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Retail, search and Amazon’s $40B ‘advertising’ business

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Re: Retail, search and Amazon’s $40B ‘advertising’ business

#21

Post by mrDmrTmrJ »

KVFinn wrote: post #12
irjustin wrote: post #8

Anecdotally, I was connected to a number of people on the Ads team and years ago, the upper ups in the G machine were already extremely nervous of Amazon's internal ads system. Google has been regularly losing marketshare to Amazon because people perform searches for products directly there when previously it was done through google-search.

>Google has been regularly losing marketshare to Amazon because people perform searches for products directly there when previously it was done through google-search. Ironically Amazon has been so aggressive with the ads recently I've lost all trust in searching on Amazon itself. I'm back to using Google to find the Amazon product page. On Amazon I search for a specific brand and model and it's on page 4, buried unti…

Strongly agree. Dropped prime after I Amazon adds mean I couldn't find what I wanted. Now use google to find specific stuff on D2C websites (probably Shopify) and spend less. It's great!

Re: Retail, search and Amazon’s $40B ‘advertising’ business

#23

Post by jhhh »

prawn wrote: post #14

I've noticed Bunnings (like Home Depot, but in Australia) adding "Marketplace" listings for non-store things to their website. I assume that there's either an internal push to become more like Amazon, or consultants pitch this approach to them and it's hard to resist. I wonder what the numbers are for supermarkets and the way they prioritise shelf placements? A friend had a big contract recently going around and hi-r…

They did the same thing for Walmart+ and honestly it's pretty terrible. Every business is going to try to be amazon now and while it's probably going to make money in the short term it'll eventually poison their brand. I want to know the hot sauce I'm going to buy isn't sold by some random dude who will send me expired items. I want to know the hard drives I'm going to buy are actually new. Same thing with newegg.

Re: Retail, search and Amazon’s $40B ‘advertising’ business

#24

Post by echelon »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #17
irjustin wrote: post #8

Anecdotally, I was connected to a number of people on the Ads team and years ago, the upper ups in the G machine were already extremely nervous of Amazon's internal ads system. Google has been regularly losing marketshare to Amazon because people perform searches for products directly there when previously it was done through google-search.

Google should be nervous about all of its ads system because their search engine is becoming increasingly trash

1) It's no longer the search intent destination for advertisers. You find information on TikTok, you research products on Reddit, you send your purchase intent to Amazon, etc. These platforms will accrete more advertiser dollars.

2) Google SERPs sucks now. Low quality ads at top, low quality results that follow. A lot of SEO bullshit. Information returned is often irrelevant. Users know this and are getting fed up.

3) Google Search tech / product itself sucks. Power queries no longer work. This might be hard to unwind from as revenue numbers are propped up by answering "dumb queries" with ads.

4) AI will eat search's lunch. You'll increasingly ask LLMs, and these LLMs will push search ad revenue to a much lower margin, especially if the goal is to gain a reputation for quality.

Google has to figure this out quick. 50% of their revenue is from search. I think they're checkmated. There's no way out except to build something new and hope it works. That wouldn't be easy for anyone, but Google especially hasn't shown a history or aptitude for doing this.

Re: Retail, search and Amazon’s $40B ‘advertising’ business

#26

Post by w-ll »

echelon wrote: post #24
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google should be nervous about all of its ads system because their search engine is becoming increasingly trash

1) It's no longer the search intent destination for advertisers. You find information on TikTok, you research products on Reddit, you send your purchase intent to Amazon, etc. These platforms will accrete more advertiser dollars. 2) Google SERPs sucks now. Low quality ads at top, low quality results that follow. A lot of SEO bullshit. Information returned is often irrelevant. Users know this and are getting fed up. 3…

> You find information on TikTok

Am I old? What kind of information. Not to be on Googles side here but, for information in video form... YouTube is at least somewhat reasonable still. Right?

Re: Retail, search and Amazon’s $40B ‘advertising’ business

#27

Post by nerdponx »

echelon wrote: post #24
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google should be nervous about all of its ads system because their search engine is becoming increasingly trash

1) It's no longer the search intent destination for advertisers. You find information on TikTok, you research products on Reddit, you send your purchase intent to Amazon, etc. These platforms will accrete more advertiser dollars. 2) Google SERPs sucks now. Low quality ads at top, low quality results that follow. A lot of SEO bullshit. Information returned is often irrelevant. Users know this and are getting fed up. 3…

Ironically, if they had focused more on delivering a good search experience instead of delivering ads and low-value "AI" features, they might have better prospects looking forward.

Re: Retail, search and Amazon’s $40B ‘advertising’ business

#28

Post by calderknight »

echelon wrote: post #24
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google should be nervous about all of its ads system because their search engine is becoming increasingly trash

1) It's no longer the search intent destination for advertisers. You find information on TikTok, you research products on Reddit, you send your purchase intent to Amazon, etc. These platforms will accrete more advertiser dollars. 2) Google SERPs sucks now. Low quality ads at top, low quality results that follow. A lot of SEO bullshit. Information returned is often irrelevant. Users know this and are getting fed up. 3…

How does finding info on TikTok work? Is it like, vidoes of teens talking about the subject you search?

Re: Retail, search and Amazon’s $40B ‘advertising’ business

#29

Post by echelon »

w-ll wrote: post #26
echelon wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) It's no longer the search intent destination for advertisers. You find information on TikTok, you research products on Reddit, you send your purchase intent to Amazon, etc. These platforms will accrete more advertiser dollars. 2) Google SERPs sucks now. Low quality ads at top, low quality results that follow. A lot of SEO bullshit. Information returned is often irrelevant. Users know this and are getting fed up. 3…

> You find information on TikTok Am I old? What kind of information. Not to be on Googles side here but, for information in video form... YouTube is at least somewhat reasonable still. Right?

TikTok is a holy grail of distilled information. In two short years of TikTok recipes, my wife has learned how to cook better than almost any restaurant we eat at, and we're serious foodies. Zero to one hundred, just from TikTok.

There's everything from OSint TikTok to finance TikTok to archeologist TikTok... It's crazy, and it's good.

Once you find your niche, the information density approaches that of a black hole. It's really high quality.

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