If you search for socks and someone shows you a promoted ad for socks, you are likely trading relevance for money as the best sock for that person is unlikely to be the most promoted one. This works in the short term but ultimately what should happen (and currently doesn't) is users then use a search or retail platform that gives them more relevant results.
Second is using my search for socks elsewhere on the platform. This is essentially using user-data outside of the intent it was given and that should be controllable by the user and default to the most conservative option without annoying dialogue boxes or other harassment. Whether it's within the platform or not shouldn't make a difference.
So competition is good, but unfortunately what I'm taking away from this that companies are going to bake more ads into their products because the products themselves aren't seeing much competitive pressure (except maybe for Meta and rightfully so).
> as the best sock for that person is unlikely to be the most promoted one.
not necessarily. I don't see how there could be a correlation between the two. When you see "sponsored" on a listing, that doesn't tell you how much the vendor paid. Also many large and reputable vendors will pay simply to guarantee they are at the top of the listing. For the vendors that don't sponsor, you don't know whether the amount they save goes into a higher quality product
> This is essentially using user-data outside of the intent it was given and that should be controllable by the user and default to the most conservative option without annoying dialogue boxes or other harassment.
Except feeding user data back into the system makes certain things technically possible that weren't possible before. Do you think modern map applications would have the same degree of accuracy if they weren't able to use user data to improve it?
> Whether it's within the platform or not shouldn't make a difference.
It does make a difference because keeping it within the platform could be used to improve the platform itself. Sending it outside the platform could be used for more malicious purposes. In the map application example, the user knows their data feeds into improved accuracy. But they don't know where that data goes outside the platform
> For the vendors that don't sponsor, you don't know whether the amount they save goes into a higher quality product.
For the vendors that don't sponsor, you don't know whether the amount they save goes into a higher quality product. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't.
But for the vendors that DO sponsor, you definetly know that the money didn't go into a higher quality product.
Some eCommerce companies who are agressively using Google/FB/Social will spend 30%+ of their revenue just on online/influencer advertising (based on companies I have worked with).
You're not wrong, main difference is between big companies vs smaller ones. Big name brands can afford to shell out more, but sometimes you see the smaller shitty dropshippers trying to get more visibility by hyping the hell out of a sub par product
Second is using my search for socks elsewhere on the platform. This is essentially using user-data outside of the intent it was given and that should be controllable by the user and default to the most conservative option without annoying dialogue boxes or other harassment. Whether it's within the platform or not shouldn't make a difference.
So competition is good, but unfortunately what I'm taking away from this that companies are going to bake more ads into their products because the products themselves aren't seeing much competitive pressure (except maybe for Meta and rightfully so).