Amazon is almost completely unusable for search at this stage. I think perhaps 3/4 of the results are sponsored ads. Three in four. Trying to find a good deal on a product, even if you know precisely what you're looking for, is a real headache of trying to dodge the advertisement minefield.
This plus the login-walled reviews is unfortunate because once I stopped buying from Amazon I'd continue to go there to browse before buying elsewhere.
These companies effectively monopolize app distribution on their platforms and then make discovery so poor that developers who try to sell apps in their stores must pay for ads in those same stores.
Whats going to be hilarious is if brick and mortar companies become popular again because of the painful U.I., scammy companies, and broken search of Amazon.
This is sad, but true. And true for other giant companies, not just for Amazon - Meta/Facebook is another good example.
What can we do about it? Not much. This is something that happens when in a "free" market you have a near monopoly, and the antitrust is too weak to even try to fine these companies.
One might think that there's a "conspiracy" of a few powerful people / billionaires, but I don't believe it it the case. Individuals are driven by results, profits, targets, metrics, etc... The company as a whole responds to shareholders, not the small retail one but large funds and such that own a significant stake in these companies. They want to make money. They lobby the government to make sure that quasi-monopolies like this one can go on undisturbed.
I don't blame Amazon. I think this is a limitation of the (supposedly) free-market society in which we live. By the way, it is not a free market when antitrust does not work, or when you need to bail-out banks, etc.
I admire and respect Seth Godin (I even met him once, years ago), and I would love to see if he had any idea of how to solve this.
It's eminently solvable. Make the practice illegal. Or break up big companies. Or you progressively tax on revenue, so it becomes increasingly inefficient to a mega corporation. Or require companies above a certain size become increasingly worker owned.
Amazon doesn't need to be so big and in so many industries. My pharmacy doesn't also need to be a movie studio. My cloud provider doesn't also need to be a self publishing business. It distorts too many things.
You should do what I do: look for someplace else to buy from first. Amazon has "everything" - if you can find it. However there are usually small sellers of that niche (often niche.com) where they know something about the product and will direct your to the best one without adds. The smaller/weirder the niche the more likely this seller is to be helpful. You get to support "the little guy", and get a good product for a good price. Even if Amazon is cheaper, the smaller store is still the better value because you get a good product.
Amazon has the most useless search I know.
Also, idk who clicks those 'Sponsored' results, but for me they are an automatic pass. But then again Amazon is such a scumbag company that uses its own brands as a weapon to make sellers pay to be visible.
> They know the best-reviewed, least-returned, best-priced model. The only purpose of the ads is to get you to pick an air fryer that isn’t that one
Thoughtless take. Say you've just invented a better looking, better functioning, cheaper air fryer. How do you expect to reach your first customers if not through ads? Sell it to your friends? That's even more invasive and annoying.
People's urge to rid the world of ads is similar to our urge to rid the world of "middlemen".
It's natural, and I get it (ads are annoying), but this is a forum where I expect people to think a little more deeply about the economics and second order effects of things.
I don't think you put much thought into the article before you carelessly bandied about the phrase "Thoughtless take."
You certainly didn't read it in much depth. The author is talking about search ads explicitly and narrowly within a category where Amazon has plenty of signals it could use to steer customers towards the highest satisfaction product.
If you make a new better product, advertise everywhere you want. And if Amazon took seriously its customer obsession, it would start driving people towards your product if it was better. Not because you paid them to.
The article isn't an attack on advertising to bring awareness of your product to an unaware market; it's an attack on being made to pay for a customer who has specifically asked for your product to be shown your product.
> People's urge to rid the world of ads is similar to our urge to rid the world of "middlemen".
This is a lazy strawman and not what the author of the post argued for.
> It's natural, and I get it (ads are annoying), but this is a forum where I expect people to think a little more deeply about the economics and second order effects of things.
Then maybe contribute to the dialog on that front. The article did so more than your comment setting up a strawman.
The problem is we aren’t in a world of more “reasonable” advertising. What we see deployed now are basically weapons-grade manipulation systems, and upstarts do not have equal access to the arsenal. So yeah, they need to get the word out, but they can’t even do that! The big dogs get better, more privileged access.
Amazon is almost completely unusable for search at this stage. I think perhaps 3/4 of the results are sponsored ads. Three in four. Trying to find a good deal on a product, even if you know precisely what you're looking for, is a real headache of trying to dodge the advertisement minefield.
This plus the login-walled reviews is unfortunate because once I stopped buying from Amazon I'd continue to go there to browse before buying elsewhere.
See also: ads for apps in app stores.
These companies effectively monopolize app distribution on their platforms and then make discovery so poor that developers who try to sell apps in their stores must pay for ads in those same stores.
Whats going to be hilarious is if brick and mortar companies become popular again because of the painful U.I., scammy companies, and broken search of Amazon.
Principal agent problem combined with a monopoly, what could go wrong?
In the end, we as a society value convenience more than global optima. So we will always land in some local optima. We deserve it.
Speak for yourself haha. Unconscious and unexamined behaviors hardly constitute a value system.
Unconscious values are still values.
[delayed]
This is sad, but true. And true for other giant companies, not just for Amazon - Meta/Facebook is another good example.
What can we do about it? Not much. This is something that happens when in a "free" market you have a near monopoly, and the antitrust is too weak to even try to fine these companies.
One might think that there's a "conspiracy" of a few powerful people / billionaires, but I don't believe it it the case. Individuals are driven by results, profits, targets, metrics, etc... The company as a whole responds to shareholders, not the small retail one but large funds and such that own a significant stake in these companies. They want to make money. They lobby the government to make sure that quasi-monopolies like this one can go on undisturbed.
I don't blame Amazon. I think this is a limitation of the (supposedly) free-market society in which we live. By the way, it is not a free market when antitrust does not work, or when you need to bail-out banks, etc.
I admire and respect Seth Godin (I even met him once, years ago), and I would love to see if he had any idea of how to solve this.
It's eminently solvable. Make the practice illegal. Or break up big companies. Or you progressively tax on revenue, so it becomes increasingly inefficient to a mega corporation. Or require companies above a certain size become increasingly worker owned.
Amazon doesn't need to be so big and in so many industries. My pharmacy doesn't also need to be a movie studio. My cloud provider doesn't also need to be a self publishing business. It distorts too many things.
> What can we do about it? Not much.
You should do what I do: look for someplace else to buy from first. Amazon has "everything" - if you can find it. However there are usually small sellers of that niche (often niche.com) where they know something about the product and will direct your to the best one without adds. The smaller/weirder the niche the more likely this seller is to be helpful. You get to support "the little guy", and get a good product for a good price. Even if Amazon is cheaper, the smaller store is still the better value because you get a good product.
Usually I can purchase directly from the company that makes the product website.
I don’t give Amazon my money, that’s something most people have the agency to do. There are many, many other places to order from on the internet.
[delayed]
Amazon has the most useless search I know. Also, idk who clicks those 'Sponsored' results, but for me they are an automatic pass. But then again Amazon is such a scumbag company that uses its own brands as a weapon to make sellers pay to be visible.
> They know the best-reviewed, least-returned, best-priced model. The only purpose of the ads is to get you to pick an air fryer that isn’t that one
Thoughtless take. Say you've just invented a better looking, better functioning, cheaper air fryer. How do you expect to reach your first customers if not through ads? Sell it to your friends? That's even more invasive and annoying.
People's urge to rid the world of ads is similar to our urge to rid the world of "middlemen".
It's natural, and I get it (ads are annoying), but this is a forum where I expect people to think a little more deeply about the economics and second order effects of things.
I don't think you put much thought into the article before you carelessly bandied about the phrase "Thoughtless take."
You certainly didn't read it in much depth. The author is talking about search ads explicitly and narrowly within a category where Amazon has plenty of signals it could use to steer customers towards the highest satisfaction product.
If you make a new better product, advertise everywhere you want. And if Amazon took seriously its customer obsession, it would start driving people towards your product if it was better. Not because you paid them to.
The problem TFA is complaining about isn't ads in general, but specifically ads in Amazon search results for products sold on Amazon.
The article isn't an attack on advertising to bring awareness of your product to an unaware market; it's an attack on being made to pay for a customer who has specifically asked for your product to be shown your product.
> People's urge to rid the world of ads is similar to our urge to rid the world of "middlemen".
This is a lazy strawman and not what the author of the post argued for.
> It's natural, and I get it (ads are annoying), but this is a forum where I expect people to think a little more deeply about the economics and second order effects of things.
Then maybe contribute to the dialog on that front. The article did so more than your comment setting up a strawman.
The problem is we aren’t in a world of more “reasonable” advertising. What we see deployed now are basically weapons-grade manipulation systems, and upstarts do not have equal access to the arsenal. So yeah, they need to get the word out, but they can’t even do that! The big dogs get better, more privileged access.
you sound like the kind of person who believes the best air fryer is the one that is advertised the most.