Amazon, the advertising company

15% of e-commerce sales made in Spain are through the Amazon marketplace. China's Aliexpress follows at a distance of more than 10 points. And the El Corte Inglés marketplace only accounts for 2%. And those are the top three places in the Spanish ranking.

Amazon's strength is such that small and medium-sized stores that want to sell online are totally dependent on the American giant.

If Amazon was recently confronted with the criticized for its less-than-credible product rating system that led him to take out of your marketplace to famous Chinese electronics stores with a turnover in the millions of euros, but which were taking advantage of a system of "reviews"unmonitored for which it paid for good reviews on the platform; now Amazon is facing excessive advertising.

If you think of advertising on the Internet, the first thing that comes to mind is Google and its well-known prominent positions in the searches of those who pay to be there. If you make your neurons work a little more, you come to Facebook and all its arc of Apps, all based on you interacting with publications among which are mixed, almost without you noticing, sponsored and those of your contacts. The third player in the list of those who generate the most revenue from advertising is Amazon. And it seems that it wants to become the first because of the drift it is giving to its marketplace.

The first thing we need to understand is the difference between a organic search and a sponsored one. The first refers to a search that yields results that are the result of the work of an algorithmwhich takes into account several factors, such as your location, language, previous searches, etc. The second is the one that, in addition to the algorithm data, takes into account a advertising position auction system that is made available to advertisers by the portal in question, be it Google, Facebook or Amazon.

These portals put the top positions of search pages (and results not explicitly searched for by a user but which appear under the heading "...") at the top of the search results.you might also be interested in" o "other users also viewed") for sale to the highest bidder. Whoever pays the most will appear first. It is no longer a matter of giving the user the best option according to their purchase history or interests, but to show those with whom they earn the most advertising revenue.

Store owners who have their products for sale on Amazon are thus faced with a double payment. On the one hand the commission that Amazon takes for being able to sell through them, and on the other hand the investment in advertising that they must pay if they want their products to appear on the first page of searches.

Amazon has been increasing the number of rows destined to sponsored results, reaching the first 5 positions. The organic results, those that you should reach naturally, thanks to the fact that the product has good references, is similar to what you are looking for, has an attractive price, is on sale or has been purchased regularly by customers similar to you, are left aside to place the sponsored results in the positions that you will see first.

The problem is such that, if you use the Amazon website, 30% of the products you will see when searching will be sponsored content. If you choose to use the e-commerce giant's App, the result rises to 35%, and can reach 50%.

Amazon's dominant position is what has brought us to this. For them it is a win-winThey earn commissions for selling products that they do not even manage themselves, they gain users by having a wide range of products and they obtain income, free of investment or maintenance, thanks to their sponsored positions program, which in practice means that merchants spend thousands of euros per month on the platform if they want their products not to be hidden on the platform.

The success of this business model based on sponsored results, zero investment, all profit, has led other platforms to implement it. PC Components, Aliexpress, Booking or Hotels.com already have active these systems in which the first positions of the searches you make do not respond to your interests, but to theirs. So it's your turn to dive.

Cover image by Joshua Earle at Unsplash