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Bezos-Owned Washington Post Embeds Amazon Buy-It-Now Buttons Mid-sentence

Posted by Soulskill on from the wait-till-they-start-delivering-papers-with-drones dept.

McGruber writes: While reading a story in the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post, I saw that the paper had begun embedding Amazon Buy-It-Now links in the middle of story sentences. For example, in this article, a sentence about the sales figures for differing covers of The Great Gatsby read: At Politics and Prose, the traditional [BUY IT NOW] version — featuring the iconic eyes floating on a blue background — sold better than the DiCaprio [BUY IT NOW] cover. This change follows the July news of much larger than expected losses at Amazon and a 10-percent decline in the Amazon's stock value. In related news, the Post reports that the literary executor of George Orwell's estate has accused Amazon.com of doublespeak after they cited one of Orwell's essays in their ebook pricing debate with Hachette and other publishers.

7 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. It's not going to work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    All advertising eventually repels people. It's only a matter of time before someone seizes the opportunity and takes your customers away. Ads associate you with cheapness. There is no coming back from a reputation as an ad whore.

    On a side note: Be thankful for ad blockers. I hold quite a few sites in undeserved regard because I don't see the ads.

    1. Re:It's not going to work by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      All advertising eventually repels people.

      Exactly. This is why, throughout history, companies that advertize have consistently failed, while companies that just sit back and wait for the world to beat a path to their door have prospered. Clearly, advertising doesn't work.

      Ads associate you with cheapness

      So true. This is why companies like Louis Vuitton and Gucci, by advertising heavily, devalue their products, and only make pennies on the dollar compared to unadvertised brands available from eBay and shipped from China.

  2. What took them so long? by The+New+Guy+2.0 · · Score: 5, Funny

    So apparently Washington Post has joined the Amazon Affiliates program.... that's so 1990s of them!

  3. Accuse me a being materialistic whore but... by slashdot_commentator · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm not having a serious problem with this.

    I hate today's commercials so much, I mute them if I can't fast forward them, and am almost forced to only watch DVR'ed content, and tend to avoid watching live TV now. I run adblock. When its a site I go to frequently, I whitelist it, and quickly block it again once I see an ad that does popups, or automatically plays audio/video, or otherwise detracts from my reading.

    I would go nuts if a "buy it now" button popped up while reading fiction, but this is a newspaper article. I don't find the button intrusive, because I'm not trying to follow artistic nuance in a newspaper article. It doesn't really take up the screen, and they're placed in front of products to sell, namely "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "The Great Gatsby".

    It seems to me no more intrusive than a banner ad, and I'm much more annoyed at large rectangular ads that break up article paragraphs. So what am I missing here?

    --
    There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
  4. Wow, seriously - that is annoying by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There were a LOT of those "buy it now" links scattered all through the article!

    If I were a Washington Post subscriber, I might very well cancel my subscription over something like that - it completely breaks up the flow of the article. That's highly annoying.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:Wow, seriously - that is annoying by Noah+Haders · · Score: 5, Insightful

      there's also something called "journalistic integrity" in which advertising content is separate from news content. The next step is for WaPo to shape its news coverage to maximize its affiliate volume. also change its name to huffpo.

  5. I'm not sure these buttons belong to the Wash Post by Nate+the+greatest · · Score: 4, Informative

    Did anyone else notice that the affiliate tag on the links suggest that the links belong to Slate magazine and not the newspaper? For the record, Bezos didn't buy Slate last year, and I don't think he owns it now. http://www.slate.com/blogs/mon... Given the unanswered questions, I'm going to assume there's more to this story. I think this could be a syndicated article which arrived with the links. Or perhaps something broke in the WP's servers, I don't know. But I do know that I checked a half dozen other articles and didn't see any affiliate links.