According to a BloomReach survey, 55 percent of U.S. consumers now start their shopping searches on Amazon, up from 44 percent in 2015. Google, meanwhile, is trending in the other direction: About 28 percent said they begin their product search with search engines like Google, down from 34 percent in the prior year.

In a recent blog post, Mark Ballard of Merkle said marketers have noticed and been alerted to Amazon product listing ads, but that it hasn’t been easy as one would expect to trigger an Amazon PLA  if the ecommerce giant were aggressively pursuing this.

Ballard said that for about half of the programs he checked, Amazon is not listed at all, but for the others, it first pops up on Dec. 20. It is anecdotal, but Amazon seems to be showing up more consistently for home goods retailers.

“Amazon and Google are competing with one another to be consumers’ first stop for online shopping,” said Ballard in an interview. “By participating in PLAs, Amazon makes Google Shopping a more exhaustive and attractive search option for shoppers, but it will also end up producing more traffic and customers to Amazon.”

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