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

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.

[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.

[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.

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.