It doesn't have to do with Amazon. It is just how ads work.
Of course when you buy a product that is heavily advertised you know that you are paying for it, Amazon or not. That's why, when I see an ad campaign for a product I may want, it is a signal for me to look elsewhere. Some competitor may use what would be ad budget towards offering lower prices or better quality.
As for Amazon, it is not cheap! It is convenient, fast delivery, easy returns and all that. But if you forego that convenience, there is usually a cheaper option: local shops, Chinese platforms, direct sales, etc...
It's confusing to me that amazon is in the ads business at all though. They're a retail service, not an ad business and it seems that all the ad business does is burn goodwill. They do have goodwill to burn, but it cheapens the entire experience.
How is it confusing? Most brick and mortar stores show ads for specific products. Online platforms other than Amazon do it too.
The only thing is that Amazon is more diversified than other retailers, in particular, they have AWS, essentially selling the platform that runs their website to third parties. It makes sense for them to offer sell their ad service to third parties too.
No one does it like Amazon, it requires users to walk through the sponsored ads before they can see organic search results, almost no other platform does this online. Walmart has a single strip of sponsored results at top, immediately leading to organic results, others like Target, HomeDepot do not mix in sponsored results with search results.
B&M is different, Ads are there, but you aren't forced to look at them like Amazon does.
> B&M is different, Ads are there, but you aren't forced to look at them like Amazon does.
Ignorance is bliss. Unfortunately, even your physical Walmart store is also selling a lot of shelf space to manufacturers/advertisers (similar to how Amazon sell the first slot, or at this point first 'page'), especially those checkout lines (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-grocers-wring-extra-cash-ou...). That's why your on-boots retail staff can't change those planograms (which defines how to layout shelf space in a grocery store) willy-nilly, they're designed by the highest bidder. That's why those soda or chips seems placed in too convenient slots that are also 'coincidental' to those currently advertised in other ways, because it's, plain and simply, paid to be there.
How does the saying go, again? "You may not be in the ad business, but the ad business is in you"? Something like that? That sounds wrong, but sometimes it seems like the double entendre may as well be the reality.
Per the article, in exchange for that goodwill they get a billion dollars per week. Do we need more explanation?
To be clear, it's gross, but they are doing it just enough that their convenience and average sufficient product quality keeps me using them. I'd guess they do a lot of research to keep that balance where it is.
I don't expect to get any sort of explanation from Amazon of course. I do think they are probably doing something that is hurting them financially. Acquired goodwill is extremely hard to measure and shows up in things like long-term customer retention and engagement, so you're not going to see it on an A/B test -- on a A/B test users come in with the same level of goodwill on both sides of the fork and thus their immediate behavior is not going to be dictated by this.
In many ways this is symptomatic of larger trends in society and managerial culture of looking for ways to measure things rather than confronting the messy subjective non-measurable reality.
The only time we'll get a true counterfactual is when a competitor arises who can meet Amazon's very high bar for logistic excellence but can offer a more appealing interaction, and then Amazon retail will die off without anyone understanding how or why it happened.
I still use Amazon despite them being burned because they seem slightly more reliable than other places, but only slightly and my goodwill to them is completely burned. Yesterday they delivered a package to a parcel locker 150 miles away, which is a double screw up because it was supposed to be to the door. They've also made it really difficult to see where a package will be shipped from (and so whether or not you'll pay import taxes).
But I'm close. My purchases through them are down probably somewhere around 80%. My girlfriend never really used Amazon and doesn't see the appeal at all - telling someone "it used to be good" makes you wonder what you're doing.
Even AWS has burned me and clients enough times that we pretty much don't use them anymore - an idea that was unthinkable a decade ago.
The other thing is that the more they burn this goodwill the more they'll be tempted to increase ad revenue, and the more the goodwill will disappear.
> It is convenient, fast delivery, easy returns and all that.
Not, however, reliable. Ordered espresso filters, got counterfeits; ordered new monitor, got used, with a scratch in the screen, followed by a runaround game while demanding a replacement.
> It doesn't have to do with Amazon. It is just how ads work.
It has everything to do with amazon.
Amazon has chosen to embed ads into the navigation used to shop on their site. It is a conflict with the customer's needs in just about every way possible.
I think the only time I saw something so blatant was years ago at the Cheesecake factory, where they had ads in their menu (not really food-related)
> It doesn't have to do with Amazon. It is just how ads work.
It doesn't have to be that way. Can you keep your search results pure and put ads next to them. If the ads are good, customers will be interested.
Yes, you will have fewer clicks (i.e. less ad revenue) than if you try to deceive your customers by not clearly marking ads. But you don't have to enshittify your page. Enshittification also lowers the value of your business, particularly in the long term.
> It is just how ads work
First, no. You have missed the point of the piece entirely.
Second, even if you were right, is that an argument for it working that way? If this were a blog post about how gangrene sucks, would you be making the same case?
I’m just going to keep doing this like once a month here forever: “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”