About this live episode
The Season 1 finale of The Longer Game was the show's first-ever live episode — a loose, unscripted roundtable titled "Talk About Anything Amazon." Host Michael Maher, Chief Idea Officer at Cartology, brought back three returning guests and friends of the show to talk through the squeeze the whole channel was feeling: layoffs at Shopify and at large Amazon sellers, a flood of venture capital reshaping the space, and advertising costs rising as new money bid up CPCs.
From there the conversation moves through margin math, the real split between online and in-store shopping, inventory as the true growth constraint, tactical AOV plays like bundles and multipacks, the reality of international marketplaces, and the talent gap quietly holding the industry back.
Who was on the panel
Elizabeth Green , Amazon Advertising Lead at Junglr, brings the paid-media view. Her take: margins were always the game — low CPCs and thin competition simply hid the math. As the platform matured the wiggle room disappeared, so sellers have to read the data, watch conversion rate at the product level rather than only inside ad reports, and make strategic calls about which products to push and which to pull back.
Ryan Cramer , Head of Marketing at First Choice Shipping, zooms out to the broader retail picture. Amazon is roughly 40% of US e-commerce revenue, and e-commerce itself sits near 16% of total retail after spiking during the pandemic. The demographic that actually grew is not digital-only shoppers — it is people who buy both in store and online, which is why so many online brands are chasing shelf space at Walmart and Target.
He also makes the panel's loudest point: inventory is the single unlock, because no listing, A+ content, or PPC strategy saves a brand that runs out of stock.
Brett Bohannon , Founder of Amazon with Brett, covers the operator and education side — the talent shortage in the Amazon space, why VC-backed roll-ups underestimated the operational depth required, and how that gap led him to build his own business teaching sellers.
Key takeaways
- Margins were always the game — cheap CPCs and thin competition just hid the math.
- Watch conversion rate at the product level, not only inside ad reports.
- Amazon is roughly 40% of US e-commerce, but the fastest-growing shopper buys both in store and online.
- Inventory is the real unlock; great PPC cannot save a brand that runs out of stock.
- Bundles, multipacks, and variety packs lift AOV inside the same fee tier.
- Low-price trial products still drive discovery for food and beverage brands.
- International marketplaces are real, but there is no second US.
- The talent gap is the industry's quiet constraint — depth beats headcount.