As Amazon improves its ad technology and increases overall ad spending, product recommendations on Amazon are gradually being replaced by advertising space.
Until not long ago, when searching for a product on Amazon you could find product recommendations or most viewed products in certain categories, which were found on the detail page of each item in the retail giant, however, the results are fewer every day of this type that we can find in their catalogues.
Product recommendations on Amazon disappear to make way for advertising
According to an investigation carried out by , this place has been occupied by the “sponsored products related to this article” or the section, which also includes sponsored products called “4 stars and more”.
You may not have realized it yet, since both product recommendations and ad slots targeting a specific category or product are visually identicalsomething that can confuse consumers.
In early 2019, Amazon expanded targeting options for sponsored product campaigns by introducing the ASIN, that is, the standard identification number of each product on Amazon, as well as targeting by category, which allowed Extend the reach of sponsored product ads to product listings.
Furthermore, within Amazon search, sponsored products can be targeted based on keywords or particular item details, both of which have resulted in ad spend on Amazon in the US increasing by 33%. until reaching 10,000 million dollars.
By logic, As more advertisers have expanded their advertising targeting, sponsored products have taken over the place of product recommendations displayed after the details of each item.
While sponsored placements on product listing pages have the lowest click-through rate compared to other placement types, they do grow the average total number of clicks due to their placement.
Google and eBay also show fewer organic results in their searches
Over the years, Amazon’s product recommendation system has been a standard and an example for other marketplaces and large competitors in the retail industry, and yet, in recent years they have been disappearingand now browsing their catalogs is more of an ad-led journey.
Something similar is happening at Google, which, as we have seen in , has noticed a increased visibility of shopping modulesas well as more ads at the top of your search results, and featured snippets.
A trend that follows what eBay, whose promotional listings were released in 2015 and have so far generated just over 230 million euros in revenue for the marketplace in the first three quarters of 2019, and whose result has been that top positions are impossible for organic results in your search.
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