SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
If it feels as though Amazon's site is increasingly stuffed with ads, that's because it is. And it looks like that's working — at least for brands that are willing to fork over ad dollars as part of their strategy to sell on Amazon.
Amazon-sponsored product ads have been around since 2012. But lately, as the company has invested in growing its advertising business, they've become more aggressive.
[...] "Nobody is scrolling beyond the first page when they do a search," Jason Goldberg, SVP of commerce at SapientRazorfish, a digital marketing agency, told Recode. "If you want to be discoverable, you have to find a way to show up in search results."
To get that prime visibility, brands are responding with more cash. Spending on sponsored products in Amazon's search increased 165 percent in the second quarter of 2018 compared with a year earlier, according to data from marketing agency Merkle.
The competition for brands to bid on their own or others' keywords is fierce, and is leading toward what Goldberg called a "perfectly escalating arms race where all the trends are to spend more money to buy more ads to have better visibility on Amazon."
Amazon makes money every time consumers click on an ad — and it still gets to sell whatever people end up buying.
[...] Amazon would not comment on the growth or placement of sponsored ads, but offered this statement: "At Amazon we work hard to continually invent new ways for customers to find the right products to meet their needs. We take the same approach with sponsored products and sponsored brands. We are focused on creating value for customers by helping them discover new brands and products."
Source: recode
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @04:34PM (4 children)
I do. I've learned that what is best for me, in any Amazon search, is usually on page 3 or 4, if not further down.
I find the idea of ads on the Amazon pages to be insane, and it's been the last straw to make me not renew Amazon Prime. Ads are to get me to buy something -- but I'm already at Amazon to buy something! You already won! Stop throwing ads in my face, damn it.
I expect soon Amazon will rent the space on the ceiling above college dorm beds to show rotating advertisements to students 24/7. Probably mostly birth control ads.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @05:08PM (1 child)
I had noticed all these goddamn ads lately, and these ads are terrible. Trying to look for 100% cotton shirts had me scrolling through 2/3 the page of polyester crap.
Also More likely condoms.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday September 12 2018, @10:55PM
Also more likely porn.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday September 12 2018, @10:54PM
I do this with Google: search for something something Linux, and you have to add -Windows because the first searches come up with somsomething windows and sometimes have to go to further pages.
Guess MS is paying Google because no one uses MS Burp (or whatever THEIR search engine is).
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 13 2018, @10:53AM
Fifteen million merits!