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Fnord666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

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 [recode.net]

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