Some brands and sellers love Amazon ads because they show up right at the moment you’re making a purchase - though others tell me ads have become an extra Amazon tax they have to pass on to customers.Īmazon insists they’re actually a good thing for us. After selling $31 billion in ads last year, Amazon became the third-largest online ad company in the United States, trailing only Google and Facebook. As I’ve written before, Google search has a big shill results problem, too, though it’s as much about ads as pointing you back to Google’s own products.Īmazon has turned shill results into its next big thing. ( Seriously.) Food-delivery apps shill eggnog and whipped cream when you’re just looking for milk. Shill results now crowd Apple and Google’s smartphone app stores - search for an app used for couple’s therapy, and you’ll get an ad for a dating app.
What’s worse, many other apps and online marketplaces are following Amazon’s lead. Even when they contain a tiny disclaimer label - as do Amazon’s - these kinds of ads can be misleading because they fill up spaces people have every reason to expect to contain trustworthy, independent information. We the users want honest online shopping experiences and some common-sense limits on ads that are designed to deceive.
Amazon has pioneered a kind of online advertising business that feeds us sponsored information that can cloud our choices. One of the great promises of the internet is that we can get access to more information and make better choices.
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