This Week in M&A Issue #143

Google’s Cookie Comeback: Privacy Gets Personal

After years of planning and numerous delays, Google has abandoned its plan to automatically turn off third-party cookie tracking in Chrome.

Instead, the company will shift its focus to giving users more control over their web browsing privacy.

Anthony Chavez, VP of Privacy Sandbox at Google, stated that instead of following in Safari and Firefox's footsteps and deprecating third-party cookies, Chrome will now present users with an option to make an informed choice about their web tracking settings.

This approach is similar to Apple's app tracking opt-in feature, which significantly impacted social media platforms' ad revenues when introduced in 2021.

In addition to the new user-choice feature, Google also plans to introduce IP Protection in Chrome’s Incognito mode to further enhance privacy.

This change comes after concern from stakeholders including regulators like the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), as well as much negative feedback from publishers, web developers, standards groups, and the advertising industry.

Despite canceling its cookie phase-out, Google remains committed to its Privacy Sandbox initiative, launched in September 2023. Privacy Sandbox is designed to categorize users into topic groups rather than tracking individuals. Google will continue to make Privacy Sandbox APIs available.

While this new approach isn’t as drastic as completely removing cookies, it might still significantly reduce the number of users who allow third-party tracking, which could have a big impact on digital advertisers.

Prime Day 2024 Smashes Records with $14.2 Billion in Sales!

Amazon’s Prime Day 2024 was a massive success, with U.S. shoppers spending a record-breaking $14.2 billion. That’s an impressive 11% increase from last year’s $12.7 billion!

Most importantly, independent sellers sold more than 200 million products, mostly from small and medium-sized businesses.

On the first day alone, spending reached $7.2 billion, up 11.2% from last year, while the second day saw $7 billion in sales, an increase of 10.4%.

Two main factors drove this record-breaking spending: back-to-school shopping and a wave of new electronics and home goods. Spending on school supplies like backpacks and stationery soared by 216% compared to June, and kids’ clothing sales jumped 165%. This year’s Prime Day was closer to the start of the school year than in 2023, boosting these numbers.

Electronics also saw a major boost, with sales up 61%. Tablets were a hot item with a 117% increase, and TVs saw a 111% jump. Small kitchen appliances also had a strong showing, with a 76% rise in sales.

Discounts were deeper this year. Electronics were discounted by 23% on average, up from 14% last year. Apparel prices dropped by 20%, compared to 12% in 2023, and home and furniture items were 16% off, up from 9% last year.

Mobile shopping took off, with 49.3% of purchases made on mobile devices, an 18% increase from last year. Amazon’s Rufus AI assistant also played a major role, assisting millions of customers with their shopping.

The average order size was $57.97, up from $56.64 last year. Many households made multiple purchases, spending about $152.33 on average. While curbside pickup slightly dropped to 18.9% of orders, “buy now, pay later” options were popular, making up 7.6% of orders and contributing $1.08 billion in sales.

Adobe expects July’s total consumer spending to reach $84.4 billion, an 8.2% increase from last year.

Prime Day 2024 set new records and showed how smart discounts and timing can lead to impressive sales growth.

Listing #77088 - $628,629.00

Avg. Monthly Profit - $18,489.00

digital product, subscription, affiliate | lifestyle, parenting, home, business | 34x

Created in January 2012,  this digital product and subscription business offers comprehensive course bundles on various topics within the lifestyle, health, productivity, parenting, and business niches.

The courses have been created by contributors who are influential figures within their respective areas. 

We’re highlighting this business this week because of its following strengths:

• Profitable: profit margins of 65% with 650+ subscribers
• Well-Diversified: revenue split across digital product sales (62%), subscription (34%), and affiliate (4%). 
• Assets: email list with 200K subscribers and 22K followers across various social media accounts.

Learn More >

Amazon Ads Expands: Lead Generation Ads for Non-Marketplace Sellers

Attention U.S. businesses that don’t sell on Amazon. Amazon Ads has rolled out a fantastic new feature that lets you use Sponsored Display ads to collect customer leads across its vast ad network—even if you’re not selling products on Amazon.

This new feature, still in beta, helps you attract potential customers by letting them sign up for information directly through your ad without forcing them to leave their current browsing, shopping, or entertainment activities.

Your ads will appear not only on Amazon’s own pages, like the homepage and product listings but also on thousands of popular sites and apps such as Twitch and IMDb.

Previously, you could only drive traffic to your website with Sponsored Display ads, making it hard to measure how well you were capturing leads. Now, with lead generation ads, you can gather and track leads more effectively using Amazon’s tools. Plus, all leads are stored securely in Amazon Leads Manager, keeping everything privacy-compliant.

Amazon Ads expert Jeffrey Cohen has shared exciting details about this feature, including success stories from two businesses that have already benefited from it.

Currently, this feature is in open beta and available only in the United States for businesses not selling on Amazon.

To get started with this new feature, businesses can reach out to their PDM (Partner Development Manager) for more details, or access it through the Amazon Ads API. 

⚠️ New Google core update launching in coming weeks: exact date TBD

🎓 10 lessons from selling $10M of digital products: pros, cons, and insights

🗯️ Are AI chatbots better than search engines? testing the quality of search

💵 How much search marketers make: average income and trajectory

🏛️ Amazon files lawsuit to fight fake review: gunning for fake review brokers

Case Study: From Launch to 6-Figure Exit in Just 2 Years

Many of us have heard of successful startups being acquired by aggregators for large sums of money.

But it’s not just fancy tech startups that achieve these kinds of dream exits. Every day entrepreneurs can make it big too. In fact, one of our sellers achieved this milestone just last year.

In an interview with They Got Acquired, founder Marwan Barakat detailed his success story.

In February 2021, Barakat, a solopreneur in China, launched Baby Sunnies, a line of polarized sunglasses for kids, exclusively on Amazon. The business quickly thrived, making up to $220,000 in monthly revenue.

But in August 2021, disaster struck. Amazon removed Barakat’s listings, citing patent infringement. “My million-dollar business was gone,” Barakat recalls. He also had $100,000 worth of unsellable inventory stuck in Amazon’s warehouses.

Determined to bounce back, Barakat devised a new strategy. He redesigned the sunglasses straps to avoid patent issues. By December 2021, Baby Sunnies was back on Amazon with an improved design that sold even better than before.

Barakat used Amazon's pay-per-click (PPC) ads to boost sales, quickly ranking in the top 10 for key search terms and enjoying a 26% net profit margin.

Despite his success, Barakat had a new passion project that needed his attention. So, he decided to sell Baby Sunnies through Empire Flippers.

A European aggregator showed interest in the business and, after a week of negotiations and two weeks of due diligence, the sale was finalized in April 2023. The business sold for about $500,000, including $50,000 worth of inventory.

Bing's New AI Search Could Change Your Clicks

Microsoft has just revealed a sneak peek at its new Bing generative search feature, which is set to compete with Google’s AI Overviews. This update brings a fresh look to Bing's search results, combining AI-generated answers with traditional search results.

The new Bing design uses a blend of large and small AI models to gather information from across the web and present it in an AI-generated summary.

When you search for something like "What is a spaghetti western?", you'll get a detailed AI-generated summary about the film genre, including its history and top examples, along with links to the sources of this information.

While traditional search results are now displayed in a slim column on the right side of the page, Microsoft insists that this change will still support website traffic and maintain a healthy web ecosystem.

This will be a welcome change for SEOs and site owners who have struggled with reduced traffic as a result of Google’s AI overviews.

That said, Microsoft hasn’t shared specific data to prove that its new design will maintain the number of clicks to websites, alluding only to “early data” that it’s choosing to keep private for the time being.

The updated search page also includes additional content like videos, charts, and music related to your query, all found below the AI summary. Users can still choose to view the traditional search results if they prefer, simply by dismissing the AI-generated summaries.

Currently, this new feature is being tested with a small group of users. Microsoft plans to gradually roll it out, gather feedback, and make improvements before it becomes widely available.

As AI becomes more prominent in search engines, these changes might affect how your site performs on Bing, so it's a good idea to keep an eye on your Bing Webmaster Tools to monitor any shifts in traffic.