TECH Signal 493
Seth Godin argues Amazon's search ads are a 'tax' that makes search worse and raises costs
↗
Seth Godin's blog post argues that Amazon's search ads are a form of legal theft that makes search results worse and ultimately raises costs for customers.
For engineers building ecommerce or search products, this highlights the incentive to degrade organic results to drive ad revenue. It also shows how zero-sum search ads can reduce overall sales and force merchants to pay to protect their own listings. Understanding this dynamic is crucial for designing fairer systems.
Written by elseif from the cluster below · every claim links back to a sourceThe three things worth knowing
Amazon makes nearly a billion dollars a week in profit from search ads.
The post claims that search ads make search worse and cites a study showing ecommerce sites with ads sell fewer items.
The publisher's highest-yielding ad is for the book 'The Knot' at about a dollar per click, showing merchants pay to appear for their own product.
THE CLUSTER