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Seller Central and Amazon Ad Console are Merging

seller central amazon ppc ad badger

“You are both the same, except one is better.” Do you know who said that? Thoreau? Longfellow? Frost? None of them. That quote comes from Michael Scott, the man who oversaw the second most important merger the world has ever seen.

The second most important? Yes. A new merger is coming between Amazon’s Seller Central and Amazon Ad Console that puts the merger between Scranton and Stamford to shame.

Not to say we told you so, but we kinda did say this would happen. We’ve been thinking about what this would look like since last year, and now that it’s happening here’s what you need to know.

Should You be Scared?

There’s been unrest within the Amazon PPC community after a vague message popped up on everyone’s Seller Central account.

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Call in the UHaul cause we're moving to a new platform

In the past, there has been a divide between sellers and vendors. Vendors use Amazon Ad Console to sell their products to Amazon. Sellers have been using Seller Central to sell their products around the globe to individual customers.

So what does this message mean? All vendors and sellers will now share one advertising platform. Not the best news we’ve ever heard. Seller Central is a better platform, and this message indicates that the shared platform will feel more like Ad Console.

Having the same tools to use for sellers, vendors, book sellers (KDP), and other groups will be very helpful. While Ad Console, formerly known as AMS, has been sluggish in the past and far from the ideal platform, improvements have been made.

How It Will Work

Essentially, everything that falls under the umbrella of Amazon Advertising will now be on the same platform. The merger still separates Ad Console and Seller Central, to a degree. There will be two portals, and moving from the Seller Central portal to the Ad Console portal will require a new login.

Permissions for Ad Console and Seller Central are different, and they will continue to be different. It’s unclear whether or not brands or companies will be able to easily add PPC consultants to their account. For our sake, we hope it’s easy.

Don’t Fear the Merger

Sure, the merger isn’t exactly ideal. Amazon has stated that there will be major changes migrating to the new platform from Seller Central. Change isn’t exactly new for Amazon. Seller Central changed its aesthetic recently, but these changes were only cosmetic.

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So long old friend. The blue aesthetic was short lived.

Moving around the platform will also be different. Reports will now be in the left-hand navigation menu. The Reports Page and Create Campaign Page look exactly the same, thankfully.

While there may be a learning curve to using the new platform, it is good that Amazon has one platform dedicated to Amazon Advertising. Hopefully, this means updates and new features will be added for both the Seller Central and Ad Console portals at the same time.

Bulk Operation Blunders with Ad Console

There have been quite a few bugs with bulk operations. The team at Seller Central has always been very responsive and fixed the bugs quickly. Working with Ad Console is a bit of a different story. Amazon Ad Console’s team isn’t very responsive, and essentially nothing happens.

The first issue is needing a Campaign ID. Campaign ID is essentially a serial number for a campaign. For Seller Central, you don’t need the Campaign ID. All you need to do is search for the campaign name. 

If you want to add a campaign negative keyword, all you have to do in Seller Central is search for the campaign, find the keyword, and select “Add as Campaign Negative.” 

In Ad Console, this process is much less efficient. It’s very easy to unknowingly create duplicate campaigns in Ad Console, and there’s nothing to stop that from happening. Campaign names in Ad Console can be duplicated. The only differentiating factor between campaigns is Campaign ID. This makes it very hard to keep track of which campaign is the one you wanted.

Want to upload a campaign negative via bulk uploads on Ad Console? Can’t do that. Hopefully that will be remedied with the new platform.

If you’re a Vendor, you don’t have different skews. Sellers often have different skews for one ASIN. Some have two for FBM and FBA or a variety of other reasons. Vendors sell directly to Amazon so there is no other skew, only the Amazon ASIN.

Now that sellers and vendors are being combined into this new platform, it will be interesting to see what is accepted when uploading bulk sheets.

Key Takeaways

In an ideal world, the new platform will be a seamless transition from whichever platform you are most comfortable with now.

Hopefully the basic functions of each platform will remain easy to use, and all signs point to this being the case.

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Discover Us on our PPC Den Podcast

If you enjoy supplementing your long reads with audio, we cover this topic on our podcast as well. 

Listen to it in the episode below or find us on your favorite streaming platform, like Apple, Google, Spotify, and more!

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Watch Mike & Stephen on YouTube

If you enjoy supplementing your long reads with video, well, hot diggity dog, you’re in luck! We cover this topic on our YouTube channel too. 

Watch it below and please don’t forget to ‘like’ and subscribe.

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