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Both Apple and Amazon collect cash from companies that want to offer their products to us. Let me take the case that these sideline jobs are gross conflicts of interest that hurt us – and, ultimately, these tech titans, too.
I mean this: Enter “dog beds” in the search box on Amazon. You can expect Amazon to show you what it thinks are the best dog beds. But in fact, the first options you’ll see are most likely from companies that paid Amazon to appear right in front of your eyeballs. There are advertisements in half-fairing. Amazon marks these entries as “sponsored”. As soon as you notice them, you realize that these advertised products are everywhere.
Apple does that too. Try searching for “fitness” in the iPhone App Store. The first option might be a workout app that appears in a shaded blue box. Again, it’s an advertisement. (Android app stores usually do this too.)
Amazon and Apple preach their obsession with doing what’s best for customers, but these advertising businesses are not about us at all.
Advertising is not uncommon or necessarily bad. The New York Times and many other reputable companies make money from advertising. But I would argue that Apple and Amazon are different from almost any other advertising effort.
Google, Facebook, and The Times usually don’t show you ads and sell you the advertised product. The dog bed company pays Amazon to make sure their products are prominently listed so people can buy them on Amazon.
In defense of the companies, there are several other advertising businesses that are also closed. Kellogg’s could pay the grocery store to make sure the cereal boxes are at eye level on the store shelf. It’s similar to Apple and Amazon. (Though the supermarket isn’t worth more than $ 1.5 trillion, like both Apple and Amazon are.)
When companies pay Amazon and Apple to get noticed, it likely goes down for us in the form of higher product or app prices. You could say that all advertising is annoying and a tax for consumers. But at Apple and Amazon we’re there anyway to pay for an app or a product. The ads are simply a fee for choosing one dog bed or fitness app over another.
If Amazon takes money from a dog bed company to make this the first item we see, it doesn’t necessarily make the best dog bed. It can’t even be a good dog bed. Viewing this ad is definitely good for Amazon, and often for the retailer as well. But it’s a lot harder to say it’s good for us. The same goes for Apple and its app advertising.
Amazon knows that. My colleague Karen Weise reported on the heated debate within Amazon as to whether paid product advertising would undermine customer trust. Jeff Bezos made the last call that showing ads could make things a little worse for Amazon buyers, but that the extra money would help the company invent amazing new things for customers.
Bezos’ assessment of short-term pain for long-term gain may be correct. Or maybe he was just upset about the money.
Apple has argued that online advertising tracking its users is an invasion of our privacy and Facebook has declared war on advertising. The company also wants to grow bigger in advertising sales. (Apple says its ads are less invasive than those of other companies.)
Let me suggest an alternative for Amazon and Apple. What if companies improved their products and made more money that way instead of reaching for more money with paid commercials?
It’s been a big problem for years that Apple’s App Store is a sea of options, making it difficult for people to discover something new that might interest them. Paid app promotions where the best apps don’t show up isn’t the right answer. At Amazon, sometimes it feels like the company doesn’t know how to create a nice place to simply shop. Ads are not the answer. You can make things worse.
I recently searched for a pulse oximeter on Amazon and searched for a specific brand. I was blown and turned off by the number of ads I saw for seemingly shady fakes. I gave up. Amazon lost a potential sale because its business can feel like an unruly mess and its paid commercials are part of the problem.
Perhaps there should be a golden rule for tech titans rich and powerful: Just because a company can make money on something doesn’t mean it should.
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Before we go …
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A cryptocurrency craze turns into fuel for garbage talk on the square: A new kind of virtual trading cards with basketball highlights has also cast a spell over some athletes. My colleague Kellen Browning explains how NBA players fell in love with the Top Shot online marketplace.
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Big tech game is non-partisan: I read two books by U.S. Senators on antitrust law so you don’t have to. Politicians at the other end of the political spectrum agree that American tech giants have too much influence and are calling for a return to citizen engagement in the fight against industry consolidation.
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Our bodies weren’t made to use computers: Vice News traced the long history of people who stopped using computers. “In our history of media interaction, there really has been no precedent for what the combination of sitting and looking at a computer monitor did to the human body,” writes Vice News.
Hugs too
I can’t resist these tiny, blurry, and cuddly peregrine falcon chicks.
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