Amazon Brand Registry 2.0 - Is It Worth It?

Nowadays, many customers first search for products on Amazon. There’s a good chance that they will discover your products and brand on Amazon before they even visit your website or other websites. Therefore it’s key that your brand leaves a good impression on Amazon - you might not get a second chance. Even if a customer already knows your brand, poor representation on Amazon might damage the image of your brand.

Unfortunately, brands encounter quite a number of challenges when it comes to brand representation on Amazon. Examples are unauthorized changes to product listings resulting in incorrect product/brand information or counterfeit products.

In response to these and other challenges, Amazon introduced its Amazon Brand Registry Program at zero cost to brand owners. The program, revamped in May 2017, is also officially known as ‘New Amazon Brand Registry’, and more colloquially as Brand Registry 2.0.

What is Amazon Brand Registry and Why is It Important?

The redesigned Amazon Brand Registry program is a powerful tool for brands to protect their brand, copyrights and product listings and fight back against counterfeiting. We highly recommend enrolling in this program to ensure that your brand is being protected.

In this article we will walk you through the essentials of Amazon Brand Registry, including its benefits and how to set it up. We will also cover some related programs such as the Amazon Transparency Program and Amazon Project Zero.

So let’s get started.

Since the re-configuration of this project, thousands of brands have registered for free as there are no brand registry costs or fees. These brands are reporting almost 99% fewer suspected copyright infringements and violations.

On top of the brand protection benefits, enrolling in the program unlocks many other powerful benefits that help with building and marketing your brand on Amazon.

Here are some of the most important facts you need to know about Amazon Brand Registry:

**for more information on recognized trademarks, see “Amazon Brand Registry Requirements”

Is Amazon Brand Registry Worth It? What is the Cost?

Amazon highly encourages all brands to enroll in the new version of Amazon's Brand Registry program.

As there are numerous benefits and zero costs associated with Amazon Brand Registry (except for the official brand registration fee) we also recommend making use of this program if you are a brand owner.

As previously mentioned, there are generally two kinds of benefits to registering your brand at Amazon:

1. Improved brand protection benefits

2. Access to special brand building and marketing benefits

1. Improved Brand Protection Benefits With Amazon Brand Registry

Superior Editing Rights for Product Listings

A common problem encountered by brand owners among sellers and vendors are unauthorized changes to product listings made by other parties (e.g. 3P sellers).

These changes can be very damaging as your carefully crafted product descriptions and images might disappear or they might be replaced with the wrong information. This in turn might hurt your conversion rates, brand image, return rates and reviews.

While having brand registration does not guarantee that this will never happen again, it strengthens your editing rights significantly. That means that it will be harder for other parties to make changes to your listings. If you want to monitor changes being made to your listings, you will find a very useful tool in our vendor software. The Content Monitoring feature in the Content & SEO module notifies you in case of any change to your listings and enables you to reset your content to the original version with just a few clicks.

Manual Search and Report Tools for Action Against Infringements

Amazon offers tools that allow brands to perform targeted manual searches for infringements in the Amazon product catalogue — and report them.

• Search for products that infringe on copyright protections.Choose to filter your search by brand, trademark, or product name. The Amazon system will find all infringing products including archived products and those that have dormant seller listings.

• Search for infringing products with a proprietary image search function.Use your brand’s images to find products with similar images or logos.

• Search globally throughout all thirteen of Amazon’s active markets.Search through all content in Amazon stores to check for infringements that may be occurring in international markets without your consent.

• Search in bulk by ASIN.Search by uploading a list of ASINs or product URLs to make the search process fast and easy. As an added bonus, this tool offers an ‘image enlargement’ feature that allows you to enlarge image thumbnails for easy infringement identification. ASIN search also provides the option of a sort view by average customer ratings. Gauge product popularity with this added feature.

Once you find infringing product matches, you can easily file an infringement report with the Amazon brand protection team. The Amazon brand protection team is made up of hundreds of representatives based in the US. Its sole functionality is to investigate and correct counterfeit and infringement reports.

Automatic, predictive brand protection measures

In addition to the manual search, Amazon also automatically looks for infringing listings and removes them. This will be more effective, if you provide Amazon  detailed information about your brand that can be used for this automated search.

2. Access to special brand building and marketing benefits with Amazon Brand Registry

As a seller, registering your brand at Amazon unlocks some special benefits that are generally designed around brand building, marketing and enhancing the brand experience for customers on Amazon. Vendors mostly have access to these benefits even without registering their brand.

A+ content

A+ Content is an Amazon program that gives sellers and vendors the opportunity to enhance their product detail pages with richer product descriptions, featuring images, charts, videos and more.

There are generally four types of advantages to A+ Content:

Product: More images and more elaborate product descriptions give you the space to tell your product’s story in a more engaging way and show off unique benefits and features as well as the lifestyle connected to your product.

Brand: Telling your brand’s story and connecting with your buyers builds brand awareness and loyalty and can encourage repeat purchases.

Product range: A+ product comparison charts help users discover more of your products and make satisfactory buying decisions. They also decrease the probability that users are driven away (e.g. by Sponsored Products ad or the Amazon similar product comparison widget) and buy competitor products.

Video: Within the A+ Content section you have the opportunity to upload videos to your product listings that will appear in your image gallery. For Premium A+ Content (only vendors) videos can also be directly integrated in the A+ Content.

Brand Stores

With Amazon Brand Stores you can set up dedicated shop pages on Amazon featuring a customized product selection. You can customize these shop pages with your own images and text to create the brand experience you aim for.

Customers on Amazon will get to this brand shop if they click on the brand name on your product listing. Their main advantage is, however, that you can use the brand stores as branded landing pages for Sponsored Brands campaigns (more about that below) and external campaigns (e.g. campaigns on Facebook).

Sponsored Brands

Sponsored Brands is a banner based, PPC (pay-per-click) ad format for advertising on Amazon. The banners can have various placements in Amazon search results (the most prominent being above the search results):

Sponsored Brands ads or banners can be customized (within limits) to reflect your brand and they can be linked to your Amazon Brand Store or customized landing pages.

Compared to Sponsored Products campaigns that are targeting rather lower funnel customers, Sponsored Brands can be used as a brand discovery tool to capture more top of funnel customers and drive brand discovery and awareness.

Brand Dashboard and Brand Analytics

This is a benefit specifically for sellers (vendors have some of the features included even without brand registry). The Brand Dashboard and Brand Analytics can be found in Seller Central.

The Brand Dashboard is a tool that gives brands an overview of how their brand is performing overall. There are dedicated dashboards (e.g. brand health, conversion, traffic) for deeper analysis.

Brand Analytics is tool offering a range of different reports with valuable insights. It’s similar to ARA (Amazon Retail Analytics) for vendors, but the range of reports is smaller. You get the following reports:

• Amazon Search Terms: See the top search terms on Amazon including click shares and conversion shares for the most clicked products by search term

• Market Basket Analysis: See which products are frequently bought together to identify bundling and cross-selling opportunities

• Item Comparison and Alternate Purchase Behavior: See which products are viewed together to do competitive research

• Demographics: Find out about your target audience

Posts (beta)

Posts (currently in beta) are a great way to enhance user browsing experience and draw more attention to new brands and products. Posts operate much like social media posts and put the user in the driver's seat.

Posts directly link to individual product detail pages and also include category tags which means shoppers can continue exploring related products.

Amazon posts are laid out in carousel format ideal for discovery as users scroll through and can be tapped for easy purchase. Plus, Posts deliver additional benefits to brand registered businesses:

• Brand differentiation - Posts are the most product-focused service of brand registry and enable you to re-share your social media content

• Metrics for performance analysis - see how many views and clicks your Posts are getting and measure click through rates

• Free participation - Posts is a free service for brand registered businesses

Are There Any Disadvantages to Amazon’s New Brand Registry?

The following points are not genuine disadvantages, but rather things that Amazon Brand Registry will not do for you.

• Amazon does not act against sellers that list your brands’ products against your wishes. It only acts against sellers who sell counterfeit or infringing products.

• Amazon will not take action against sellers who advertise your brands’ products under the Minimum Advertised Price (MAP).

Amazon Brand Registry Application - Step by Step

So you’re ready to protect your brand and products against counterfeits by enrolling in Amazon Brand Registry?

Good news! - the process is fairly straightforward, if you follow these steps

1. Check the requirements

2. Sign up

3. Enroll your brand

Let’s go through these application steps in detail.

Step 1: What Are the Requirements for Amazon Brand Registry?

In order to enroll in Amazon Brand Registry, there is only one key requirement:

• You must have an active, registered trademark for each marketplace in which you want to register (see available countries below)

Don’t have a trademarked logo as a brand owner yet? It’s time to design and register one. Your trademarked logo must meet one of the following criteria:

• An “Image” based mark with graphic elements composed of numbers, letters or words

• A “Text” based mark with textual elements

The trademark requirements are generally similar across the following listed countries. Trademarks can be text or image-based with the exception of the US which allows for more types of trademark classifications.

Amazon currently recognizes trademarks that have been issued by government trademark offices in Australia, Brazil, Canada, European Union*, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and United States.

* trademark issued by EU does not communicate selling in all EU marketplaces

Countries where Amazon recognizes your brand registration.

Step 2: How to Sign Up for the Amazon Brand Registry Program

1. Trademark your brand. If you already have active, registered trademark(s) issued by one or more of the countries/regions listed above, keep it ready. You will refer to it many times throughout the enrollment process.

2. Have proof of brand rights/ownership. Be able to verify that you are the trademark rights owner or an authorized agent of the trademark.

3. If you are already selling on Amazon seller or vendor central, all you need are your existing Amazon login account credentials. If you do not currently have an Amazon seller or vendor central account, create a new one for free.

4. Sign in by using your Seller or Vendor Central account credentials.

Step 3: How to Enroll Your Brand for the Amazon Brand Registry Program

1. Provide your Amazon brand name(s) along with their trademark(s)

2. Provide your trademark(s) number(s)

3. Provide the product categories that you want your products to be listed under (make sure that they match with an Amazon product category)

4. List all of the manufacturing and distributing countries of your brand product

How long does it take to enroll in Amazon Brand Registry?

And that’s it! Once you have submitted your application, Amazon will generally respond about the status of your brand within two weeks. If you are submitting multiple trademarks for multiple countries the confirmation and approval could take longer.

You can also give up your brand registry status at any time, should there be a need to do so.

Note to sellers registered in Brand Registry (1.0): new Amazon Brand Registry does not operate on a grandfather clause basis. That means your brand registry status does not carry over and you must re-enroll.

What is the Amazon Transparency Program?

Amazon’s Transparency Program goes even a step farther than Brand Registry 2.0. Transparency codes are applied to each and every product under a brand’s domain. Each code is made up of numbers and letters that are scanned at Amazon Fulfillment Centers before they are sent out to customers. This ensures that only credible products are shipped out to products, eliminating the risk of counterfeits.

Customers can also take part in the anti-counterfeiting measures. They can scan products that they’ve purchased with the Transparency App (available only in the US).

Brands have the choice to enroll their entire product line for Transparency or just selected product(s). Each individual product, however, must have a transparency code (usually in the form of a sticker) applied to it.

It is currently available in the US, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and India.

What is Amazon Project Zero?

Brands Take Charge of Counterfeit Removal

Amazon Project Zero is a protection program that is designed to harness the power of brands and Amazon’s fraud team. It puts the brand in the driver-seat, so to speak, allowing them to remove counterfeit products themselves using a new self-service tool that Amazon has designed for the program.

The data collected and stored about the removed products helps Amazon’s automated system to detect similar fraudulent products in the future.

Machine-Learning Fuels Prediction and Action

Protection is automated with Amazon’s brand security that learns as it goes. That means the more information a brand provides, the better the automated brand security system can prevent fraudulent products from reaching the market. Machine learning allows Amazon’s Project Zero to be a proactive versus reactive service. The brand security system will automatically remove products if they fail to match the information provided by the brand. That is, key data points, such as trademarks, logo, distribution and manufacturing location are combed across all five billion listings and suspected counterfeits are then removed.

Unique Serial IDs Provide Better Protection

Similarly to Amazon Transparency Program, Amazon Project Zero relies, in part, on serialization. Brands are responsible for applying a unique serial code to each product they enroll in the program. Again, Amazon representatives then scan the products to confirm their authenticity. This reduces the number of counterfeits that actually reach customers.

How do I sign up for Amazon Project Zero?

You can join the waiting list for the program here.