For marketers, this underscores why it’s critical to stay aware of the changes happening around you. Understanding how your competitors’ moves affect the wider landscape can help you adapt quickly, spot new opportunities, and ultimately outperform your competition—ensuring you’re not caught off guard when disruption hits.
Let's recap what happened
After decades of participation, Amazon has stopped running all of its Google Shopping ads. This unprecedented exit came as a surprise to many in the advertising industry, but as some reports suggest, it looks to be a strategic move that had been a long time coming. Amazon reportedly began pulling back its Google ad spend in US markets as early as May 2025, gradually extending the withdrawal to other global markets before completely deactivating its Google Merchant Center sometime before July 23, 2025.
Is There Room on the Bandwagon?
The long-term implications of this move are yet to be determined, particularly as we await to see if Amazon will make a comeback. In the short term, however, Amazon’s plummeting impression share has a lot of advertisers—especially those who previously saw high overlap rates with Amazon—excited. It’s only logical that anyone advertising on Google Shopping would see this as a unique opportunity to boost their own campaign efficiencies and drive incremental growth.
But they weren't alone
According to an analysis conducted by Mike Ryan, Head of Ecommerce at Smarter Ecommerce, the impact on basic KPIs was less dramatic than many expected. Cost-per-clicks (CPCs) dipped initially but quickly rose back to previous levels toward the end of July. Click-through rates (CTRs) saw a temporary increase before swiftly returning to business as usual. Impression shares remained fairly flat.
In the fast and furious world of digital marketing, this is to be expected. Numerous smaller players—or perhaps a few major ones—quickly stepped in to plug the gap. By re-evaluating their strategies, relaxing efficiency targets, and increasing investment, many advertisers moved quickly to leverage this unique opportunity. While some may succeed, others will likely fail.
Looking at our own doorstep
Curious to see the trends across our own client portfolio, we analyzed the performance of our shopping campaigns on a pre/post basis. We compared the 14-day period before July 23rd with the 14-day period after. Initial results indicate a decrease in shopping CPCs (-4.31%.) and increase in conversion rates (+39%) resulting in a 20% uplift in shopping conversions and a 35% increase in shopping ROAS.
We also conducted a more focused analysis on shopping campaigns for a couple of clients (let’s call them Client A and client B), that have been historically struggling with rather significant impression share overlap with Amazon.
- Client A: This client was used to seeing Amazon’s shopping impression share average around 46%. Following Amazon’s exit on July 22, we gradually increased our daily budgets and relaxed ROAS targets in existing campaigns. We carefully monitored the impact and saw our impression share increase by a whopping 43% when comparing performance on a pre/post basis. The uplift in conversion rates gave us the confidence to remain present in the space and keep budgets open. So far, we’re seeing a fantastic 47% ROAS increase, though we remain vigilant as we’ve also noticed Temu’s impression share starting to creep up.
- Client B: This client previously struggled with Amazon taking up over 90% of shopping impression share. We happened to be onboarding this account at the time Amazon pulled out so we took an opportunity to rethink the structure of existing campaigns and start from scratch. So far, we’ve seen an encouraging 40%+ ROAS increase.
So, what's next?
Amazon hasn’t released an official statement on this strategy, nor do we expect them to. We know that Amazon would have crunched the numbers and is likely running this as a test or decided to reinvest its (not small) advertising budget into developing its own ecosystem rather than spending with their competitor.
Google’s mission remains to be the go-to platform for all types of searches, increasingly expanding into consideration and research queries while detecting users’ commercial intent to serve relevant ads. In contrast, Amazon is laser-focused on product-specific, bottom-of-the-funnel searches, positioning itself as the e-commerce “search engine” leader. Some widely available sources claim that over half of all product searches now begin on Amazon, with that number steadily increasing. Ambitious as ever, Amazon aims to capture the largest share of the e-commerce search market, if not all of it.
As Damien Bennet, Chief Strategy Officer at Incubeta UK, rightly pointed out, “Whether this change sticks or not, it should focus advertisers on Amazon as a product search engine in its own right.”
Turning change into opportunity
If I could give you one piece of advice, it would be to stay curious and platform-agnostic. While monitoring competitor movements and understanding shifts in the ecosystem is crucial, it’s only part of the equation. The real opportunity lies in integrating these changes into a broader strategy—one that’s flexible, long-term focused, and open to leveraging the best solutions across platforms. In today’s fast-evolving market, using change as a catalyst to innovate, drive growth, and strengthen your brand’s position is what will truly set you apart.
