Watch out: Amazon search ads might boot you off Amazon soon

I’ve probably spent more time combing through Amazon listings than most people, if only because I have to do it for the bane of my existence Amazon’s various Prime Day sales events. The Amazon shopping experience has become progressively more frustrating over the years, as they fill up with promoted and sponsored listings crowding out the stuff I’m actually looking for. But it’s about to get worse.

Jeffrey Cohen, Amazon’s Ads Tech Evangelist, showed off the newest feature for the company’s iOS and Android apps on LinkedIn (spotted by Search Engine Land). It’s called “lead generation ads,” wherein companies can buy advertising for products that aren’t featured on Amazon’s store. Customers will be given an option to “Shop brand sites directly” (i.e., leave Amazon.com to shop somewhere else). If you’re subscribed to Amazon Prime, you might get faster shipping and other perks. A full post on Amazon’s promotional page goes more in-depth.

Amazon

It’s hardly unprecedented for Amazon to advertise stuff that I’m not actually looking for. And despite its public perception as primarily an online retailer, Amazon is really a tech company now. While $55 billion in direct sales are the biggest chunk of its business, they’re not even half of its total income — services sold to third-party sellers bring in almost $35 billion, web and cloud systems bring in $25 billion, and advertising earns $11.8 billion, according to Statista.

Having said that, it’s hard not to feel like Amazon is muddying up its product search even more than it already has. If I’m shopping on Amazon, it’s because I want to buy something on Amazon, to take advantage of the Prime subscription I already pay for (which somehow doesn’t include ad-free viewing for video) and the associated credit card points.

Seeing ads for non-Amazon stores while I’m shopping on Amazon is yet another example of “enshittification” in action. That’s when a public-facing service or product is constantly tweaked to squeeze more money and attention out of us without any measurable improvements to the service or product in question. It sure doesn’t enamor me to Amazon, especially now that “Prime shipping” no longer guarantees the uber-fast delivery times it was once known for.

If this sounds like entitled grousing, well, I guess it is. But even as someone whose entire profession is dependent upon online advertising, I think I won’t shock anyone when I say that online advertising often sucks.

Non-Amazon ads are now in beta on Amazon’s mobile apps, sure to come to a desktop browser near you soon. In the LinkedIn comments on the announcement, advertisers expressed glee at the new feature, and I’m sure at least some of them weren’t AI-generated slop.