11 ms·

What's funny about this article is: 1. It's obvious clickbait - "secret" brands - how salacious! Yeah, as though a company wants to keep things it sells secre

What's funny about this article is: 1. It's obvious clickbait - "secret" brands - how salacious! Yeah, as though a company wants to keep things it sells secret. 2. Each time you click on a link from the Quartz article, you are given a url with a link tracker tag. For example, for the Arabella brand, you get: 16352060011?tag=quartz07-20 So basically someone sat there behind a computer, authoring an article while using words like, "expose" and "clandestine" brands, and "attacking small brands," while simultaneously setting up ad links on their Amazon account so that they would make money from Amazon every time someone clicked on said brands. Now that is journalistic integrity at its finest, and emblematic of the world of manipulating people's fears and worries for profit that we live in.

fucktech 9y ago
You should never wear a polo regardless of brand
mgiannopoulos 9y ago
Nice catch. I used to think Quartz had some quality standards.
- Raphmedia 9y ago
  I never understood the outrage behind referral links. If somebody is linking to Amazon and users start shopping, why is it so bad that they get a slice of the pie?
  - sp332 9y ago
    But now it looks like the article only exists to get people to click Amazon links, and not because there's any actual news.
    - Kiro 9y ago
      Are those polar opposites?
      - sp332 9y ago
        No, it's just not a good look for a news organization to have content so entangled with income, especially if they don't even mention it. I think http://thewirecutter.com/ http://thewirecutter.com/ does a good job, and they're also way more open about the fact that the site is covered in affiliate links.
      - justinjlynn 9y ago
        At its heart, it is a conflict of interest and a clear violation of traditional journalistic ethics. At the very least, it is contrary to what one might assume to be a societal norm. Once one is aware of what they're doing, one feels taken advantage of and that is simply not acceptable.
    - manigandham 9y ago
      Did you know all of those brands belonged to Amazon before you read the story?
  - mgiannopoulos 9y ago
    Referral links are a form of advertisement. Quartz should have a disclaimer attached to the article since they mix their content with advertising.
- JoblessWonder 9y ago
  Almost every major website is doing the exact same thing. Here is Wired's policy on affiliate links: https://www.wired.com/2015/11/affiliate-link-policy/ https://www.wired.com/2015/11/affiliate-link-policy/ They are almost assuredly added automatically so the author had no clue it was happening. I used to author a Wordpress plugin that did this for bloggers so they wouldn't need to worry about generating links through the Amazon website then going back to their Wordpress dashboard.
michaelbuckbee 9y ago
I feel a little differently here. 1. Amazon most likely does want to keep it quiet that these are house brands, only because they have to walk the line between third party sellers, traditional retail and their house brands. There are examples of Amazon straight up copying items and putting them under their "Amazon Basics" brand - check out their laptop stands vs the Rain Design mStand. 2. I suspect that it's just a script that adds the Amazon Affiliate tag to the URLs. This is pretty typical for large publication CMS's.
- silencio 9y ago
  I didn't even realize that these were supposed to be secret. I vaguely recall getting emails about Happy Belly and Wickedly Prime (I guess the author left out Wickedly Prime...). I'm pretty sure I've also gotten emails and physical mailers about Lark & Ro and Scout & Ro, but maybe Amazon was targeting people (like me) that buys a lot of women's and children's clothing on the site? Amazon Fashion does their own thing all the time. I also get targeted a lot for Simple Joys by Carter's, which is a baby clothing line made just for Amazon Prime members but not a white label product, which I find very fascinating. And the last thing I bought under that brand was so much nicer than the general Carter's experience of ripping twenty million of those plastic tags off.
- j-c-hewitt 9y ago
  Almost every major department store and big box retailer has their own white label brands. Amazon is not unique in doing this nor in making it slightly obscure. You can usually figure out which ones are which.
reaperducer 9y ago
In the real, non-tinfoil hat, world those affiliate links are automatically added by the CMS and the writer has nothing to do with it, sees no revenue from it, and has no idea it's happening. This is Quartz, not some dude's blog. Sorry, not everything is a conspiracy to get you.
komali2 9y ago
I don't understand this kind of callous judgement of writers trying to make money. We don't see judgement here for the Amazon engineers that wrote the ref system, or Amazon for, well, selling product. I find it frustrating - somehow the writer has no integrity because they want money for their work? What, to you, would have been an acceptable way for this writer to present their research? Raw data handed to the internet on a silver platter as they bow out of the room and fund a server to allow us to access it? I disagree that the article is clickBAIT. I agree that the writer picked a title that would garner clicks, and then they gave us some interesting (to me) research. It wasn't holistic, it doesn't tell us EVERYTHING about Amazon, no, but it gave me enough to Google if I'm more interested. And if they're gonna link to Amazon products anyway, why wouldn't they use referral links? Are we going to lambast someone for seeing a harmless way to make some change and taking advantage of it?
- justicezyx 9y ago
  > somehow the writer has no integrity because they want money for their work? Writers job is writing article, spread news and knowledge, and make money. If you write ads and claims it an article or news, you loss your integrity? Does this sound reasonable to you?
  - komali2 9y ago
    Before you ask whether that sounds reasonable, I'd need to be convinced this is an ad. To me it is an article, one that apparently someone had to thumb through a couple hundred patent applications to write, among other research.
    - justicezyx 9y ago
      I used ads as an example. The article can be described as an article embedded with Amazon afflicted links. Put that in the disclaimer.
      - throw2016 9y ago
giaour 9y ago
I have never seen Quartz's CMS, but it's likely adding those referral trackers to any Amazon link in any article. Source: have worked for a few online-native magazines and seen this feature multiple times
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tptacek 9y ago
I don't know, it's not the story of the century, but I found it interesting and clicked around most of the links to the Amazon brands. And only among Internet nerds are affiliate links seen as sleazy.
- justinjlynn 9y ago
  > And only among Internet nerds are affiliate links seen as sleazy. Given the subject matter of the article, that may be an unwarranted assumption.
  - ryandrake 9y ago
    I'd argue that the only reason "only Internet nerds" find affiliate links sleazy is that they're the only ones who know what they are. If the average Joe realized that merely clicking on a link and going shopping might monetarily reward the person who published the link, he'd find that sleazy too. Affiliate link defenders: Imagine this scenario. One of your family members or a close friend has been sending you "links to a few cool/funny sites" every few weeks for the last 5 years. Your friend can find such great web sites! That last one with cats swimming in a pool was hilarious! Then all of a sudden you learn that all this time he was getting paid every time you clicked on one of those links, but never disclosed this to you. Wouldn't you feel like that was just a tiny bit sleazy?
    - tptacek 9y ago
      It's literally an article about the brands. What else were they going to link to instead? I don't think you've thought this through very carefully.
      - ryandrake 9y ago
        How does that make the practice any less sleazy? I wonder why a publisher wouldn't want to disclose somewhere in the text (even in 6 point gray on white text in a footer) that the publisher gets paid when users browse to Amazon through the links and buy something?
theEXTORTCIST 9y ago
to add to your post, that affiliate link stays active on amazon accounts that clicked it for 24hours and pays out to the owner for every product purchased in that time frame
- popinman322 9y ago
  Well that's interesting. Do new affiliate links push the old one(s) out? Do they stack?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
manigandham 9y ago
Not the greatest story but it delivered exactly what was promised - which is brands that are known but not known as belonging to Amazon. That's what was secret. Also who cares if there are affiliate links? It's a nice way for the publisher to make money and makes absolutely no difference to you. Do you use an adblocker too? Why the outrage?
mcwm 9y ago
Hello: author here! I honestly have no idea what that tracking tag is, but 07/20 was the date I started writing this story! Guessing it's just Amazon tracking to see where traffic is coming from. But if you have any other questions about the story or my journalistic integrity, I'm here to answer them!
- RyJones 9y ago
  Small Parts used to be an independent store - it was acquired in 2005[0]. I wonder how many of the other brands came in via purchase? Not that it matters; it's been 12 years, I'd expect Small Parts to be fully integrated. [0] https://www.geekwire.com/2012/amazoncom-push-nuts-bolts/ https://www.geekwire.com/2012/amazoncom-push-nuts-bolts/
- nnutter 9y ago
  How would Amazon know the date you started writing the article?
  - mcwm 9y ago
    I'm honestly not sure ! It could've been a CMS thing — will need to enquire.
- callumlocke 9y ago
  That tracking tag is an affiliate ID allowing Quartz to receive a small cut whenever someone clicks through and buys something. Most likely it was added automatically by the Quartz CMS, as is common practice. Probably just ignore the guy questioning your journalistic integrity.
- nnutter 9y ago
  Confirmed through several sources that `tag=` links are definitely referral links.
- taco_emoji 9y ago
  How would Amazon change the URLs on your article? More likely, if you didn't do it on purpose, is that Quartz's CMS automagically appends that tag into any Amazon.com links.
hammock 9y ago
Not clickbait bro. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_brand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_brand >Large companies wanting to reach a new demographic may use a secret brand to establish clout among that demographic. This imprint brand may use the distribution network of the parent brand, but ship from a dummy company.

fucktech 9y ago

You should never wear a polo regardless of brand

mgiannopoulos 9y ago

Nice catch. I used to think Quartz had some quality standards.

Raphmedia 9y ago
I never understood the outrage behind referral links. If somebody is linking to Amazon and users start shopping, why is it so bad that they get a slice of the pie?
- sp332 9y ago
  But now it looks like the article only exists to get people to click Amazon links, and not because there's any actual news.
  - Kiro 9y ago
    Are those polar opposites?
    - sp332 9y ago
      No, it's just not a good look for a news organization to have content so entangled with income, especially if they don't even mention it. I think http://thewirecutter.com/ http://thewirecutter.com/ does a good job, and they're also way more open about the fact that the site is covered in affiliate links.
    - justinjlynn 9y ago
      At its heart, it is a conflict of interest and a clear violation of traditional journalistic ethics. At the very least, it is contrary to what one might assume to be a societal norm. Once one is aware of what they're doing, one feels taken advantage of and that is simply not acceptable.
  - manigandham 9y ago
    Did you know all of those brands belonged to Amazon before you read the story?
- mgiannopoulos 9y ago
  Referral links are a form of advertisement. Quartz should have a disclaimer attached to the article since they mix their content with advertising.
JoblessWonder 9y ago
Almost every major website is doing the exact same thing. Here is Wired's policy on affiliate links: https://www.wired.com/2015/11/affiliate-link-policy/ https://www.wired.com/2015/11/affiliate-link-policy/ They are almost assuredly added automatically so the author had no clue it was happening. I used to author a Wordpress plugin that did this for bloggers so they wouldn't need to worry about generating links through the Amazon website then going back to their Wordpress dashboard.

michaelbuckbee 9y ago

I feel a little differently here. 1. Amazon most likely does want to keep it quiet that these are house brands, only because they have to walk the line between third party sellers, traditional retail and their house brands. There are examples of Amazon straight up copying items and putting them under their "Amazon Basics" brand - check out their laptop stands vs the Rain Design mStand. 2. I suspect that it's just a script that adds the Amazon Affiliate tag to the URLs. This is pretty typical for large publication CMS's.

silencio 9y ago
I didn't even realize that these were supposed to be secret. I vaguely recall getting emails about Happy Belly and Wickedly Prime (I guess the author left out Wickedly Prime...). I'm pretty sure I've also gotten emails and physical mailers about Lark & Ro and Scout & Ro, but maybe Amazon was targeting people (like me) that buys a lot of women's and children's clothing on the site? Amazon Fashion does their own thing all the time. I also get targeted a lot for Simple Joys by Carter's, which is a baby clothing line made just for Amazon Prime members but not a white label product, which I find very fascinating. And the last thing I bought under that brand was so much nicer than the general Carter's experience of ripping twenty million of those plastic tags off.
j-c-hewitt 9y ago
Almost every major department store and big box retailer has their own white label brands. Amazon is not unique in doing this nor in making it slightly obscure. You can usually figure out which ones are which.

reaperducer 9y ago

In the real, non-tinfoil hat, world those affiliate links are automatically added by the CMS and the writer has nothing to do with it, sees no revenue from it, and has no idea it's happening. This is Quartz, not some dude's blog. Sorry, not everything is a conspiracy to get you.

komali2 9y ago

I don't understand this kind of callous judgement of writers trying to make money. We don't see judgement here for the Amazon engineers that wrote the ref system, or Amazon for, well, selling product. I find it frustrating - somehow the writer has no integrity because they want money for their work? What, to you, would have been an acceptable way for this writer to present their research? Raw data handed to the internet on a silver platter as they bow out of the room and fund a server to allow us to access it? I disagree that the article is clickBAIT. I agree that the writer picked a title that would garner clicks, and then they gave us some interesting (to me) research. It wasn't holistic, it doesn't tell us EVERYTHING about Amazon, no, but it gave me enough to Google if I'm more interested. And if they're gonna link to Amazon products anyway, why wouldn't they use referral links? Are we going to lambast someone for seeing a harmless way to make some change and taking advantage of it?

justicezyx 9y ago
> somehow the writer has no integrity because they want money for their work? Writers job is writing article, spread news and knowledge, and make money. If you write ads and claims it an article or news, you loss your integrity? Does this sound reasonable to you?
- komali2 9y ago
  Before you ask whether that sounds reasonable, I'd need to be convinced this is an ad. To me it is an article, one that apparently someone had to thumb through a couple hundred patent applications to write, among other research.
  - justicezyx 9y ago
    I used ads as an example. The article can be described as an article embedded with Amazon afflicted links. Put that in the disclaimer.
    - throw2016 9y ago

giaour 9y ago

I have never seen Quartz's CMS, but it's likely adding those referral trackers to any Amazon link in any article. Source: have worked for a few online-native magazines and seen this feature multiple times

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

tptacek 9y ago

I don't know, it's not the story of the century, but I found it interesting and clicked around most of the links to the Amazon brands. And only among Internet nerds are affiliate links seen as sleazy.

justinjlynn 9y ago
> And only among Internet nerds are affiliate links seen as sleazy. Given the subject matter of the article, that may be an unwarranted assumption.
- ryandrake 9y ago
  I'd argue that the only reason "only Internet nerds" find affiliate links sleazy is that they're the only ones who know what they are. If the average Joe realized that merely clicking on a link and going shopping might monetarily reward the person who published the link, he'd find that sleazy too. Affiliate link defenders: Imagine this scenario. One of your family members or a close friend has been sending you "links to a few cool/funny sites" every few weeks for the last 5 years. Your friend can find such great web sites! That last one with cats swimming in a pool was hilarious! Then all of a sudden you learn that all this time he was getting paid every time you clicked on one of those links, but never disclosed this to you. Wouldn't you feel like that was just a tiny bit sleazy?
  - tptacek 9y ago
    It's literally an article about the brands. What else were they going to link to instead? I don't think you've thought this through very carefully.
    - ryandrake 9y ago
      How does that make the practice any less sleazy? I wonder why a publisher wouldn't want to disclose somewhere in the text (even in 6 point gray on white text in a footer) that the publisher gets paid when users browse to Amazon through the links and buy something?

theEXTORTCIST 9y ago

to add to your post, that affiliate link stays active on amazon accounts that clicked it for 24hours and pays out to the owner for every product purchased in that time frame

popinman322 9y ago
Well that's interesting. Do new affiliate links push the old one(s) out? Do they stack?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

manigandham 9y ago

Not the greatest story but it delivered exactly what was promised - which is brands that are known but not known as belonging to Amazon. That's what was secret. Also who cares if there are affiliate links? It's a nice way for the publisher to make money and makes absolutely no difference to you. Do you use an adblocker too? Why the outrage?

mcwm 9y ago

Hello: author here! I honestly have no idea what that tracking tag is, but 07/20 was the date I started writing this story! Guessing it's just Amazon tracking to see where traffic is coming from. But if you have any other questions about the story or my journalistic integrity, I'm here to answer them!

RyJones 9y ago
Small Parts used to be an independent store - it was acquired in 2005[0]. I wonder how many of the other brands came in via purchase? Not that it matters; it's been 12 years, I'd expect Small Parts to be fully integrated. [0] https://www.geekwire.com/2012/amazoncom-push-nuts-bolts/ https://www.geekwire.com/2012/amazoncom-push-nuts-bolts/
nnutter 9y ago
How would Amazon know the date you started writing the article?
- mcwm 9y ago
  I'm honestly not sure ! It could've been a CMS thing — will need to enquire.
callumlocke 9y ago
That tracking tag is an affiliate ID allowing Quartz to receive a small cut whenever someone clicks through and buys something. Most likely it was added automatically by the Quartz CMS, as is common practice. Probably just ignore the guy questioning your journalistic integrity.
nnutter 9y ago
Confirmed through several sources that `tag=` links are definitely referral links.
taco_emoji 9y ago
How would Amazon change the URLs on your article? More likely, if you didn't do it on purpose, is that Quartz's CMS automagically appends that tag into any Amazon.com links.

hammock 9y ago

Not clickbait bro. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_brand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_brand >Large companies wanting to reach a new demographic may use a secret brand to establish clout among that demographic. This imprint brand may use the distribution network of the parent brand, but ship from a dummy company.