> The FTC has long held that ads are deceptive if they imply information is being shared by an independent or impartial source, when it’s actually originating from a business trying to sell a product, said Jessica Rich, a former director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. Such practices could lead consumers to make uninformed decisions about their purchases.
I'd love to see this provision torpedo the "Amazon's Choice" labels.
I don't see how "Amazon's Choice" labels would run afoul of that.
According to Amazon, "Amazon's Choice highlights highly rated, well-priced products available to ship immediately".
I don't see anything that implies that this is coming from an independent or impartial source. It's right in the name itself that it is coming from Amazon.
The label doesn't imply an impartial source. I would think that what Amazon recommends on Amazon's website is clearly not impartial. They'd run afoul if they labeled it independent-al's top pick
I find myself wondering if "Amazon's Choice" really implies an independent or impartial source. When I'm seeing it, I know it's coming from Amazon and they would like to sell me a thing. They're certainly not pretending it's the choice of anyone other than them, the company that wants to sell me things at a profit.
I've been sent a random junky product (in its box: I knew I hadn't ordered the thing) from Amazon as an exploit to use an older Amazon account I'd had, to produce a verified five star review.
It was the #1 rated product in its category, and that's when I stopped trusting anything about Amazon. I don't remember if it was also 'Amazon's Choice': seems to ring a bell, it may well have been: showing not that Amazon was intentionally pushing garbage, but that it was purely algorithmic. I don't think it's malice as much as wilful ignorance.
In my experience the search on the Amazon site is terrible. If I want something, I search there and can browse 100 pages of low quality unrelated items. But I do a Google search and I see results from Amazon that are exactly what I need.
Did search technology stall and get outsmarted by the spammers? I'm confused how big tech search from Amazon and Google is so bad. I'm waiting for some startup to challenge Google as their progress has stopped
Spammers are part of the equation. But I think Amazon's business model is a big contributor as well. We'd have less of a problem if the entire Amazon store were actual Amazon listings, instead of randos being allowed to put up co-mingled garbage and gaming the search/review systems with no consequence.
Search technology got outsmarted by their own executives. The goal is no longer to present the best results for the user. It's to present the most profitable results.
I agree, searching for products on Amazon and actually finding what you're looking for is a pain, then you still have to try and figure out if it's a quality product or if it's from a reliable seller.
I shop on NewEgg these days when I can because their power search is much better for the things it is actually implemented well for. For the things it isn't implemented well for you're not really any better off though.
P.S.: If anyone can direct me to a reliable brand for 3-6ft USB 3 A-to-A M-to-M and M-to-F cables that can actually handle SuperSpeed without dropping half the packets, I'd be obliged.
> If anyone can direct me to a reliable brand for 3-6ft USB 3 A-to-A M-to-M and M-to-F cables that can actually handle SuperSpeed without dropping half the packets, I'd be obliged.
I'm not certain M-M is allowed under USB spec (someone else can chime in), which is why you might be having trouble finding that from reliable brands.
The HDMI capture device I'm using has shipped with an A-to-A M-to-M cable. Even if that is the reason I can't find it, I still need an M-to-F to extend this thing and I can't find that either, except from brands that either don't work at all at SS speeds or drop half the packets (like Amazon Basics cables).
I'd look at Plugable, they tend to do quality accessories. (And US-based, and technically savvy - they actually provide firmware updates for their USB docks.)
To prevent people creating loops where they plug a device with two female USB-A ports into itself, or plugging two different devices with USB-A female ports into each other. (Which is liable to damage one or both of the devices.)
I have noticed this as well. I have sometimes searched for the exact product name only for Amazon to return no or unrelated results, when Google finds it just fine.
There's so much manipulation on Amazon (both of Amazon's own doing and gaming on part of sellers) that I've more or less given up on buying from there completely. Mix in all off-brand Chinese crap polluting the store, and it's just a miserable experience.
These days, Amazon is most useful to me just as a price ceiling. I go to brick-and-mortar stores and have them price-match Amazon if the online listing is cheaper.
Best Buy has been nice lately. I pretty much only buy well reviewed (by a third party, like Wirecutter) and known items unless it’s a random thing I don’t care about or something very commodity, like a network cable. Ive also been trying to spread my $ around to other stores, like Target, etc. Amazon still wins because it’s so easy some of the time though.
I could see myself buying paperclips on Amazon if I didn't have a visceral reaction from one knockoff they sold me. I didn't realize I would react that way to anything. And they acted in relatively good faith in that transaction with other stuff, they just couldn't not sell me that knockoff.
I started shopping at Best Buy again this year, specifically because I didn't trust whatever I'd get from Amazon anymore. BB is much better than I remember it being, and so far I've been more than happy with my purchases. Combine them with Target, and I don't need Amazon anymore.
I only look on Amazon when I'm purposefully looking for cheap Chinese merchandise. Like tea lights to put inside pumpkins or other holiday decorations. I shouldn't really be supporting junk products that won't last though.
Nor do I. Their router recommendations are based on speed, with no consideration given to after purchase firmware updating. Their car reviews in the past were manipulated by choices they compare - Honda vs Kia - with no mention of, say, Toyota. I think the main problem is that they aren't actually reviewing anything - they're measuring other reviewers reactions who are paid to feature certain products and Amazon reviews, which are hugely falsified.
This. For all the economic hoovering Amazon does, it's amazing to me how much the shopping experience sucks. Search results are inundated with sponsored placements, knock-offs abound, countless fake reviews, they're always pushing 3rd party sellers, and lastly I still don't understand Prime's 2 day shipping guarantee (except when it doesn't).
Honestly the buying experience on Amazon is truly dreadful right now. If you are browsing for anything that’s not a name brand you have to sift through pages of garbage 5 star reviews from people paid with Amazon gift cards by the seller. If you look at the 1 star reviews you’ll see the sellers of items will pay people in Amazon gift cards to review the product, and pay to take down negative reviews. If I need to purchase anything I’ve given up on using them and simply go to Best Buy, Target Walmart, etc. Though it seems Walmart is trying to follow in Amazon’s footsteps with third party sellers for its website.
True, the issue is if you are getting a niche item without name brands in the market. For example I was trying to get a TV antenna, which to me doesn’t have a recognizable brand to look towards.
But a big problem is that because they mix items from third parties with everything else because they’re “the same”, you never know when you’re getting counterfeit goods. Amazon has made it so bad that some manufacturers will now actually have a page on their website showing how to detect counterfeit versions of their product.
I found this issue when trying to buy a filter replacement for my LG refrigerator. The reviews reported several cases of wrong filters sent, some used, and some fake/counterfeit. Like one was literally just an empty plastic shell. I ended up just going to LG's website, and it was actually cheaper, albeit with slower shipping. But who cares for something like that.
A few years ago I bought some brand name shampoo from Amazon and what they sent was very clearly counterfeit. The product and packaging were so bad that if anyone was paying attention to the supply line they should have been able to figure it out.
Since then my general rule has been "If it goes on me or in me, I'm not getting it from Amazon"
Good luck finding proper brands in the search results. Four times out of five, weird names that I've never heard of dominate the results to the point where it's impossible to filter for a known brand.
Exactly. Just today, even knowing what to expect, I decided to try and search for a mattress pad or cover on Amazon. Just pages and pages of brands I've never heard of.
I have also noticed an absolutely massive increase in products having 5 star review averages as reported by Amazon, then you scroll down to the top reviews, and it's almost pages of 1 star reviews reporting complete failures of the product. Their algorithm is basically worthless or obviously manipulated if the majority of top reviews are 1-star and yet the item has a 4.5 or 5 star average.
I've stopped buying on Amazon for many things, using it mainly for repeat stuff I know that works, and I've been trying to find things at other big box stores like Best buy or Target, as you mention, or directly from the manufacturer. Amazon isn't really cheaper other than faster shipping for legitimate items from main brands anyway. In several cases, I've found Amazon to actually be more expensive for some items.
This mirrors my sentiments exactly. Peak Amazon for me was about 3 or 4 years ago - I would order from Amazon without even thinking about it. Now, you can’t use it unless you know exactly what you want, because their search is unusable, and with the prevalence of counterfeit goods mixed in with all the legitimate stock… It’s become less of a hassle to just order from the manufacturer, if it’s anything I really care about.
same here - used to buy everything I could from amazon, without really checking the price (they were always generally lowest price or close to it especially if you factor in the free and quick shipping and previously not having to pay sales tax).
Now I search on amazon, then do my best to find it somewhere else for cheaper or about the same price - just the same way I do when I search for hotels on expedia or kayak, but always book direct.
Not helping AMZN either is the fact that it seems like they have pretty much given up on rapid shipping - especially where I live - two days (with prime) used to be standard - now It is more like 5-6 days for most things - even with prime. Seems a bit bait-and-switch on the supposed promise of two day shipping.
Yeah, I agree there’s a spectrum but (like you) I’m definitely hearing it from the mouths of actual friends and neighbors, not just here. I think the split is “people who can afford to be choosy” vs “people who only make decisions based on price”.
The love hasn’t changed but the buying strategies have. Amazon is still the hands down best place to actually buy things on the internet. But their dominance in product discovery is slipping.
If you figure out what to buy somewhere else and then buy it on Amazon then the product is better than ever. If you vaguely search for what you want and buy the top few results you probably think the quality has gone downhill.
obviously any counterpoint to this will also be anecdotes, but to add another: I have heard from extended family and friends unrelated to the tech industry that they have growing discontent with Amazon, and have said they order much less stuff off there. For my wife, it has become a running joke on how poor her service has been with Amazon; It's more surprising when it _works_ for her nowadays. Our current record is 2.5 months for a "next day delivery", and it was the wrong item.
I'm not in the tech industry, and I agree. Usually, when I go on about why Amazon sucks to people, they're thrilled somebody is articulating what they've found to be true. For a lot of people, when Amazon/Google don't get them what they want, they blame THEMSELVES, not Amazon or Google. They know they aren't getting what they want, but consider the problem as "I'm not good enough at using Amazon."
It's a relief to them when I lay out the bad decisions Amazon is making and how they're tanking the customer experience.
> today: the Amazon shopping experience is so filled with bullshit that it’s actually easier to buy from the producer’s website and pay shipping
This is where I'm at. I only order products from Amazon that are sold by Amazon. Pretty much any legit third party seller will have their own website I can order from.
I still read reviews on Amazon before ordering elsewhere, although they've banned me from leaving reviews and wiped all my past ones for no discernible reason. I guess I left a review on some product that had a lot of fake reviews and I got caught in the crossfire.
>I still read reviews on Amazon before ordering elsewhere
Why? I'm only adding more so it's not a one word response, but seriously, why are you still putting any credence whatsoever to Amazon reviews which is like scientifically proven to be gamed?
If you filter out reviews without picture and only 2-4 star reviews you can often find legitimate reviews on more popular items. The total star rating is of course totally useless but individual reviews still offer value.
Yeah, there's still value in Amazon reviews despite the noise. If you take the time to just sit there and read through them one by one, you can definitely learn things about the product. Obviously you skip over the trash "ya this product great, exactly what I needed" stuff. If you just read the long, multi-paragraph ones you effectively eliminate the fake stuff, because fake reviews don't get paid more for being longer. Long ones tend to have detailed discussion of actually product function and/or appearance, and THAT'S where you find the the product's potential shortcomings.
I've read some of these multi-paragraph reviews, and I'm not impressed there either. Some of them read as if they are a frustrated author that could never get published and now spends their time practicing prose searching for likes (similar to yelp). Some sound like GPT3 drivel. Some sound even worse.
Two and four star reviews are worth focusing on too. Vendors don't, for the most part, pay for four star reviews, and review-bombing idiots or people upset the delivery was late don't tend to offer two star reviews
Just because reviews are gamed on Amazon doesn't mean that there are no real reviews on there. For many purchases, there are no other sites with useful reviews. It's the best bad system we have...
Mainly for the negative ones, to see if there are many similar complaints indicating something is wrong with the product.
I've left bad reviews on manufacturer websites and often times they just never publish them so I don't really trust reviews anywhere more or less than Amazon reviews.
I still buy a lot of items from Amazon, but at this point I always check other sources for products >$50.
I have noticed a massive uptick in sponsored listings, which are rarely what I want. The utility of basic search is dramatically worse than it was a few years ago. Can anyone recommend an adblocking browser extension that kills off sponsored listings?
Nice example! A recent HN discussion centered on the "Marketplace Fair Pricing Policy" [0], which seems to oppose such situations. I'm not saying that "365 Outdoor Product" (the vendor listed at your Amazon link) is actually operated by Wurkkos, but why wouldn't manufacturers do something like this?
I've heard that Amazon penalizes vendors who sell their own product cheaper on their own site. So instead, they advertise the same price but offer "discount codes" that work on their own site.
Amazon can DIAF as far as I'm concerned. I've made an "Anywhere but Amazon" pledge to myself, and order elsewhere even if it's somewhat more expensive.
Dive light? Gotta support your local dive shops buddy! The big ones I check are DiveGearExpress, LeisurePro and your local dive shops. The dive shops usually don't carry a lot of different dive light brands unfortunately so I get it.
I moved to "the country" and no longer have local dive shops.
Also, I looked at the name brand dive lights. They're 3-5X more expensive and don't spec the LEDs. To a flashlight geek, these seem to be wholly inferior to the reputable chinese brands like wurkkos or sofirn.
Also also, I just threw out a set of expensive UK halogen lights. I expect to replace these new ones in a few years as LEDs continue to get more efficient. Going cheap seems to be the right choice for this kind of technology product.
One thing to note is: I can't find any mention of returns/refunds on the wurkkos website, while Amazon has their standard (very liberal) return policy.
From the manufacturer's standpoint, they pay 15% referal fee to Amazon for getting them the sale. They also have a 5% coupon. Taking both of those things into account, their revenue on the sale is ~$64 compared to the ~$54 on their site. But I'd wager they're not getting very many sales on their website.
I also find that I'm more confident in the manufacturer to actually ship the item properly. On several occasions I've ordered something expensive from Amazon only to have it arrived beat up and damaged. When I've returned it to Amazon and ordered again from the manufacturer it usually arrives in much better condition.
> * today: the Amazon shopping experience is so filled with bullshit that it’s actually easier to buy from the producer’s website and pay shipping
I hear this all the time but it’s rarely true for me.
I’ve always searched for alternate stores, promo codes, and other discounts before ordering from Amazon. Many manufacturers have their own web stores, but it’s really rare to find a total price (including shipping) that is actually cheaper than Amazon in my experience.
Many hot products have Minimum Advertised Pricing contracts that mean the sale price is identical across every website anyway, at which point it becomes a game of finding some place with a coupon code that is enough to offset the extra shipping costs of not using Amazon. Most of the time, it just doesn’t work out as cheaper than Amazon.
I think people underestimate just how expensive warehousing, handling orders, and shipping can be. Amazon has optimized logistics to the point that they can charge people a lot for it and still be cheaper than doing it yourself (up to a certain scale which few companies reach)
The best thing for me (which is terrible for the environment) is the ease of returns. Free returns on just about everything and i don't have to pack it, just drop it off at the Whole Foods down the street.
I'd guess that if you bought quality products from a reputable retailer* that didn't suck, you would probably not be need to use the return option nearly as much.
I know, but I haven’t found that to be true either.
By the time I know what I want to buy, it’s not hard to find it on Amazon. Amazon already has my payment info so it’s a few clicks and I’m done. I don’t understand the argument that it’s easier to find the manufacturer’s website, navigate their web store, and then enter all of my payment and shipping information.
This just sounds like sheer laziness to me, which of course it is.
What you're saying is that you're willing to trade any sense of assured quality for the convenience of not having to do anything other than do the simplest of processes. Granted, this describes the majority of people, but let's at least be willing to admit what it is.
> What you're saying is that you're willing to trade any sense of assured quality for the convenience of not having to do anything other than do the simplest of processes.
I think you missed my parent comment where I said I devoutly check manufacturer's websites for alternative prices with almost every Amazon purchase I make.
And no, I'm not trading "any sense of assured quality" away. I've had more troubles with random 3rd-party vendors than I have with Amazon. I think people are greatly exaggerating the fault rate from Amazon simply because they order so many packages from Amazon. When it comes to things like lost or stolen shipments, I'd much rather deal with Amazon's liberal policies than go to battle with a random web store.
Several times now I've ordered something from Amazon and the item delivered wasn't what was ordered. Not even a cheap knock-off, just garbage in a box. For that reason alone, I'm hesitant to use Amazon. I've never had this happen with an order direct from manufacturer, or other retailers like REI or Best Buy.
> then enter all of my payment and shipping information.
I rarely have to do this anymore as more and more stores are on Shopify.
It's also better to know what you're getting is the real deal and from a legit manufacturer. A lot of times I can't even find a legit brand on amazon even when i include the name.
And with the Chinese word salad manufacturers, it's impossible to tell if something is good, bad, or relabelled from a name-brand first shift manufacturer.
(Tries to think of an example...can't remember any because they don't stick in your memory, searches for Cellphone car holder in Amazon)
Like VICSEED, OQTIQ, HUMIXX, Loncaster, Lisen, Torras...They'll all be different after the first of the year.
Edited to add honorable mention: President Randy Handheld Mobile radio.
i don't bother at this point. my wife loves prime and uses it for small things we need right away, but i would never make a major purchase through amazon these days. there's no guarantee of who you're buying from and the supply chain is not trustworthy IME
I've bought multiple products in a category on Amazon, from different Chinese brands, using separate resellers, and received items that were identical aside from the labels even when the product descriptions and price points were wildly different. It's like AliExpress without the low prices.
Because there's no need when your model is "set up the store, sell as much low end crap as you can in 3 months, shut down store, rinse, repeat." They aren't playing long games, they're moving cheap unbranded surplus quickly. They're using excess and part discards (or parts that fell off a truck) from branded products. China has essentially no protection of patents or ip, so factories follow the product leaders, copying whatever is currently in demand.
This actually highlights how genius the AWS pivot was. Even though Amazon might lose retail clout, other retailers _are still paying oodles to Amazon_ - but for servers.
It boggles my mind how short sighted the move to the cloud is. The outages are almost quarterly at this point, too!
A lot of items I used to buy on Amazon have become so spammed with ads and non-purchasable products that I've given up. The big ones I've noticed:
- bulk gum
- my favorite brand of cheese snack cracker
- bulk mints
- bar soap
- toilet paper
The other day I noticed that the search order wouldn't even change when I used the dropdown to change it from "featured" to "low to high". Someone actually broke the sort order of search results in a change, and didn't even notice it. Or maybe there's so many ads at the top of the result that the search order doesn't have an impact any more. But I literally could not find any instances of the item I was looking for that were purchasable at all.
I have completely given up shopping for anything of any importance due to the counterfeit or stolen items. I ordered a wireless charging dock from Anker, a fully sealed box came full of C batteries. I ordered some drill bits after my old ones wore out after about a decade, the new ones lasted less than a month. Clearly counterfeit despite looking EXACTLY the same. It's just impossible now, so I just avoid them entirely and go straight to the manufacturer.
> easier to buy from the producer’s website and pay shipping
You shouldn't even have to do that and pay shipping. For the last 5 years at least I've had luck going to a more trusted vendor like Best Buy or Target which have comparable free shipping options. And a bonus is that I can go to the store and pick up the item same day if I want. Also Best Buy price matches Amazon, though it's rarely necessary because they all converge on the same prices now anyway.
> I’m sure Amazon will be just fine but it seems like they’ll need to do something at some point
Their e-commerce arm has a lot of competition on the horizon from Costco, Walmart, Bestbuy, Home Depot, and the 2 million shopify stores being run by mom and pops. All of those, aside from Walmart, you can mostly be sure you’re not getting ripped off and know what you’re buying up front.
Bezos based his business model on long term customer trust, and he’s not really there anymore. You see these magazine articles of him hanging out at pool parties with celebrities in his beach shorts and it makes you wonder where the priorities of the company are now.
Think of Amazon as a plane with Bezos as the pilot. The nosedive of the plane started while Bezos was still in control. Bezos realized the dive was unrecoverable (or at least decided the effort was too much for him and just didn't want to go down with it), so he started looking for his parachute. He also found a co-pilot to start training, but the co-pilot didn't seem to be concerned about the diving trajectory. Bezos is now totally safe no longer being on the plane as he's safely used his parachute. Jassy now gets the blame when the plane ultimately goes down. Jassy would have to simply be an amazing pilot to pull the plane out of the dive.
My original point was that it's not just about brand perception, but that was largely on based on my incorrect belief that AWS is a much larger portion of Amazon's revenue than it is in reality. I thought it was like 40-50%, but it's actually only 14.5%. Interestingly, I found this quote from the source[0]:
> AWS’ revenue makes up 14.5% of Amazon’s total revenue of $110.8 billion. And for the first time ever, revenue from AWS, advertising, third-party seller services and Prime subscriptions ($55.9 million) surpassed revenue from Amazon’s retail and product sales ($54.9 billion).
This certainly reinforces your point! It sure sounds like Amazon retail is a sort of loss leader.
>This certainly reinforces your point! It sure sounds like Amazon retail is a sort of loss leader.
"Your margin is my opportunity" --Jeff Bezos
Jeff's ethos seems to be undercut everybody at any chance. That seems to include people using his platform in the form of plainly labeled Amazon branded products or Amazon owned brands of other names. Open a platform to sell things. Open that platform to allow 3rd parties to sell things while taking a cut. Aggregate all of that sales data to find what items are worthy of selling those items directly screwing the 3rd parties.
EDIT: OK, you're talking about customer experience and maybe that's a long term risk, but as long as that graph continues it's trend not many people at the top of Amazon are going to share our frustration as customers. There are plenty of customers out there throwing money at them.
The only thing I pay Amazon for now is for the TV streaming service, since they have a better back catalogue than Netflix.
For books I'll use bookshop.org, and for anything else I'll shop around for anywhere that isn't Amazon. I really don't care about next day or same day delivery; rarely do I require something so urgently that I can't wait a few days or a week or two.
Amazon itself is total trash these days, and it's getting steadily worse.
A newcomer penetrates the market with a superior offer. Once it rises to power, it naturally must defend and fortify its position. No longer must the offer be superior, destroying and suffocating new newcomers is simply more effective and profitable.
I'm at the point where I don't buy anything from Amazon without checking the _producer's_ website first. It seems like 90% of the stuff on Amazon is just dropshippers who add $50 to the retail price and arbitrage from people too lazy to do anything but order from one website.
And it seems to be getting easier for companies to sell their own stuff. Most places seem to be using "Shopify" now? Fine with me. The integration is usually seamless and it has worked well every time I've used it.
Yeah, the inflation of price is really noticeable these days. I used to buy things like screws on Amazon, but vendors are starting to charge prices like $13 for an assortment of 200 of the shittiest made-in-china-out-of-string screws and it's just so ridiculous. McMaster is cheaper and the quality of the product is so much higher. And that's crazy because McMaster is not trying to compete on price. (Also have you guys ever used McMaster's website? If those software engineers worked on Amazon's website, Amazon would have taken over the world in its entirety ten years ago.)
I'm worried about Amazon over the next five years. Premium prices for counterfeit or subpar goods, and the data says Amazon is making more on sellers fees than AWS now, so it's going to be difficult for them to meaningfully fix it. Too many meetings like "we'll be ruined if we stop taking money from counterfeiters".
> Also have you guys ever used McMaster's website?
McMasters website is the best kept secret in the ecommerce world. I always find what I need via search and the drill down options are always relevant. Plus they have an amazing variety of things making them a first stop when I'm fabricating something.
I'm so impressed every time I use their search. It understands my query and then checks all the checkboxes on the side that apply. So you can refine by checking or unchecking them. It's absolutely flawless.
The checkout experience is also wonderful (they remember your login cookie / session forever, and the process itself is more seamless than 1-Click), the order confirmation and shipping emails are informative and visually pleasing, and when the order arrives each item is annotated with the order line number and your internal identification code.
I also love their no-branding and black-and-white drawings aesthetic. It's like they're saying "we'll find you the best brand, just pick what you actually need".
They're doing amazing. I feel like a dope when I pay twice as much as Aliexpress or whatever, but I feel even better when some screw doesn't fail a year down the road and kill me.
I just spent a few minutes browsing around the McMaster site. Never used it before as I'm not into that sort of thing.
It's really fast! Doing some digging, it appears they are using a flavor of HTML over the wire, ala Rails Turbo/Laravel Livewire/Phoenix Liveview. Maybe Blazor? I'm not sure of the file extensions for C#, so maybe they can use the aspx extension?
Cool to see some folks still actively working towards making fast ecommerce sites!
When buying ebooks, I find one can get drm free ones in epub/pdf with watermarking from the publishers often enough and not locked into kindle. the prices are sometimes higher/lower/same but the product is better.
That's the mainstream narrative, which lags the actual reality (cutting through socialthink) by a good 5 years. Amazon needed to do something about this 7+ years ago, like introduce trusted supply chains and distill the gensym brands into useful singular results. At this point these problems have become embedded in their operations, and the incentives are such to keep them going while papering over ill effects.
But every large business ultimately relies on cognitive dissonance and reality distortion fields to maintain their relevance. Amazon has been seemingly successful at keeping people buying into their sunk cost fallacy ("Prime"), so momentum wise I'm sure they'll be fine.
It's very funny to me when I talk to Americans who bang on about the convenience of Amazon and almost can't imagine life without it. From a country where Amazon never existed... life is just fine.
Exactly. Try buying something like an SD card or external SSD drive. 99% of the listings are fake. Even if you stick to legit branded products you might have to spend 30 minutes to find the listing with the lowest price because somehow it hides from the search and you can only find it by click through related items on other products.
* today: the Amazon shopping experience is so filled with bullshit that it’s actually easier to buy from the producer’s website and pay shipping*
True - After Amazon search doesn't find what I want (it found it yesterday) I've recently taken to using DuckDuckGo site search to bypass Amazon's search issues. Then I bought the TV locally, not even in a big box store. Support your local electronics dealer.
I'm torn between considering this terrible as an end-user, and being happy that this is painful enough that there might finally be enough oxygen in the room for actual competitors again.
We have a couple of online retailers in the UK (John Lewis, Argos) where you can search for a product and get maybe 20 - 30 results, mainly leading brands and some own-brand versions. It's a much better experience, however, you often find many of these items are sold out or not available in the colour (for example) that you want - which is frustrating.
Amazon always seem to have stock of the same thing in addition to multiple knock-offs and me-too versions. No surprises they get most of the business.
worse even if you explicitly type in a product name you not only still get the knock-offs you might also get them listed before the product you searched for without any "similar results" indication and without it often being "obvious on the first look" that it is a knock-off.
I don't want to know how many people accidentally under time pressure ended up buying the wrong thing, or parents not very familiar with a product accidentally buying the wrong present etc.
As much as I like dunking on Amazon and Bezos, I can't help but wonder if this could be applied to brick and mortar stores where you go in and ask for help finding something and they pitch you the product that's best for their sales commission
You can rest assured that if you go into a store and get pitched on a product, if the salesperson works on commission, the product they push the hardest on is the one with the highest profit margin (and consequently the one they make the highest commission on).
Generally, stores will offer a low priced option that they are willing to sell by keeping large quantities in stock, but on which their margin is very small. They'll make money by selling those in volume, and you won't get the hard sell for that. If they sense you walking away, they'll make the low-cost argument to at least get a product in your hands.
There will be the God-level products with enormous markups that only fools will buy. Nobody really tries to sell those, but they'll happily ring you up for the commission.
Then there is the sweet spot in the middle; the products that are moderately high priced that take a value-proposition to sell. You can rest assured these are the money-makers for salespeople.
Sadly, Amazon has found out that the three-fold approach is no longer worth it. They already deal in massive volumes, so there is no need to carry the name brands and make advertising pushes to sell those products. Instead, they focus on the low-end garbage and let the third party sellers go to war each with other for your purchase. The odd God-level-priced product still exists and they'll happily sell it to you, but you'd be a schmuck to buy it from Amazon.
Why would you say this? The US does not require consent to cookies, but we still see it on almost every website. Is this because webmasters are too lazy to prompt it only based on region?
Webmasters choose to obey it because their lawyers recommended it. I've never seen a court case in the US over cookie notices or privacy protection. If someone has an example of one, please share it with me.
In fact, US companies are constantly mishandling our data with little to no repercussions.
> The complaint goes beyond existing FTC guidelines, accusing the company of engaging in “lazy loading.” The “sponsored” label lagged in loading against top banner ads, sometimes by up to three seconds on average Internet speeds, according to the group’s analysis. On slower wireless and wired connections, it could take anywhere from seven to 15 seconds.
From what I can see, the search page has the "Sponsored" note in the response (it isn't loaded via JS). Amazon's search page seems to be mostly server-side rendered. Even if I disable my cache and set my browser to throttle to "Slow 3G", the "Sponsored" renders immediately (the "i" image next to it takes a second to load, but loads well before the product images).
It's interesting looking at the HTML because the alt tags on the product image use the phrase "Sponsored Ad" while the visual presented is just "Sponsored".
I certainly understand the criticism that the "Sponsored" text is small (11px regular vs 16px bold) and a light gray rather than black, but it doesn't seem like they're being lazy loaded in a way that would make them appear after the user had already seen the content.
The FTC's guidance says:
> We understand that there is not any one specific method for clearly and prominently distinguishing advertising from natural search results, and that search engines may develop new methods for distinguishing advertising results. Any method may be used, so long as it is noticeable and understandable to consumers.
Honestly, I think this is mostly wrong. Maybe there isn't one way, but surely one could say that 3-4 very specific ways could be codified. Just saying "clearly and prominently" leaves so much room for companies to test which ways will hold up in court, but that consumers won't notice. For example, Amazon can say "it clearly says sponsored" while potentially knowing that putting small grey text next to large bold black text makes the mind ignore the small gray text. Likewise, the "sponsored" note comes after the picture - after the user has already developed an attachment to the product.
To use Twitter as an example, "Promoted" appears below the tweet so that when scrolling, I see the tweet, my mind starts engaging with the tweet, and by the time I continue scrolling to see the "Promoted" notation, it's already done. Even the words "promoted" or "sponsored" don't have the same connotation as "advertisement".
The FTC could easily codify things. 1) Creating a logo and specific text for advertisements - "$$ Advertisement $$". 2) Requiring it to be in the same upper-left placement for all ad blocks. 3) Requiring it to have the same size, contrast, and weight against the background as the most noticeable text in the ad. 4) Mandating a different background color from non-ads by 20% (for example, if the background is black rbg(0,0,0) then a background color of rbg(51,51,51) would work. Likewise, if the background were white rbg(255,255,255), an ad background of rbg(204,204,204) would work. (Someone with a better artistic background could certainly refine that rough guideline - to my eyes, even altering one of the three colors by 20% seems to create significant contrast so you might not need to move all three to still maintain a clearly demarcated background).
That would make it really easy for consumers to distinguish an ad. The problem is that while the FTC's guidance suggests using backgrounds and borders, they only require that it be "clear". That's nonsense. Maybe keep the requirement at "clear" for small companies, but make the requirement the codified version from anyone making over $X in revenue (if you're worried about stifling small companies).
If you don't specify how, companies will make it "clear" while making it as easy to ignore and hard to find as...
The search results that are ads say "Sponsored" on them. Everything else are not ads. I'm not understanding how that's deceiving. It's similar to Google Shopping.
Let's say that I do an hour-long infomercial on a product and I try and make the infomercial look as much like content as I can. In fact, it's not just about the product. We talk about the news and weather as well. You watch 30 minutes of it and don't notice that at the end it says that it was sponsored. I clearly said it was sponsored. Just because you stopped watching before then isn't my fault, right?
Google's search results used to use a different background color and borders to distinguish ads from organic results. Now they simply put "Ad" near the paid result. That makes it harder to detect what is an ad and what isn't an ad. I'm not saying that Google is being deceitful. However, they're certainly trying to make the fact that it's an ad less noticeable.
If I put photoshopped mockups of a product on a page and then note in the description that they're not actually photos of the product, is that deceitful? That's certainly getting closer to the line (and I'd say crossing it) given extra distance.
Amazon has made choices to make the "sponsored" tag less noticeable. It's a light gray and not bold so that it blends in against the background while your eye is drawn to the much larger 45% larger font-size and bold text next to it. Amazon could have chosen to make the "sponsored" tag larger, with better contrast, and bold. They made choices to make it less noticeable.
The FTC's guidelines are vague because "clear" is a vague term. If you're looking for it, it's definitely there. If you're just browsing products, do you miss it? In fact, if I search for "waffle iron", I see one large result at the top where the content stops half way through the page. My eyes then go down to the next result. The "sponsored" tag is way off on the right, half a page away from the result I was looking at. Frankly, if I weren't looking for it, I'd probably miss it.
Commercials are something that consumers instantly notice as a paid format and they discount the message to an extent. As the John Oliver segment points out, when sponsored content looks nearly identical to regular content, it carries a lot of weight. It's harder for you to filter it out. Amazon doesn't want you to look at sponsored results and think "ugh, an ad. Clearly this company isn't good enough on its own." They want it to seem like an organic result - even if you end up seeing the sponsored tag.
I actually think that Google Shopping is very different. Google Shopping presents me with a carousel of ads at the top. They're smaller and scroll to the right. It's a different format than the organic results. Once I've identified that, every time I use Google Shopping I can just skip those if I want. I might need to learn that format for Google Shopping, but they are clearly identifiable even without looking for the "Ads" text. Google Shopping even sets the ads apart from organic results with a horizontal line that clearly separates ad space from organic space. Amazon's sponsored results often have the same size/shape/format as their organic results with nothing distinguishing them beyond the "sponsored" label. Again, I'm not saying it's deceitful, but they certainly want it to be harder to distinguish their advertisements from organic content.
As I've pointed out, it's not just Amazon and even local news is falling prey to this. "Clearly" mark...
>If I put photoshopped mockups of a product on a page and then note in the description that they're not actually photos of the product, is that deceitful?
There are legitimate reasons to do this. My old employer used to produce non-misleading mockups in Photoshop to advertise their products, partly because they looked more appealing but also because some things (cables, screens) don't look right when you photograph them.
> Clearly this company isn't good enough on its own." They want it to seem like an organic result - even if you end up seeing the sponsored tag.
I don't think it is an Amazon quality thing. Just that Amazon can sell its ads more if they funnel more people into buying from ads than organic results.
I don't even mind the sponsored placements in my search. I'd just like a search for X to give me a page full of X, not random junk bearing no relationship to X.
I'm really impressed, and quite happy, that The Washington Post is writing such an article when Mr Bezos himself owns it. Great to see this is not a deterrant
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 146 ms ] thread.... Amazon’s search results are full of ads ‘unlawfully deceiving’ consumers, new complaint to FTC claims....
I'd love to see this provision torpedo the "Amazon's Choice" labels.
According to Amazon, "Amazon's Choice highlights highly rated, well-priced products available to ship immediately".
I don't see anything that implies that this is coming from an independent or impartial source. It's right in the name itself that it is coming from Amazon.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/amazons-ch...
It was the #1 rated product in its category, and that's when I stopped trusting anything about Amazon. I don't remember if it was also 'Amazon's Choice': seems to ring a bell, it may well have been: showing not that Amazon was intentionally pushing garbage, but that it was purely algorithmic. I don't think it's malice as much as wilful ignorance.
I shop on NewEgg these days when I can because their power search is much better for the things it is actually implemented well for. For the things it isn't implemented well for you're not really any better off though.
P.S.: If anyone can direct me to a reliable brand for 3-6ft USB 3 A-to-A M-to-M and M-to-F cables that can actually handle SuperSpeed without dropping half the packets, I'd be obliged.
I'm not certain M-M is allowed under USB spec (someone else can chime in), which is why you might be having trouble finding that from reliable brands.
There’s an electronics.stackexchange post on it which also covers why male USB-C to male USB-C cables are a thing: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/444283/why-i...
I also find B&H Photo surprisingly good for computer stuff.
These days, Amazon is most useful to me just as a price ceiling. I go to brick-and-mortar stores and have them price-match Amazon if the online listing is cheaper.
I only look on Amazon when I'm purposefully looking for cheap Chinese merchandise. Like tea lights to put inside pumpkins or other holiday decorations. I shouldn't really be supporting junk products that won't last though.
The only trustworthy sites are those that don't accept advertiser money, like Consumer Reports.
Not "advertising" in the old sense of the word, but the data gathering like google/doubleclick, etc
I could sign up and pay, but still with tracking
At the bottom of the page you see:
I've started to just browse big box retailers now. They at least have a merchandising team dedicated to sourcing quality products.
I don't see this in practice. Does this actually happen?
So many sticker brands, ads and house brands..
Actually whenever you go shopping know what you want before you go to Amazon. That helps.
It's hard to fake a believable iPhone. It's easy to fake a threaded cylinder with a round piece of glass in the middle that can fool the uninitiated.
Since then my general rule has been "If it goes on me or in me, I'm not getting it from Amazon"
I'm usually good at finding the opt out link but had no luck with this. Surprised it's legal to be honest.
I've stopped buying on Amazon for many things, using it mainly for repeat stuff I know that works, and I've been trying to find things at other big box stores like Best buy or Target, as you mention, or directly from the manufacturer. Amazon isn't really cheaper other than faster shipping for legitimate items from main brands anyway. In several cases, I've found Amazon to actually be more expensive for some items.
Review-gaming will always be a problem for websites with high-enough traffic.
* 2010: this is amazing! You can get anything right away! And I don’t buy anything without checking Amazon reviews first
* 2015: it seems like Amazon is an unstoppable behemoth that might be doing harm in the world, but it’s just so easy to order stuff, so… sorry, world!
* today: the Amazon shopping experience is so filled with bullshit that it’s actually easier to buy from the producer’s website and pay shipping
I’m sure Amazon will be just fine but it seems like they’ll need to do something at some point.
Now I search on amazon, then do my best to find it somewhere else for cheaper or about the same price - just the same way I do when I search for hotels on expedia or kayak, but always book direct.
Not helping AMZN either is the fact that it seems like they have pretty much given up on rapid shipping - especially where I live - two days (with prime) used to be standard - now It is more like 5-6 days for most things - even with prime. Seems a bit bait-and-switch on the supposed promise of two day shipping.
In the real-world, people love the product just as much. The only complaints I hear are about the working conditions.
Starting to see the sentiment seeping from the early adopters to the early majority
If you figure out what to buy somewhere else and then buy it on Amazon then the product is better than ever. If you vaguely search for what you want and buy the top few results you probably think the quality has gone downhill.
It's a relief to them when I lay out the bad decisions Amazon is making and how they're tanking the customer experience.
This is where I'm at. I only order products from Amazon that are sold by Amazon. Pretty much any legit third party seller will have their own website I can order from.
I still read reviews on Amazon before ordering elsewhere, although they've banned me from leaving reviews and wiped all my past ones for no discernible reason. I guess I left a review on some product that had a lot of fake reviews and I got caught in the crossfire.
Why? I'm only adding more so it's not a one word response, but seriously, why are you still putting any credence whatsoever to Amazon reviews which is like scientifically proven to be gamed?
I've left bad reviews on manufacturer websites and often times they just never publish them so I don't really trust reviews anywhere more or less than Amazon reviews.
- The fake reviews are commonly very low-effort: "best I've found, gift for grandma".
- A seller looking to do review spam doesn't want to keep pumping fake reviews forever. It costs money, and it's a risk.
Taking these two things into account, I sort for recent reviews, and only consider <5 star reviews OR reviews with some meat on them.
Random example I bought a few weeks ago, a dive light:
Amazon, $80: https://smile.amazon.com/DL07-Flashlight-Underwater-Recharge...
Manufacturer, $55 (free shipping too): https://wurkkos.com/products/wurkkos-dl07-mulit-color-led-fl...
I still buy a lot of items from Amazon, but at this point I always check other sources for products >$50.
I have noticed a massive uptick in sponsored listings, which are rarely what I want. The utility of basic search is dramatically worse than it was a few years ago. Can anyone recommend an adblocking browser extension that kills off sponsored listings?
[0] https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/G5TUVJKZHU...
Amazon can DIAF as far as I'm concerned. I've made an "Anywhere but Amazon" pledge to myself, and order elsewhere even if it's somewhat more expensive.
uBlock Origin works well.
Also, I looked at the name brand dive lights. They're 3-5X more expensive and don't spec the LEDs. To a flashlight geek, these seem to be wholly inferior to the reputable chinese brands like wurkkos or sofirn.
Also also, I just threw out a set of expensive UK halogen lights. I expect to replace these new ones in a few years as LEDs continue to get more efficient. Going cheap seems to be the right choice for this kind of technology product.
From the manufacturer's standpoint, they pay 15% referal fee to Amazon for getting them the sale. They also have a 5% coupon. Taking both of those things into account, their revenue on the sale is ~$64 compared to the ~$54 on their site. But I'd wager they're not getting very many sales on their website.
I hear this all the time but it’s rarely true for me.
I’ve always searched for alternate stores, promo codes, and other discounts before ordering from Amazon. Many manufacturers have their own web stores, but it’s really rare to find a total price (including shipping) that is actually cheaper than Amazon in my experience.
Many hot products have Minimum Advertised Pricing contracts that mean the sale price is identical across every website anyway, at which point it becomes a game of finding some place with a coupon code that is enough to offset the extra shipping costs of not using Amazon. Most of the time, it just doesn’t work out as cheaper than Amazon.
I think people underestimate just how expensive warehousing, handling orders, and shipping can be. Amazon has optimized logistics to the point that they can charge people a lot for it and still be cheaper than doing it yourself (up to a certain scale which few companies reach)
*I no longer consider Amazon a reputable retailer
By the time I know what I want to buy, it’s not hard to find it on Amazon. Amazon already has my payment info so it’s a few clicks and I’m done. I don’t understand the argument that it’s easier to find the manufacturer’s website, navigate their web store, and then enter all of my payment and shipping information.
What you're saying is that you're willing to trade any sense of assured quality for the convenience of not having to do anything other than do the simplest of processes. Granted, this describes the majority of people, but let's at least be willing to admit what it is.
I think you missed my parent comment where I said I devoutly check manufacturer's websites for alternative prices with almost every Amazon purchase I make.
And no, I'm not trading "any sense of assured quality" away. I've had more troubles with random 3rd-party vendors than I have with Amazon. I think people are greatly exaggerating the fault rate from Amazon simply because they order so many packages from Amazon. When it comes to things like lost or stolen shipments, I'd much rather deal with Amazon's liberal policies than go to battle with a random web store.
I rarely have to do this anymore as more and more stores are on Shopify.
It's also better to know what you're getting is the real deal and from a legit manufacturer. A lot of times I can't even find a legit brand on amazon even when i include the name.
Now it feels like wal-mart where price is all that matters and quality isn’t even a consideration.
So much stuff that is $2 cheaper but just garbage…
And the more expensive stuff just is priced more but still garbage.
Sometimes I feel like I have to buy two or three things from Amazon before I find one that isn’t terrible or counterfeit.
(Tries to think of an example...can't remember any because they don't stick in your memory, searches for Cellphone car holder in Amazon)
Like VICSEED, OQTIQ, HUMIXX, Loncaster, Lisen, Torras...They'll all be different after the first of the year.
Edited to add honorable mention: President Randy Handheld Mobile radio.
Some maybe, but a lot of products from these chinese sellers seem to be designed to be cheap, not just badly made.
/me giggles
It boggles my mind how short sighted the move to the cloud is. The outages are almost quarterly at this point, too!
- bulk gum
- my favorite brand of cheese snack cracker
- bulk mints
- bar soap
- toilet paper
The other day I noticed that the search order wouldn't even change when I used the dropdown to change it from "featured" to "low to high". Someone actually broke the sort order of search results in a change, and didn't even notice it. Or maybe there's so many ads at the top of the result that the search order doesn't have an impact any more. But I literally could not find any instances of the item I was looking for that were purchasable at all.
https://smile.amazon.com/s?k=kitchen+island&s=price-asc-rank...
You shouldn't even have to do that and pay shipping. For the last 5 years at least I've had luck going to a more trusted vendor like Best Buy or Target which have comparable free shipping options. And a bonus is that I can go to the store and pick up the item same day if I want. Also Best Buy price matches Amazon, though it's rarely necessary because they all converge on the same prices now anyway.
Their e-commerce arm has a lot of competition on the horizon from Costco, Walmart, Bestbuy, Home Depot, and the 2 million shopify stores being run by mom and pops. All of those, aside from Walmart, you can mostly be sure you’re not getting ripped off and know what you’re buying up front.
Bezos based his business model on long term customer trust, and he’s not really there anymore. You see these magazine articles of him hanging out at pool parties with celebrities in his beach shorts and it makes you wonder where the priorities of the company are now.
> AWS’ revenue makes up 14.5% of Amazon’s total revenue of $110.8 billion. And for the first time ever, revenue from AWS, advertising, third-party seller services and Prime subscriptions ($55.9 million) surpassed revenue from Amazon’s retail and product sales ($54.9 billion).
This certainly reinforces your point! It sure sounds like Amazon retail is a sort of loss leader.
[0]: https://www.fiercetelecom.com/platforms/aws-to-rescue-3q-rev...
"Your margin is my opportunity" --Jeff Bezos
Jeff's ethos seems to be undercut everybody at any chance. That seems to include people using his platform in the form of plainly labeled Amazon branded products or Amazon owned brands of other names. Open a platform to sell things. Open that platform to allow 3rd parties to sell things while taking a cut. Aggregate all of that sales data to find what items are worthy of selling those items directly screwing the 3rd parties.
EDIT: OK, you're talking about customer experience and maybe that's a long term risk, but as long as that graph continues it's trend not many people at the top of Amazon are going to share our frustration as customers. There are plenty of customers out there throwing money at them.
For books I'll use bookshop.org, and for anything else I'll shop around for anywhere that isn't Amazon. I really don't care about next day or same day delivery; rarely do I require something so urgently that I can't wait a few days or a week or two.
Amazon itself is total trash these days, and it's getting steadily worse.
A newcomer penetrates the market with a superior offer. Once it rises to power, it naturally must defend and fortify its position. No longer must the offer be superior, destroying and suffocating new newcomers is simply more effective and profitable.
And it seems to be getting easier for companies to sell their own stuff. Most places seem to be using "Shopify" now? Fine with me. The integration is usually seamless and it has worked well every time I've used it.
I'm worried about Amazon over the next five years. Premium prices for counterfeit or subpar goods, and the data says Amazon is making more on sellers fees than AWS now, so it's going to be difficult for them to meaningfully fix it. Too many meetings like "we'll be ruined if we stop taking money from counterfeiters".
McMasters website is the best kept secret in the ecommerce world. I always find what I need via search and the drill down options are always relevant. Plus they have an amazing variety of things making them a first stop when I'm fabricating something.
The checkout experience is also wonderful (they remember your login cookie / session forever, and the process itself is more seamless than 1-Click), the order confirmation and shipping emails are informative and visually pleasing, and when the order arrives each item is annotated with the order line number and your internal identification code.
I also love their no-branding and black-and-white drawings aesthetic. It's like they're saying "we'll find you the best brand, just pick what you actually need".
They're doing amazing. I feel like a dope when I pay twice as much as Aliexpress or whatever, but I feel even better when some screw doesn't fail a year down the road and kill me.
It's really fast! Doing some digging, it appears they are using a flavor of HTML over the wire, ala Rails Turbo/Laravel Livewire/Phoenix Liveview. Maybe Blazor? I'm not sure of the file extensions for C#, so maybe they can use the aspx extension?
Cool to see some folks still actively working towards making fast ecommerce sites!
But every large business ultimately relies on cognitive dissonance and reality distortion fields to maintain their relevance. Amazon has been seemingly successful at keeping people buying into their sunk cost fallacy ("Prime"), so momentum wise I'm sure they'll be fine.
True - After Amazon search doesn't find what I want (it found it yesterday) I've recently taken to using DuckDuckGo site search to bypass Amazon's search issues. Then I bought the TV locally, not even in a big box store. Support your local electronics dealer.
Amazon always seem to have stock of the same thing in addition to multiple knock-offs and me-too versions. No surprises they get most of the business.
I don't want to know how many people accidentally under time pressure ended up buying the wrong thing, or parents not very familiar with a product accidentally buying the wrong present etc.
Generally, stores will offer a low priced option that they are willing to sell by keeping large quantities in stock, but on which their margin is very small. They'll make money by selling those in volume, and you won't get the hard sell for that. If they sense you walking away, they'll make the low-cost argument to at least get a product in your hands.
There will be the God-level products with enormous markups that only fools will buy. Nobody really tries to sell those, but they'll happily ring you up for the commission.
Then there is the sweet spot in the middle; the products that are moderately high priced that take a value-proposition to sell. You can rest assured these are the money-makers for salespeople.
Sadly, Amazon has found out that the three-fold approach is no longer worth it. They already deal in massive volumes, so there is no need to carry the name brands and make advertising pushes to sell those products. Instead, they focus on the low-end garbage and let the third party sellers go to war each with other for your purchase. The odd God-level-priced product still exists and they'll happily sell it to you, but you'd be a schmuck to buy it from Amazon.
Maybe the EU will do something about it, but of course, those changes will not make it to US consumers.
In fact, US companies are constantly mishandling our data with little to no repercussions.
From what I can see, the search page has the "Sponsored" note in the response (it isn't loaded via JS). Amazon's search page seems to be mostly server-side rendered. Even if I disable my cache and set my browser to throttle to "Slow 3G", the "Sponsored" renders immediately (the "i" image next to it takes a second to load, but loads well before the product images).
It's interesting looking at the HTML because the alt tags on the product image use the phrase "Sponsored Ad" while the visual presented is just "Sponsored".
I certainly understand the criticism that the "Sponsored" text is small (11px regular vs 16px bold) and a light gray rather than black, but it doesn't seem like they're being lazy loaded in a way that would make them appear after the user had already seen the content.
The FTC's guidance says:
> We understand that there is not any one specific method for clearly and prominently distinguishing advertising from natural search results, and that search engines may develop new methods for distinguishing advertising results. Any method may be used, so long as it is noticeable and understandable to consumers.
Honestly, I think this is mostly wrong. Maybe there isn't one way, but surely one could say that 3-4 very specific ways could be codified. Just saying "clearly and prominently" leaves so much room for companies to test which ways will hold up in court, but that consumers won't notice. For example, Amazon can say "it clearly says sponsored" while potentially knowing that putting small grey text next to large bold black text makes the mind ignore the small gray text. Likewise, the "sponsored" note comes after the picture - after the user has already developed an attachment to the product.
To use Twitter as an example, "Promoted" appears below the tweet so that when scrolling, I see the tweet, my mind starts engaging with the tweet, and by the time I continue scrolling to see the "Promoted" notation, it's already done. Even the words "promoted" or "sponsored" don't have the same connotation as "advertisement".
The FTC could easily codify things. 1) Creating a logo and specific text for advertisements - "$$ Advertisement $$". 2) Requiring it to be in the same upper-left placement for all ad blocks. 3) Requiring it to have the same size, contrast, and weight against the background as the most noticeable text in the ad. 4) Mandating a different background color from non-ads by 20% (for example, if the background is black rbg(0,0,0) then a background color of rbg(51,51,51) would work. Likewise, if the background were white rbg(255,255,255), an ad background of rbg(204,204,204) would work. (Someone with a better artistic background could certainly refine that rough guideline - to my eyes, even altering one of the three colors by 20% seems to create significant contrast so you might not need to move all three to still maintain a clearly demarcated background).
That would make it really easy for consumers to distinguish an ad. The problem is that while the FTC's guidance suggests using backgrounds and borders, they only require that it be "clear". That's nonsense. Maybe keep the requirement at "clear" for small companies, but make the requirement the codified version from anyone making over $X in revenue (if you're worried about stifling small companies).
If you don't specify how, companies will make it "clear" while making it as easy to ignore and hard to find as...
Let's say that I do an hour-long infomercial on a product and I try and make the infomercial look as much like content as I can. In fact, it's not just about the product. We talk about the news and weather as well. You watch 30 minutes of it and don't notice that at the end it says that it was sponsored. I clearly said it was sponsored. Just because you stopped watching before then isn't my fault, right?
John Oliver did a great segment on this on sponsored content on local news: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIi_QS1tdFM
Google's search results used to use a different background color and borders to distinguish ads from organic results. Now they simply put "Ad" near the paid result. That makes it harder to detect what is an ad and what isn't an ad. I'm not saying that Google is being deceitful. However, they're certainly trying to make the fact that it's an ad less noticeable.
If I put photoshopped mockups of a product on a page and then note in the description that they're not actually photos of the product, is that deceitful? That's certainly getting closer to the line (and I'd say crossing it) given extra distance.
Amazon has made choices to make the "sponsored" tag less noticeable. It's a light gray and not bold so that it blends in against the background while your eye is drawn to the much larger 45% larger font-size and bold text next to it. Amazon could have chosen to make the "sponsored" tag larger, with better contrast, and bold. They made choices to make it less noticeable.
The FTC's guidelines are vague because "clear" is a vague term. If you're looking for it, it's definitely there. If you're just browsing products, do you miss it? In fact, if I search for "waffle iron", I see one large result at the top where the content stops half way through the page. My eyes then go down to the next result. The "sponsored" tag is way off on the right, half a page away from the result I was looking at. Frankly, if I weren't looking for it, I'd probably miss it.
Commercials are something that consumers instantly notice as a paid format and they discount the message to an extent. As the John Oliver segment points out, when sponsored content looks nearly identical to regular content, it carries a lot of weight. It's harder for you to filter it out. Amazon doesn't want you to look at sponsored results and think "ugh, an ad. Clearly this company isn't good enough on its own." They want it to seem like an organic result - even if you end up seeing the sponsored tag.
I actually think that Google Shopping is very different. Google Shopping presents me with a carousel of ads at the top. They're smaller and scroll to the right. It's a different format than the organic results. Once I've identified that, every time I use Google Shopping I can just skip those if I want. I might need to learn that format for Google Shopping, but they are clearly identifiable even without looking for the "Ads" text. Google Shopping even sets the ads apart from organic results with a horizontal line that clearly separates ad space from organic space. Amazon's sponsored results often have the same size/shape/format as their organic results with nothing distinguishing them beyond the "sponsored" label. Again, I'm not saying it's deceitful, but they certainly want it to be harder to distinguish their advertisements from organic content.
As I've pointed out, it's not just Amazon and even local news is falling prey to this. "Clearly" mark...
There are legitimate reasons to do this. My old employer used to produce non-misleading mockups in Photoshop to advertise their products, partly because they looked more appealing but also because some things (cables, screens) don't look right when you photograph them.
I don't think it is an Amazon quality thing. Just that Amazon can sell its ads more if they funnel more people into buying from ads than organic results.