Amazon adjusts its advertising algorithm! Third-party sellers will suffer

The recent months are the off-season for Amazon sellers in the second half of the year. Amazon’s usual practice is to adjust its policies and algorithms during the off-season, so we can see that Amazon has been making frequent changes recently in order to implement these new adjustments before the peak season in the second half of the year.

We have previously introduced Amazon’s changes to Reviews and analyzed Amazon’s strategic deployment of the review system in the future (click here to review).

Immediately afterwards, Amazon made changes to another system, and the location and algorithm of in-site advertisements have been adjusted recently.

Changes to this ad

This time, the changes to advertising are mainly divided into two parts, one is the display position and the other is the algorithm. Let’s interpret them separately.

1. Changes in display position

According to the information currently released by Amazon, the location of product promotion, the advertising method most commonly used by our sellers, has undergone some changes, from the previous 2-4-6 mode (2 positions at the top of the search page, 4 positions in the middle of the page, and 6 positions at the end of the page) to a 3-4-5 mode.

Here is a diagram to help you understand this change more vividly. The blue position in the diagram is where the advertising product is displayed.

Simply put, it moves an ad space at the end of the page to the first row of search results. This means that the most golden first row of search results has one less naturally ranked product.

However, Amazon has added an ad space that top sellers are willing to spend money to compete for, and the benefits it can bring to my brother-in-law are self-evident. However, Amazon's ambition is not just to collect rent, this extra ad space is actually prepared for its own products.

Along with the change in advertising position, there is another update, which is that when self-operated products are placed in product advertisements, the word "Sponsored" will no longer be displayed, but instead a label "Our Brand" will be displayed.

Although the display method is different, it is still a product advertisement in essence, because the words "Our Brand" will not appear on the self-operated products that are naturally displayed. There is no doubt that this change will improve customers' aversion to promoted products, and the sales of self-operated products will also increase.

The inclination towards self-operated products is not only reflected in the display position, but even the algorithm has been changed for this purpose, and this change is quite disgusting.

2. Adjustment of advertising display algorithm

According to insiders, when the ad position was changed, the ad display algorithm was also strategically adjusted.

In the past, the A9 algorithm has always followed two basic elements in displaying advertising products: relevance to the search and product sales. The more relevant the product is to the customer's search terms and the higher the sales volume, the higher the product will be displayed in the search.

Amazon has used this reference standard for more than a decade, but the recent changes have added another factor to the algorithm's considerations: whether the product can bring enough profit to Amazon. In other words, the weight of self-operated products will be further amplified.

Profit-seeking has always been the main theme of Amazon. The company has launched one business and policy after another, all for the purpose of bringing in more profits. This is why Amazon's stock price has soared until it became the world's largest company by market value.

However, Amazon has been slow to make profits one of the search-oriented factors. In addition to the strong opposition from the search engineering team, external public opinion and government regulatory pressure are also important reasons.

However, the opposition from engineers and the pressure from public opinion obviously cannot stop Amazon from making money . Amazon has recently started testing the changes to “Our Brand” . The display issues reported by many sellers to me recently may also be due to the impact of this adjustment.

An insider who broke the news to the media said

This adjustment is unfair to both consumers and third-party sellers. Amazon can openly tilt traffic and prime display positions toward its own products to bring itself more profits.

The person also revealed that the A9 search team is often under pressure from executives in Amazon's retail division to increase the frequency with which its own products appear in search results.

Amazon has declined to release further information.

The above changes are not good news for us third-party sellers. It is disgusting that Amazon, regardless of opposition from its own engineers and society, forcibly transfuses its own products and suppresses the search weight of us third-party sellers.

We now urgently need government-related regulatory measures to separate Amazon's platform business and self-operated business. We hope that after the exposure of insiders, the criticism from regulators and the media will allow Amazon to withdraw this change.

I will continue to pay attention to this incident and tell you the latest news as soon as possible. You can follow the official account or join our seller group to get follow-up information.

Until there is further news, everyone should still do their daily operations well. You can optimize your title keywords and record your natural ranking to track Amazon's algorithm changes. I have collected a keyword optimization tips package for you. Please scan the QR code below to get it from me~

PS. If you want to join the seller discussion group, you can also private message me to let me add you to the group