Weekly Buzz 8/28/25: Amazon Kills Variations? | Walmart Ties Marketplace to Stores | New YouTube Channel Giveaway!

We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Principal Brand Evangelist, Carrie Miller. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10’s newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level.

Update to irrelevant or redundant variation theme removal
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-news/articles/QVRWUERLSUtYMERFUiNHUEszWTIyTko1MktORVVQ

New YouTube Channel for the Serious Sellers Podcast and Weekly Buzz by Helium 10
https://www.youtube.com/@Helium10SeriousSellersPodcast

Amazon resumes Google Shopping ads – but not in the U.S.
https://searchengineland.com/amazon-resumes-google-shopping-ads-international-domains-461238

Walmart ties marketplace to stores, debuts AI seller tools
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/walmart-ties-marketplace-stores-debuts-122600640.html

Walmart Rolls Out Faster Deliveries for 3rd-Party Sellers
https://www.pymnts.com/walmart/2025/walmart-rolls-out-faster-deliveries-for-3rd-party-sellers/

Send meltable inventory to FBA starting September 22, 2025
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-news/articles/QVRWUERLSUtYMERFUiNHVTROUlI3OFIzRFZLSkta

Enrollment changes for FBA Liquidations and Donations programs
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-news/articles/QVRWUERLSUtYMERFUiNHQ0dHSzlXWFhVNlo2Q0g2

Protect your account from deactivation with Account Health Assurance
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-news/articles/QVRWUERLSUtYMERFUiNHSFpFSlU0SkFXOEJBRlJQ

Optimized targeting for Sponsored Display Conversion campaigns
https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/sponsored-display-automatic-targeting-for-conversions/

Don’t miss out on these crucial updates and insights for sellers looking to thrive in the e-commerce landscape.

In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers:

• 00:51 – Variation Armageddon Update
• 02:29 – New YouTube Channel
• 03:23 – Amazon Google Ads
• 05:02 – Black Box Update
• 08:00 – AI Walmart Tools
• 09:52 – Walmart Next Day Delivery
• 10:50 – Meltable Inventory Update
• 11:42 – FBA Liquidations Update
• 12:57 – Custom Ads Rules
• 19:05 – Protect You Account
• 20:47 – Optimized Targeting

Transcript

Carrie Miller:

On this week’s episode of the Weekly Buzz. We have updates to listing Armageddon, and Walmart is now tying its online offerings to their retail stores, and our brand new YouTube channel has just launched this and more. On this week’s episode of the Weekly Buzz.

Bradley Sutton:

How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. This is the show that is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the goings on in the Amazon, TikTok shop and e-commerce world. We let you know what new features that Helium 10 has, as well as give you a training tip of the week that’ll give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Today’s host is actually going to be Carrie Miller, so, Carrie, take it away and let us know what’s buzzing.

Carrie Miller:

Okay, so, first up, we actually have an update to Amazon’s irrelevant or redundant variation theme removal. I know a lot of people are really upset about this. When we announced it, I think it was last week, but Amazon actually sent out a little bit of a message in seller central to clarify some things about the variation cleanup, cause, you know, obviously people who have variations don’t want their size, color variations to be completely deleted out of the catalog. Um, so this is what Amazon actually said. They said on August 20th 2025, we announced that irrelevant or redundant variation themes would be removed from our listing experiences. These variation themes are marked as depreciated do not use in our new product templates. We also published a list of variation themes and product types affected by this change. This change was only intended to impact variation themes that were not needed. We’ve revised the list to only remove variation themes that had no sales in the past 12 months. Additionally, we won’t remove any versions of critical variation themes like size, color and style for applicable product types. Your existing variation families will continue to operate normally with no disruption to sales. If you want to update them, you can do so at any time. Child ASINs will stay active even if you choose to update the variation themes, and so, basically, if you want to see a list of those variation themes that are going to be depreciated, you can actually go to this message in seller central and it will show you. You can basically download an entire spreadsheet that’s going to show you all of the variation themes that they are removing. Now, you know, thankfully they’re not removing the most important ones, like size and color and all those variations that you need, but if you do have kind of an obscure one, you might want to check it and make sure that everything’s okay. And also, they have an FAQ listed there as well If you need to check the FAQ for more information.

Carrie Miller:

So up next is we have a brand new YouTube channel for the Weekly Buzz and the Serious Sellers Podcast, and we’re not going to be uploading these Weekly Buzzes in the podcast to our regular Helium 10 channel anymore, and so we want to make sure that you’re able to find all of this great information. So, the way that you’re going to find it, I’m going to share my screen. You’re going to go to YouTube and you’re going to search Helium 10 Serious Sellers Podcast, and what we want you to do is we want you to hit subscribe and then what you’re going to do is you’re going to go into the channel and, if you like or actually like and comment on one of the videos that we already have posted, you’re going to be entered to win a one on one call with either Bradley, myself or Shivali. It’s going to be your choice. So don’t miss out on that easy win and make sure to follow us on that channel to make sure that you don’t miss out on the latest news. Ok, so make sure you subscribe to that YouTube channel so you don’t miss out on any of the new podcasts and Weekly Buzz updates.

Carrie Miller:

All right, so let’s go ahead and get into the next article, which is Amazon resumes Google shopping ads, but not in the US. So we actually talked about this a while back, that Amazon is not doing Google Ads anymore, and so we were kind of questioning what was going on with this. So I’m just going to show this article. Basically, amazon restarted spending on Google Shopping Ads across its international domains exactly one month after abruptly pausing them, which is a move that now looks like a deliberate marketing test. So here are some of the details, and we actually have it in this article. It says. All international domains are once again running shopping ads, the US market remains excluded, raising questions about competitive strategy and channel mix. And the month long pause lines up with theories that Amazon was stress testing reliance on Google traffic. So Amazon is one of Google’s largest advertisers and its absence reshaped the auction. So when Amazon actually went dark and this is from a study from optimizer that they found they found that the clicks rose for other retailers. But the row has actually dropped and this suggests that Amazon’s presence helps keep traffic more efficient, even for competitors. And Amazon’s selective return highlights its ability to flex its advertising muscle while experimenting with acquisition costs For rivals. The US gap could be a rare window to grab market share before Amazon inevitably flips the switch back on. So I’m curious to know what all you think. Why do you think that they’re kind of testing this? Do you think that they think they’re good enough without Google? I’m really interested to know how this will turn out or when they’ll turn it back on the US ads, but for now they’ve only turned back on the international ads. Okay, so next up I’m going to pass it over to Shivali for our new feature alert, which is an update on Blackbox.

Shivali Patel:

All right, it’s time for a new feature alert. If you’ve ever opened up Blackbox product finder, you know that it’s one of the most powerful product research tools out there on the market. But let’s be honest, its advanced mode has over 20 different filters, and if you are a brand new or non-technical seller, then that can feel a little overwhelming, which is why we’ve completely re-imagined the simple mode inside of Blackbox. Let me show you what’s new. Instead of this advanced section, where you have access to a handful of different filters, what you can do is toggle over to simple, and in doing so, now it’s going to walk you through step by step, through a question flow. You just answer these five easy questions, things like your preferred category, which are the three areas you’re familiar with. You can also opt to get a surprise category, if you’d like.

Shivali Patel:

What price range are you most comfortable selling at? Is it less than 20 bucks, 20 to 35, 35 to 50, over 50? What sort of competition are you comfortable with? Some people have a higher risk tolerance than others, and that is why these answers are really up to you. Should your product fit into a shoebox? Do you want something bigger, smaller? Be mindful that something that’s smaller is probably going to require a little bit less capital investment to start, whereas something bigger think a couch, a refrigerator, they’re bigger items, they’re probably a little bit more expensive is going to require more capital upfront as well, and then for your monthly revenue. If you could make X amount in monthly sales, that would make you smile.

Shivali Patel:

Hopefully you can see this above my head right here. And then Blackbox is going to do the heavy lifting for you by automatically translating your answers into smart conditions. I’m just gonna select a few right off the bat so you guys can check out what I mean. I’m just selecting a few here to show you an example, I’m going to click search and, as you can see that automatically translated to the more advanced filters, the tool went in, found the associated filters and did it for you, and so now you can go through and just focus on getting the data.

Shivali Patel:

The whole point of this is for Blackbox to do the heavy lifting for you and to automatically translate your answers into those smart search conditions I mentioned. Plus, we’ve added category based pricing suggestions with a green check mark to let new sellers know when they’re choosing a suitable price point. Yes, you can switch between simple and advanced mode without losing your data. But the barrier to entry for new sellers just got that much lower and more simplified, so you literally do not have an excuse to get started if the shoe fits. It also means you’ll start learning how to think like an advanced user without the frustration. Give it a try and with that I’ll pass it back to Carrie.

Carrie Miller:

Thank you so much for that update, Shivali. Okay, so next up we have some announcements from Walmart, because they just had their let’s Grow conference in San Diego this last week and that’s where they annually announce all of their major updates to the Walmart marketplace. So we have some exciting updates. I’m going to share this article. This article is called Walmart Ties Marketplace to Stores and Debuts AI S seller tools. So basically, it kind of highlights all of the main announcements that they had, and so we’ll take a look at this. It says they’re looking to boost seller exposure.

Carrie Miller:

Walmart announced new in-store initiatives and AI power tools for its marketplace. The company announced Tuesday at its marketplace seller summit. Its new super center in Cypress, Texas, features in-store QR codes that let customers access extended online assortments. The retailer is bringing the extended marketplace aisle into stores with a few items on display that allow shoppers to then purchase through the Walmart app. Walmart also announced expanded next day delivery coverage via Walmart fulfillment services in top cities like LA, New York, Chicago, Houston and Atlanta, and Walmart also debuted AI power listing tools that are intended to help sellers reduce time to market and improve conversion rates. Additionally, the company is reducing its seller referral fee to 0% for qualifying toys ahead of the peak season. So if you sell toys, you should be selling on Walmart, because that’s one of their biggest categories, and now they’re not even going to be charging you any referral fees. So that’s pretty incredible. And just going to the online, you know a lot of people want to get into Walmart stores, so this is a really cool opportunity for online sellers to kind of showcase their products in stores and to see how people react and if they’re buying through kind of these QR codes. And I’m imagining, if this works really well at their Texas store, that they’re going to expand it nationwide and we’ll see how that goes. But, going along with this, I’m going to go into the next article.

Carrie Miller:

Walmart actually rolled out faster deliveries for third party sellers. So it says. The retail giant announced Tuesday, august 26th, that its fulfillment services, which provides storage and shipping services for its third-party marketplace vendors, will now begin offering next day delivery in those cities that I mentioned before New York, LA, Chicago, Houston and Atlanta. Walmart’s aim is to deliver the speed that customers expect, and the service will cover some of the website’s most popular items, with Walmart planning to continue to expand the next day deliveries to additional areas. So that’s pretty exciting, especially because, if you’re selling on other platforms and also Walmart, maybe now people will start buying on Walmart because of that next day delivery that this could be a huge game changer for Walmart sales in general, especially for those items where people really want them faster. So very, very exciting updates from the let’s Grow conference and I’m sure Walmart will continue to be updating their platforms. But these are some really good updates, I think.

Carrie Miller:

Okay, so let’s go ahead and get to the next announcement here, and that is an announcement in Seller Central and it’s about multiple inventory. Starting on September 22nd 2025, amazon is going to be removing the previous meltable inventory restrictions announcement that they had in March, and they do this every year. This ensures that the meltable inventory doesn’t just melt all over the place, so you can actually start sending those back in, and they’re going to resume filling customer orders for these products October 13th. Meltable inventory refers to all heat sensitive products that melt during prolonged exposure to temperatures of 155 degrees Fahrenheit, and this includes, but is not limited to, chocolates, gummies and select jelly and wax based products. So if you sell those types of products, then again, starting September 22nd, you’re going to be able to start, you know, sending those things back in so that they can start being sold on October 13th and next up.

Carrie Miller:

We have some enrollment changes for FBA liquidations and donation programs. So this is actually another announcement in Seller Central it says the FBA liquidation program, which allows you to potentially receive recovery for eligible inventory, will become the default option for your unsold inventory. If you haven’t configured your automated fulfillable settings and automated unfulfillable settings, you’ll automatically be enrolled in the liquidation program. You can still opt out of the liquidation program at any time. The FBA donations program, which allows your eligible products to be donated instead of recycled, will become mandatory as of September 30th 2025, you won’t be able to opt out. If you’ve previously opted out, you’ll be re-enrolled. There are no changes to the fees for either program.

Carrie Miller:

These programs support Amazon’s commitment to sustainability by extending product life cycles and reducing waste. Through liquidation, products find new users through secondary markets, while donations ensure useful items reach charitable organizations instead of being discarded. While no action from you is required, amazon recommends that you review these changes and adjust your inventory management strategy. Check that out if you’re curious about any more information. There is, you know, more details that you can click on to get more information in that announcement. And next up, we have a training tip of the week from Bradley Sutton and it is about Helium 10 custom rules for ads. So you’re definitely going to want to check in with this one, because this can save you a lot of money and a lot of time.

Bradley Sutton:

How to set custom rules for your advertising that could save you up to 95% of the time it takes to manage Amazon advertising. This is important, like it should be self-explanatory, how this can make you money. How many of us, if we didn’t use an agency, if we weren’t using software, were toiling with Amazon Seller Central search term reports to manage our PPC, and then we had to run pivot tables and VLOOKUPs and download multiple weeks of data, and then we had to find all the data points that we wanted. Hey, where was my? Which search terms did I have? More than 25 clicks, but no sales. Oh, let me find those one by one. Once I found them. Now I got to go find where that campaign is in seller central and pause that target or negative match that target. Maybe.

Bradley Sutton:

I had another rule where I’m like you know what, if I have something that was between a hundred and 120% ACOS, I need to bring that down to 70% ACOS. Well, first of all I would have to make a whole bunch of formulas in Excel files to even find where is in that range of ACOS, and then I would have to make another formula that said all right, what do I have to bring my bid down in order to bring my ACOS down to 80%. And then again, once I make all those calculations, again I got to go one by one, find where in the world that target is, in which campaign, in which ad group, and edit it one by one. This takes time, like if you’ve got one product, sure you know, maybe you’ve got five campaigns. You can probably manage that, like you know, 30 minutes a week. But what if you have hundreds of campaigns, scores of products? You can see that takes forever.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, that’s why Helium 10 Ads has rules based ad campaigns. It means that you set your own rules, not Helium 10, like Helium 10 has AI. We could do it for you, but no, like, all of us have our own little way of how we want to run advertising. I want to optimize based on my row, as I want to optimize based on my ROAS. I want to optimize based on ACOS and if it’s at this level, I want to schedule when I have a high bid and a low bid, et cetera, et cetera. Whatever your personal rules are that you’re manually doing, let Helium 10 do the heavy lifting for you. We’re one of the only all-in-one tools that have full rules-based management for your advertising. Let me show you how it works really quick.

Bradley Sutton:

For example, here’s one of my campaigns and I’ve got tons of rules here that are just based on ACOS. All right, I add all of my campaigns to this and I’m like hey, you know what, if ACOS is between 50 and 60, do the calculations so that the bid gets down to 40. If it’s between 40 and 50, make it go down to 30. And I have it on the flip side If it’s between three and 5%, you know what, raise it up to 7%. You know, raise a bid. I have other ones where it says you know what, if I get more than 25 clicks but zero orders in 60 days for a target, pause the target.

Bradley Sutton:

I have so many rules here that I set up. That was basically kind of like set it and forget it. In addition to that, I also have like day parting schedules. I noticed that my Ads were like back in the day they were like crazy high at certain times of the day, like 10 PM to midnight. So you’ll see, here I set another rule that says you know what, for each day of the week, uh, for the period of 10 to 11 PM, since that, just for whatever reason. Like works terribly for me. Um, take my bids down by 75%, so I’m not losing so much. And look here I just did that recently. You could see here how my a cost was 172% before at 10 PM. Well, watch what happens. This is just looking back at 60 days. Look what’s going to happen If I look back at like my last uh, let’s just say last couple of weeks here from 10 to 11 PM. Now look at that 10 to 11 PM, my ACOS is actually down to zero. Almost it’s like not spending at all. So look at how much money I saved $170 of wasted spend I was spending in the previous 60 days and now that has come to a complete halt because I set up this rule that said lower my bids at this very unprofitable time.

Bradley Sutton:

Once all of those rules are put in place, every week I set mine, every week, you could set yours to every day. Helium 10 is giving me suggestions of what I need to do with my bids in order to put into practice those rules I had so like. For example, here’s a keyword coffin shelf where my cost per click was 29 cents. I had said, hey, if it’s between 30 and 40%, do what it takes to get that down to 20% ACOS. And sure enough, Helium 10 is telling me hey, lower that, bid down by 3 cents. All right, here’s there’s 58 of these suggestions that came just today and I just have to click this button once If I want to implement it. This is something that would have taken me hours to do with those pivot tables and spreadsheets. I can manage my PPC up to a hundred campaigns in about five minutes a week without even automation. I can turn on automation zero time.

Bradley Sutton:

But me personally, I like to keep control again, rules based advertising. Helium 10 is the only place you are going to get that. When you’re talking about all in one suite of tools for Amazon sellers. This is absolutely a way that can make you money because it’s going to find stuff that maybe you couldn’t with Excel files and save you some money. But more importantly, arguably it’s going to save you time. Like I said, it saves me, at least I would say, five to 10 hours a week of work across my 250 campaigns that I’m managing, because it’ll only take me like five minutes per account, so like maybe 15 minutes for all three of my accounts and I’m finished every week optimizing my Ads campaign. So if you’re interested, Helium 10 Ads you get it free with a Diamond plan. So make sure to add and you start utilizing Ads now.

Carrie Miller:

Thank you so much, Bradley, for that seller strategy of the week. Okay, next up we have an article within Seller Central or announcement actually, within Seller Central that says protect your account from deactivation with account health assurance. And I think this is actually pretty helpful for a lot of people because if there’s any kind of violation, they usually will deactivate your account and it’s really difficult to get back up online, and so with this I it’s really difficult to get back up online, and so with this I think it might make it a little bit easier for you to resolve issues and they’ll kind of take a more proactive approach, at least according to this announcement it says on here. It says we understand how important it is to get your selling account back online when policy violations arise. If you consistently achieve a high account health rating, our account health assurance program enables you to continue selling while you resolve account health issues with the help of our team. Here’s how it works If you have a professional selling account and you maintain an account health rating of 250 or higher for at least six months, with no more than 10 days below the threshold, and have a valid emergency contact number on file, you’ll be automatically enrolled in account health assurance at no additional cost when you encounter an issue that would otherwise result in account deactivation, and account health specialists will reach out to you to explain what the issue is and how to address it. As long as you respond to us within 72 hours and us is Amazon and you work with Amazon to resolve the account issues, your selling account won’t be deactivated. Note, if you commit serious policy violations, such as fraud or deceptive, illegal or harmful activities, we may still take your immediate action, including account deactivation. So this is really good news, very helpful for sellers who maybe have some sort of violation they didn’t know about. That way, they don’t get completely deactivated and they can still sell while they figure out the problem they have, and they’ll have access to their account to be able to solve the issue. So I think this is a really good update.

Carrie Miller:

And next up, we have an article from Amazon about optimized targeting for sponsored display conversion campaigns. This actually is going to show you what actually just launched, which is basically when you select your optimization strategy for conversions. Sponsored display will enable cost-effective, dynamically optimized targeting to help you reach audiences who are more likely to engage with your ads. By selecting bids with recommendations provided by Amazon. Advertisers can now select for optimized targeting to automatically reach audiences likely to be interested in your ads, minimizing the guesswork and effort to manually select different targeting types. For added flexibility and control, advertisers will also have the ability to select either manual targeting or add manual targeting. In addition to optimize targeting. For manual targeting, advertisers will now have options to select remarketing, exact products, targeting based on views or purchases, or contextual targeting, and this, actually, they go further down to say where it’s available.

Carrie Miller:

It’s going to be available in North America and the United States, Canada and Mexico, south America and Brazil. It’ll also be in Europe and the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Poland, the Netherlands, Sweden, the Middle East. It’ll be in the United Arab Emirates, Asia Pacific. It’ll be Australia, India, Japan and Singapore. So kind of thinking. This might be a little bit kind of like how TikTok Ads have this kind of algorithm where they find the audiences where that they, you know, will most likely convert. It’s kind of like an AI thing. So, if you haven’t checked it out, check this out and, you know, start utilizing these amazing tools that Amazon is giving to all of us. So that is all that we have for this week’s episode of the Weekly Buzz and we hope that you’ll tune in again next week and remember you’re going to go to the Serious Sellers Podcast YouTube channel and that’s where it’s going to be, so go ahead and tune into that channel next week for our Weekly Buzz, so you can see what’s buzzing by everyone.

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