Amazon Key Word Ads Dominate Search Results

When you search for something on Amazon.com, you might notice that a lot of what populates on the results screen is nothing more than ads. Retailers who sell through Amazon.com are increasingly buying ad space to promote their wares. Promoted products are what you see first when you do a search for an item on Amazon. A simple search such as 'cereal' results in at least three ads that are shown at the top of the page. If you are doing your search on a smartphone, those ads take up the entire screen. After the promoted products by retailers, the next item that you see is one of Amazon's private label brands. Yes, Amazon.com even sells its own cereal, which is something that it acquired when it bought Whole Foods.
If you actually want to see the organic search results, you have to keep scrolling down the page. You can tell the promoted products based on a little banner that is shown on the photo of the item. Amazon sells off those sponsored ads in a sort of auction. The vendor who pays the most gets the top spot. It allows up to three vendors to promote their items on the page before any organic search results are shown.
Vendors make their bids based on keywords. For example, Kellogg's could promote their Frosted Flakes cereal using the key words "corn flakes", "breakfast cereal" or "cereal" as well as with their brand name. In many cases, the Amazon knockoff of the same type of cereal is also shown in the top three search results.
Some developers wanted to see if Amazon is showing sponsored product ads for all types of searches or just popular ones. The developers did a bunch of searches, from vague keywords such as "batteries" to highly specific keyword searches such as "Lady Speed Stick baby powder deodorant." The fact that consumers rarely navigate past the first page of search results is not just true when they go to Google or Bing. It is also true when they go to Amazon.com, and the company is using it. For more information click here https://www.recode.net/2018/9/10/17797720/amazon-is-stuffing-its-search-results-pages-with-ads.