ANavigator Weekly Amazon Digest — Week 28

This week covers a Buy Box eligibility change landing in the UK and EU, an early start to Prime Big Deal Days planning, and a new holiday ad automation tool. It also covers a review access test, a correction on a widely shared layoffs claim, Amazon's $25 billion bond plan, and Google's UCP appearing in AI mode. 📌 Contents Buy Box Eligibility Requirement Removed in the UK and EU Prime Big Deal Days Submissions Already Open Amazon Launches Holiday Ad Budget Bid+ Multiplier Amazon Testing a Login Wall on Reviews Amazon Layoffs Story Gets Corrected Amazon Looks to Raise $25 Billion for AI Infrastructure Google's UCP Shows Up in AI Mode   1. Buy Box Eligibility Requirement Removed in the UK and EU From July 20, Amazon is removing the seller performance eligibility requirement for the Buy Box in the UK and EU. Sellers currently have to clear a performance bar before they're even considered for the slot; that pre-check goes away. Amazon says the actual selection criteria stay the same: price, delivery, and performance still decide the winner. Eligibility and selection are different things, and removing eligibility opens the pool of sellers who can compete for the Buy Box, including sellers who were never authorized to sell a given product. Brand Registry, Transparency, and MAP enforcement remain the tools that actually give you control. Sellers who've relied on the performance bar as a passive filter should treat this as the moment to check listings directly. The change takes effect July 20. Read more here by Josh Shawuk 2. Prime Big Deal Days Submissions Already Open Prime Big Deal Days deal submissions opened July 8 this year, the earliest start recorded for this event. The event date itself has moved earlier every year since 2022: October 11-12 that year, October 10-11 in 2023, October 8-9 in 2024, and October 7-8 in 2025. The submission window has followed the same pattern. In 2024, it opened on July 8, and in 2025, it opened on August 7. An earlier submission window doesn't confirm a September event date, but it does suggest Amazon expects sellers to start planning well before the official announcement. Waiting for that announcement puts brands behind on deal eligibility checks, pricing floors, stock cover, and ad budget planning. The work items worth starting now include parentage checks, promo funding, Featured Offer risk, and competitor pricing review. Read more here by James Howard 3. Amazon Launches Holiday Ad Budget Bid+ Multiplier Amazon introduced the Holiday Ad Budget Bid+ Multiplier, a new automation feature built for Q4 promotions. It automatically raises bids while eligible deals such as Lightning Deals, Top Deals, or Prime Exclusive Discounts are live, then returns them to normal once the promotion ends. The rollout coincides with the opening of holiday deal submissions, giving advertisers time to prepare ahead of Q4. For advertisers running multiple holiday promotions, this removes a layer of manual bid monitoring during the busiest stretch of the year. It also reduces the risk of bids staying elevated after a deal has already ended, which is a common source of wasted spend. Read more here by Ivan Marynych 4. Amazon Testing a Login Wall on Reviews Some unauthenticated sessions browsing Amazon are now hitting a message on product pages that reads: "Customer reviews require account verification. Sign in." Instead of full review text, these sessions see only the star rating breakdown and the AI-generated "Customers say" summary. The behavior is inconsistent across sessions, which points to an A/B test rather than a platform-wide change. Real shoppers browsing while logged in are unlikely to notice a difference. The sessions most affected are automated tools that read review text without an account, including scrapers and third-party monitoring tools. This looks like a continuation of Amazon's gradual approach to limiting review data access outside its own platform. Read more here by Serghei Bessonov 5. Amazon Layoffs Story Gets Corrected A claim circulated this week stating Amazon cut 30,000 jobs due to AI, then rehired 11,000 of those same people once the approach proved too costly. That version of events isn't accurate. Amazon did cut roughly 30,000 corporate roles across two separate rounds, and the company does plan to hire around 11,000 people in 2026. Those incoming roles are largely interns, new graduates, and early-career engineers, not the employees affected by the earlier cuts. Amazon has said this hiring level is close to what the company does in a typical year. There's no evidence supporting the idea that Amazon tried replacing staff with AI and reversed the decision. What's actually taking place is a reduction in management layers, cuts within specific teams, and continued hiring in software, cloud, and AI roles. Read more here by Oleksandr Kovalov 6. Amazon Looks to Raise $25 Billion for AI Infrastructure Amazon is looking to raise $25 billion through a bond sale as it continues investing in AI infrastructure, data centers, and the broader AWS ecosystem. The scale of investment required for chips, data centers, energy capacity, and model development has reached a point where even a company of Amazon's size is financing part of it through debt markets rather than cash reserves alone. This spending reaches across AWS, ecommerce, advertising, Rufus, Alexa, and logistics. Behind the customer-facing parts of Amazon that sellers interact with daily sits a financially intensive infrastructure buildout that shows no sign of slowing. The bond sale is a signal of the capital intensity behind the current stage of AI competition, not a one-off event. Read more here by Nikolai Tahmin 7. Google's UCP Shows Up in AI Mode Google's Universal Commerce Protocol, or UCP, its agentic shopping integration, has started appearing within AI mode search results. The feature is showing up mainly on branded prompts so far, tied to a specific "buy" button that appears next to an underlined product name in the left panel. Adoption remains limited to a small group of retailers, including Target and Etsy, with other early adopters not yet consistently triggering the feature. UCP lets Google users complete a purchase without leaving Google, continuing the company's pattern of keeping users inside its own ecosystem. Questions raised this week include how UCP might affect average order value, since upsells shown on a typical product page or cart don't carry over, and whether appearing as one item in a feed dilutes brand identity over time. It's early, and how UCP develops will depend on how many retailers adopt it and how Google positions it within AI mode search results. Read more here by Zack Notes That's the full set of updates for Week 28. Amazon is tightening review access, adjusting Buy Box rules, and pouring money into AI infrastructure while Q4 planning windows open earlier than usual. Subscribe to the blog to get next week's digest as soon as it's published.   If you want to stay updated on Amazon changes, subscribe to our blog. If you need support with PPC, DSP, AMC, analytics, or a long-term growth strategy, contact the ANavigator team at info@anavigator.co  Book a call to get a FREE AUDIT by the link below:     Book a call – FREE AUDIT   Follow my Weekly Newsletter on LinkedIn:  / amazon-digest-for-brands-7232361008185372672   Follow me on LinkedIn:  / ookovalov  Follow ANavigator on social media:  / anavigator    /@anavigator_official  / anavigator7    / @anavigators     LinkedIn page to contact us:   Author: Oleksandr Kovalov Role: Founder & CEO @ ANavigator — The ANavigator Team  

Starting September 30, 2026, Amazon is enforcing a new delivery standard for seller-fulfilled shipments going to B2B buyers. If you fulfill your own orders and sell to Amazon Business customers, this applies to you. What the Requirement Is The Business Hour Delivery Rate measures the percentage of your seller-fulfilled shipments delivered to Amazon Business customers within their operating hours, tracked over a rolling 14-day period. You will need to maintain a rate of 90% or higher. The enforcement is two-stage. If your rate is below 90% on September 30, Amazon notifies you and provides recommendations. If it does not improve by October 30, your seller-fulfilled offers may be deactivated for Amazon Business customers. FBA and retail offers are not affected. The Real Problem With This Metric Seller reaction has been pointed out, and not without reason. Once a package is handed to UPS or FedEx, delivery timing is entirely in the carrier's hands. Many commercial customers now close at 3pm or 4pm, or have variable hours, compressing the delivery window further. Sellers document cases where using all three of Amazon's recommended tools still produces a BHDR below 90%. What Amazon Says Guarantees Compliance Shipments fulfilled using Automated Handling Time, Shipping Settings Automation, and Amazon Buy Shipping together are guaranteed to meet the Business Hour Delivery Rate requirement. If you are using all three and still miss the threshold, you have documented protection. In the US, Amazon recommends UPS Ground, UPS Ground Saver, and FedEx Ground for reliable BHDR performance. Carrier selection is the most direct variable available to brands currently running below threshold. What to Do Now Check your current BHDR in the Eligibilities section of Account Health in Seller Central. If you are below 90%, you have twelve weeks before the assessment date to move it. The 14-day rolling calculation means changes to carrier selection and shipping settings take time to flow through to measured outcomes — starting adjustments in late September is too late. This is the third seller-fulfilled delivery metric Amazon has enforced or tightened in 2026, after the On-Time Delivery Rate update in February and the handling time accuracy requirement in June. Amazon's direction is clear: faster, more reliable self-fulfillment, enforced automatically. September 30 is twelve weeks away. Check your Account Health dashboard today. If you want to stay updated on Amazon changes, subscribe to our blog. If you need support with PPC, DSP, AMC, analytics, or a long-term growth strategy, contact the ANavigator team at info@anavigator.co  Book a call to get a FREE AUDIT by the link below:     Book a call – FREE AUDIT   Follow my Weekly Newsletter on LinkedIn:  / amazon-digest-for-brands-7232361008185372672   Follow me on LinkedIn:  / ookovalov  Follow ANavigator on social media:  / anavigator    /@anavigator_official  / anavigator7    / @anavigators     LinkedIn page to contact us:   Author: Oleksandr Kovalov Role: Founder & CEO @ ANavigator — The ANavigator Team