Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, August 12

Amazon quietly shutters product ads that drove traffic to outside sites: Amazon.com Inc quietly shuttered a pay-per-click advertising program that allowed businesses to divert traffic from the retailer's platform to their own websites on Tuesday, saying it would permanently discontinue the program in October. The program allowed many businesses that are not necessarily sellers on Amazon's online marketplace to buy ad space on its website. Targeted ads for specific items would pop up on Amazon's website and drive shoppers to the retailer or manufacturer's own site. "Our customers performed really well with it because it provided a middle ground of being able to partner with Amazon but also not allowing them to see all their transaction data," said Scot Wingo, the executive chairman of ChannelAdvisor, which helps retailers and manufacturers sell on ecommerce platforms. Wingo said the program was known for its high conversion rate and said advertisers were surprised when they received an email from Amazon notifying them of the change this week. Amazon's overall advertising business could bring in $1.26 billion in 2015 worldwide and grow to $1.83 billion by 2018, according to estimates from eMarketer, which tracks online advertising.

Alibaba Is Planning Its Comeback From the World’s Biggest Wipeout of Market Value: It took less than a year for Alibaba to turn from a stock-market darling into the biggest source of shareholder losses worldwide. Alibaba’s fiscal first-quarter sales are projected to climb 33 percent, the weakest pace in at least three years, to 21 billion yuan ($3.3 billion), according to the average of 26 estimates compiled by Bloomberg. That compares with a mean growth rate of 56 percent for the previous 12 quarters. Alibaba shares closed Tuesday at $77.34, down 35 percent from their Nov. 10 high. While the stock is still trading above its initial public offering price in September, the company has lost the equivalent of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s entire market capitalization since its peak -- the world’s biggest destruction of market value. The Hangzhou-based company is now ranked 24th worldwide with a value of $194 billion. After its record $25 billion IPO and 75 percent surge in the first two months of trading, Alibaba has been hit by a succession of bad news. Now, China’s biggest e-commerce operator is plotting its comeback. This week’s purchase of a stake in Suning -- Chairman Jack Ma’s largest deal ever -- is part of the company’s push to reach millions of new customers in rural China and abroad through a bigger logistics network. Ma is counting on expansion outside China’s largest cities to offset a slowdown in sales growth that helped erase more than $90 billion of market value since Alibaba shares peaked in November. While the strategy may take time to bear fruit, Wall Street is keeping its faith before the release of Alibaba’s quarterly results on Wednesday. Share-price forecasts tracked by Bloomberg imply a 35 percent rally over the next year, the second-biggest projected return among the world’s 25 largest companies.

Branch8 Lets Merchants Sell Via Multiple E-Commerce Sites With Fewer Headaches: Choice and competition is good for consumers, but it sure makes things tricky for merchants. Assuming that you want to reach shoppers through as many touchpoints as possible (you do), then you’re going to be using a handful of e-commerce sites to sell your stuff in Asia. Beyond just spending time on different sites and dashboards, that means you’ll be managing tricky issues — like inventory, demand, outbound packages and more — manually across a range of different (competing) websites. That’s basically a whole separate job in itself. Indeed, that’s what the founders of one new startup, Branch8, believe. With their service, they are aiming to make a difference and make selling across many sites something that any merchant can do with ease. Beyond consolidating the basic processes beyond selling via multiple services — Amazon, Lazada, Rakuten, eBay and Jumia are among the initial platforms supported — Branch8 also provides analytics to track traffic, it automates price checking and product migration, and connects to third-party logistics services. Those value-adds, Chan said, are where it believes it can really stand out for merchants. “Our differentiator is analytics,” he told TechCrunch in an interview. “Few tools track traffic via SKU. While our price tracking tool and the convenience of migrating to new platforms, this process is very manual, are specifically designed to meet merchants’ pain-points.” The service is initially free to use for three months, after which a subscription-based pricing model kicks in. Packages begin at $315 per month, rising to $715 for merchants with larger product ranges and more intensive customer service requirements.

Facebook Now Sells Video Ads Inside Other Apps: Facebook, which has ramped up its own video advertising efforts over the past two years, is now selling autoplay video ads inside apps it doesn’t own. Facebook had already been selling display ads this way. It has an ad network called Audience Network, which lets advertisers use your Facebook data to serve you ads inside other apps, like Candy Crush or Tango. An update to the product Tuesday included the option to buy new ad types, like video ads and carousel ads (you can swipe between multiple images). Video advertising is no longer a rarity. Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram all offer their own video ad products. But selling video ads through Audience Network is still an important update for Facebook, which makes the vast majority of its revenue from advertising. Video ads are more lucrative than traditional static or banner ads, which is why the social network has been pushing to sell them within its own apps.