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

ben-evans.com

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

#71

Post by peoplefromibiza »

echelon wrote: post #29
w-ll wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 just simply that cooking is a very basic skill.

it only requires that you do it.

you don't need to study hard to learn to cook.

The average person can learn to cook from someone who already can do it (usually it's your parents...) in a week. It usually happens at the age of 15. From then on it's only a matter of practicing and experimenting. It doesn't require a tutor, contrary to what TV shows like master chef wants to sell to you.

I learned how to cook looking at my mom doing it and then tried some recipe from this book series from the '60s that were very popular in many homes when I was a kid.

It's easier than learning how to bike or walk.

https://www.ibs.it/in-cucina-con-fantasia-10-libri-vintage-w...

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

#72

Post by missedthecue »

foepys wrote: post #34
missedthecue wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard much fuss about 4), but i'm still skeptical. Google makes most their money on commercial searches such as "what is the best TV", or "where to buy football tickets", not "please do my homework". And AI will have a hard time returning superior results on the former, because many people are looking for human reviews rather than an AI output. In this sense, Amazon ads will continue to a threaten Google, but no…

> human reviews rather than an AI output AI will very soon be perfectly capable of generating human sounding reviews. It just needs to "dumb down" the tone a bit to be believable.

But no one wants that. ChatGPT can already produce a good 500 word review of a TV, I can ask it to do that right now, but that's totally non-valuable.

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

#73

Post by kasey_junk »

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…

Vendors have used advertising dollars to pay for shelf placements in physical stores for at least 40 years.

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

#74

Post by Semaphor »

beachy wrote: post #70
Semaphor wrote: post #31

I went to Amazon without an ad blocker for the first time yesterday (wanted to try the fakespot service, but it requires an extension and "access all" so I created a clean profile for it). I was surprised how many ads there were on Amazon, I thought the situation was already bad with an ad blocker, considering they show a lot of hard-coded ads, but wow.

The most satisfying experience for me at the moment is the suggestions I get on a new tab in chrome on Android. Not because the suggestions are amazingly good - sometimes they're ok - but because when they lead to some crap-infested site I can click to not see that site any more. That ability to cull keeps the suggestions workable for me. I genuinely think the Google would benefit hugely by making this a possibility…

They used to have that feature, but then you could block the spammiest sites that make them money, can’t have that. Luckily, I neither use Chrome nor Google.

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

#75

Post by ajb »

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…

I agree except for "there is no way out" - for a company with Google's bankroll, there's always the option of an acquisition. That's the usual way for monopolists to stay relevant.

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

#77

Post by [deleted] »

beachy wrote: post #70
Semaphor wrote: post #31

I went to Amazon without an ad blocker for the first time yesterday (wanted to try the fakespot service, but it requires an extension and "access all" so I created a clean profile for it). I was surprised how many ads there were on Amazon, I thought the situation was already bad with an ad blocker, considering they show a lot of hard-coded ads, but wow.

The most satisfying experience for me at the moment is the suggestions I get on a new tab in chrome on Android. Not because the suggestions are amazingly good - sometimes they're ok - but because when they lead to some crap-infested site I can click to not see that site any more. That ability to cull keeps the suggestions workable for me. I genuinely think the Google would benefit hugely by making this a possibility…

[deleted]

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

#78

Post by foepys »

missedthecue wrote: post #72
foepys wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> human reviews rather than an AI output AI will very soon be perfectly capable of generating human sounding reviews. It just needs to "dumb down" the tone a bit to be believable.

But no one wants that. ChatGPT can already produce a good 500 word review of a TV, I can ask it to do that right now, but that's totally non-valuable.

Definitely but would you be able to tell if a review you see is generated or written by a human?

We will have to face a reality where nothing on the internet can be trusted. Ironically traditional news outlets will probably become more relevant again.

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

#79

Post by college_physics »

beachy wrote: post #70
Semaphor wrote: post #31

I went to Amazon without an ad blocker for the first time yesterday (wanted to try the fakespot service, but it requires an extension and "access all" so I created a clean profile for it). I was surprised how many ads there were on Amazon, I thought the situation was already bad with an ad blocker, considering they show a lot of hard-coded ads, but wow.

The most satisfying experience for me at the moment is the suggestions I get on a new tab in chrome on Android. Not because the suggestions are amazingly good - sometimes they're ok - but because when they lead to some crap-infested site I can click to not see that site any more. That ability to cull keeps the suggestions workable for me. I genuinely think the Google would benefit hugely by making this a possibility…

> That ability to cull keeps the suggestions workable for me.

Don't you have better use for your time? Normalizing the disaster that has become the internet (and absolving the key actors in that development) is robbing us all from experiencing a more sane online life.

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

#80

Post by ankit219 »

Scarblac wrote: post #65
ankit219 wrote: post #57

> the ‘retail media’ gold rush: the realisation that a high-traffic website or app could be ad inventory even if you’re not a media company, that you have very relevant ‘consented’ first party data (at the very least intent if not broader profiles) and probably purchase attribution too, that all of this now has more relative value given the push against cookies and third party data everywhere else - and that advertis…

But it will come at least somewhat at the expense of their core business, surely? An Airbnb with ads looks a lot less trustworthy than one without, I think.

Depends on how relevant are the ads. I think it augments the business because now businesses are monetizing majority of visitors in some way. It's sustainable for long term if the ads are relevant enough for users to not drop off. Ads and trust are inversely correlated agreed, though looking at Uber and Amazon, I am not sure if that is true for every case. I might be an outlier, but amazon ads after I search for a product are actually quite useful. And probably why advertisers get a good ROI (evident in growth) and users aren't turned off by it (evident in sales revenue). Relevance score for any ad would matter for the company.
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