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Amazon quietly shutters product ads that drove traffic to outside sites

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) silently closed a pay-per-click ads program, which enabled enterprises to divert visitors from AMZN’s platform to their own sites.

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Amazon’s website would feature targeted ads for specific items that popped up and drove shoppers to the retailer or manufacturer’s own site.

“Our users done very well doing so this is because created a happy medium of having the ability to affiliate with Amazon but as well as not enabling one to look at their contract statistics”, said Scot Wingo, the manager chair of ChannelAdvisor, that helps jewelry stores and companies offer on seo sites.

Nowadays, consumers deploy more product searches on e-commerce marketplaces before looking up an individual retailers’ website.

An Amazon spokeswoman confirmed the change adding, the advertising programme would not be available after 31 October.

The tweak means that Amazon will from the autumn offer modest text ads to run alongside product searches, according to an email sent to the site’s advertisers, and seen by Wall Street Journal.

The proposed replacement are Amazon’s Text Ads: a new product which is awaiting a description on the Amazon Advertising page. “We are in continuous communication with our advertisers and partners on alternative opportunities to reach Amazon customers including Selling on Amazon”. The ads themselves were displayed much like regular Amazon listings – picture, price and shipping option included – and with the tagline “Product Ads from External Websites”.

The program lets businesses who may not be sellers on Amazon’s online marketplace to purchase ad space on the platform.

“We are disappointed with the news”, said Angela Hsu, vice president of Internet business and marketing at Lamps Plus, a home decor company that used the product ads program.

According to forecasts from eMarketer that trails online advertising, the overall advertising business of Amazon is capable of bringing in $1.26 billion in 2015 globally and rise to $1.83 billion by 2018. The firm was featured in an Amazon case research in May and stated the programme elevated its gross sales by greater than eighty %.

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Google Inc has recognized the leading position Amazon as Eric Schmidt, its executive chairman, call the online retailer its largest rival in searches.

Inc. To End Pay-Per-Click Advertising Program This October