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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

#121

Post by Ensorceled »

Moru wrote: post #64
Semaphor wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily, I mostly don’t see any ads. Only for work, and on Amazon pretty much. Some more as product placement and in the physical world, but not a ton.

I love the new ad displays in the local shopping mall. They use LCD screens rotated 90 degrees and my sunglases are just the wrong filter angle so they become nice black displays for me. Physical adblocker :-)

My wife commented on how shitty some ambulance chaser ad was and all I could see was a black display. Now I want a law that requires all billboards and other such ads to be properly polarized so they can be blocked :-)

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

#122

Post by everdrive »

lordnacho wrote: post #101
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of basic data like figuring out the cast of a movie, practically all of my searches now have "reddit" appended to them. Medical and health-related queries are particularly screwed. Every top result is practically the same gamified SEO trash with filler content. I also don't know who told Google to ignore the keywords in my search query and show me a cluttered page that targets "topics" instead of keywords.

The cool thing about Reddit is you might just be able to ask for a recommendation and someone will give it to you. Either someone else has asked before, or you find the right sub where the people with the answer are.

Just imagine what AI will do this in 4 years. You can no longer trust the recommendations, there are whole threads written by bots to push specific products.

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

#123

Post by wil421 »

DeathArrow wrote: post #120

I never encountered ads on Amazon, so out of curiosity I disabled uBlock Origin and visited Amazon. It seems that the ads are for products sold on Amazon. Clicking an ad redirects you to the product page. Until now I thought that sites where you go to spend money are free of ads. This is a new low. What's next, ads on banking apps? Ads on the revenue service website? I think ads play the biggest part in why the Inter…

You know you can pay eBay to promote your listing. That is pretty much what they mean by ads in this case. Someone is paying to be the top spot or be promoted on search results.

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

#124

Post by DeathArrow »

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…

I use Edge browser on Android because it allows me to block ads. I also use NewPipe instead of the normal YouTube app and I can enjoy essentially an adless experience on Android.

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

#125

Post by ClumsyPilot »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #100
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> So? Millions of people lack basic skills, like 1/3 of the population struggles with digital skills. You mean people can't use their hands? Digital skills are not real skills, they are imaginary skills that mostly boil down to "they don't know software products" but they also "don't care about them" and it's a very very very broad field, many people take for granted their knowledge about complex stuff, but basic "di…

> You mean people can't use their hands?

Have you seen British newbuilt homes? They must be using their feet!

> Digital skills are not real skills, they are imaginary skills

So is filling doing paperwork and navigating beurocracy.

We have an entire proffesion dedicates to doing just that, and every year thousands of people get in trouble because they ticked a wrong box in a form.

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

#126

Post by deepGem »

DeathArrow wrote: post #120

I never encountered ads on Amazon, so out of curiosity I disabled uBlock Origin and visited Amazon. It seems that the ads are for products sold on Amazon. Clicking an ad redirects you to the product page. Until now I thought that sites where you go to spend money are free of ads. This is a new low. What's next, ads on banking apps? Ads on the revenue service website? I think ads play the biggest part in why the Inter…

Ads on Amazon are far more annoying than ads on other web properties, because I go to Amazon for a very specific need. I search for Tide washing liquid and I see these sponsored products on top, way above the Tide result. From a purist viewpoint, this is disgusting. I have to come to you Amazon, to just give me what I want, not what you think I want.

That said, there isn't a better alternative so I just ignore the ads and go for the product no matter how far down the page that product appears.

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

#127

Post by deepGem »

wil421 wrote: post #123
DeathArrow wrote: post #120

I never encountered ads on Amazon, so out of curiosity I disabled uBlock Origin and visited Amazon. It seems that the ads are for products sold on Amazon. Clicking an ad redirects you to the product page. Until now I thought that sites where you go to spend money are free of ads. This is a new low. What's next, ads on banking apps? Ads on the revenue service website? I think ads play the biggest part in why the Inter…

You know you can pay eBay to promote your listing. That is pretty much what they mean by ads in this case. Someone is paying to be the top spot or be promoted on search results.

I think Amazon has an ad network of sorts, so sellers bid for the sponsored search slot. In retailers who don't have such a platform, merchandisers take the call and boost/bury products in search results.

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

#128

Post by peoplefromibiza »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #125
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So? Millions of people lack basic skills, like 1/3 of the population struggles with digital skills. You mean people can't use their hands? Digital skills are not real skills, they are imaginary skills that mostly boil down to "they don't know software products" but they also "don't care about them" and it's a very very very broad field, many people take for granted their knowledge about complex stuff, but basic "di…

> You mean people can't use their hands? Have you seen British newbuilt homes? They must be using their feet! > Digital skills are not real skills, they are imaginary skills So is filling doing paperwork and navigating beurocracy. We have an entire proffesion dedicates to doing just that, and every year thousands of people get in trouble because they ticked a wrong box in a form.

> So is filling doing paperwork and navigating beurocracy.

yep, exactly, that's why I pay people to do it, unless I'm required by the law to do it personally.

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

#129

Post by input_sh »

Anon4Now wrote: post #107
mym1990 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am generally getting overwhelmed with ads coming from every nook and cranny of life to the point that I don't even want to buy stuff anymore, for a lot of it its like: whats the point?

If you use Chrome, then switch to another browser that allows full adblocker functionality. I use Firefox with UBlock Origin and hardly see any ads.

Sponsored segments on YouTube. Billboards. Sponsored texts in newspapers. "YC XXX is hiring" on HN.

I use Firefox + uBlock Origin + Sponsorblock and a few others. Ads are still everywhere. Not as everywhere as they'd be without it, but it's not like adblocks get rid of them all together.

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

#130

Post by Ensorceled »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #69
kenhwang wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> YouTube's monetization and algorithms incentivized content to be bloated with fluff like long intros, outros, intermissions, shoutouts I can watch YouTube on a television though. And, just like a book, I can skip the parts I'm not interested in. Are we at the point that research has become something that should be so effortless that even the tiniest annoyance is considered bad? > so content creators cram in as much…

Ironically, your comment has the same problem the people you are complaining about are a complaining about ... 8 paragraphs as opposed to the GPs 2.

I'm not learning Roman History from youtube/tiktok, I'm trying to figure out how to factory reset my parents DVR. 10 minutes of rambling is not useful.

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