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Comment by CodeSheikh | Hacker News Reader

We see (or are forced to see) ads on Google, Facebook et al. is because they are free to use services for consumers. Eventhough that bother some us so much that we use all sort of ad blocking plug-ins at our disposal to stop seeing those pesky ads. I pay for my Amazon Prime membership and for every product I purchase on Amazon.com. Last thing I want is getting bombarded by obnoxious ads. while shopping for my next two-day delivery of Topo Chico water bottles there. Unless Amazon decides to roll out a steeply discounted Prime membership program, I would be a very unhappy customer seeing ads on a paid platform.

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I much rather see ads on Amazon.com than anywhere else. I'm there in the market, I'm walking into the store and see ads for products, that's expected. I go in with a consumer mindset.

Everywhere else is the problem, I don't like being treated like I'm at the store every minute of the day, online and offline. I'm not looking to buy anything when I browse the internet, when I commute, when I'm at home and the phone keeps ringing to sell whatever, when I'm picking the kids at school and people keep trying to engage in sale talk and push flyers. It's exhausting.

Amazon is the place I'd least like to see adds. I want the environment where I'm making the purchasing decision to be the one with the least psychological manipulation.

Amazon needs to spend its money on improving its search, ranking, and review systems to customers can find the products they want themselves, not on adtech. Amazon's search is trash and it's always been trash. It's 2017, why does sort-by-ratings still rank products with a one 5-star review over products with 1000 reviews and an overall rating of 4.9 stars. There are better algorithms out there [1]. It also needs to put serious effort into fixing its fake reviews problem and counterfeiting problem.

Amazon's core search and shopping experience hasn't improved much in at least 10 years, possibly more. That needs to change.

[1] https://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating...

Ads for Amazon is like Walmart choosing what product to be put on display and where. It is an established business.

I echo some of your sentiment. If Amazon is truly as customer obsessive as they branded themselves, they would avoid putting cheap ads out there. Since their click rate is going to be so high, those ads will be very expensive indeed, which I would assume to be quality ads as well.

Quality ads would be like "hey see that you are buying Topo Chico. Why don't you try these new flavors as well at a discounted rate?". Instead of "Buy Nestle water" ads. Or something very unrelated. Basically a win-win situation for both parties.

But to be honest I would be very much reluctant at seeing a lot of ads. They do this already with "Sponsored" products and most of the time it serves as distraction instead of convincing buyer into even at least clicking their ad.

This is what I never understood in online ads. You're looking to buy, say, a North Face jacket but the price is a bit higher than you're willing to pay, so you close the tab.

Now, you go elsewhere on the web and you see ads for that particular jacket, but there's no incentive for you to click on the ad because you already know the price is too high.

But if the ad says: "hey, 10% off on this jacket in the next 30 minutes with coupon code xyz" then yeah you might click on the ad, buy the jacket and in the end, the customer, the retailer and the ad agency are all winning.

If you could manipulate coupon codes like that then why would anybody pay full price (if it wasn't urgent)?

Not everyone is that savvy or willing to put in the effort.

There are people who save ridiculous amounts with traditional coupons, but not many people are willing to put in the effort or make the sacrifices to to that, so they still work for the companies.

I bet a lot of people would still pay full price. I mean, Gap has 30% off coupons every week like clockwork. 40% off is pretty regular, too, so why would anyone pay full price? Well, I bet a lot of people do.

In a retail environment, the choice of product position on a shelf or display is often not entirely the random choice of the retailer; the producer may be paying for that. IN publishing, where I work, there's a system known as 'coop' (cooperative marketing) in which the publisher credits the bookseller in exchange for favorable positions on a table or other visible spot (it's legal as long as the deal is clear to all and terms are offered to all). Normally these sorts of promotional considerations are hidden from the consumer. Recall that back when Amazon was still primarily a bookseller, they had actual category editors who chose books to be featured on the category's opening page.

So just having paid advertising is just an extension of this. As Amazon acts less like a department store and more like the operator of a bazaar with thousands of merchants hawking their wares in the street, I guess it makes sense.

The ads are already there and have been for a while.

Amazon already forces you to see what are effectively ads. Every page you visit has suggested items based on either similar search results, purchase history, current page content, content other users purchased after viewing a product, etc.

They just don't look like ads because they are indistinguishable from the rest of the amazon interface.

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