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Amazon needs to get a lot better at selling people complimentary goods. Once I buy something, I frequently see multiple advertisements for that exact product. W

Amazon needs to get a lot better at selling people complimentary goods. Once I buy something, I frequently see multiple advertisements for that exact product. Why can't they develop a database of products that compliment each other and so when someone buys a kitchen tool, they start advertising cookbooks. Example: "On Prime Day, Members purchased over 215,000 Instant Pot 7-in-1 Multi-Functional Pressure Cookers" http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/13/amazon-prime-day-is-biggest-day-for-online-retailer-ever.html http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/13/amazon-prime-day-is-biggest-d... If you have a database of 100s of thousands of people who all are suddenly looking for recipes and raw materials for a pressure cooker, why not advertise to them?

j-c-hewitt 10y ago
They do remarket to people automatically if many people have purchased both product_x and product_y. If you sell stuff to people on Amazon, you could also manually set up a Facebook, Google, etc. remarketing campaign to do just that using your customer emails. They actually do advertise products to you in your favorite category based on your recent purchases. In general you see the same product remarketed to you over and over because it's an additional layer of difficulty to add people who have purchased a product from you to an exclusion list. It's definitely more effective to do that (and Amazon does try to do that to you if you either haven't purchased it after a certain period or have purchased it on that particular device), but with any really complicated website with millions of products some things are going to get lost. >If you have a database of 100s of thousands of people who all are suddenly looking for recipes and raw materials for a pressure cooker, why not advertise to them? If Instant Pot wanted to break Amazon's TOS and make some extra money selling their Amazon customer lists to publishers, they could probably do that. Otherwise Instant Pot would have to get into the publishing business themselves to get access to those lists.
SerLava 10y ago
I'm no expert in this area. But I think this is due to the inherent nature of a system where the ads are all pushed by people marketing specific products, rather than a centralized "what is the best product to market to this person right now?" type of system. It's pretty easy for a toaster guy to say "Amazon, show this ad to people who looked at toasters" without ALSO selectively hiding it from people who just bought a toaster. It's harder to pin down a pattern indicating the imminent purchase of a toaster. Like for instance, someone seems like they're probably 20 years old, and now they're looking at wedding stuff. They are probably going to be influenced by a toaster ad, but getting it to them would require a toaster manufacturer to set up some pretty complicated shit.
erikpukinskis 10y ago
> Why can't they develop a database of products that compliment each other Well, the goods would need some way to communicate, and then there's the question of how does an inanimate object come up with something nice to say about another object.... Unless you meant complement. </snark>
tonyedgecombe 10y ago
From a customer perspective I wish they would try selling to me a bit less, I don't shop at retail stores that are too in your face, it's getting like that at Amazon.
binarysolo 10y ago
They do do this -- people who buy X also buy Y.

j-c-hewitt 10y ago

They do remarket to people automatically if many people have purchased both product_x and product_y. If you sell stuff to people on Amazon, you could also manually set up a Facebook, Google, etc. remarketing campaign to do just that using your customer emails. They actually do advertise products to you in your favorite category based on your recent purchases. In general you see the same product remarketed to you over and over because it's an additional layer of difficulty to add people who have purchased a product from you to an exclusion list. It's definitely more effective to do that (and Amazon does try to do that to you if you either haven't purchased it after a certain period or have purchased it on that particular device), but with any really complicated website with millions of products some things are going to get lost. >If you have a database of 100s of thousands of people who all are suddenly looking for recipes and raw materials for a pressure cooker, why not advertise to them? If Instant Pot wanted to break Amazon's TOS and make some extra money selling their Amazon customer lists to publishers, they could probably do that. Otherwise Instant Pot would have to get into the publishing business themselves to get access to those lists.

SerLava 10y ago

I'm no expert in this area. But I think this is due to the inherent nature of a system where the ads are all pushed by people marketing specific products, rather than a centralized "what is the best product to market to this person right now?" type of system. It's pretty easy for a toaster guy to say "Amazon, show this ad to people who looked at toasters" without ALSO selectively hiding it from people who just bought a toaster. It's harder to pin down a pattern indicating the imminent purchase of a toaster. Like for instance, someone seems like they're probably 20 years old, and now they're looking at wedding stuff. They are probably going to be influenced by a toaster ad, but getting it to them would require a toaster manufacturer to set up some pretty complicated shit.

erikpukinskis 10y ago

> Why can't they develop a database of products that compliment each other Well, the goods would need some way to communicate, and then there's the question of how does an inanimate object come up with something nice to say about another object.... Unless you meant complement. </snark>

tonyedgecombe 10y ago

From a customer perspective I wish they would try selling to me a bit less, I don't shop at retail stores that are too in your face, it's getting like that at Amazon.

binarysolo 10y ago

They do do this -- people who buy X also buy Y.