Now Amazon Will Push External Ads From Its Platform | TechTree.com

Now Amazon Will Push External Ads From Its Platform

Watch out for intrusive advertisements while you’re shopping on Amazon as the digital marketplace opens up its inventory to external brands.

 

Come festival season and business owners fall over each other to promote their brands to catch customer eyeballs. Things have been no different in the online space for a couple of decades as Google and then Facebook went hell-for-leather with their display ads that possibly attracted many and distracted a few amongst online shoppers.

And if you happen to fall in the second category who finds such ads irritating and invading your privacy, brace yourself for some more of it as the Dussehra and Diwali festivities come close. This time round it is Amazon that has started exhibiting external advertisements on both their browser and mobile apps in India.

The “click-out” promotions have been on since June though Amazon has ensured that it remains low-key till the time the festival shopping gets into top gear somewhere around the end of September. The apps today boast of monthly views of 330 million and Amazon is hoping to make extra money by giving up online real estate to brands other than those that sell on their platform.

In other words, they’re making a direct approach to corner a share of the online marketing pie that was till date the monopoly of Google and then Facebook. Of course, if the company manages to make a neat pile of cash post the festival season, users can prepare for a further invasion of their shopping basket from brands that would be willing to pay more for attracting our attention.

Which automatically causes those with lesser financial muscle to be pushed into the inside pages with little chance of discovery.

A report published in the Economic Times suggests that in terms of cost-per-click, Amazon has pitched itself above Facebook and Google though keeping themselves below LinkedIn. Marketing experts claim that e-commerce platforms offer better deals to advertisers because of their scale and better knowledge of user intent compared to platforms such as Google and Facebook.

Right now, users get to see ads from Citibank and Maruti Suzuki on Amazon and if you’re wondering how these brands aim to benefit from being on the platform, you are not the only one to do so. When was the last time you bought a car online? Or would you be shopping online if you didn’t have a credit or debit card readily available in your wallet?

Welcome to the world of intrusive digital advertising! Of course, there is another reason Amazon is attempting to change the rules. A news report that didn’t attract much interest came from Germany where a court ruled that Amazon could no longer play ads advertising a brand on Google search queries and then link it to third-party products.

A court in Karlsruhe in Southwestern Germany ruled in favor of outdoor equipment manufacturer Ortlieb Sportartikel and asked Amazon to refrain from using ad words associated with a specific brand and its product for a more generic one. The court said that it was tantamount to misleading the consumer as well as abusing the brand itself.

In the US, Amazon has been offering click-outs for some years now while in India, Flipkart partnered with video streaming platform Hotstar to target consumers with relevant advertisements on the latter. With a multitude of similar streaming applications available, it may only be a matter of time before Amazon attempts to sell you a cricket bat if you happen to be watching a cricket match online! 


TAGS: Amazon, Facebook, Google

 
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