Has Amazon made a move to quell Google’s income from its site?
Amazon is set to end some of its pay-per-click advertising this October, in a move that could suggest the etailer is looking to cut off the amount of money Google makes from its website.
The changes to the advertising programme, which currently allows businesses that don’t necessarily sell products on Amazon’s online marketplace to buy ad space and direct traffic to external links, come after the e-commerce giant last summer introduced a new ad sales programme to directly challenge Google’s dominance of the online ad market.
The tweak means that Amazon will from the autumn offer modest text ads to run alongside product searches, according to an email sent to the site’s advertisers, and seen by Wall Street Journal.
This means that any Google links that appear at the bottom of Amazon’s search results will be stamped out.
An Amazon spokesman told The Drum in a statement. “We can confirm that Product Ads will be discontinued from October 31, 2015. We are in continuous communication with our advertisers and partners on alternative opportunities to reach Amazon customers including Selling on Amazon.”
In October 2014 Google chairman Eric Schmidt admitted that Amazon had become the search engine’s “biggest search competitor”.
Amazon’s overall advertising business is estimated globally to bring in $1.26bn in 2015 and grow to $1.83bn by 2018, according to eMarketer.