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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

#261

Post by prawn »

bombcar wrote: post #181
Regnore wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assumed that this is a legal requirement for all big online stores - is that not the case?

No, it's a blatant cash-grab by all big online stores. And for awhile you can continue to search "shipped and sold by Company" but eventually that goes away, because the marketplace shit is pure profit for them. It sells out the brand and turns them all into eBay/Alibaba clones and it's a major danger sign. More and more I have to restrict Walmart to "stocked in store" to avoid useless crap.

Funny you should mention that because it's how I'd started searching the aforementioned Bunnings site. Filter by what's available and in stock at the local store.

The other development is having to check online reviews before purchasing just about anything. Previously, if I bought shelf brackets or similar, I could usually rely on the fact that they were stocked at at a reliable store to mean they were decent enough quality. They'd passed some sort of review. If they were terrible, they'd be pulled from shelves. But that's no longer the case. More and more cheap, unfit-for-purpose goods are being sold by formerly solid stores. They'll accept returns but keep stocking 1-star items and hoping most people forget to return. I've checked reviews and been saved by 1-2 star averages suggesting the manifold splits first use or the shelf supports a tenth of the rated weight.

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

#262

Post by propogandist »

tnel77 wrote: post #201
JCM9 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Sorry to burst you bubble but this is how all of retail works including physical stores. From the moment you walk into a store everything you see from what products are “on sale” to the floor displays to where on the shelf an item appears is all “an advertisement” paid for by the product…

I worked at a Kroger in high school and I learned this fact then. A lady was assembling a big display for s’mores supplies (Hershey’s, Reese’s, brand name marshmallows, and some graham crackers). They paid for a premium spot in the store right next to the checkout lanes since it was near Fourth of July and they wanted to maximize sales. Even the placement on store shelves is paid for. The prime shelf space costs more…

it’s more intricate than this. There is store shelf specific plans to define how inventory should be stocked at the SKU level on a given shelf. The distance between the price tags determine the actual shelf space facings usually, in addition to end-caps, which are very premium spaces.

Most large grocers outsource all of this management to intermediary firms that “manage” shelf space for chains, selling and updating their retail merchandising based on marketing campaigns and sales data.

You may find good pricing on brands/products on the lowest shelf, as they tend to be smaller firms that compete with the large players that pay premium for shelf-space, which is sustained by higher pricing.

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

#263

Post by solalf »

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…

Booking.com - the biggest travel website in the world, already does this and has been for years. They mainly charge via greater conversion fees (ie a bigger slice of the booking), as opposed to a cost per click model (which I think is Amazon’s preferred model). This way, they have a huge incentive on making the ad as relevant as possible, otherwise they’ve wasted inventory through not monetizing the click at all (whereas cost per click means you make money regardless of wether the user clicks through).

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

#265

Post by solalf »

jefftk wrote: post #251
yamtaddle wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads on the store search is more like you ask a clerk to help you find one thing and they show you three other things first.

The clerk can preferentially show you higher margin products that might be what you're looking for, and while a grocery store wouldn't bother other retail (ex: electronics, cars) will.

I’ve actually heard of many restaurants doing this as well.

“May I recommend the salmon today sir?” often means the chef got a good price on it and the restaurant will gross more.

Source: a friend of mine who bused tables for a few years. Not sure that’s statistically relevant in any way, but it’s an interesting anecdote.

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

#266

Post by carlosjobim »

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…

Google is still king of the traditional web. There are so many products and services that you cannot sell through Amazon and that you do not want to sell on Amazon. Social media is a joke when it comes to online sales, you have to invest 100 hours into social media to get the same results as investing 1 hour in a normal web site.

The search engine of Google has rapidly deteriorated, but people still go mainly to Google when they want or need to purchase something.

AI can not make contracts with humans and make a sale. People selling online instead of making free content seem to be the most protected against AI right now. An AI can never deal with money responsibilities.

Google's strongest arm right now are maps, where they are superior. Apple is finally catching up, and could compete with Google if they changed some of their truly idiotic maps policies. For what it's worth, Apple could probably easily destroy Google as a search engine, and they have the conservative attitude to make them a good candidate.

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

#267

Post by oblio »

Loughla wrote: post #234
tracerbulletx wrote: post #233

When you walk in your local grocery store and see a Pepsi display with a football player or something and a big stack of Pepsi products right there how do you all think that happens?

This thread is showing me that a shocking number of people have never considered that the layout of the stores they shop in are not either arbitrary or necessarily based on what's best for the customer.

Loss leaders are the epitome of user hostile.

Bread, milk, butter, etc the farthest away from the entrance so you can't just go in and out.

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

#268

Post by carlosjobim »

Ensorceled wrote: post #130
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Why make such a rude and useless comment? If you don't like what people say you don't have to read or listen.

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

#269

Post by carlosjobim »

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…

You kind of mean cooking as in "cutting and heating food" it seems to me. It's like saying a person can learn "computing" in a week, where they learn how to write a Word document and print it. Sure, it covers a need, and it's a good start. Everybody should learn some cooking and YouTube is a great instructor, but like everything it takes time and effort to become skilled.

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

#270

Post by carlosjobim »

Ensorceled wrote: post #132
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. One that the vast majority of people suck at. Either it's not basic or something else is wrong ... like how hard it is to learn new skills.

They suck because they never took just a little time to try to learn, because they think it's so basic that they can just figure it out while doing it. Or they were wrongly taught by their mothers from past generations when women cooked because of their sex and not because they were any good at it.
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