If you're doing your holiday shopping on Amazon your top search result may actually be an advertisment.
Here's an example: Let's say you're searching for a watch. You won't see the best-selling watch or the watch with the best reviews first. Instead, you'll see whatever manufacturer Amazon chose to have you see.
Another example is when you're searching for a new TV. The search may take you directly to LG and Sansui, despite Amazon's best-seller category being dominated by Chinese brand TCL.
The ads are paid by the manufacturer to get better placement on the top e-commerce site.
Right now, there are more ads than ever before on top of the products you are searching for, which are ranked based on sales performance and other factors.
So, for us consumers it's buyer beware, and you'll most likely be doing quite a bit of digging around on the website before you actually find what you want.
Amazon has many ways to filter results — with an option to show products that quality for Prime shipping only, ones that have 5 star reviews, and more — but cutting out the ads out isn't something you can avoid.
