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Amazon Has Already Become Something of a Corporate Boogeyman -- and Now It Could Be Bringing Its Industry Disruption To Advertising (nbcnews.com)
When Jeff Bezos arrives as expected at the Sun Valley conference -- the year's most exclusive meeting of media industry leaders -- he'll know much more about his fellow media moguls than they know about him. And that has them worried, especially as Amazon's advertising business picks up. From a report: Amazon's growing advertising business is poised to challenge the stranglehold Google and Facebook have on the internet's ad dollars, thanks to its growing dominance in e-commerce and growing presence in the media world. Google knows what consumers are interested in, and Facebook knows who you are. But Amazon has what many in the advertising industry regard as the most important piece of the puzzle: what people buy. And the e-commerce giant is starting to capitalize on that data in a big way. "It is definitely growing as a media company, but it is surging in terms of ad revenue," said Advertising Age editor Brian Braiker. "The scary part for marketers is that [data] is all walled off, and if you want the special sauce you have to play by Amazon's rules." Amazon still makes the bulk of its money through the sales of goods and its widely used cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services, but its advertising business is growing. In the first three months of 2018, Amazon reported revenue for its "other" segment, which is largely advertising, rose 139 percent, to $2 billion.
So the biggest evildoers on the internet - Google and Facebook - are about to get competition from a company that actually sells products to the people who go to their website (instead of selling the people who go to their website as the product)?
About damn time.
I hope Fuckerberg is shitting blood.
I can vouch for this software. Works great!
I don't think the advertising world could get any worse than it already is, so if Amazon starts driving them out of business then I'm all for it.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Alexa is now selling less than Google home, much less. Amazon's smartphone foray was a total flop. Its self driving car tech is, somehow, behind even Apple. For some reason it decided to make video games. If you want to check on how that's going ask yourself if you even knew that before reading this.
Amazon might be able to "disrupt" industries outside the tech industry. But its track record of taking on other tech companies is dismal. I don't see this changing anytime soon.
Please provide links to all of the about:config settings.
I didn't know about these add-ons. Links for Firefox:
Tracking Token Stripper
No Coin
Neat URL
Block ads on your network with Raspberry Pi and pi-hole
Maybe they will eventually become one company: Micro-Amazo-Google, and carry insufficient management to a new level.
Based on the absolutely useless / unrelated / random "recommendations" Amazon suggest for my Kindle library, I'd say that none of the others big advertisers are exactly quaking in their boots.
It is too early to tell [and, I am not a lawyer], but there are aspects of this story which may well fall foul of the new General Data Protection Regulation from the EU, or, perhaps, the related law just passed in California.
Among the key principles of the GDPR are concepts such as the "Lawful Basis for Processing" and "Consent"...
Here, the parent is suggesting that because Amazon is the platform on which people make purchases, "Amazon knows what you actually buy" and therefore this gives Amazon the ability to better target advertisements. However, the GDPR "Lawful Basis for Processing" helps to limit the way that companies can use [or abuse] data about us. There are six categories for the Lawful Basis for Processing:-
1. For the legitimate interests of a data controller or a third party, unless these interests are overridden by the Charter of Fundamental Rights (especially in the case of children).
2. To perform a task in the public interest or in official authority.
3. To comply with a data controller's legal obligations.
4. To fulfill contractual obligations with a data subject.
5. To perform tasks at the request of a data subject who is in the process of entering into a contract with a data controller.
6. To protect the vital interests of a data subject or another person.
Amazon are going to have to rely entirely upon the first of these if they want to use our shopping data to be able to serve tailored advertisements. But here's the rub - is it a valid "legitimate interest" for Amazon, a retail shopping platform, to have the right to serve tailored advertisements? [ And: you need to think beyond the concept that, well, they do this already on their platform - because what has changed is the law. Taking data from the public for one claimed purpose and then using it for another purpose is not legal any more...]
I haven't checked the detail of the recent California legislation, but it seems to me that the GDPR was conceived and enacted to stop exactly this sort of mega-corporation abuse of our personal data, even if that personal data is just our shopping habits.
Bezos and Amazon are setup as Vertical Integrators like the Robber Barrons of the 19th Century. Not content to own a simple steel mill Carnegie realized he could drive costs down by owning the coal mines, the railroad and everything else that supplied his steel empire. Bezo's is following the tradition, not content with a marketplace of goods he's moving into delivery of those goods and production of the goods themselves. He will continue to expand these things just like he'll expand the digital side of the business by moving into advertising and all kinds of other services.