None of my books have AMS ads on them. err..

[TimothyEllis]

I've just found none of my books have any sort of AMS ads on them. No slider, no single ads. Anywhere.

Is this just me being in Australia? Or is AMS down for the US evening?

Co-incidentally, I recently noticed a much higher flow back to my first series, which might indicate this isn't just a today thing, and at some point, AMS vanished from my books completely, and so the also-boughts and also-viewed sliders are getting readers full attention, and since they have most of my books near the front, people are finding my current books, and going back.

If this is true, what has happened to AMS then?

If it's not true, and I'm blocked from seeing the ads, why?

I'll note the .com.au site also has no AMS ads, so it's not just me in Aus looking at the .com store.

Any clues as to what's happening?

[Simon Haynes]

Maybe they're experimenting?  They run the site for a day with no AMS ads, just also-boughts, and see if sales go up or down.

Or it's a failure somewhere.

[Shoe]

Ads are showing here (U.S.).

[TimothyEllis]

Ads are showing here (U.S.).

On my books?

[Shoe]

Ads are showing here (U.S.).

On my books?

Yes. I checked four and they all had AMS ads showing.

[TimothyEllis]

Ads are showing here (U.S.).

On my books?

Yes. I checked four and they all had AMS ads showing.

Interesting.

Why would Amazon do that?

[notthatamanda]

I went to the AUS store and checked on each of my own, Tim's and Simon's books, no sponsored ads.  We have ads in the US store.

How did, as of yesterday, anyone, one buy ad space in the Australia store?  Did they just put some of the US or UK AMS/AA ads there?  And not tell us?
Maybe they are going to roll out a specific advertising for Australia and had to shut it off from wherever it is coming from before they do that.  Just a guess.

[TimothyEllis]

I went to the AUS store and checked on each of my own, Tim's and Simon's books, no sponsored ads.  We have ads in the US store.

How did, as of yesterday, anyone, one buy ad space in the Australia store?  Did they just put some of the US or UK AMS/AA ads there?  And not tell us?
Maybe they are going to roll out a specific advertising for Australia and had to shut it off from wherever it is coming from before they do that.  Just a guess.

I don't see the point of them doing Aus only ads.

My sales in Aus are 3.5% of my total, and absolutely not worth specific Aus only ads.

My worry if they are doing this, is they think Aus authors don't have any need for any other market. When in fact, for me as an Australian author, the Aus market is pretty well irrelevant. (Sad but true)

[notthatamanda]

Do you know which program the Aus ads were coming from?  I'm really curious about that.

I wouldn't mind a country specific program, although it would be nice if you could target the country within the campaign, like Google does.  Smaller markets, I think a good campaign could get you into good category rankings and produce more organic sales that way, I would hope. 

Anyway, if someone knows where the Aus ads were coming from and they aren't there now, we could ask them.  I've never been able to get into the UK program so if they were part of that platform it wouldn't make sense for me to ask them, but if they were coming out of the US I would.

Hope this makes sense, adjusting to the earlier high school schedule here and I'm pretty foggy this morning.

[Rinelle]

Haven’t seen ads in Australia (on the .com or .au stores) for months now.

[BlueWren]

I only see ads if I go to the .com store and specifically enter a US postcode into the location box at the top (I'm also Australian, and it automatically pegs me as being from australia, even in incognito mode). So maybe try that.

[ImaWriter]

I've been seeing this since the spring and it's completely stupid on Amazon's part to do this.

I'm in Canada, and I can't see any of my ads--or anyone else's for that matter--on the .com store unless I use a VPN. And my Kindle account, like a lot of other Canadians, is on the .com store. So Amazon is pretty much shooting themselves in the foot, because as best as I can tell, Canadians aren't seeing most of their advertising.

The other part that pisses  me off is the price to advertise is so much higher than a year ago, yet they are narrowing our reach at the same time.

[Bill Hiatt]

I've been seeing this since the spring and it's completely stupid on Amazon's part to do this.

I'm in Canada, and I can't see any of my ads--or anyone else's for that matter--on the .com store unless I use a VPN. And my Kindle account, like a lot of other Canadians, is on the .com store. So Amazon is pretty much shooting themselves in the foot, because as best as I can tell, Canadians aren't seeing most of their advertising.

The other part that pisses  me off is the price to advertise is so much higher than a year ago, yet they are narrowing our reach at the same time.

From that standpoint, if it hadn't been going on so long, I'd be tempted to think it was a glitch. Amazon makes no money unless people click on the ads. They can't click on them if they can't see them. Like you, I can't see the sense in it at all.

[notthatamanda]

I've been seeing this since the spring and it's completely stupid on Amazon's part to do this.

I'm in Canada, and I can't see any of my ads--or anyone else's for that matter--on the .com store unless I use a VPN. And my Kindle account, like a lot of other Canadians, is on the .com store. So Amazon is pretty much shooting themselves in the foot, because as best as I can tell, Canadians aren't seeing most of their advertising.

The other part that pisses  me off is the price to advertise is so much higher than a year ago, yet they are narrowing our reach at the same time.

From that standpoint, if it hadn't been going on so long, I'd be tempted to think it was a glitch. Amazon makes no money unless people click on the ads. They can't click on them if they can't see them. Like you, I can't see the sense in it at all.

I don't see the sense in it either, but for the record, Amazon makes money when people buy books, not just from ads.

Just for giggles, and because I have to listen to Alexa read a couple of chapters from an old book tonight, zzzzzz, I went to the Australia store and put in some generic things, like "Space Opera" & other categories.  When I do it in the US store, I get two sponsored ads at the top of the list.  In Australia, just books.   But does anyone know how ads were ending up in Australia and other countries, that aren't the UK and the US, before?  Because they never disclosed that some of my ad money was being spent at those stores.  How were ads ever running in Australia?

[Simon Haynes]

I'm in Australia and when I view amazon.co.uk I see ads on the products (which I can't buy, since the kindle UK store is off limits to aussies.)

When I visit the US I see no sponsored products anywhere, except the little display ads on the right hand side of the product page. Nothing in the search listings either. Now, I've got my default store set to the US, and I can and do buy there... but I see no ads. (Smart!)

No ads showing on the Aussie store for me either.

[ImaWriter]

I don't see the sense in it either, but for the record, Amazon makes money when people buy books, not just from ads.

Well, of course. But the whole point of ads is to entice people to buy, right? So, theoretically at least, isn't Amazon creating an environment where they're potentially selling less books?

[notthatamanda]

There is a sentiment that has been expressed repeatedly on the boards, though not necessarily by Bill, that Amazon only wants to suck money from authors via ads.   I don't agree with that sentiment.

As to whether or not getting rid of the ads means Amazon sells less books, I don't know.  But I kind of doubt someone who is looking for something to read will click on a book, decide they are not interested, and if there are no ads, give up and not buy anything.  There are lots of ways to find books on Amazon. 

[RPatton]

There's something psychology calls habituation. Something (ads, scents, images, whatever) becomes invisible to us the more we see it. The more time we spend on Amazon as customers, the less effective the ads are because our mind gets used to them and eventually ignores their presence.

Moving ads around and changing up how they work serves two purposes. It jump starts our brain in recognizing the ads again, but it also gives Amazon  another data point to study the results of. Right now they know that ads in location A have about three months before habituation hits, but ads in location B only work for a month before customers stop seeing hem.

[notthatamanda]

That makes sense.  In a couple of months they put the ads back, people's brains are like "new stuff interesting!".  And why not test it in a smaller market.

But I am still desperate to know where those ads were coming from in the first place.  I need to resign myself to not knowing that.

[Bill Hiatt]

There's something psychology calls habituation. Something (ads, scents, images, whatever) becomes invisible to us the more we see it. The more time we spend on Amazon as customers, the less effective the ads are because our mind gets used to them and eventually ignores their presence.

Moving ads around and changing up how they work serves two purposes. It jump starts our brain in recognizing the ads again, but it also gives Amazon  another data point to study the results of. Right now they know that ads in location A have about three months before habituation hits, but ads in location B only work for a month before customers stop seeing hem.

That makes perfect sense, but how does removing the ads completely in some markets fit that theory? Is that Amazon seeing if not running the ads for a little while makes them seem fresh to us wherever they pop up?

Personally, I'm not anti-ad. I use them myself. I never have understood the multipage ad carousels, though, nor adding a second carousel to the page, both of which have continued for a long time. I'll happily plow through pages of search results, but I've never felt like plowing through row after row of ads.

Recently, I got sufficiently annoyed by the way Amazon was handling blu-ray and DVD new releases to switch to deepdiscount.com. I buy the same things I probably would have bought on Amazon, but much faster. I'm not tempted to look at other people's reviews and wonder whether the people writing them actually have a clue, because there aren't any reviews. I'm not distracted by ads on product pages, because there aren't any there. Oh, and I don't have to wonder why there's no way to filter out special-interest products, like the University of Wisconsin commencement videos, because they aren't there to clutter my search pages. If I wasn't sure what I wanted, I might miss some of those features, but I'm actually finding it less frustrating and more efficient to have a cleaner shopping experience. I'll probably not move back to Amazon for those kind of things except for the odd product that deepdiscount doesn't have or unless something is only available in streaming format. 

[notthatamanda]

Okay so how does one hit the sweet spot between habituation and familiarity?

Here's one guy's thoughts on familiarity:  https://www.business2community.com/marketing/marketing-familiarity-principle-01226056

[Rinelle]

I’m willing to bet that Amazon removing the ads in Australia has more to do with something like GST than anything to do with testing.

I’m not sure if the Australian Amazon page ever actually had ads, since I don’t search there, but if it did, they were probably being served through advantage, not AMS. Authors with an advantage account can run ads in several countries, though not sure if Australia is one of them or not.

I was seeing ads on the .com site, where I still shop. I’m assuming I was seeing ads that were being advertised on the US site, and because I’m not in the US, Amazon decided to stop serving them to me.