4 ms·

Amazon is actually really really good at this :-) They follow me all over the internet for _weeks_ to show me ads about a product that I have already purchased

Amazon is actually really really good at this :-) They follow me all over the internet for _weeks_ to show me ads about a product that I have already purchased via amazon itself !

teapot01 10y ago
While it might seem nonsensical to advertise something you have already purchased, the next time you need to purchase it chances are the brands you saw in ads will seem more trustworthy.
wapz 10y ago
Same situation with me! I purchased a pasta maker (one of those fairly expensive 'automated' ones), and Amazon keeps suggesting I buy another one!
shaftway 10y ago
I'm actually not particularly surprised. The drop-off rate of people with something in the cart is shockingly high. I think it used to be 99%, but that was before people were as used to buying online, so that may have dropped, but I bet it's still high. I suspect there are two factors at play. One might be a chinese wall between search/ads and purchasing. There might be regulatory restrictions about using purchasing data, so they legally can't use it. And in the absence of precognition about anything else you want, ads for something you were looking for recently probably perform pretty well for re-capturing those drop-offs vs. the alternative (random goods?). The other one (and this is less about Amazon) is that the algorithms aren't driven by machines, it's by people. Generally the computer looks at all the ads, calculates the likelihood that you'll click on each one, and multiplies that by the price of that ad to get expected value. Then it just shows you the top n sorted by expected value decreasing. Some of that calculation depends on user behavior (like lowering the percentage the more often you see the ad), but a lot of it depends on what advertisers are willing to pay. And those people are human. They're guessing what you are likely to search for when you need their services or reading articles about their topics. And they have shockingly little control over how to target users. Whenever I hear someone say "Google is selling your information" I urge them to set up an AdWords account and try to buy some information. I have one set up for my own name (useful when interviewing to help guide people to me instead of similarly named people, and to exert influence over the content associated with me). I have my CPC set to $0.05 with a max of $1/day and no funding unless I want it to start showing up. It was highly educational.

Amazon is actually really really good at this :-) They follow me all over the internet for _weeks_ to show me ads about a product that I have already purchased via amazon itself !

teapot01 10y ago

While it might seem nonsensical to advertise something you have already purchased, the next time you need to purchase it chances are the brands you saw in ads will seem more trustworthy.

wapz 10y ago

Same situation with me! I purchased a pasta maker (one of those fairly expensive 'automated' ones), and Amazon keeps suggesting I buy another one!

shaftway 10y ago

I'm actually not particularly surprised. The drop-off rate of people with something in the cart is shockingly high. I think it used to be 99%, but that was before people were as used to buying online, so that may have dropped, but I bet it's still high. I suspect there are two factors at play. One might be a chinese wall between search/ads and purchasing. There might be regulatory restrictions about using purchasing data, so they legally can't use it. And in the absence of precognition about anything else you want, ads for something you were looking for recently probably perform pretty well for re-capturing those drop-offs vs. the alternative (random goods?). The other one (and this is less about Amazon) is that the algorithms aren't driven by machines, it's by people. Generally the computer looks at all the ads, calculates the likelihood that you'll click on each one, and multiplies that by the price of that ad to get expected value. Then it just shows you the top n sorted by expected value decreasing. Some of that calculation depends on user behavior (like lowering the percentage the more often you see the ad), but a lot of it depends on what advertisers are willing to pay. And those people are human. They're guessing what you are likely to search for when you need their services or reading articles about their topics. And they have shockingly little control over how to target users. Whenever I hear someone say "Google is selling your information" I urge them to set up an AdWords account and try to buy some information. I have one set up for my own name (useful when interviewing to help guide people to me instead of similarly named people, and to exert influence over the content associated with me). I have my CPC set to $0.05 with a max of $1/day and no funding unless I want it to start showing up. It was highly educational.