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Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

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Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#361
post #354
post #244

Amazon is the third largest advertising company after Google and Meta. Its ad revenue is $32B (and growing fast, the run rate is $40B). That is half the revenue of AWS, which is worth 70% of Amazon's market cap. The inescapable conclusion is that Amazon's advertising is worth the remaining 30% of Amazon's market cap and Amazon's e-commerce arm is deemed worthless by Wall Street , its only purpose being to support the…

Similar to how vizio makes more money spying through their tvs than selling them in the first place.

Context: https://www.howtogeek.com/767919/tv-manufacturers-make-more-...

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#362
post #244

Amazon is the third largest advertising company after Google and Meta. Its ad revenue is $32B (and growing fast, the run rate is $40B). That is half the revenue of AWS, which is worth 70% of Amazon's market cap. The inescapable conclusion is that Amazon's advertising is worth the remaining 30% of Amazon's market cap and Amazon's e-commerce arm is deemed worthless by Wall Street , its only purpose being to support the…

This reminds me that as far as wall street is concerned, it is actually an afterthought that airlines operate airplanes, all the money is in the credit cards.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now Amazon is nothing more than AliExpress with faster shipping. Shame. On Alibaba, you get business background info, whether it's a manufacturer or a reseller, a picture of the factory, info about whether someone checked out the factory, what certifications the product has, and how long it takes them to respond to inquiries. Amazon doesn't have any of that. On Alibaba, search for "outlet strip". You can check "Ver…

I’m curious, do you actually trust those certifications? I’m wary of the validity of them, but don’t know how to verify if they’re authentic. Thinking mostly of UL certification.

You can check the UL number on a product and get the certification info and company info. This is harder than it used to be on the UL site. You have to register for a free account.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I applaud anyone who leaves a non 5 star review, gets contacted by the company with bribes to make it 5 stars, and updates their review to report the company doing that.

I'm sure people do it, the bribes are probably not very good. Sadly the company can probably get Amazon to take down the review in that case. Reviews for sellers themselves are a joke too, I was looking at some earlier today, via black friday deals. The number of reviews with a line through them and "Amazon takes responsibility for this fulfillment-related experience" was hilarious, when those reviews were things lik…

The seller could argue that it was damaged in transit. The whole thing would probably be luck of the draw in how their first level support in India chooses to apply guidelines.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#365
post #362
post #244

Amazon is the third largest advertising company after Google and Meta. Its ad revenue is $32B (and growing fast, the run rate is $40B). That is half the revenue of AWS, which is worth 70% of Amazon's market cap. The inescapable conclusion is that Amazon's advertising is worth the remaining 30% of Amazon's market cap and Amazon's e-commerce arm is deemed worthless by Wall Street , its only purpose being to support the…

This reminds me that as far as wall street is concerned, it is actually an afterthought that airlines operate airplanes, all the money is in the credit cards.

I think it was the CEO of American Airlines, which owned the Sabre computer reservation system at the time, that if he had to choose between keeping the airline or the CRS, he'd go for the latter. In any event. Sabre was spun out in 2000.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#366

My process for getting usable results on Amazon (.co.uk, presumably the others too): 1. Search for thing 2. Filter by department (necessary for 3) 3. Filter by Seller: only Amazon 4: Filter by reviews: 4 stars+ 5: Sort by price, Low > High 6: (Further filters as appropriate) 7: Look at only products with a high number of reviews 8: For every product, "See all reviews" and filter on "Verified purchase only" and "Show…

Are other sites so bad in the US? I can count the number of times I've been tempted to buy with Amazon in Europe on one hand. I mean pretty much every other webshop has a search experience that is orders of magnitude better then add Geizhals to the mix and you're almost guaranteed to find the cheapest offer, in much less clicks than even trying to find something that is legit and matches the search criteria on amazon…

In Australia a lot of their delivery is Uber style drivers and is usually faster than other options.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#367
post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are other sites so bad in the US? I can count the number of times I've been tempted to buy with Amazon in Europe on one hand. I mean pretty much every other webshop has a search experience that is orders of magnitude better then add Geizhals to the mix and you're almost guaranteed to find the cheapest offer, in much less clicks than even trying to find something that is legit and matches the search criteria on amazon…

The search experience on Amazon is not actually that bad. It's only bad if you're paranoid or picky. I don't use Amazon to discover anything that I'm actually passionate/picky about so I personally never have this problem.

Amazon used to emply Udi Manber, who literally wrote the book on search. Yet it still doesn't offer basic search features every search engine has had for years, like using quotes for phrases, the plus sign to require a phrase to be present in the search result, or the minus sign to exclude keywords or phrases from search results. That's by design.

Amazon search is so useless that about half the time I use DuckDuckGo to search Amazon itself.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#368
post #301

My process for getting usable results on Amazon (.co.uk, presumably the others too): 1. Search for thing 2. Filter by department (necessary for 3) 3. Filter by Seller: only Amazon 4: Filter by reviews: 4 stars+ 5: Sort by price, Low > High 6: (Further filters as appropriate) 7: Look at only products with a high number of reviews 8: For every product, "See all reviews" and filter on "Verified purchase only" and "Show…

I had to buy a replacement USB cable in a pinch the other week. Probably the first time since pre-COVID where I could justify next day delivery (where I would normally be happy to just wait however long it takes from a more local retailer). I knew exactly the kind to look for but I couldn't just search for that and pick the first item on the list. I could have easily bought the wrong thing in one click and not known…

what's wrong with getting the Amazon Basics version of whatever commodity?

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#370
post #297

My process for getting usable results on Amazon (.co.uk, presumably the others too): 1. Search for thing 2. Filter by department (necessary for 3) 3. Filter by Seller: only Amazon 4: Filter by reviews: 4 stars+ 5: Sort by price, Low > High 6: (Further filters as appropriate) 7: Look at only products with a high number of reviews 8: For every product, "See all reviews" and filter on "Verified purchase only" and "Show…

I've bought and seen crap with good reviews. On Amazon. You have a good chance to end with some chinese crap if you rely only on Amazon. On some product, I prefer finding a specialized seller (that isn't dropshipping). Or find a real blog (tends to be hard with all those fakes websites listing top 100 products, but they nmask hemselves when all products are chinese crap on Amazon). Reddit also work to get advice from…

eBay is actually legit a good source for quality items. You can see actual seller ratings, how much the seller sells and specific item feedback. The returns / refund process is dead simple and flawless as well. The only issue is that none of the processes are as quick as Amazon. Shipping is slower and if you need to do a return it can take like 3 days to get the label.
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