> The highest-yielding ad my publisher has tested so far is the search “Seth Godin The Knot“
I think it would be interesting to see legal action here. I’m not a lawyer, but I feel like there should be at least three ways to go after this:
1. Trademark infringement. If Amazon is using someone’s search that is clearly searching for a specific product, possibly trademarked, it seems inappropriate for them to serve up an ad for a competitor at higher priority than the actual result.
2. Fraud. If I search for a product that Amazon sells and Amazon shows me an ad for a different product first and hides the product I searched for below the fold, they are effectively telling me that they don’t have the product I searched for and possibly that it doesn’t exist. It seems to me that this is deceiving me for commercial gain.
3. Fraud again. If I search for a specific book and Amazon shows me an ad for that book, I think they’re trying to trick me into clicking that ad so they get extra revenue even if I don’t intend to click an ad. (And they’ve defrauded the ad buyer too. Those clicks are bogus. Seth Godin should not be charged for a click when the clicker was searching for the book by a good approximation of its name!)
Someone should file the multi-hundred-billion-dollar class actions :)
It reminds me of an analogy I read a while ago in an article critiquing keyword based online advertising (can't find the article unfortunately). A restaurant wants to drum up new business, so the owner tasks three employees with handing out flyers with coupons attached. The coupons are marked to identify which employee passed them out, and each week the owner gives a bonus to the employee whose coupons get redeemed the most. Week after week, the same employee keeps getting the bonus. The other two get more and more suspicious. Is he some kind of marketing genius that's able to get tons of people to use his coupons? Finally, they ask him how he does it. He says, "I stand in the waiting area of the restaurant".
This guy's publisher is paying Amazon $1/click to show the book to people who are already going to buy the book. It's basically the same thing.
You raise a good point. This phenomenon is well-documented for at least two decades now on Google search. It is common for brands to buy keywords for their own product. Why? If not, competitors will by the same keywords to direct customers away. As I understand, this has existed for more than 20 years and Google has never been sued for it (that I know). Maybe this is just part of a highly competitive online search market. To be clear: I am not saying that I like or agree with this market outcome as a consumer, but I am merely saying it has existed for a long time and gov't regulators don't seem to really care.
I don't know how it is for large businesses, but if you're a small business, and you put your own business name as a search keyword for your ad buys, fully half or more of your ad spend will be your existing customers looking for your website, phone number or address. If you stop spending on it, they will still find you, but a competitor will probably show up above you. I am not sure this matters.
Depends on what ads are showing and what they are bidding (vs. what you can afford to bid for the marginal traffic) but yes can be very much worth it to pay google's troll toll.
Google has been sued for displaying ads on trademarked keywords though.
This is what I wonder… the author says that:
> The highest-yielding ad my publisher has tested so far is the search “Seth Godin The Knot“
But that doesn’t mean the ad is a good investment. It isn’t just about the yield from the ad, but about the DIFFERENCE in yield between having the ad and not having the ad.
It is really simplistic thinking to just look at conversion rates.
I'm equally confused here. Who searches "Seth Godin The Knot" and if the first result isn't that exact book, goes and buys a book about knots or weddings or something? The book should be there in plain view at the top of organic best matches. Did they really test this "yield" claim?
Sophisticated advertisers measure “incrementality”, which is exactly what you’re talking about. Alas, most advertisers are not sophisticated.
It’s worse than that. If that employee isn’t standing in the waiting room, handing out coupons some other restaurant’s employee will be standing in the waiting room, handing out coupon for the restaurant next-door.
Oh, and you have to pay the building owner for the coupons which also discount your food.
The term for this that I heard is:
> Advertising as inference not influence.
People buying ads want to influence customers, but the platforms can instead focus on finding the folks who are already going to buy the product and show them the ad in order to gain the sweet sweet attribution saying "I am responsible for the sale".
You can test this by taking your ad-spend and flatly multiply it: if you spend 5 times as much money to advertise to 5 times as many people, but your sales don't also go up by 5x, then the money you were spending at the 1x rate probably wasn't influencing the buyers either, instead the ad companies were merely targeting all the customers you were already going to get sales from.
This reminds me of my dad's story about decades ago as a kid paperboy they had a contest get people to sign up and who ever had the most after a few months would win a bike. He smoked everyone. They were desperate to know how he got so many people to sign up but he refused to tell them.
His trick, well back then for a nickel you could go to a paper vending machine and buy a paper. But it would just open up and you could literally grab all of them if you wanted. So for a month every day he sacrificed a nickel and essentially stole about 20 papers. He then delivered them to non customers along his route for about a month. Then he left a note "if you have enjoyed your free trial of the paper and would like to continue as a customer....". He won the bike hands down and never did tell the paper company how he got so many new starts.
> back then for a nickel you could go to a paper vending machine and buy a paper. But it would just open up and you could literally grab all of them if you wanted.
I miss that world.
This case is even worse than the restaurant parable, because in that one the customer is already pretty much guaranteed and the coupon will give them enhance satisfaction that makes them more likely to come back. In Godin’s case, the customer doesn’t get that $1 and may not even buy the book, they may e.g. just be looking for the page to read reviews or link it to someone else.
Burnt myself on this in Google Maps just this week. I had an appointment in my calendar with the location set to "Dr Firstname Lastname, 123 Main St, 12345". I clicked through it into Google Maps and since it had the full address specified I just trusted it. Well, it turned out that the first result was actually an ad for a competing doctor 20 minutes in the wrong direction.
To Google's credit, they did drop the "Don't be evil" slogan many years ago...
Same! I searched a local pizza place to pick up a pizza I had ordered and took the first result. I searched for the exact name, I saw a picture of pizza, and I hit directions. Halfway there it didn't feel right and I checked. It was Dominoes. I was furious and my pizza sat for an extra 7 minutes.
I needed directions to a family member's house after she moved. Clicked on her address from the text message, and Google tried to send me to a real estate agent's office instead.
This is egregious. I would be livid if I drove 20 minutes to an ad buyer's location instead of the actual address, after putting in the actual address to google maps. This is completely the opposite of what a map should be doing for you.
If you can, use Apple maps for now, although Apple has proudly proclaimed that they will be serving ads in maps soon. I also refuse to use the maps.app.goo.gl short links that google maps always wants to send. They will trap you in the compromised google search ecosystem. Insist on using raw addresses. I will paste in the raw address every time someone in a group chat sends a goo.gl link.
Ouch. But at least there is OSMand.
"to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
I would show up at the competing doctor and make things as awkward as possible. They chose to do that ad.
Do they even have any idea that their ads are showing up for the specific competing doctor? Isn't Google the one deciding where the ads are most valuable?
If they don’t know, showing up and telling them will let them know.
If you excuse the effects that people’s actions have because they didn’t realize they were causing them, you guarantee that those effects will never stop.
These are creative, but you haven’t thought them through. Do you really want brands to own trademarks on their keywords? So that when, to pick a random example, you search the internet for “1-800 Contacts,” nobody else is allowed to show an ad that says “Hey Amluto! We sell the same thing cheaper!”[1]
2 is just being bad at business. Which is why I’m skeptical it happens.
3, I hate to break it to you, basically happens in every major store you walk into in America. Google “slotting fees.” If you think customers want an alternative, apply to YC!
[1] The FTC (on your behalf) sued 1-800 contacts for trying this. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2016/08/...
IIRC, at one time, in Aotearoa/New Zealand at least, Coca Cola Amatil (or whoever it is) had trademarked 'Always'. It may have been some other word, but it was definitely a common word. And it wasn't the particular branding, just the word
seems they've ruled the practice is ok:
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/warby-parker-fends-...
> Someone should file the multi-hundred-billion-dollar class actions
Incidentally, last week Amazon changed their TOS [0] and now all disputes with them are to be resolved via Arbitration; class action waiver when you use their services, etc.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/amazon-reinstates-b...
How long till binding arbitration is meditated by AI?
in california you can opt out of binding arbitration within 30 days of signing the contract.
that's only to complain about their service to you, not cases like fraud or copyright infringement, which was the subject here
Can we make a class action lawsuit target multiple storefronts? Apple and Google desperately need to be gently reminded of this less. With a power drill attached dildo. Their searches are trash, first hit is always an ad.
I don't want any of your arguments to be supported in law.
The day someone can sue me because they searched for something on my web site and what they expected didn't come up, my web site is effectively legally prevented from having a search box.
The action needed here is anti-trust style / monopoly action. If there were viable competitors it wouldn't matter what Amazon's search box does. The fact the US government is in denial about the whole principle of the need for robust anti-trust / competition enforcement that is the core issue here.
I understand why you are opposed to the arguments and I like the idea of anti-trust action, but ...
The anti-trust cases I am familiar with spanned decades. Perhaps it's not a representative sample, yet it also makes sense. Anti-trust basically says they're doing something that is normally legal, but they're abusing their power over the market in a way that makes those actions illegal. You're moving from prosecuting actions to intent. That is a whole lot more difficult to prove.
I'm also uncertain how I feel about prosecuting a company just because it is a monopoly. I absolutely hate monopolies, and large monopolies almost certainly got to where they were by illegitimate means. On the other hand, it is difficult to untangle legitimate consumer choice from a monopoly manipulating the market to remove that choice.
The reason this is a thing is that other people can bid on your product (Amazon has an entire sponsored product category for this reason). So the reason for Seth Godin to bid on ads for "Seth Godin The Knot" is to try to crowd out other people bidding on the same term (eg another book on the same topic). Can be smart but you don't have to play this game if you don't want to, and the ACOS will tell you if it's worth playing. Even if you don't bid on those ads your own product will be the first result. It's just whether you want to bid up the price for competitors -- if you don't bid on your own product someone else can come in and buy the ad spots cheaply.
Hopefully Seth's publisher knows this?
1. If you get banned from Amazon largely this is very bad for business. They can find a reasonable excuse I’m sure!
2. Fraud is a stretch, these things are labelled even if it’s deliberately designed to be difficult to understand. The discovery on this would be fascinating though because I can guarantee you there’s records somewhere of a ticket to make things more deceptive…
3. I don’t think the fraud thing will get you the results you want (I guess this is a slightly ironic statement given what we’re talking about). According to Claude it’s more likely deception under “FTC Act §5” but you can’t directly do this anymore and apparently “Amazon reinstated binding individual arbitration with a class-action waiver in its Conditions of Use, effective 14 August 2026.” So even taking them to court got much much more difficult.
I think unfortunately until a different administration (maybe one less motivated by billionaire donors) comes in, we are stuck with this type of practice.
This is terrible behavior and it should be condemned, but I see no reason it should be illegal. There’s no deception in any of this. It’s like going to a store and asking an employee where the Widgets are, and they show you the Doodads instead because they’re more profitable. This is scummy but by no means illegal. The Doodads are labeled as Doodads. The advertisers know where their ads can be shown and under what conditions they’ll be charged for a click. It’s all dickish but it’s not fraud.
Is this argument applicable to nuisance laws?
What nuisance laws are you referring to and how would this argument potentially apply?
unless the othet sellers are selling counterfeit books, you have zero grounds for any of those.
worked in advertisement, and there's legal precedent to allow bidding on competitor brands (for every advertising network joy).