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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.
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.
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)
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.
Titty chips and smelly tampon boogers have been added to your list.
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These things seem oriented to the "Prime" member. People who honestly believe deep in their hearts that Amazon is an awesome company and that driving to actual stores to support a local economy is for old losers. They do buy the same stuff over and over from Amazon. Need toilet paper? Get Amazon to buy it. Need another liter of soda? Get Amazon to deliver it (and enter your house while you're gone to put it in the fridge). These are the people who scream at others "The $99 a year Pays For Itself!!!"
Sure, if you're a disabled shut in, then Amazon is great. If you're an able bodied person then spread your business around to more than one store and step outside now and then.
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!
Let me explain this: if I want fresh blueberries, I don't need them some time in the next 48 hours. I need them now, so I can have them for breakfast tomorrow. Since there will be at least one such purchase per week, might as well go to the store and buy the rest.
Also, I can pay good, old-fashioned, cold, hard cash in the store. Not have my shopping habits sliced, diced, tracked, and otherwise microscopically examined by marketeering pieces of trash.
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 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...
"That doesn't sound like something I'd buy, now does it?"
"Buy now" accepted.
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.
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.
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
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