For years, Google has been the only player in online digital advertising space worth talking about. That was until Facebook came into the picture, and now the two companies are sharing the bulk of online advertising revenue among themselves. Well, Amazon has over the recent years been described by marketers as the burgeoning third-force in online advertising.
While Google position online as the go-to-platform for general information search. Amazon is increasingly the go-to-platform when searching for information for things a consumer wants to buy. And it is a growing trend, not just in North America or Europe, but the world over.
For marketers looking to catch the eye-balls, it makes more sense to advertise on Amazon platform than it does on Google. Particularly if you are selling products users would want to buy; physical items as opposed to digital products.
This growing trend could just make Amazon the biggest threat to Google advertising revenue since Facebook. According to a report by the CNBC, some marketers are moving more than 50% of their advertising budgets to Amazon ads as opposed to Google ads. The CNBC apparently came up with this report after talking to executives working from various media agencies.
Marketers are reportedly moving “hundreds of millions of dollars a year” from Google ad to the Amazon ads. This report is collaborated by findings from a survey by Survata, which says that most consumers in North America turn to Amazon first when they are looking for information on the things they want to buy. Though Google remains by far, the most popular search engine.
Therefore, Amazon is proving to be more important for marketers with advertising consumer packaged goods brands. Amazon has one more upper hand over Google when it comes to click through. With Amazon, advertisers can quickly ascertain a click or view of an ads directly to the items sold on the e-commerce site. When it comes to Google, doing that becomes somewhat complicated, since most buyers purchase products they have search for from other websites.
However, as of now, Amazon is not that much of a big threat to Google’s profit; at least not yet. The company has just posted $54.7 billion profit from advertising revenue globally in just the first half of 2018 [PDF]. That is a 24% improvement from last year’s first half revenue from advertising. While Amazon posted $4.2 billion from advertising from the same period.
