Breaking news! Amazon restricts these sellers from advertising

Breaking news! Amazon restricts these sellers from advertising

Recently, according to an investigation by foreign media, Amazon restricted some device competitors from purchasing advertisements related to search results of Amazon's own products, giving its devices an advantage over competitors.




Foreign media said that although Amazon allows some device manufacturers to buy advertisements related to other competitors' products on Amazon's website, the company will not allow some device manufacturers to buy advertisements related to Amazon's own products, including the voice assistant Echo Show, Ring Doorbell and Fire TV.


Sponsored Products on Amazon are keyword-targeted ads that sellers can use to promote certain products. In order to obtain the "sponsored label", sellers need to bid according to specific terms, and ads with higher bids may get more impressions.

Amazon said in a statement that it disagrees with the findings of the foreign media, but acknowledged that there may be limited advertising resources for certain keywords related to Amazon's own products and devices. The company said that this restriction is an example of letting sellers decide which products to advertise or promote on their website, which is standard practice. Amazon added that it is possible that these companies participated in the bidding but did not win the bid.

Amazon spokesman Jack Evans also said in a statement: "When a platform promotes its own products, it generally does not sell competitors' products." Just like Walmart will not sell Amazon's own products Kindle, Fire TV and Echo.



The investigation also found that Roku, which competes with Amazon's Fire TV, has been unable to buy ads related to Amazon's devices and its own products for several years. Foreign media said that Roku search results on Amazon's website often show ads for Roku competitors, Roku products offered by dealers, and promotional ads for Amazon's Fire TV at the top of the search results.


Roku has not yet responded to this.

Other device makers have faced similar problems buying sponsored ads on search results for Amazon products, including Facebook’s voice-activated smart displays that compete with Amazon and Arlo Technologies, whose smart security products compete with Amazon-owned Ring.



Foreign media found that members of Amazon's device team marked the products of larger competitors (called "first-tier competitors") to prevent them from purchasing ads related to Amazon's own products. In addition, when Amazon's device team launched a new product, employees were responsible for deciding which keywords to ban in ads and were told to discuss these issues in emails marked "privileged and confidential" to prevent regulators from accessing the relevant emails.


Amazon told CNBC that employees only mark emails when they are seeking legal counsel.

Amazon's practices have attracted the attention of regulators, who are already scrutinizing its business practices. Amazon is facing antitrust investigations in Europe and the United States, with the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee investigating how Amazon uses data from third-party sellers to make its own-brand products. In addition, Amazon's competitors have previously accused the company of using predatory pricing to suppress competitors.


(Source: Cross-border Black Technology)


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