A consumer expertise marketing consultant who has tracked Amazon for the reason that firm’s founding in 1995 has printed a pointed evaluation arguing that the Amazon Advertisements enterprise has quietly deserted the customer-first philosophy that outlined Jeff Bezos’s e-commerce operation – even because the promoting division generated $56 billion in income in 2024.

The critique, authored by Jean-Christophe Solus and dated Might 2025, targets three particular structural issues in how Amazon presents paid and natural content material to consumers: the opacity of product badges like “Amazon’s Selection,” the invisibility of producer model content material, and the prevalence of sponsored placements that carry no discernible declare or product promise.

The doc arrives at a second when Amazon’s promoting machine is working at full pace. Amazon’s full-year advertising revenue reached $68.6 billion in 2025, greater than double the $29 billion generated 4 years earlier. Amazon reported Q1 2026 advertising services revenue of $17.2 billion, up 24% yr on yr. The platform has concurrently rolled out a consolidated Marketing campaign Supervisor, AI-powered inventive brokers, and unified DSP infrastructure – all aimed squarely at advertisers. What Solus asks, implicitly, is whether or not anybody has been designing for the particular person on the opposite facet of the display.

The client obsession hole

Amazon’s management ideas should not personal. Buyer obsession sits on the high of the checklist, above frugality, possession, and each different inner worth. Solus acknowledges this publicly said hierarchy however suggests the promoting arm operates by a distinct logic.

In response to Solus, “Buyer obsession is Amazon’s #1 precept, however the extensively profitable Amazon Advertisements enterprise ($56bn in 2024) appears satisfied that the motto is for the e-commerce guys solely, not theirs.”

That may be a particular cost – not that the promoting merchandise fail to work for manufacturers, however that they’ve been designed with out critical consideration of what consumers expertise. The excellence issues as a result of Amazon has traditionally positioned its promoting enterprise as uniquely reliable exactly as a result of it sits inside a buying surroundings. Advertisements on Amazon, the argument goes, are related as a result of they seem when somebody is already trying to find a product. Solus doesn’t dispute the relevance argument. He disputes whether or not that relevance is being communicated clearly sufficient to the folks making the acquisition choices.

Mysterious badges: automation with out clarification

The primary drawback Solus identifies considerations the small labels that seem on product thumbnails all through Amazon’s search outcomes – labels like “Amazon’s Selection,” “Greatest Vendor,” and “Unique.” These badges have existed for years, and their presence on an inventory is mostly understood by entrepreneurs to replicate some mixture of gross sales velocity, score thresholds, and return charges.

The factors, in line with Solus’s evaluation, embrace a product being rated 4 stars or larger, being bought continuously, and being returned sometimes. The system is automated, working at scale throughout hundreds of thousands of listings. What the badge doesn’t do, at the least traditionally, is clarify itself to the particular person studying it.

In response to Solus, Amazon’s strategy to those labels has been one in all opaque automation: “In pure Amazon type it’s utterly automated. Sadly they forgot to clarify this to prospects.”

He notes there was a partial enchancment. For some captions, Amazon now surfaces an evidence panel – the screenshot within the doc exhibits a cellular overlay studying “Amazon’s Selection: Total Choose” adopted by three bullet factors: rated 4+ stars, bought usually, returned sometimes. That granularity is exactly what Solus is asking for. The query he raises is why the identical remedy has not been prolonged uniformly to all badges, together with “Greatest Vendor” and “Unique.”

The sensible stakes for the advertising and marketing neighborhood should not trivial. Manufacturers investing in Amazon Advertisements campaigns have lengthy understood that profitable a badge can dramatically have an effect on conversion charges. But when consumers don’t perceive what the badge means, the sign erodes. The badge turns into ornament slightly than a decision-making software, which additionally reduces its worth to the advertiser who earned it.

Ghost model pages: premium content material with no entrance signal

The second subject entails what Solus calls “ghost model pages” – the wealthy manufacturer-produced content material that seems deep inside Amazon product element pages. Manufacturers can add this materials at no further value. It usually contains high-quality imagery, structured product storytelling, and design parts per the model’s personal visible id. The content material is well-produced. It’s also successfully invisible to anybody not already scrolling deeply via the web page.

In response to Solus, the stress right here is structural: “Over the past 30 years the product pages have grown tremendously and this premium content material is misplaced in a sea of different issues. Too dangerous there isn’t a approach for the patron to browse Amazon and look on function for this high quality communication.”

He identifies the aggressive backdrop: Amazon is aware of that direct-to-consumer web sites, notably Shopify-powered storefronts, give manufacturers full management over the presentation of their id. The flexibility to add model content material on Amazon is partly Amazon’s response to that aggressive stress. Manufacturers keep on the platform, partly, as a result of they’ll preserve some model of their visible language there. However the discoverability drawback undermines the association. The content material exists. No person navigates to it.

This has a direct promoting implication. Manufacturers spending closely on Sponsored Merchandise and Sponsored Manufacturers to drive site visitors to Amazon listings might discover that site visitors touchdown on pages the place probably the most distinctive and convincing content material – the model’s personal crafted narrative – is actually hidden under a number of scrolls of technical specs, vendor data, and competitor listings.

Zero promise adverts: the claimless search consequence

The third strand of the critique is probably the most commercially pointed, and probably the most related to practitioners operating Amazon promoting campaigns.

In response to Solus, a considerable portion of Amazon’s sponsored placements carry no declare by any means. When a consumer sorts “shaver,” “detergent,” or “battery” into Amazon’s search bar, the primary three outcomes are paid placements. The merchandise paying to seem there don’t make any argument about why the patron ought to select them over the following consequence. They’re merely paying to exist on the high of the checklist.

In response to Solus, “The unhappy fact is that Amazon Advertisements depends for an enormous chunk of its exercise on claimless adverts. The sponsored content material solely impacts the looks rank. In different phrases while you kind ‘shaver’ or ‘detergent’ or ‘battery’, the primary three merchandise pay to be there. There is no such thing as a profit for the shopper.”

He invokes David Ogilvy to determine the baseline: promoting, at its core, ought to make a declare on behalf of the product being marketed. Ogilvy constructed campaigns round particular guarantees – the product does one thing for you, delivers a measurable consequence, earns your desire for a purpose. A sponsored placement that merely occupies area doesn’t try this.

What makes the purpose sharper is Solus’s remark that Amazon already possesses the infrastructure to vary this. The badge system, no matter its present limitations, is a mechanism for associating a product with an evaluated attribute. Pairing sponsored placements with a brand-selected badge stating the related declare would value comparatively little technically. In response to Solus, “It could not be massively tough for Amazon to comply with its inner pointers and pair paid promoting with a model chosen badge stating the specified declare. The Promoting enterprise wouldn’t change a lot however the shopper would profit.”

The remark that Walmart has replicated the claimless mannequin – a screenshot within the doc exhibits Walmart.com search outcomes following an identical format – suggests this isn’t an issue distinctive to Amazon however one Amazon is well-positioned to handle first, given its said ideas.

The flywheel that stopped spinning for consumers

Solus frames all three issues throughout the context of what made Amazon’s unique development mannequin work. The flywheel metaphor – decrease costs and higher choice convey extra prospects, extra prospects convey extra sellers, extra sellers convey decrease costs – relied on each a part of the enterprise genuinely enhancing the buying expertise. Badges, model pages, and product copy had been all, of their unique conception, methods of lowering friction and serving to consumers make higher choices.

The argument is that these instruments haven’t saved up. The badge system scaled and not using a corresponding funding in client schooling. Model content material was welcomed however not promoted. And the promoting enterprise grew so quick – from $29 billion 4 years in the past to $68.6 billion in 2025 – that refining what the sponsored outcomes really talk might have felt much less pressing than constructing the following advert format.

Amazon has concentrated significant development effort in 2025 on tools for advertisers: the unified Marketing campaign Supervisor, Advertisements Agent for automated marketing campaign administration, inventive era instruments, and a revamped homepage hero package deal with fractional share-of-voice choices. These developments serve the manufacturers and companies inserting the cash. What’s tougher to level to is a comparable funding in serving to the patron perceive what they’re .

For digital promoting practitioners, the evaluation carries a sensible dimension past its philosophical one. The effectiveness of Amazon promoting is finally downstream of purchaser belief and comprehension. If the particular person encountering a sponsored consequence doesn’t perceive why it’s there, or if a badge they see carries no legible that means, the clicking fee and conversion fee for that placement are decrease than they’d in any other case be. That makes the funding much less environment friendly.

Amazon’s Sponsored Products have remained the largest single contributor to advertising revenue through every quarter tracked. The core of the enterprise is a product that capabilities primarily via search-intent matching – somebody sorts a time period and sees paid outcomes. If these outcomes carried extra details about why every product deserves consideration, the advertiser’s spend would work tougher.

Individually, the retail media model Amazon pioneered has now been licensed to other retailers, with Macy’s among the many first main shops to implement the Retail Advert Service. Because the underlying know-how spreads, so do its structural assumptions. If claimless sponsored outcomes develop into the default structure for retail search promoting throughout a number of platforms, the query Solus is elevating turns into one in all industry-wide conference slightly than a single firm’s product choice.

The Amazon Advertisements enterprise recorded Q4 2024 revenue of $17.3 billion, an 18% year-on-year increase, with sponsored merchandise persevering with as the biggest phase. The total-year 2024 determine was roughly $56 billion, the quantity Solus cites in his evaluation. The enterprise has grown considerably on the present mannequin. That development doesn’t tackle whether or not the mannequin could possibly be improved for consumers – and, as a consequence, for the advertisers whose returns rely upon shopper decision-making.

Jean-Christophe Solus held the place of CIO at Groupe Roederer, dad or mum firm of Champagne Louis Roederer, from February 1998 to February 2008. He describes himself within the doc as a consumer expertise knowledgeable who has “adopted and studied retail for the reason that beginning of Amazon in 1995 and even earlier than that.” His present work focuses on serving to manufacturers design technically possible buyer expertise options.

Timeline

Abstract

Who – Jean-Christophe Solus, a consumer expertise marketing consultant and former CIO of Groupe Roederer (Champagne Louis Roederer), who has monitored Amazon’s retail mannequin since 1995.

What – A structured critique of Amazon Advertisements arguing that the promoting division has diverged from Amazon’s said buyer obsession precept throughout three areas: the unexplained use of product badges like “Amazon’s Selection,” the invisibility of producer model content material on product pages, and the prevalence of sponsored search outcomes that carry no product declare.

When – The evaluation was written in Might 2025 and circulated publicly on LinkedIn on or round Might 25, 2026.

The place – The critique examines the Amazon.com buying surroundings, totally on cellular, with further observations about Walmart.com following the identical patterns in sponsored search outcomes.

Why – Solus argues that whereas Amazon’s flywheel mannequin initially required each element – together with promoting – to enhance the patron expertise, the promoting enterprise has grown massive sufficient ($56 billion in 2024, $68.6 billion in 2025) to maintain itself on the present mannequin with out investing in clearer communication to consumers. The implication is that this divergence reduces the effectiveness of promoting spend and undermines the trust-based rationale that distinguishes Amazon Advertisements from search promoting on different platforms.


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