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Amazon Prepares Online Advertising Program

54 points by davidst 12y ago

ripberge 12y ago
Well Google still has the dominant search traffic and that's where the text ads with real intent behind them get shown and clicked on so this isn't going to do much. And as far as people doing product searches on Amazon.com, it's not a great source of revenue for advertisers. If you want to get real sales from Amazon customer searches you need to have your products for sale either via Amazon itself or in the Amazon marketplace. They make way more money that way and place the way they place ads on their pages reflect that. Google will retain total dominance in this area as long as a the vast majority of people use google.com for web searches.
- skbohra123 12y ago
  *edit - Tired of these armchair analysts dismissing anything new coming outright. Not a kind of mentality I would expect from someone interested in startups. Ok, But no one asked if it will work or not. And your comment doesn't have any extraordinary analysis or information that someone with even a small understanding of the topic wouldn't know.
- ohashi 12y ago
  That may be so. But there also may be an opportunity for Amazon to target ads better than anyone else could. Essentially retargeting for Amazon's platform.
  - ripberge 12y ago
    Amazon can re-target better than Google because they know about some products you browsed on Amazon.com? Google has your entire search history, click through history, ad-interaction history and a ton of other data to target you.
    - bostik 12y ago
      Not browsed. Bought. Maybe even more importantly, they know which products you returned and why. Public reviews on items are one thing and likely gameable, the direct merchant feedback form remains private between the merchant and the customer. And Amazon, of course, because they mediate the exchange. For pure marketing purposes that kind of limited view could be quite valuable indeed. As to what this means for me? More rules in AdBlock, I guess.
- mkr-hn 12y ago
  Amazon.* might get less traffic than Google's properties, but it probably has as many or more people with their wallets out.
curiouscats 12y ago
This is potentially a real risk to Google. The odds of such a huge success it decreases Google's profits are tiny (I think). But there is a real risk that the increase in Google's profits going forward are materially affected by a well done competitor to Adsense. If Amazon took away 10% of what Google's adsense business 4 years from now would have been that is likely material to Google's earning. Not huge but real. Even losing the ads on Amazon's web site is likely noticeable (though not a huge deal I would guess). There is even the potential Google has to reduce their profitability to compete - giving web sites a better cut of revenue. That said I think Amazon has plenty of challenges to making it an effective competitor to Google. But they have a chance. And there is even a small chance (very small I think) that Amazon could create a competitor that actually results in noticeably (say over 15%) declining revenue to Google via adsense. Likely even in this case Google continues to grow profit. Google revenue from ads from their own websites are the most important earnings and likely to continue to be so. Also new business (non web-ad-income) is growing and I think will continue to do so (this is likely an area some might find more questionable).
hownottowrite 12y ago
From what I understand, they are pitching an agency model. The rate I heard quoted was $2.50 CPM.

54 points by davidst 12y ago

Well Google still has the dominant search traffic and that's where the text ads with real intent behind them get shown and clicked on so this isn't going to do much. And as far as people doing product searches on Amazon.com, it's not a great source of revenue for advertisers. If you want to get real sales from Amazon customer searches you need to have your products for sale either via Amazon itself or in the Amazon marketplace. They make way more money that way and place the way they place ads on their pages reflect that. Google will retain total dominance in this area as long as a the vast majority of people use google.com for web searches.

skbohra123 12y ago
*edit - Tired of these armchair analysts dismissing anything new coming outright. Not a kind of mentality I would expect from someone interested in startups. Ok, But no one asked if it will work or not. And your comment doesn't have any extraordinary analysis or information that someone with even a small understanding of the topic wouldn't know.
ohashi 12y ago
That may be so. But there also may be an opportunity for Amazon to target ads better than anyone else could. Essentially retargeting for Amazon's platform.
- ripberge 12y ago
  Amazon can re-target better than Google because they know about some products you browsed on Amazon.com? Google has your entire search history, click through history, ad-interaction history and a ton of other data to target you.
  - bostik 12y ago
    Not browsed. Bought. Maybe even more importantly, they know which products you returned and why. Public reviews on items are one thing and likely gameable, the direct merchant feedback form remains private between the merchant and the customer. And Amazon, of course, because they mediate the exchange. For pure marketing purposes that kind of limited view could be quite valuable indeed. As to what this means for me? More rules in AdBlock, I guess.
mkr-hn 12y ago
Amazon.* might get less traffic than Google's properties, but it probably has as many or more people with their wallets out.

curiouscats 12y ago

This is potentially a real risk to Google. The odds of such a huge success it decreases Google's profits are tiny (I think). But there is a real risk that the increase in Google's profits going forward are materially affected by a well done competitor to Adsense. If Amazon took away 10% of what Google's adsense business 4 years from now would have been that is likely material to Google's earning. Not huge but real. Even losing the ads on Amazon's web site is likely noticeable (though not a huge deal I would guess). There is even the potential Google has to reduce their profitability to compete - giving web sites a better cut of revenue. That said I think Amazon has plenty of challenges to making it an effective competitor to Google. But they have a chance. And there is even a small chance (very small I think) that Amazon could create a competitor that actually results in noticeably (say over 15%) declining revenue to Google via adsense. Likely even in this case Google continues to grow profit. Google revenue from ads from their own websites are the most important earnings and likely to continue to be so. Also new business (non web-ad-income) is growing and I think will continue to do so (this is likely an area some might find more questionable).

hownottowrite 12y ago

From what I understand, they are pitching an agency model. The rate I heard quoted was $2.50 CPM.