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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.
No. Frelling. Way.
That can't possibly be true. Biased suggestions? An attempt to sell stuff from a company that, well, sells stuff? No! I am verily astonished!
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
#noshitsherlock
If you can make new 'skills' for Amazon's gadget which result in more ads being delivered to users, Amazon will pay you
https://www.techspot.com/news/72465-here-what-people-behind-alexa-skills-get-paid.html
Everything from Amazon, Google, Facebook, is ad-related
You are not their customers, you are their product
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.
Do most people use it for shopping? I tried it a couple times, but seems inconvenient since I rarely re-order the same item twice, so I can't say "Alexa, re-order toothpaste" -- I generally want to browse around and read reviews and look at prices from non-prime shippers.
The only thing I use my Echo for is listening to music, turning the lights off, and sometimes the weather. Oh and and a kitchen timer.
If it starts playing ads for any of those uses, I'll stop using it.
>Jeff Bezos and friends
I love how people like to personify leadership roles like the president of a country or the CEO of a company so that there is a clear, well defined figure to shit on.
>INSIDERS REPORT THAT BEZOS AND FRIENDS EXPLICITLY GAVE ORDERS TO AMAZON MARKETING DIRECTORS TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO MAKE MORE MONEY!
I wonder which brands of “titty chips” and “smelly tampon boogers” can Alexa add to my shopping list?
... is smart enough to not give me ads.
Well, not counting ads that everyone else listening to the same radio station is getting.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
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 was an early Echo adopter and have a Dot now as well. I primarily use it to (a) maintain my shopping/errands list, and (b) stream music while I do stuff in the kitchen. I've never bought anything using it.
But I can tell you if the day comes that Alexa gives me ads when I'm asking for something else, it's getting unplugged forever. ..bruce..
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
I have a whiteboard for (a), a cheap linux laptop for (b)
Why do I need ads for toothpaste? Toothpaste exists. I know it exists. I'll buy the cheapest brand that's FDA and ADA approved, ideally without SLS.
I do not want a friggin' relationship with my machinery.
I don't think advertising is inherently evil, however I think the methods being employed this last decade absolutely is evil. Advertising should not involve an invasion of privacy.
Now you say there is money being made. That is true. However I'm unsure the money is where people think it is. Yes, Amazon is making big money, just like any advertising agency. I do not think however that Colgate is necessarily getting its money's worth here. After all, if the advertising is worth that much to the companies, then why isn't the consumer getting a significant discount on products that advertise to us non-stop? If getting the ads into Amazon Echo is that useful, they should give away the machines for free. Remember, we used to get FREE television shows in exchange for having advertisements (which we were never forced to watch with our eyes held open). That was a good deal with millions of people watched broadcast TV; but for Amazon Echo the number of customers is relatively small.
When's the last time you saw a toothpaste ad on TV. In the 60s and 70s they were ubiquitous. This one gave you minty fresh breath, that one fights cavities, the other one makes your teeth whiter.
Now you never see one. My guess is all the patents expired, everyone implemented everyone else's patents, and all toothpaste is essentially the same nowdays. So buy the cheapest tube you can, cuz it ain't gonna matter.
If people are bound and determined to act like sheep, we shouldn't be terribly surprised when corporations treat them like sheep.
What's really disappointing, though, is that so many have come to believe they actually deserve this, and vote in ways that facilitate their further victimization.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
In the UK, toothpaste ads are quite common, so I think that your theory is incorrect. Perhaps they simply spend their marketing budget elsewhere, for example, paying for prime shelf space in supermarkets?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Some toothpaste is definitely better than the basic stuff, especially if you have specific issues like sensitive or stained teeth.
What you should really be asking is why do you need advertising? Adverts are mostly lies, what you need are honest appraisals and tests.
In the end I had to test several toothpaste products myself, because there wasn't much reliable information several years ago.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
and the next step will be a government mandated 'terminal' in every home. Then in every room.
Orwell must be turning in his grave over how many of the plebs are sleepwalking towards the state he predicted. The CEO's and Marketeers will all be for this. They will make their dosh and escape before the going gets too bad. I hear Antartica is the place to hide out at the moment.
Fuck the lot of them.
I'll never have any of this crap in my home.
When's the last time you saw a toothpaste ad on TV.
Probably last week? here's a fairly recent one, and it's for a normal variety. Nowadays, Crest and Colgate are always plugging their whitening/hyper breath freshening varieties.
I certainly saw a Listerine ad on TV tonight, and I definitely already knew about the existence of mouthwash without those ads, too.
screwing with them?
Pay cash for your Amzon spy device.
Link it to a pre-paid credit card.
Create a fake Amazon account.
Create a tape loop of random words.
Entertainment...
Most people have higher limits than you'd think. "If I'm not doing anything wrong, why should I care about privacy?" The mating cry of the millennial sheep.
I'll make a fortune of my soon to be existing Alexa ad-blocking skill.
...how...Amazon...works!!!
I really thought the whole fuss about these things all joining up and selling you stuff was overblown, until one day at work...
I work in a university biochemistry department, where we do X-ray crystallography. We have a home X-ray source downstairs, which we're talking about upgrading. (No, Alexa, we're not buying it off Amazon, STFU.) My professor is interested in a system that uses liquid gallium for the anode, as opposed to the traditional spinning lump of copper. We've talked about it, a lot, phones nearby. Nothing weird has ever happened as a result.
Then we had a meeting with the nice lady from the Innovations department - the one where they deal with all the patents and fun secret stuff. My boss, being a wonderful old-school professor, just had to tell her in detail about this device, even though it was only vaguely related to what we were meant to be discussing. Her iPhone sat innocently on the table the whole time.
Not two hours later, I went to Amazon to buy some kayaking stuff. Top of my recommendations? 20 grams of gallium. Never had anything even vaguely like it recommended, before or since.
Could be blind coincidence, of course...
"Alexa, do what I say and shut the fuck up"
(and yes, I know I go to feminist hell for that one)
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Hate to burst your bubble but that argument is by no means championed by millenials. In fact, whenever our rights get carved up again, it's usually the baby boomers I hear spouting that hogwash. Less so gen x.
Then again hating on millenials is so much easier than confronting one's own failings...
If they still may, yes, they will.
At what point will acceptance be high enough that you'd already raise suspicion by not inviting the trojan horse into your home? And at what point will you pretty much become a social pariah if you don't?
We already see something like this happen with Facebook. Quite a few companies already don't really have their own homepages anymore. You want to deal with them, you have questions, you have complaints? Better have a Facebook account or you won't. Any promotion will also only happen with Facebook, and by now you also already have webpages that require you to have an account there to log in to them because they want to avoid the hassle of having to deal with their own user database.
And of course if most people you know use Facebook to organize events, guess what you'll have to have to be invited, because it's so comfortable and hassle free to create a group and just invite all the people on the list?
It reminds me more and more of the former East Bloc. A lot of things were not outright outlawed or mandated, but failing to do what The Party wanted usually resulted in you miraculously being sidelined.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Advertising to raise awareness to a product's existence is fine. But do you really think anyone still doesn't know what detergents there are?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yesterday. For a toothpaste that allegedly lets you brush some "artificial enamel" onto your teeth.
But aside of that, yes, the toothpaste ads have vanished. Or my mental ad blocker already registers all of them and throws them away instead of allowing them to be noticed.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ads are bad for your teeth?
Dude, you're not supposed to chew them, they want you to swallow that shit.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well then just get rid off it now because it's only a matter of time.
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.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Amazon Echo, Siri, Google, etc. is Mycroft. I'm not sure if it's quite mature yet, but they are making leaps and bounds: https://mycroft.ai/
But I could never understand why *I* should pay *them* for it. It always seemed that it should be the other way around....
That's because the internet ad-driven revenue model has ruined everything. People are so used now to get a "free" service (e.g. Gmail, Youtube, whatever) in exchange for being subjected to a barrage of advertising (and giving up their personal data to the provider of the service) that this is now becoming commonplace in services and products you actually pay upfront for, in real currency. People are so used to ads everywhere that they just ignore it, and the distinction is lost on them. So I pay $100 for a Windows licence and get advertising on my login screen. I buy Google Home or Amazon Echo and then get ads inserted as "suggestions" (they don't even say they're ads anymore). Soon you'll be buying cars that'll have an LCD screen on each door flashing commercials streamed there by the manufacturer, and you won't have any say in the matter.
Yes but I always forget to pack the whiteboard in the morning so if I decide to stop at the supermarket on my way home, I know what to get....
bickerdyke
But the ad said it was "clinically proven" and even showed some people in white lab coats!!
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
I had some visitors with a young 11-ish child, and the TV was on (which wasn't my choice) but when the ad break came on I hit the mute button so we could talk. The child went ape-shit crazy cos she couldn't hear the ads. It's like she needed the audio fix that came with them or something. It was scary and reminded me why I don't make a habit of watching real time TV.
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
Lots of people will tell you that adverts have no effect on them,
These are the kind of people that advertising has the best effect on. People who refuse to believe they can be influenced. Advertising has a huge effect on me, which is why I go out of my way to avoid/block it. However because I'm concious of the effect, I can control it somewhat. In fact I have a list of brands I'll never buy because one of their ads has really annoyed me.
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.
This... and its why we have an Advertising Standards Agency in the UK (and most other developed countries). I've never understood why Americans seem content to allow advertisers to lie through their teeth and leave determining the truth as an exercise to the reader (a reader who is poorly informed will have trouble divining the truth from propaganda, so it's a negative feedback loop)
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
It's called a brain, with a memory. Some of us were born with one.
The child went ape-shit crazy cos she couldn't hear the ads. It's like she needed the audio fix that came with them or something. It was scary and reminded me why I don't make a habit of watching real time TV.
Should also have reminded you why you shouldn't have children in this day and age.
Luckily for the future of humanity we're not all asocial asexual workaholic cockwombles..
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Lots of people will tell you that adverts have no effect on them,
These are the kind of people that advertising has the best effect on. People who refuse to believe they can be influenced.
Advertising has a huge effect on me, which is why I go out of my way to avoid/block it. However because I'm concious of the effect, I can control it somewhat. In fact I have a list of brands I'll never buy because one of their ads has really annoyed me.
/quote
It depends on your personality. Some people are more open to suggestion than others. Hypnotism in magic acts is one example of this. Some people are easily "hypnotized" while others, like myself, are so skeptical and grounded in reality that it just doesn't work. Advertising is similar. It works on some people much better than others.
Advertising has a minor effect on me. It makes me aware of products that I didn't know about and I tend to notice Ads for products that I've already bought, especially expensive items (part of the post purchase confirmation bias). Beyond that, I always assume that everything in an Ad is a lie in some form or another. Perhaps this is because I understand how marketing works from having a Business Degree and am aware of the techniques being deployed.
In many ways, advertising is a lot like "fake news". A little bit of skepticism goes a long way....
Hell, Stevie Wonder could see this coming...
In the UK, toothpaste ads are quite common, so I think that your theory is incorrect. Perhaps they simply spend their marketing budget elsewhere, for example, paying for prime shelf space in supermarkets?
In the UK, they still have toothpaste ads because ... no, I can't ... it's just too easy ...
And some of us prefer to use it for more interesting things.
bickerdyke
I've found it's a good idea to chew over anything you hear, particularly ads, before you swallow it. That is absolutely in spite of what the advertiser would prefer you do.
Aha, there's the problem! You see, I'd prefer you to buy my toothpaste.
Now just do what I say, and nobody has to get hurt. We need not resort to violence for you to pay me. Instead, I could occasionally gently remind you to buy my toothpaste. I think we all agree this is a better situation than me having to stick a gun in your face.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I'm curious... can you cite a decent clinical study that suggests using any toothpaste is better than none at all? The American Dental Association's removal of the recommendation to floss due to a complete absence of evidence that it is beneficial comes to mind.
The evil didn't start after WWII, it just got more distilled. People who want to sell you stuff have always exploited our bias towards credulity. Where it gets really evil is when they start sponsoring school programs, or whole schools. Unfortunately that is also not a new phenomenon, but we used to at least pretend we thought it was a problem.
My friend recently got a Google Home. It's actually a pretty decent wifi speaker, and among the cheapest as well. Possibly worth buying and disabling the microphone.
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
Not inherently a bad thing.
that they'll buy one of the first three that pops into their heads
Possibly a bad thing.
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.
Only a bad thing if they are trying to justify their purchase with claims of "it's better than the competition".
Not sure where you're going with this. The Brits generally have good dental care but don't tend to spend money on purely cosmetic dentistry so they have more natural looking teeth, whereas here in NA we do a lot of cosmetic dentistry, even to the point of weakening our teeth to make them look better.
Yes but I always forget to pack the whiteboard in the morning...
You could snap a photo of it with your cell phone...
My wife and I just take a picture of the board before we head out. We had some list keeping software, shared notebook, and other things, but they're never in the kitchen when we need them. I suppose that shouting at Alexa and hoping she understands is one option, but just jotting a note on the fridge works just fine. As a trade-off for not installing a spying ad delivery system in my house, I say it's a fair compromise.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Yep, that's how I get to work most of the time, either that or a bicycle.
Well, being a parent is a job, and part of that job is training the children. Certainly when I grew up the parents would turn down the volume during some commercials, or I would be called to dinner during my favorite show. I think today there's a lot more tolerance for bad behavior from children. I see this in stores where a child is running around, playing with the toys, shouting, and meanwhile the parent seems oblivious to what's going on.