Thanks for posting this article! AMS has been a game-changer for me as an author, but as a consumer, it drives me crazy. Like the guy in the article, there have been times I've searched for the exact item I want and I have to scroll past lots of loosely-related products to get to the one that has the exact description I searched for. Shouldn't it be first? Other times, I search for a product and find a sponsored ad for it before its product page in the regular search results. Sometimes one right after the other. This really irks me. It makes me wonder how many people are searching for my books because they know what they're looking for, yet I have to pay for them to find me when they should have found me anyway. Because...you know...that's how searches are supposed to work.
Also, in response to Crystal who mentioned it's impossible to keep these ads from wiggling into your subconscious, that's completely true. I ignore ads completely (skip past them, avert my eyes, etc.), and I'm still affected. Sometimes I crave a food just to vaguely remember seeing an ad for it. Or I decide to look up specs for a car and realize it's only on my mind because of a banner ad. The ads I notice most of all are the creepy ones. One example was an ad for a business speaker who was coming to my city. I'm connected with him on LinkedIn, so it was suspiciously relevant. Another was for our local grocery store advertising the weekly sales of the staples my husband and I buy. With ads this creepily relevant elsewhere, you'd think Amazon would do a better job with their coveted algorithms.
