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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

#81

Post by jjeaff »

nostromo wrote: post #63
flangola7 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What even is Prime without faster shipping?

A bad spinoff of Lord of the Rings nobody watched..? I wish this was a joke, but they did increase the cost of prime to pay for that trash, rather than focusing on what people really use Prime for. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/ama...

I'm annoyed that they keep raising the price to pay for a streaming service I barely use. But I still can get most things next day or two days at most.

And I very much enjoyed the Lord of the Rings series they did. High production quality and pretty good story telling. But I suppose I am easily entertained.

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

#82

Post by underwater »

MangoCoffee wrote: post #13
cheeselip420 wrote: post #6

So the companies that sell on Amazon pay money to Amazon (from the revenues they get from Amazon's customers) to have their products listed more favorably than competitors (one of which is actually Amazon). I can see how this seems advantageous and monopolistic for Amazon...

https://smallbusiness.chron.com/requirements-getting-product... "You may be required to pay a slotting fee to, in effect, purchase shelf space if there is a great deal of competition fighting for the same space." no difference than paying for shelf space.

Except there is more competition in brick-and-mortar stores.

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

#83

Post by mattlutze »

flangola7 wrote: post #56
thaumasiotes wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dropped prime after "two-day shipping on all orders" had degenerated into "we'll deliver it when we feel like it, and you can't get two-day shipping even if you're willing to pay extra for it".

What even is Prime without faster shipping?

A tool to get you to do your browsing and shopping on Amazon, so that they can improve your buyer profile and sell it across their network.

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

#84

Post by Ayesh »

kenhwang wrote: post #35
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?

YouTube's monetization and algorithms incentivized content to be bloated with fluff like long intros, outros, intermissions, shoutouts, life updates, sponsorships, etc. Basically content that added no value to the user and only exists to make the video long enough to qualify for more ad pods. A 10 minute video would often only have 2 minutes of relevant content. TikTok encourages the opposite: so content creators cra…

Those Audible/SkillShare/VPN ads ruined YouTube for me, and I consume a lot less content on YouTube nowadays. Sponsor Block addon has saved me hours automatically skipping them, but I can't help but worry that it is only going to make things worse in the long term as creator revenue drops.

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

#85

Post by bakuninsbart »

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?

I had a small problem with my dishwasher, and wanted to look up how to fix it. Youtube video was ~15 minutes long and in the end somehow contained less relevant information than the 1 minute TikTok.

Youtube shorts is trying to get in the mix, but no matter how I try to curate my feed, there's always around 30% bald men bullshitting mixed in (Joe Rogan, Andrew Tate and a bunch of bad comedians). Their algorithm is strongly geared towards controversy, and I guess it works to increase engagement, but only for people who don't realize how toxic and unhealthy it is to watch stuff like that.

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

#86

Post by lotsofpulp »

peanuty1 wrote: post #59
tyoma wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when Amazon listed private label brands, like every retailer has done for decades if not longer, and there was a collective freak out?

I think the freak-out was that Amazon was leveraging its data to create copycat products.

I assume all businesses do this, before Amazon ever existed.

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

#87

Post by lotsofpulp »

Regnore wrote: post #53
scarface74 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the same thing every company in retail has done forever

How many options are there for retail?

In the US, each area usually has Costco/Walmart/Target, Best Buy/Apple, Home Depot/Lowes, Staples/OfficeDepot, Kroger/Albertsons/regional grocer, Nordstrom/Macys/Kohls/Old Navy/Gap.

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

#88

Post by arky527 »

foepys wrote: post #78
missedthecue wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unless those traditional news outlets use LLMs to write stories for them in order to keep up with the internet/lower salary cost

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

#89

Post by ClumsyPilot »

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…

> The Amazon search is no... literally incorrect products, stuff that I would have to return if I bought it by accident. Like yesterday Amazon kept showing lightbulbs with the wrong physical socket size.

People keep going on about AI but the worlds most valuable company is incapable of arranging shit they sell into correct categories. You could be looming for a toothbrush and they will sell you a car seat.

Alza.cz delivers all over EU, they have an actual human categorise their stock, and it's a much better experience.

They don't sell absolutely everything, but they have electronics, Scooters, teslas, home appliances - you name it.

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

#90

Post by ClumsyPilot »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #71
echelon wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> it's just simply that cooking is a very basic skill

So? Millions of people lack basic skills, like 1/3 of the population struggles with digital skills.

Some skills are basic but obscure - maintenance of a bicycle is a basic, but if you never has a bicycle, you won't have it.

Or maybe prepping a live fish for cooking.

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