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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

#271

Post by sharemywin »

jefftk wrote: post #160
sharemywin wrote: post #155

I think maybe Amazon's algo is wrong. I've seen alot of people comment that they search for a brand and get crap instead. I would think they need to take the fees they charge for a sale into account when serving ads. Also, people's previous history. If you don't buy crap don't show it high in the results. And, intent. are they really searching for a new product or just using search to find the product/brand they want

> I would think they need to take the fees they charge for a sale into account when serving ads. Why do you think they don't? This is exactly the sort of thing I would expect Amazon to get right.

feels like they are just maximizing ad revenue

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

#272

Post by peoplefromibiza »

carlosjobim wrote: post #269
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…

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.

> It's like saying a person can learn "computing" in a week

Correct.

The difference is that computing needs a lot of prior knowledge, including what computing means and which branch of computing you want to learn.

But writing a Word document and printing it it's absolutely attainable in 1 day.

Cooking, as in cooking your meals at home, for yourself or your family, is only a bit more complicated than preparing the breakfast.

Which is something that anybody (IMHO) can do.

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

#273

Post by freejazz »

Zetice wrote: post #254
freejazz wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow, you conveniently know the exact people doing those exact things at Walmart but instead first made up that I expressed a negative sentiment. Yeah, okay.

Huh, what does that have to do with whether or not Amazon has a monopoly? I think at this point it’s clear they do not, you just didn’t have the info about the industry you were commenting on.

Oh, my dad works at the Justice Department and he said it does.

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

#274

Post by carlosjobim »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #272
carlosjobim wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It's like saying a person can learn "computing" in a week Correct. The difference is that computing needs a lot of prior knowledge, including what computing means and which branch of computing you want to learn. But writing a Word document and printing it it's absolutely attainable in 1 day. Cooking, as in cooking your meals at home, for yourself or your family, is only a bit more complicated than preparing the bre…

What prior knowledge would you need to do computing?

Cooking a simple meal anybody can learn, just as typing a Word document and printing it. More complicated cooking tends to stress people out immensely. Kind of the same as more complicated computer stuff does.

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

#275

Post by solalf »

solalf wrote: post #263
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 (whe…

I meant wether the user converts, no clicks through.

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

#276

Post by Zetice »

freejazz wrote: post #273
Zetice wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, what does that have to do with whether or not Amazon has a monopoly? I think at this point it’s clear they do not, you just didn’t have the info about the industry you were commenting on.

Oh, my dad works at the Justice Department and he said it does.

Okay so to be clear, are you saying you don't believe Walmart.com does the things you've listed, but if they did, you'd be wrong?

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

#277

Post by hakfoo »

dazc wrote: post #45
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…

'I've noticed Bunnings (like Home Depot, but in Australia) adding "Marketplace" listings for non-store things to their website...' This is certainly a trend led, I am guessing, by troves of internal search data that suggests people are searching for things they don't have the capacity to stock themselves.

In a way, it feels like lying to the customer.

"Do you stock purple widgets?" "No, we're Red Widget Emporium" is not an inappropriate answer. If anything, it improves the trust angle-- you're the experts on Red Widgets rather than a mile-wide-six-inches-deep generalist. I generally don't want to buy sheet lumber and breakfast cereal at the same store.

"We'll pretend we stock it but actually hand you to a second tier vendor who you'd never go to directly" is less compelling somehow.

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

#278

Post by moneywoes »

skizm wrote: post #208

Buying things these days: Go to amazon search for product. Find something that looks reasonable. Confirm review section has a reasonable distribution of stars and check out a few 1 and 3/4 star reviews (hope they're written by a human) and see if there are any deal breakers. Go to google and enter " reddit reviews". Go to reddit read reviews and hope they're not written by astroturf accounts, bots, or chatgpt (have t…

What’s the slowest part of this process?

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

#279

Post by adsmonkey »

throwawaya2337 wrote: post #252
mabbo wrote: post #205

I keep trying to explain to people: they aren't "ads" they are "pay for customers to ever see your product". It's an extortion ring, basically. Just like nobody ever opens page 2 of Google search, people rarely scroll down very far on Amazon's product search page. These "ads" just put the highest bidders' products at the top-K spots (and K keeps increasing) so that customers aren't see the most relevant products, jus…

The sentiment of it being an extortion ring is correct. However, it's not as simple as placing the highest bidders' product at the top-K spots, because it's not a true auction system; not anywhere close. Amazon runs an ML algo that attempts to determine the actual cost benefit of serving an ad, and does everything in its power to maximize the value of the underlying ecosystem. It applies weights to warehousing fees,…

Strikes me as a well informed take.

I would think it’s like an auction for the things that don’t matter. For the most valuable brand KWs do you think the winner is randomly allowed to be determined by “the market”? Why not bring the brand to the table directly, and outside of the auction determine what they’ll have to pay.

To me, it seems like no company could keep their hands out of the cookie jar that is running an auction. Too much short term pressure to move things up and to the right. Amazing cash cow though.

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

#280

Post by peoplefromibiza »

carlosjobim wrote: post #274
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's like saying a person can learn "computing" in a week Correct. The difference is that computing needs a lot of prior knowledge, including what computing means and which branch of computing you want to learn. But writing a Word document and printing it it's absolutely attainable in 1 day. Cooking, as in cooking your meals at home, for yourself or your family, is only a bit more complicated than preparing the bre…

What prior knowledge would you need to do computing? Cooking a simple meal anybody can learn, just as typing a Word document and printing it. More complicated cooking tends to stress people out immensely. Kind of the same as more complicated computer stuff does.

> What prior knowledge would you need to do computing?

Wikipedia to the rescue, as usual

Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software.

now go to the average person, ask them what an algorithm is and be prepared to be disappointed.

Ask them what a pressure cooker or filleting is and you won't be.

> just as typing a Word document and printing it

that's not computing, that's typewriting.

typewriting is easy, as the adage says: monkeys can do it and eventually write Shakespeare.

> More complicated cooking tends to stress people out immensely. Kind of the same as more complicated computer stuff does.

Not really.

More complicated cooking mostly takes more time, but it's not really more difficult. I would argue that many people can make cakes which is some of the more complicated food one can cook, but they amusingly say they can't cook.

Making sushi it's easy, but it needs a very long preparation.

More complicated computer stuff requires a lot of studying and you have to learn a lot of concepts that have no other use outside of computing world.

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