December 5, 2022
Amazon.com has long been the go-to place for online product searches, but recently washington post The article found that advertising was overwhelming the actual search results, making it impossible to give customers what they wanted.
If you search for “cat bed”, Position It turns out that the entire first screen of results shows ads masquerading as listings, rather than products that have arrived, as they offer the best combination of price and quality. The results included one ad of him with a picture of a dog instead of a cat.
On the first five pages of search results, more than half of the listings were ads or Amazon’s own products. A Profitero study found that Amazon displays sponsored products on the first page of search results twice as often as Walmart and four times as often as Target. Other online outlets, such as food delivery platforms and app stores from Google and Apple, have also started showing ads in search results.
Amazon’s advertising business will grow 58% in 2021, making it the third largest online ad seller. recode paper. 6 Mass Marketers Spoken recode To be successful on Amazon today, sellers need to spend 10-20% of their sales on advertising.
Amazon’s practices around how search results are displayed have long been criticized.
Stacy Mitchell, co-executive director of the activist group Institute for Local Self-Reliance, said: CNBC Amazon said in October that it can “change and steer buying behavior” by prioritizing its own private brands in search results and demoting non-Amazon products in search results. This statement was made in connection with a complaint by Peak Design CEO Peter Dering. He said Amazon stole many of its key features, including the name of Peak Design’s camera his bag, and created private-label knockoffs.
According to the webinar abstract published on search engine journal In 2018, 70% of customers searching for a product on Amazon never clicked past the first page of search results, and 35% clicked on the first product listed on the search page, leaving the first 3 items accounted for 64% of the clicks.
Discussion question: Do you think Amazon’s practice of displaying ads in search results is reducing shoppers’ trust in the site? Amazon’s practice creates an opportunity for other companies in the product search space mosquito?
“Do you think Amazon’s practice of showing ads in search results is reducing shoppers’ trust in the site?”
