Slashdot Mirror
Why So Much Coverage Of Amazon Prime Day? The Incentives, Of Course (theguardian.com)
Olivia Solon, writing for The Guardian: In July 2015, Amazon declared its own annual holiday: Amazon Prime Day. The retail giant promised deals on a wide range of products for customers signed up to its membership program, Amazon Prime. This is the second Amazon Prime Day, and it's pretty hard to miss. At the time of writing, the #PrimeDay hashtag was one of Twitter's top 10 worldwide trends. Media outlets including the Daily Mail, USA Today, the Telegraph, PC World and CNet are publishing numerous stories about the discounts on offer, and urging readers to sign up for an Amazon Prime trial. What many of those readers won't realise is that publishers are financially incentivised by Amazon to write about Prime Day. By signing up to the retail giant's affiliate programme, Amazon Associates, publishers can earn commissions from linking to products on Amazon.com.In some other news, Amazon announced on Wednesday that the self-created holiday was its biggest sales day ever, with worldwide orders rising more than 60% compared with the previous Prime Day.
No need to be butthurt over your small vocabulary.
They've created enough artificial hype, that people are genuinely excited about it. At this point, people are talking about it without getting paid, because they want to.
What I don't understand is why people want to talk about it. I checked it out multiple times yesterday, and the only notable thing I saw was that the Amazon website was painfully slow. Absolutely nothing on sale looked like a good enough deal to entice me to impulse buy.
They have changed their price matching policy since last year. Last year they would refund you the difference between what you paid a few days before and the Prime Day price. This year you have to order it again and then send it back. Stupid, but I guess the more hoops they make you jump through, the less refunds they have to issue.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
^H^H^H^H^H^ I mean shilling.
"If the item is out of stock say "Remind me"" and you'll get a notification when it's back in stock. (Hint, that's not going to be on Prime day when the price is back to normal.
Today Show and Good Morning America are about 30 seconds of news then the remainder trying to sell what ever Comcast/Disney movie is about to be released, "deals of the day" that really aren't. Some fluff pieces. There's always a cooking segment with a star if said movies.
Then finish it off with a song from some artist.
There's already a perfectly good word: "incited". You don't need to make up "incentivized".
It's called MBA-speak. They come up with new words to describe mundane actions.. like Monetize. And yes, Incentivize. It's so cromulent my spell checker didn't flag it.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
I'm guessing his point was that verbing weirds language.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
What's Amazon Prime Day?
I really have no idea but I also give zero fucks about it.
I was going to blame the firefox spell check dictionary on their behalf, but it's even in it. Must be left out of whatever they are using, I know I tend to second guess myself even when I know something is a word and it gets marked incorrect by spell check.
No, incentivized is a real word and is the correct one to use here. incited implies violence, which as far as I know didn't happen. This isn't black Friday at Walmart.
Prime Day on 7/12 (or 12/7 for you other people).
Way to really blow that one, Amazon.
How's about we name and shame (with evidence in the form of links) media outlets doing this? If they're getting a kickback, there's no way I'm trusting their review on anything.
What many of those readers won't realise is that publishers are financially incentivised by Amazon
I suppose there might be a few people out there who think Daily Mail, USA Today, the Telegraph, PC World and CNet are something other than shills. Hard to believe though.
It's called MBA-speak.
Back in my day, we called it marketing. Now get that BS off of my lawn!
As I sat at the dinner table carving my traditional Amazon Prime day roast goose with my family and friends I was reminded of the real reason for Amazon Prime day. I casually gave thanks to God that there is surplus crap in warehouses that stores cannot sell usually.
As we toasted in the new Prime-Year and started the count down to next prime day I looked around at all my cheap crappy made-in-China goods. Life is good when you have useless garage sale junk-a-plenty.
You don't need to make up "incentivized".
Incentivize.
I keep hearing people talk about it coming up but nobody has said WHEN it is.
Depends.
I was quite looking forward to it. And then in the run-up and on the day bought nothing anyway. I briefly considered an SSD but the brand I wanted never went on sale and I'm not going to compromise just to get something cheap - I'd just buy a cheaper brand anyway.
In fact, the only thing I "bought" was a free copy of Civ IV, available to Amazon Prime users throughout the sale. It "cost" £12.99 and no doubt classes as a sale, but I never paid a penny and it was a Steam key. And then I discovered that I and everyone who might have wanted it already have it on our accounts.
Is that technically a sale for Amazon? Surely not if it's free. And everything else was pretty Meh.
Like the Steam sales and the indie packs - their day has come and gone and I only look for nostalgia's sake. The days of actually BUYING anything in them at anywhere near a discount over what I could have had them for previously? They're long gone.
The way publishers are incentivized to write about Trump, to post click-bait headlines, to place ads prominently on their site, to cover things people are interested in, and generally to attract as many eyeballs as possible. Yawn.
All of the fun and none of the guilt.
And what incentive does Slashdot get for this provision? Rhetorical question, okay?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Once upon a time, there were lots of small mom-and-pop stores, each with a small but specific set of goods.
In the not so distant future, there were lots of (not so small) supermarkets, shopping centers and malls, each with 20-100 smaller stores, that quickly realised that they are the new mom-and-pop stores, all threatened and sooner or later replaced by the one big store: amazon
How do most people get paid?
Every other week is common, at one point in history I had a roommate where we both got paid every-other week, and we were on opposite schedules, it was great when it came to keeping the kitchen stocked and shared expenses paid. Under this setup most people get paid towards the end of the week, but it could really be at any time.
The other option is 1st and 15th, probably a little less common. In this case the time during the week is sort of randomish but if one of those dates falls on a weekend you often get paid early, meaning Friday - late in the week. I guess you could have a place pay you late, but I don't think that would pass the legal test.
Most people have to pay rent and big expenses at the beginning of the month.
When was Prime Day? On a Tuesday (near the beginning of a week), on the 12th. Basically Prime Day was held right before most people get paid and the twice a month folks are nearing the end of the really expensive half of the month. Brilliant! I'll bet they would have sold loads more if they would have made it the 16th.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Incited does not mean the same thing as incentivized. Which already is a word. It wasn't made up
It's a fundamental and longstanding feature of the English language though. Those who complain about it are from the guilded/style-as-grammar + armchair-philologist crowd who think lack of prepositions beginning or ending a statement is a sign of proper breeding and culture rather than a narrow preference of an isolated linguistic group from Britain, and rule that was given to keep elementary kids from common grammatical errors.
Personally I didn't see anything other than on Amazon's site unlike last year where everyone was curious what the sales would be until Amazon unveiled its yard sale.
I stopped buying from Amazon as they have grown to the point where playing games to cow people into joining their little club is more important to than competing on merit.
Try buying star wars from Amazon without a Prime membership. Oh right you can't. Persistent harassment to join "prime" complete with confusing UX tricks. Deliberate plays to artificially delay shipping and enforce minimum orders to artificially manipulate consumer behavior.
As a customer I refuse to accept or support Amazon's behavior and have taken my business elsewhere.
All words are made up in some sense, and some more than others, even some in common and current usage.
Meh... found a few things then looked elsewhere (newegg in this case) and found them at a cheaper regular price then the super-uber-OMGWTFBBQ amazon day price. overall, not impressed but maybe that's because I don't buy crap unless I need it or really want it for some reason. Buying just because something is "on sale" ... I just never understood that mentality...
There's already a perfectly good word: "incited". You don't need to make up "incentivized".
Fun fact: they are different words with slightly different meanings! (isn't English fun?!)
They both come from Latin.
When you incite it's an imperative.
When you incentivize it's a temptation.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I find being bombarded with "coverage" of something that I am excluded from very annoying. Prime is not a particularly private club, but it is not the public, and publishers who decide to make what amounts to a catalog for a membership club will have their publications filed under "marketing". Make sure Amazon pays you enough, because there is no way I'll ever pay you after you've turned market crier.
And I shop at Amazon. Hint, old news media - not everyone reads papers/magazines, and not everyone uses Twitter.
Also, why do you care, Guardian? Have you been "incentivised" to write about it? Pretty sad when the Guardian sells out to big business.
Amazon Strikes:
1. Paid premium tier that is still garbage in Canada unless you use the service A LOT
2. Filter bubbles throughout promoting crap I already own (the self-curation feature just makes things worse)
3. Prices that are not nearly as attractive as they were in years past -- many of my local retails are actually competing on price (reasonably)
I haven't hit Amazon in months, and though I'll probably hit the site during the holidays, there's just little interest from me in visiting until then...
Bye!
Can't beat Alibaba
No it isn't. An "imperative" comes from a third Latin root word, impero, meaning to command or give an order. (That's also where we get the word "emperor," via "imperator" meaning "one who gives orders".)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
There are those of us who are both aware and delight in that fact. If one can be proud of believing in a god, I can be equally proud of my conformity to a regional subset of the English language.
This was the first year I was prime and could take advantage of prime day. I was very disappointed. The few things I wanted sold out in minutes or even seconds. Gift cards, in particular, sell out in less than one second. I think I bought one kitchen thermometer that wasn't really even that cheap, but I needed one and it was reasonable.
Most of the stuff seemed to be crap that they wanted to get rid of. I browsed several categories, and it was just such random crap that I'd never buy. Why don't they just call it "prime clearance" since that's mostly what it is, plus a few decent items that sell out in short order.
I actually had several things I wanted to get (bed sheets, some electronic devices, household goods, etc.), but couldn't get any on prime day. Either nothing on sale or they sold out too fast. Pretty lame.
I don't know, but it works for me.
Yeah, and except for the thing of them having different meanings, you're absolute right!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
If the summary is true, wouldn't publishers being paid simply to write about Amazon PrimeDay and/or linking to specific products on Amazon on PrimeDay have to CLEARLY identify their story as 'advertising'? Now, to be clear, I haven't spent any time looking at any "publisher" sites that may have written about Amazon PrimeDay so maybe they are following the rules & clearly identifying their story as 'advertising' but the pessimist in me suggest that this is entirely unlikely and as such I'm betting these 'incentivized publishers' are setting themselves up for a potential lawsuit/action by the government.
For instance, do we know for sure that the owners of Slashdot are not being 'incentivized' to write about PrimeDay as in this summary?
7 is a Prime number. 13 is a Prime number.
12? Meh.
Amazon could have done so much better if they'd had Prime day on prime numbers.
What next? Pi Day on 3/13 next year?
Stop verbing nouns!
Amazon's advertising pitch leads you to believe that Prime Video has most of the films that you'll ever want to see available for streaming. That's the very tantalizing but only imagined deal --- that you'll never own a film, but you'll be able to stream what you want from the Amazon catalogue as long as you keep paying the yearly Prime subscription. But it's not so, that's merely the expectation that the well-crafted advertising gives you, and it's a totally false picture.
In reality, Prime Video is what should be called a video enticement service, or in other words, an advertising shelf. It provides very close to none of the films that you're likely to want to watch, but you are paying your Prime subscription for the privilege of having Amazon's non-Prime video catalogue dangled before your eyes and for being enticed into paying for purchase or rental of attractive titles. Virtually no blockbusters are available on Prime at all --- the exceptions are extremely rare, just a tiny few a year.
And it gets worse. Watchable titles are occasionally added to the Prime service, but only for a brief period and then withdrawn, for added enticement. When you next sit down with friends to watch that film, there's a good chance that it's been withdrawn from Prime, and then you'll have to pay up or disappoint them.
Also, you might think that at least the blockbusters of the distant past would be available on Prime, right? After all, they've been earning millions over many decades, that should be long enough. Well think again. Don't bother looking for Bladerunner or Dune or Terminator or Aliens or any other old movie with a strong reputation on Prime, because if they can still bleed you for it then it won't be on Prime, not even temporarily. (This varies by territory --- in UK at least, the SciFi blockbuster selection closely resembles an empty shelf.)
So, don't be fooled. Prime Video is primarily a video advertising portal for Amazon, and not much else. Prime's delivery benefit encourages you to order more to recoup your payment, and the video benefit is mostly just very blatant enticement, so the deal falls far short of being a good one.
It's a perfectly cromulant word, he just needs to embiggen his vocabulizer.
Stop nouning verbs!
This is internal marketing.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Seriously though, I went over to check it out because of this slashdot story, not those other incentivized ones. Didn't see anything worth buying though, regardless of price. Your average garage sale is more interesting.
A lot of the electronics offered on Amazon Prime Day was just rebranded Chinese stuff that you can find at the same or lower prices on DealExtreme, AliExpress or GearBest ALL YEAR LONG.
I have a Prime subscription... I looked though literally hundreds upon hundreds of "Prime" deals but found almost nothing that interested me. Nothing that caused me to push the "Buy" button, anyway.
I did buy something yesterday but it's the kind of thing I was going to buy regardless, the much-hyped Prime thing wasn't a factor.
"Much ado about nothing" in my opinion.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
There's already a perfectly good word: "incited".
"Incite" has nothing to do with "incentives" or anything even remotely close. I do not think that word means what you think that word means.
Sadly, "incentivized" has crept into the vocabulary due to the efforts of marketers, and I wish they would all die in a fire. Yes, it's a word, but it's not a good word.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I'm guessing his point was that verbing weirds language.
Yes, it's weirding the language to verb words so cromulently, without the slightest omnestration.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Especially when it's the best one.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
They held it on June 12th. Neither 6 nor 12 are prime numbers!
Surely that should be "enstrongulate his vocabulizer".
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You mean just like Slashdot is paid to push certain stories ?
Bit like the pot calling the kettle black.
I notice you managed to name several newspapers and retailers in your article,when there was no good reason to do so,you could have made your point without mentioning anyone in particular,or do you or your holding Corp have some interest in those you named ?
Software-speak: scrum, sprint, swimlane.
I'm baffled that we have to borrow words from sports to describe the cool new thing.
The firefox spell checker is utter fucking plop. It's always flagging up actual words as wrong.
The piece of shit has the vocabulary of a seven-year-old.
This wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't an abysmally clumsy typist, which means about half of the words actually are wrong. I forget why (no doubt a statistician would know) but IIRC that's the worst possible situation, because log (x(1-x)) or something.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This does make sense for cross-border shipping, as the inter-warehouse shipping is on them, whereas directly shipping it to the consumer would add duties/etc
So what Amazon gives people money for reporting about them. Pretty much every bigger store gives away affiliation bonuses if you report about them and add links to their products.
So any review that you see out in the internet is most likely targeting affiliate revenue and not recommending what's best for you but what gives them best revenue; especially when it is ad-free and does not have a paywall.
"publishers are financially incentivised by Amazon to write about Prime Day"
Dear god the buzzwords. "Amazon pays for advertising."
Look, you get a 30 day trial to prime and it doesn't disappear when you opt out of the trial. I used to sign up for the free trial on prime, get shit mailed, opt out of prime, then rinse & repeat next time I wanted an item. I did this for 3 years until this last month when I finally ran out of trial days.
I think you just want to complain, since you get prime free for 30 days.
Be seeing you...
Lol, what coverge? I read reddit daily, as well as facebook, and slashdot, and this is the first article about prime day that I've seen.
I believe you mean "incented," not "incited," and ... bad news.
Breakfast served all day!
Just penis envy.
Ha ha
All useless junk. No wonder people don't have any money
Is Amazon trying to convince us that Jeff Bezos was born on July 13? No, my friends, that is a lie. Amazon Prime Day was originally an ancient Roman holiday called Mercatus that was held in mid-July, and it was essentially a festival to facilitate trade; merchants would gather in Rome and sell stuff at a discount. The Romans did a lot of evil things, but one thing they did not do was sell fake Chinese knockoffs. Amazon stole the holiday and is pretending they came up with it themselves! Yeah right!
Amazon is waging War on Christmas, trying to insult Christ's birthday by knocking it from its rightful position as the prime capitalist consumer orgy of the year. This is a lot worse than saying Happy Holidays, folks. I decided to get back at Amazon and so I went there and ordered a bunch of coffee mugs that say "Merry Christmas" and I urge you to all do the same and let Amazon know that we won't stand for this.
Actually Amazon has chased me back to shopping at Barnes & Noble, because they raised their minimum order for free shipping so much that it makes a lot more sense for me to drive 40 miles to my nearest B&N to pick up a book for someone's birthday present.
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Incited is not the same thing. Incited gets used in a number of contexts. Perhaps the most common phrase using the word is "incited a riot", which means stoking the flames of a mob with passionate words.
You were probably thinking of incented, which is a synonym for incentivized. Both have the specific meaning of getting people to do something by offering rewards, and say exactly what the writer of the article was trying to say. Both are neologisms according to the Oxford Etymology Dictionary, but incentivized is older (1970) than incented (1992). Incentivized is also much more common; it shows up about seven times as often in a search of Google Books.
Publications like PC World and CNet are a mix of shill and useful information. It has been thus since trade publications were invented.
Sometimes the shill even contains useful information, as it did with Prime Day for many people. After all, the purpose of reading those publications is for advice on what to buy. The advertising and advertorials can help with buying decisions just as much as the supposedly neutral content. You just have to read them knowing that some of the content is supported.
No, not hard to miss. I worked all day, went to a bar, went home, cooked, ate, went to bed. Didn't see a thing about Amazon Prime Day.
Oh, it may have been in adverts on the telly. But that's what the fast-forward button is for. Never watch live TV again - just put it on hold when you're making a cuppa tea, having a piss, or rewind if you didn't quite catch something - you'll accumulate enough time easily to be able to FF through the adverts easily.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"