Ad business a boon for Amazon but a turn-off for shoppers

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Sponsored ads are flooding Amazon’s search results and making it harder to find the products customers are searching for.

.com knowing exactly what he wanted to buy.AmazonMaddaloni, a web strategist in Appleton, Wisconsin, said searching on the world’s biggest shopping site had always been a good experience for him up until a month ago, when he started seeing more ads.Amazon has turned its online store into an advertising powerhouse in just a few years. It overtook Microsoft last year as the third largest ad platform in the U.S. following Google and Facebook, according to market research firm eMarketer.

Jason Goldberg, a retail consultant and chief commerce strategy officer at Publicis Communications, said showing ads instead of what people search for is “the best example of Amazon failing to live up to its mission of becoming ‘Earth's most customer centric company.’”Advertising is one of Amazon’s fastest-growing businesses, helping to offset some of its more expensive endeavors like one-day delivery, which is hugely popular with customers but also a drain on the company.

After David Sinclair’s book on aging went on sale in September, colleagues told him that when they typed his name on Amazon, they saw ads for vitamins and supplements above his book. The supplement makers had selected Sinclair’s name as a keyword, hoping to get the attention of people who wanted to buy his book, “Lifespan: Why We Age — and Why We Don't Have To.”

Erik Gordon, a professor who follows Amazon at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, said the ads at the top of a search implies to many visitors that the products are the most popular. “Amazon is gambling that it will make enough money off the ads to offset the loss from visitors who notice that products at the top are sponsored,” Gordon said.

 

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Bezos doesn't make enough money as is. He has to have ads for more.

It's always been like this. Back when I used to shop on Amazon I made it a point not to by sponsored products just because of how annoying Amazon makes it.

Its as if they weren’t already making enough money. This happens to all tech sites eventually no? A competitor will rise

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