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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

#141

Post by Semaphor »

input_sh wrote: post #129
Anon4Now wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not parent, but I don’t have most of those.

> Sponsored segments on YouTube

I only watch music videos and very rarely a how to repair video.

> Billboards

I guess I sometimes see those in US TV shows ;)

> newspapers

I think I remember those things ;)

> is hiring

I guess, never saw those as ads. Though now that I think about it, I have started to want to figure out what BuildZoom does with custom homes, why YC funded them, and why I should care. Maybe one day I’ll see enough hiring posts to google them ;)

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

#142

Post by DeathArrow »

missedthecue wrote: post #33
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…

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…

>In this sense, Amazon ads will continue to a threaten Google, but not some future edition of ChatGPT.

Maybe a future edition of ChatGPT can discern a real human review from a content farm returned by Google Search.

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

#143

Post by DeathArrow »

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

The positive news is that if Google search dies, so will the SEO websites and content farms that litter the web.

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

#144

Post by DeathArrow »

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.

If Google search dies, so will the content farms that litter the web.

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

#145

Post by lotsofpulp »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #98
montagg wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walmart too. And Target. And grocery stores. I am not sure people are really prepared to take the implication of how unfair Amazon seems to its logical conclusion, because it means undermining a lot of what makes us comfortable in modern life under capitalism. Regulation targeted at increasing competition (breakups, rather than regulation Amazon as a monopoly of a kind and entrenching them) might result in a better o…

> undermining a lot of what makes us comfortable in modern life under capitalism I read Wealth of Nations, did I miss the part where it says: "you should have a single global company control most of the market"? Every economist writes about importance of competition. If you want to keep around giant monopolies, you are not capitalist.

On a global scale, it helps if your country is where all the biggest companies are coming from, especially to compete with big companies from other countries.

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

#146

Post by deepGem »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #140
deepGem wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ad…

> 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. Go to Walmart.com or Target.com and you can filter for items sold by Walmart and Target. Or eBay and Aliexpress. What Amazon is good for is cheap $20 to $100 items that you want the ability to easily return for a refund.

Sadly neither of these are allowed to sell in India. It's an Amazon/Flipkart duopoly and I personally cannot stand the Flipkart shopping interface. Millions love it.

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

#147

Post by thfuran »

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…

Why keep paying them?

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

#148

Post by gruez »

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…

>What's next, ads on banking apps?

Those definitely exist if you count ads from the bank itself (eg. upsells)

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

#149

Post by DeathArrow »

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...

But the article is about ads not about the position on a page on Amazon or in Amazon search results.

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

#150

Post by washywashy »

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…

They auction the search result space, like Google search. I guess for prime members it would be nice to have the option to turn off. I have noticed this happening on lots of websites now, particularly grocery websites.
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