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I've been long amazed at how bad Amazon's web ads are, as if the department was authorized to get rid of money as fast as possible. Besides the times -- because
by danso 8y ago
I've been long amazed at how bad Amazon's web ads are, as if the department was authorized to get rid of money as fast as possible. Besides the times -- because of one click through to a joke product like $10K ultrapremium audio cables -- that I would get followed by weeks with absurd ads, my favorite example is getting barraged by Battlestar Galactica season 3 ads right after I bought the damn thing. OTOH, perhaps Amazon's ad/recommendation system was too smart, trying to warn me from purchasing season 4.
I understand that big data learning systems are harder to tweak than what we'd suspect from ground-level day-to-day experience. But it just seems like Amazon still has plenty of room to apply some conventional heuristics to get far more efficiency than they do now.
- throwawaylalala 8y agoMany of those ads are paid for by the seller. The seller frequently isnt Amazon.
- j-c-hewitt 8y agoThose ads are mostly on Amazon's automatic remarketing systems. They only recently opened up control over the bidding and targeting of those to sellers and brands. Eventually considering how well that ad system tends to work in the right hands, I would expect it to be less intrusive and more effective over time. Amazon's remarketing tends to be paid for by Amazon and it behaves like any remarketing system run by other companies if you don't change anything from the defaults, set a very high frequency cap, and don't pay attention to whether or not the person converts.