The two questions I’m getting more than any other right now: why hasn’t Amazon stepped in on the Creator Connections situation, and when are they going to? I don’t have an inside line to Amazon’s decision makers, but I do have friends who were just at Amazon’s invite-only Creator Connect event, I’ve watched what Amazon did during Prime Day, and I’ve run the math on how fast campaigns are filling. Here’s my honest read on both questions.
In This Article
- Amazon Knows, But May Not Grasp the Severity
- The Uncomfortable Theory: Full Campaigns Might Help Amazon
- Why Q4 Timing Works Against a Fix
- The Math Says Bronze and Silver Run Out First
- The Moment Big Publishers Can’t Get a Campaign
- Why Raising the Cap Isn’t a Quick Patch
- Prepare for the Worst Case
- What I Recommend Right Now
Amazon Knows, But May Not Grasp the Severity
My first concern was that Amazon simply wasn’t paying attention. I no longer think that’s the case. My friends who attended Creator Connect said Amazon is aware of what’s happening with campaign slots, though they may not understand how severe it’s become.
The stronger evidence came during Prime Day. Amazon intervened on behalf of several large brands and edited campaigns that were already live and already completely full to add more slots. Somebody at Amazon had to have a conversation about changing the slot count on a running campaign, which is not something that happens casually. So yes, they know. The real question is why they haven’t acted more broadly.
The Uncomfortable Theory: Full Campaigns Might Help Amazon
Here’s a theory that came out of those Creator Connect conversations. Just because something is bad for creators doesn’t mean it’s bad for Amazon. The people I know who are in the managed program and get invited to these events believe Amazon may actually benefit from the perception that Creator Connections is in overwhelming demand.
Think about it from Amazon’s side. They’re trying to get more brands to buy into Creator Connections. About a month and a half ago I covered a LinkedIn article from a seller group that described Creator Connections as slow-moving. If you’re Amazon pitching brands, that perception is a problem. But if you can point at campaigns that fill in seconds and say “look how badly creators want to promote your products, we can’t create enough campaigns to meet demand,” that’s a sales pitch. Companies let things fill up and run wait lists for exactly this reason.
I think we’re past the point where this fully explains Amazon’s inaction, and brands talk to each other, so the “my campaign filled up and nobody promoted my product” conversation is happening too. But I believe there’s at least a sliver of truth in it, and it’s a fair partial explanation for why nothing has been done yet.
Why Q4 Timing Works Against a Fix
Now the “when” question. We’re in Q4, and large companies typically do not make sweeping changes in Q4. They make their changes before Q4 so Q4 can do Q4 things. They want systems settled and stable through the holidays, and they address structural problems in Q1.
That timing is unfortunate, because the math on campaign availability doesn’t wait for January.
The Math Says Bronze and Silver Run Out First
Based on the fill rates we’re tracking, I don’t know that bronze and silver creators see another campaign come through within about a week. I hope I’m wrong, and you’re welcome to make your own videos saying I’m overstating this. But the numbers say that’s where we are. After that, it comes for gold and platinum shortly thereafter.
Picture the end state: every campaign on the page is full. A new campaign drops and gets sniped within seconds, because there are automations grabbing anything that appears and 200,000 people fighting over 800 slots. Nobody gets the campaigns they want. Not you, not me.
The Moment Big Publishers Can’t Get a Campaign
And not the large publishers either. The New York Times, CNET, Forbes, TechCrunch, the outlets that make Amazon millions of dollars a day through affiliate content, will suddenly be unable to get into a campaign. I think the trigger for real action is when one of them calls Amazon and asks what is going on with Creator Connections, and Amazon takes a hard look around.
I’ll be direct: I think it’s likely at this point that the system crashes before it gets fixed. I don’t want that. I hope Amazon comes in today. I hope it’s already happened and I just haven’t seen it. But the margin of time left is so small that any fix has to happen very quickly, and that’s not how Amazon usually operates on something this big.
Why Raising the Cap Isn’t a Quick Patch
A lot of people want the answer to be “just raise the cap.” Amazon may not want to make a quick patch on something with this many ramifications. Even at the Creator Connect event, the conversation my friends heard was that Amazon was open to raising the cap, but only if they could also raise the budget, because they see those two things as intertwined.
And even if they raise it, we end up right back here, probably sooner than you’d think. We watched campaigns go from 800 to 2,000 slots around Prime Day and refill in under 24 hours. The speed at which campaigns fill is unsustainable without structural change to Creator Connections itself. A bigger number is not a structural change.
Prepare for the Worst Case
So what does the worst case look like? An unusable Creator Connections ecosystem. No campaigns you can match your videos to, no product research value from the campaign list, nothing to plan around. Brands will probably still send samples through it, but they’ll be samples on campaigns you can’t earn bonus commissions on because you couldn’t get in.
Here’s the strange twist: brands may actually save money in that scenario. Their campaigns are full of people who aren’t promoting, they still get some creators promoting organically, and they pay no bonus commissions to the people locked out. Amazon fills its demand narrative, brands spend less, and creators eat the cost.
What I Recommend Right Now
Plan as if Creator Connections bonuses go to zero and treat anything above that as upside. Keep your storefront producing on its own: run Storefront Cross Check so you know which of your videos are still live and earning, use the Comparison Video Schedule to keep new content flowing against proven products, and catch dead listings with Unavailable Video Matching. The creators who get through this are the ones whose income was never dependent on a bonus program in the first place.
If you want to build a storefront that doesn’t need Amazon to fix anything for you to get paid, start with Oink for Influencers. The product research and storefront tools are built for exactly this kind of moment.
