Amazon will stop buying ads from Google

The confrontation of two Internet giants continues. This time, Amazon has gone on to the next escalation. From now on, it will not advertise on Google. Earlier in the US, Amazon was one of the largest customers of the Internet search engine — by buying expensive and very desirable places over search results by inquiry. In order not to help the business of his rival, according to rumors, the store now wants to become a platform for placing online commodity ads.

Many stores pay premium prices for “grocery” ads from Google: ads with a small image, price, and a link to your product. This ad is the first to be seen by customers who search on Google for TVs, shelves, sneakers, headphones and other products, and, due to its visibility, increases sales by several times better than Google Adwords. Amazon began to place in such product advertising in 2016 - interrupting the rates of Walmart, which used to pay the most at online auctions held by Google. After that, in most categories, no retailer could offer more money than Amazon (according to rumors, tens of millions were spinning there). For Amazon itself, it was also very profitable. But now Google will lose this big client and source of profit.

Company Merke, tracking the statistics of requests from Google for its customers, noticed that since April 28, Amazon no longer places ads on the search engine. In her recent blog, her boss, Andy Taylor, wrote:

This widespread disappearance of ads with goods can only mean one thing - Amazon itself stops the entire campaign.

Prior to this, product advertising over search was one of Google’s most successful and profitable businesses. Alphabet does not disclose its figures, but, according to experts, this type of ads is growing three times faster than Adwords. Previously, Amazon bought all the advertisements for office supplies, accessories, clothing for fitness, consumer electronics and even in many categories. For this, the company paid Google "at least $ 50 million a year."

Why cooperation has stopped - nobody knows for sure. Amazon does not respond to requests from journalists. A Google spokeswoman commented:

We cannot disclose information about individual customers, but this is quite a common situation when advertising campaigns reduce their budgets. This can happen for a variety of reasons.

But experts believe that one of the reasons is that Amazon does not want to sponsor its main rival, even if in such insignificant amounts. The company itself is seriously going to become one of the main sites for online advertising - also, by the way, by issuing a search on its website. Amazon is already making $ 2.8 billion a year from that; plans to reach $ 5 billion this year. It is not beneficial for her to show potential advertisers that she uses Google services. Amazon shareholders expect that in three or four years it will be able to break the digital duopoly between Alphabet and Facebook - due to advertising in its online store and voice announcements in Alex. And if it can damage the business of Google - this is another nice plus.

In the previous series

The relationship between Google and Amazon has never been smooth, but a particularly cold period began after Google started promoting Assistant and released the smart column of Google Home. Amazon considered this an invasion of its territory. And banned Google from selling all products (especially Google Home) in their store. In response, Alphabet restricted clever speakers with Alex to access her YouTube. Then the online store removed Nest's smart products from Google’s site from its website, and generally banned developers from using the word “Google” in their skills for Alex. After the access to YouTube was completely blocked for her, Amazon even registered the trademarks “OpenTube” and “AmazonTube”, threatening to create its own video hosting service, only with blackjack and free access for its speakers.

We talked about this funny war between two companies in a blog in January, but since then, otvetka from Google has arrived. On the principle of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Google entered into a partnership with Walmart, the only retailer of the level of Jeff Bezos. And together, the two companies did not allow Amazon to capture e-commerce in the US (and in the future, and in the world). The other day, they pulled out India from the store - having bought Flipkart for crazy money , so that Amazon could not unite with it.

Google is also introducing voice search technology products for Walmart and Target to allow them to compete with Alex. And in March, a new service opened up for retailers, which allows creating universal online baskets of goods that are broadcast between smartphones, computers and smart speakers. It directly competes with a similar system from Amazon, and several dozen stores have already started using Google. While Amazon is trying to develop as a platform for online advertising, Google is gradually turning its engine into one of the world's largest marketplace.

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