Sources Say Amazon Will Soon Be Targeting Ads, a la Google AdWords

According to The Register (citing a paywalled WSJ article), a new face in targeted ads is emerging (according to "people familiar with the matter") to compete with Google, and it's Amazon. They already have a vast, mineable collection of data about customers' buying, listening and viewing habits, so exploiting personalized ads seems a natural follow-on. According to the report, the ad system would replace Google as ad vendor on Amazon itself, and "It is also apparently hoping to beef up its ad placement business on other sites as part of Amazon's strategy to carve its way into Google's multi-billion-dollar AdWords' empire." Pretty soon Amazon will able to just save me time by ordering the things I would have ordered based on ads that they themselves have placed.

Comments

easy solution....

[Anonymous Coward]

adblock plus

OK, fine, do it already.

[ColdWetDog]

I'm OK with targeted ads. I just wish they would figure out how to target them.

I bought a couple of 'Hello Kitty' flash drives close to a year ago. It was a joke, people kept stealing my generic looking ones. The Hello Kitty sticks stay in my desk. Since then, every other time I log in, Amazon has to breathlessly show me various Hello Kitty things. An impressive panoply of products, but ones that I'm not especially interested in.

Try to buy something for a gift? Well, idiot algorithm thinks you're going to buy the same thing for the next six months....

You'd think it this was easy.

Re:OK, fine, do it already.

[Collective 0-0009]

The NCAA just went away from an algorithm and to a human selection system that will determine the entrants of a two game playoff to determine the champion.

Some of the comments have been about how the BCS (the algo) didn't factor in if the field was muddy, if a player was injured (some do), experience and maturity of players, and could not determine when margin of victory mattered. Humans, however, have no issue being able to dynamically add a factor to the algorithm. Humans can easily tweak how much weight you give to various factors. Humans also have bias.

I guess my point is this stuff gets pretty complicated, especially when it involves humans and our inconsistent, illogical emotions, feelings and actions. If it was easy nerds would have figured out the perfect horse-betting-algo and woman-getting-algo.

Re:OK, fine, do it already.

[TubeSteak]

Try to buy something for a gift? Well, idiot algorithm thinks you're going to buy the same thing for the next six months....

IIRC, Netflix recently added an option for you to watch movies without them being added to the Netflix recommendation algorithm.

You'd think companies like Facebook and Amazon would be so smart as to offer you an option to remove items from their profile of you.

Re:OK, fine, do it already.

[houghi]

I'm OK with targeted ads. I just wish they would figure out how to target them.

Targeting in Marketing is done in two ways.
The first is the one that we talk about here on /. the most. It analyzes what you are interested in. They will analyze what you have seen and bought, They will then assume what you might be interested in and show you these items.
e.g. a new TV when you have a high intrest in movies and tv shows and console games.

The other way is to assuming you do not know certain products, so they want you to learn about the product and will try to entice you to buy said product.
e.g. a new TV when you have never shown interest in movies, tv shows or console games.

Re:OK, fine, do it already.

[p.g.king]

Amazon do, there is an area for you to improve your recommendations, where you can simply tick items not to be used for recommendations.

Don't think I've bothered really though, it should be more seamless than me having to go and hunt it out etc. simply easier for me to ignore the recommendations.

Re:OK, fine, do it already.

[Dragon Bait]

I'm OK with targeted ads. I just wish they would figure out how to target them.

On the desktop version of Amazon, go to "Your Account" on the top right next to the search bar, then "Your Recommendations" from the drop down. Under the search bar there should be a "Improve Your Recommendations" link. Find your "Hello Kitty" purchase and click "Don't use for recommendations."

Note: If anyone cares, I do not work for Amazon any more than any of their other customers do.

Re: OK, fine, do it already.

[frikken lazerz]

But then they'd have to reveal how much data they have collected about you, and people would be creeped out (although probably not enough to stop using fb and amazon).

Re:OK, fine, do it already.

[AthanasiusKircher]

Find your "Hello Kitty" purchase and click "Don't use for recommendations."

Mod parent up! GP is complaining about a problem that actually has a known solution, which Amazon has been reasonable enough to implement.

GP is complaining about the precise behavior that allowed him to accomplish his goal in ordering the flash drive. Amazon obviously profiled people and predicts that the demographic who will buy "Hello Kitty" products is very specific, and most people do NOT want that stuff.

GP's argument is thus actually proof that Amazon's algorithm is probably working well. GP chose a product that would be undesirable for most of his coworkers for the very reason that it's something of a niche product. By buying such a product, GP identified himself to the algorithm as one of those few people (unlike his coworkers) who would want such a product.

Now he expects Amazon to just intuit that he's some sort of exception to that general rule (which in this case, is probably a very good rule, or someone would have stolen GP's flash drives by now).

I'm not saying Amazon's recommendations couldn't be improved -- but this particular example is very poor. And if GP wants to fix his recommendations, Amazon has a system specifically designed to allow this.

Re:OK, fine, do it already.

[worf_mo]

Thanks for this information! I occasionally order stuff for various family members; for the past months a certain number of women's sandals and phone covers in primary colors kept showing up in my recommendations. You helped me get rid of them.

Re:OK, fine, do it already.

[AthanasiusKircher]

The idea that regular people will curate the advertising data used to profile them is a huge non-starter.

GP wasn't complaining about advertising. He was talking about recommendations -- and he obviously wants to have better recommendations or he wouldn't bother looking at them at all. So, if he's looking at recommendations, chances are he would like to improve them -- and if that requires just a few clicks, it might actually be worth it to him.

I, personally, haven't looked at Amazon's recommendations in years. I don't care what they say or how accurate they are. If they were listing a bunch of Hello Kitty products, I wouldn't go around complaining about it, because I never even notice the recommendations. GP obvious does, which implies he pays some attention to them. If he wants to improve them, Amazon has a mechanism for doing so.

As to your assertion that regular people wouldn't help advertising companies, I'm not so sure about that. Slashdot is full of a bunch of people who never want to see ads. (I'm one of them.) I'm never going to even look at an ad, so the only thing I ever want to see on an ad is the quickest way to close it.

But, believe it or not, there are people in the world who look at ads. And some companies have been moving to a model that forces people to watch ads. In those cases, assuming I'd actually use the service at all (which I probably wouldn't, but others might), I'd appreciate a little box that says, "I don't want to see ads like this one again." If I'm being forced to look at an ad anyway, I might as well take that time to click something that will make that ad go away and put something better next time.

Re:OK, fine, do it already.

[AthanasiusKircher]

Now you are really off in lala land. The recommendations are on the same page as the products he's looking at. Noting them is not the same as seeking them out.

What version of Amazon's page do you visit? If I go to an Amazon product page, I see links to "Items Frequently Bought Together," "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought..." and "Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed..." and things like that. Perhaps those are personalized to some extent, but those products are mostly based on what product page you're actually on and on what others have bought -- not on whether you bought a random unrelated "Hello Kitty" product.

To get to see personalized recommendations for random products, I have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page past just about any content I normally would want to see. Frankly, until just now when you pointed this out to me, I never even noticed they were down there... because I would have no reason to scroll down past all the other random stuff on product pages unless I specifically wanted to see them.

I think most people, if they want to see their personalized recommendations, either go to Amazon's homepage, or they click on a link to see information on your account, where you can find "Recommended for you" or whatever. I NEVER seek these things out myself, so the only time I've seen these is occasionally when I've clicked on some "My account" link for something else that took me to a page with them.

Bottom line: I can't recall actually even SEEING what Amazon recommends for me based on my purchases in at least a couple years. GP obviously seems to notice this on a regular basis since he bought his flash drives.

So, either he (and you?) visit some alternate reality version of Amazon's website, or you're both seeking out these recommendations... because I can't remember the last time I even saw the recommendations, let alone "noted" what might have been in them.

Re:OK, fine, do it already.

[AthanasiusKircher]

I will qualify what I said slightly -- I do recall seeing some sort of "People who bought what you recently ordered also bought..." after I've gone through check out. So, I assume some of those are based on my recent order history (maybe not just the last order) and have general recommendations. That's about the closest I can recall to seeing the regular Amazon "Recommended for you" stuff in years.

Re:OK, fine, do it already.

[antdude]

Can we tell Amazon never to recommend for ALL by default?

Re:OK, fine, do it already.

[__aajfby9338]

I bought a couple of 'Hello Kitty' flash drives close to a year ago. It was a joke, people kept stealing my generic looking ones. The Hello Kitty sticks stay in my desk. Since then, every other time I log in, Amazon has to breathlessly show me various Hello Kitty things. An impressive panoply of products, but ones that I'm not especially interested in.

If that bothers you, then definitely avoid clicking any links on The Worst Things for Sale. The recommendation algorithm doesn't automatically discriminate between things you might want to buy vs. things you looked at for shock or humor value. Thanks, Amazon, but I don't need a 55 gallon drum of personal lubricant at the moment.

Re:OK, fine, do it already.

[larryjoe]

The idea that regular people will curate the advertising data used to profile them is a huge non-starter.

Somehow the geekboy bias of slashdot thinks it's a great idea to make the effort to do Amazon's or Google's job of making targeted ads non-annoying. For normal people, configuring ads on Amazon's behalf is obviously annoying and is obviously a non-starter.

Of course, the real solution is not to do Amazon's job for them. The real solution is to block ads. No, the websites won't go away. Corporations are hooked on money and will find another way to stay in business.

Shocking!

[Frosty Piss]

Amazon wants to show specific products to people that might be interested in them? Shocking!

Also, Adblock Plus, and maybe shop at other businesses that don't have the objectionable practices as Amazon and Wal-Mart?

I see 2 problems

[Snotnose]

First, about half of what I buy on Amazon are gifts that I myself would not have any interest in owning. Second, I haven't ordered anything off Amazon since they started charging sales tax (fark CA and it's high taxes). Too many other online sources to use without letting the spendthrifts in Sacramento squeeze me dry.

Re:I see 2 problems

[Zero__Kelvin]

"First, about half of what I buy on Amazon are gifts that I myself would not have any interest in owning"

So you are saying that you have an interest in buying things for others, that you yourself would not want. So what. The point is: here is the type of stuff this guy might buy , not here is the stuff this guy might want."

Re:I see 2 problems

[Zero__Kelvin]

A good system will see it was bought only once, and mark it as an abberation.

Re:I see 2 problems

[BitZtream]

So how about you get off your ass and change the laws governing how ridiculous your taxes are?

No, you don't ACTUALLY want that do you? My guess is that you're happy to take all the benefits those taxes provide, but somehow think its okay to not actually participate in paying them.

Do you abstain from using public roads? Public transit? Public policing? How about water and power which are subsidized by taxes? Do you enjoy the protection of California's tough environmental laws or do you not?

You're just a freeloader to stupid to realize that you're happy to cut off your own nose to spite your face.

Re:I see 2 problems

[Dragon Bait]

First, about half of what I buy on Amazon are gifts that I myself would not have any interest in owning.

IIRC, you can mark an item as a gift when you purchase it (not sure if that impacts recommendations). You can alter the recommendations via "Your Account", "Your Recommendations", "Improve Recommendations", "Don't use for recommendations."

Re:I see 2 problems

[Solandri]

So how about you get off your ass and change the laws governing how ridiculous your taxes are?

No, you don't ACTUALLY want that do you? My guess is that you're happy to take all the benefits those taxes provide, but somehow think its okay to not actually participate in paying them.

California has one of the highest tax burdens in the country. It's even worse if you factor in average income. Graduated income taxes means states with higher incomes naturally have a higher tax burden. The #1-3 tax burden states are all in the top 5 in income. But California at #4 in tax burden is 15th in income.

It's not about being unwilling to pay taxes for services. It's about the state being inefficient at providing those services. Any shortfall is viewed not as a spending problem, but a revenue one; meaning the inefficiencies are allowed to remain while taxation goes up relative to other states. Most of what I've seen in my two decades here has been creative phantom budget cuts which really only push the costs to future years, and hiding new taxes in places the public won't notice. If the government spent half as much creative effort trying to actually streamline spending, things wouldn't be so bad.

Unfortunately, voting doesn't make much difference because the districts have been gerrymandered (that tends to happen when one party controls a state for a long time). The breakdown of likely voters in California favors Democrats by only about 60% to 40%. But in the legislature Democrats hold 69% of the Assembly and 68% of the Senate (down from 78% after the latest election). The last time the state had anything close to proportional representation was in the late 1990s after governor Pete Wilson (R) vetoed the districts drawn by the legislature. The State Supreme Court ended up redrawing the districts, and the breakdown of elected legislators was much closer to the will of the voters (who were about 55%/45% in favor of Democrats back then).

Re:I see 2 problems

[AthanasiusKircher]

A good system will see it was bought only once, and mark it as an abberation.

That's not the behavior I would want. When I first get interested in something new, I'll often buy one or two related items to "try things out." If I've gotten to the stage that I'm actually buying anything, chances are that I'm probably going to become interested in seeing more (at least considering it -- whether or not I will follow up and continue buying things depends on a lot of factors).

So, no, I don't want that behavior in a "good system." I'd frankly prefer a system that defaults to showing me related products to the more unusual products I've purchased, since I'm less likely to know what is popular among things I haven't bought a lot of. If I'm already ordering a dozen things per year in one category, chances are that I already know it pretty well, and I'm going to find the things I want whether I see recommendations or not. (Obviously, there should probably be some sort of "half-life" to recommendations for unusual items; if you order one thing out of the norm, and you don't order anything else like that in your next few dozen items, those recommendations should gradually fade.)

The key to the system is also having a button you can click to say "Don't use this one particular product for recommendations," because I might be buying a one-off gift or a one-off product, and I don't want more. Amazon has a button like that explicitly designed into their system, so, to me, that's exactly the behavior I want in a "good system." (Not saying it couldn't be improved, but I don't want your "good system" policy either.)

Re:I see 2 problems

[TheRaven64]

The problem is, if half of the stuff that you buy on Amazon is intended for gifts, then it's very difficult for the algorithm to determine the difference between a pattern with 50% of inputs being false positives, and a completely different pattern. It's quite easy to train a machine learning algorithm to discover that, given these 100 things that you've bought for either yourself or your friends, either you or one of your friends would like something from this other set of items. It's much harder for it to then determine that, at this instant, you're shopping for yourself or a specific friend and that it should narrow the search down to things that person will be interested in.

Re:I see 2 problems

[Zero__Kelvin]

" it's very difficult for the algorithm to determine the difference between a pattern with 50% of inputs being false positives"

Again. They aren't false positives. You buy stuff like that. The system doesn't care who you buy it for, or why you buy it. If you bought it for others before, you're likely to do it again, and while you may have never wanted it in the first place, you clearly wanted to buy it, or you wouldn't have purchased it.

Re:I see 2 problems

[Qzukk]

it's very difficult for the algorithm to determine the difference

Again. They aren't false positives. You buy stuff like that. The system doesn't care who you buy it for, or why you buy it. If you bought it for others before, you're likely to do it again, and while you may have never wanted it in the first place, you clearly wanted to buy it, or you wouldn't have purchased it.

Except for the case where I bought something from a wishlist and had it shipped to the person who put it on the wishlist. Then

A) it should be trivial to determine that this is a gift
2) The appropriate response is to show me other things that person also wished for.

Personally, I think both of you are wrong.

Re:I see 2 problems

[TheRaven64]

You're missing the point. You buy stuff like that occasionally and on specific occasions. If I have, say, 10 friends for whom I buy birthday presents, and buy 20 things for myself, from Amazon each year, then if you want to recommend things to me then there is absolutely no point in recommending things that one of my friends likes, because there's a very small chance that this will be the time when I'll be buying something for that person. The same applies to seasonal goods, but those patterns are easier to spot because they apply to everyone.

Re:I see 2 problems

[Zero__Kelvin]

"You're missing the point. You buy stuff like that occasionally and on specific occasions. "

Half the time is occaisonally. Got it.

"because there's a very small chance that this will be the time when I'll be buying something for that person."

Maybe you didn't know that you don't actually have to buy the items? What are the chances that you will buy a Lexus or a tampon? You don't seem to understand how targeted ads work at all. They don't guarantee that you'll only see ads for things you want to buy, any more than you have that guarantee when you watch The Golden Girls and see the ads presented during the commercial breaks. What they do is increase the likelihood that the ad will pertain to you.

Re:I see 2 problems

[CaptainDork]

Amazon will be updating their TOS to include the prohibition of buying things from them that you don't, personally, want.

Re:I see 2 problems

[TheRaven64]

"You're missing the point. You buy stuff like that occasionally and on specific occasions. "

Half the time is occaisonally. Got it.

Are you really that dense? You may be buying gifts for one of your friends half of the time, but you're not buying gifts for one specific friend half of the time. Recommending things that one friend likes when you're shopping for things for a different friend may coincidentally be useful, but probably isn't unless you have a very homogeneous set of friends.

Re:I see 2 problems

[Zero__Kelvin]

Are you realy that dense? Who cares? You continue to be lost in the idea that they care who you are buying for, rather than what you are buying. If you bought a my little pony for your boyfriend and valium for your mom, you might want to buy another my little pony related item and some ocycodone. They really don't care who you are buying it for. If you buy a my little pony, some valium, and 10 mens cothing items, they will weigh the inputs accordingly. Good luck understanding simple logic!

Amazon? Really?

[DogDude]

From a privacy aspect, anybody shopping at Amazon already doesn't care about any kind of privacy.

From a business aspect, I'm shocked that they're not doing it already. They have more information about their customers than probably any single organization on the planet. Considering how badly they're bleeding cash, I'm wondering why they haven't been doing this all along.

Re:Amazon? Really?

[ladislavb]

They've been doing it already. They started about two or three weeks ago when, as an Amazon affiliate, I was given an opportunity to create Amazon ads and to place them on my website. So far so good - the CPM is decent (just over a $1) and even though it hasn't been able to beat AdSense, it is still much better than most other networks I've tried in the past. The fill rate hangs around 30% at the moment. It looks promising.

They didn't target their customers?

[AbrasiveCat]

I though they were already doing this. They were failing if they were missing this opportunity. What do people expect? (Do I like it? meh. I don't like being profiled. It could make buying easier.)

Re:They didn't target their customers?

[BitZtream]

It could make buying easier.

Its more likely that you'll just end up not being exposed to new items that may be useful to you.

Profiled advertising seems like a great idea, except (as it stands currently) you end up advertising to people who are already buying your products, and hence, theres not really any point in them getting your advertisements.

Re:Jeff, the trip you've been waiting for is ON SA

[Zero__Kelvin]

Clearly Bezos likes the Galapogos, so what exactly would be wrong with it? I really don't understand why people hate targeted ads so much. Sure they might miss the mark. How is that any worse than untargeted ads? Is there some twisted belief that untargeted ads miss the mark less somehow?

Re: Jeff, the trip you've been waiting for is ON S

[frikken lazerz]

Well, how will you feel when your mother comes over (let's assume you've escaped from mommy's basement, haha) and she uses your PC, and everywhere she goes she sees ads for *insert sensitive interest here*. Have fun explaining to her why those ads are coming up all the time. And even if you don't let neighbors or family or your computer, these targeted ads are often based on IP, so anyone with a smartphone who comes over could see them as well. Now do you see why I hate targetted ads?

Re: Jeff, the trip you've been waiting for is ON S

[Zero__Kelvin]

No, but I see that you don't under stand computer security, auth systems, or NAT :-)

Compete with Google?

[m00sh]

Google tracks a large portion of the websites you visit, including slashdot. They have a more detailed browsing history. If you use gmail, they probably have all your purchasing history as well (including Amazon). Not to mention your search history. So, Amazon has a fraction of the data that Google would have on a person.

The only thing that Amazon has over Google is that you use Amazon ads and if a visitor buys something, you get a nice 4% commission. But, I don't know if big money will come from that - it's just blogs.

Re:Jeff, the trip you've been waiting for is ON SA

[Mr. Slippery]

I really don't understand why people hate targeted ads so much. Sure they might miss the mark.

I care about the covert surveillance which enables targeted ads.

I care about powerful corporate and political interests attempting to manipulate my decisions. That's nothing less than mind control, black magic.

The ads themselves? Adblock Plus removes them from my sight anyway.

Re:Jeff, the trip you've been waiting for is ON SA

[Zero__Kelvin]

You choose to use Amazon, you agree to their terms. Exactly what do you think is "covert" about it?

Buy before you order

[tomhath]

Pretty soon Amazon will able to just save me time by ordering the things I would have ordered based on ads that they themselves have placed.

Submitter might have thought that was a joke, but Amazon already has applied for a patent on that.

Doing it now

[the eric conspiracy]

I'm already getting profiled ads based on my Amazon shopping.

Annoying as fuck. Looking for more ad blocking extensions.

They already do

[bobjr94]

A few months ago I added some car parts to my wish list and never bought them. When visiting some web sites on my phone I get amazon ads for these exact same items along with other items I looked at and never bought. I say on my phone because I have ad block on all my desktops and laptop and never see these ads.

Re:They already do

[dargaud]

You can also install Firefox on your smartphone (Android at least) and then install the AdBlock addon just like on the desktop version. Without having to root anything.

Like Being A Target

[JimSadler]

I do get a lot of targeted ads and I don't mind them at all. Many times the ads offer products that interest me.

I have a rule and so do most people

[gelfling]

To NEVER EVER EVER EVER consider any product or service that advertises. For example, Pandora runs the same local car dealer ad for every other ad, every day. Not only am I not buying a car, I will never use that dealer. Ever. Never Ever. Ever.

Fuck you APK

[badkarmadayaccount]

Do you not get tired of trolling... I'm setting up a hosts file subscription and associated OPEN SOURCE FREE SOFTWARE solution, free on github, just to spite you, any one with me?