pack‑ins like Gummibärchen) tied to reviews
• Using third parties or services to source or route “real purchases” for review generation
• Asking only happy customers to review or asking unhappy ones to contact support first (redirection/“Umleiten”)
• Contacting buyers to change or delete reviews; misusing buyer messaging or external tools to do so
• Displaying positive Amazon reviews inside your PDP copy or images

Consequences spelled out include removing reviews, blocking products from receiving future reviews, permanent loss of privileges, naming sellers publicly, and even civil/criminal action. If a partner/agency violates on your behalf, you bear the penalty.

There’s also a practical trap: FAQ and guidance pages now answer nearly every “Can I…?” with “No.” If you maintain templated support messages, remove any variant of “If there’s a problem, contact us; if everything is fine, leave a review.” That is explicitly considered redirecting feedback away from Amazon’s mechanisms.

Warning: Don’t try to be clever. “Early Reviewer” lookalike emails, external list outreach, or any off‑Amazon review routing is radioactive. Amazon is removing reviews and locking products out of future reviews when they detect manipulation.

Action Item: Audit all post‑purchase comms, inserts, and automation flows this week. Nuke anything that steers only satisfied buyers to review pages or offers any quid‑pro‑quo. Train agencies and VA teams—your account, not theirs, pays the price.

What Sellers Should Do Now

1. Rebuild your SEO workflow around Amazon-native data. Use Category Insights for seasonality, Opportunity Explorer (keywords and ASIN downloads) for discovery, and SQP monthly to verify relevance shifts after promos.
2. Fix Opportunity Explorer interpretation. Treat headline pool volumes as cumulative; prioritize Search Terms with 360/90‑day movement and export them. Stop relying on third‑party “daily” volume guesses.
3. Split Retail vs B2B ads. Create distinct campaign sets with tailored bids and negatives. Layer SD’s 59 B2B audiences where appropriate.
4. Turn on SD remarketing and defense. Launch view and purchase lookbacks (7/14/30/60/90 and 7/14/30/60/365), start with low bids, and defend your own ASINs across SD and SP.
5. Upgrade your Store. Enable hide‑OOS, stand up dynamic product nets, and plan manual refreshes until rules arrive. Use content benchmarks from Category Insights to refine PDPs.
6. Relist coupons with five‑item eligibility. In multi‑unit or complementary catalogs, switch percent coupons to “up to five items per order” to lift AOV.
7. Calendar the promos. Sommeraktion 3. bis 7. September; submit recommended offers bis 24. Oktober for Black Friday; submit Prime Big Deal Day offers bis 5. September. Align inventory and creative now.
8. Purge review risks. Remove any “happy-review/unhappy-contact” language, eliminate incentives/inserts, lock down agency SOPs, and brief support on the new seller feedback handling so they stop chasing suppressed comments.