Sellers Baffled as Amazon Ditches Product Ads

If driving traffic to your own website is important to your business, we would like to introduce you to Amazon Text Ads*, our newest Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising solution that enables you to run text ads on Amazon. Other than that, the e-commerce company did not provide any explanation as to why it is suddenly closing down its pay-per-click ad program.

The program allowed many businesses that are not necessarily sellers at Amazon’s online marketplace to buy ad space on its website.

Scot Wingo, the executive chairman of ChannelAdvisor that assists manufacturers and retailers to sell on eCommerce platforms, said that consumers performed highly well with it as it offered a middle ground of being able to collaborate with Amazon but also not letting them to observe all their transaction data.

Wingo said the program was known for its high conversion rate and said advertisers were surprised when they received an email from Amazon notifying them of the change this week.

Although Amazon offered no comment over the change, it is likely the company wanted to restrict the many ads found on the bottom of Amazon search results, placed there by Google Inc. “We are in continuous communication with our advertisers and partners with alternative opportunities to reach Amazon customers including Selling on Amazon”.

“We are disappointed with the news”, Angela Hsu, vice president of Internet business and marketing at home décor retail firm Lamps Plus, says, noting that her company’s participation in the advertising program has brought about an 80 percent growth in sales. Amazon gives different promoting choices for third-party sellers to differentiate their merchandise like its sponsored ads programme.

A current survey launched by Amazon and Pymnts.com discovered that sixty four % of respondents stated they start looking for a product on a market, adopted by their favorite web sites, serps and social media.

In October 2014 Google chairman Eric Schmidt admitted that Amazon had become the search engine’s “biggest search competitor”. Facebook also launched targeted product ads in February.

The Product Ads program was sort of a win-win situation that lets retailers take advantage of Amazon’s popularity while still retaining full control of how their customers shop for goods and what information they share.