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Yes, Your Amazon Echo Is an Ad Machine (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: CNBC reports that Amazon is in discussions with huge companies that want to promote their goods on Echo devices. Proctor & Gamble as well as Clorox are reportedly in talks for major advertising deals that would allow Alexa to suggest products for you to buy. CNBC uses the example of asking Alexa how to remove a stain, with Alexa in turn recommending a Clorox product. So far it's unclear how Amazon would identify promoted responses from Alexa, if at all. Here's the really wacky thing: Amazon has already been doing this sort of thing to some degree. Currently, paid promotions are built into Alexa responses, but maybe you just haven't noticed it. CNBC uses this example: "There are already some sponsorships on Alexa that aren't tied to a user's history. If a shopper asks Alexa to buy toothpaste, one response is, 'Okay, I can look for a brand, like Colgate. What would you like?'" So it seems like Amazon wants to get you coming and going. Not only does the company want to let you buy stuff with your voice. Jeff Bezos and friends also want to make money by suggesting what to buy and even by pushing those products higher up in the search results so that you're more likely to do it.
But I could never understand why *I* should pay *them* for it. It always seemed that it should be the other way around....
These devices are true "Trojan Horses". You invite them into your home, and they inevitably start sucking money through their channels for items you normally would buy at a bricks-and-mortar store. Dog food, tissues, a pizza, whatever. Sooner or later you will buy something from the small value category that Amazon (a merchandising company) or Google (an advertising company) don't normally sell in significant volume, or can't sell through their normal commerce channels due to perishability. If you're a retailer and you're not part of these ecosystems, your bottom line will be declining as of today.
Aaaaand just like that any and all of my interest in this product has disappeared.
A personal assistant isn't if he serves more than one master. In the real world, we call that treason and cut their heads off. Well, in recent centuries we fire them instead, but same idea.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I do not want a friggin' relationship with my machinery.
Just because you're paying doesn't mean you're a customer. Especially if someone else is paying more.
For reference, see politics.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The problems with advertising started after the second world war, when advertisers started adopting techniques developed for propaganda. Lots of people will tell you that adverts have no effect on them, but ask them to name three brands of toothpaste and I can guarantee that they'll all be ones that they've seen adverts for, that they'll buy one of the first three that pops into their heads, and that they won't be able to cite a single clinical study that tells them that it's better than (or even as good as) any other one.
This got far worse with modern Internet advertising. Broadcast adverts (billboards, TV, Radio, and so on) had to work with an average psychological profile, but companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon can collect enough information about individuals to put them into one of a hundred or a thousand far more accurate buckets so that adverts can be tailored directly to manipulate them.
These days, advertising is basically evil. The days when an advert was telling you about a product and giving you information to make an informed decision are long gone.
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