Amazon, here comes the advertising

Many times SEO’s complain about the shrinking real estate for organic listings in Google. Over the years, more ads have been taking up the top of the page and with the introduction of Product Listing Ads, the more real estate has been taken up by ways for Google to make more revenue.

But at least 1-2 organic results are sometimes showing above the fold, just below the ads. Depending on the query, Google will show just only search ads, or when the query is more commercial, Google will ad a block of PLA’s. See below the search I just did for garden hose.

A nice pack of 5 PLA ads and two search ads are pushing down the organic results on this Google search. Working in sports merchandise, we SEO’s at Fanatics are dealing with more aggressive ways for Google to make sure they get their fair share of clicks on the ads that make money.  See for example a search for Oakland Raiders jersey:

With 4 search ads at the top, and a 3X3 PLA grid in the right rail, here Google is showing how eager they are to get the advertising dollars from the clicks on a more commercial query. There is money to be made here.

Although Google is quite aggressive in squeezing more advertisement into a SERP, taking up more real estate on the first page, and pushing organic results below the fold on my 15″ laptop, nothing compares to what I just spotted for the same query for a garden hose on Amazon…

Amazon getting into advertising more aggressive than Google

For the query garden hose on Amazon, I didn’t get any organic search results for products on Amazon above the fold. All that I could see without scrolling, were advertisements for garden hoses. WTF!

Seems clear to me that Amazon will be able to grab much more advertising dollars in the near future, next to their already impressive revenue stream of direct sales to consumers.

Now you could understand better why Google is so focussed on Amazon as one of their main competitors. Commerce queries have a very high value for advertisement networks. As the intent of the user is so high to convert into a sale, advertisers are more likely to pay a premium for the ad space to get in front of their potential customer.

How far can Amazon take this advertising revenue stream? How large can it become?

Disclosure: I’m long in AMZN stock