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My experience of targeted advertising is Amazon trying to sell me things I’ve already bought ...
by rusk 8y ago
My experience of targeted advertising is Amazon trying to sell me things I’ve already bought ...
- distances 8y agoAnd Booking pushing advertisements for the exact same hotel I've just checked on their service. I can't understand how that would seem like a good idea to anyone.
- pelario 8y agoI've thought the same (and heard the same booking "blunder"), until I visited a city I had visited before, and went for the exact same hotel...
- TuringTest 8y agoSurely that would make sense the next time you visit the city, not for the same visit.
- bdamm 8y agoThere’s some marketing theory about brand reinforcement near a purchase creating a more likely customer later. I’m not a marketer though.
- maxxxxx 8y agoThe easiest way to get "brand reinforcement" is to deliver a good product. I will remember them. Right now it seems they want to get "brand reinforcement" through constant nagging which already causes me to dislike the brand.
- dhimes 8y agoBut did you need an ad to get you to do that? Seems like that's the one ad you don't need to see.
- JAlexoid 8y agoThat depends on where you see that ad. If you search for that particular hotel on Google, it's going to have an ad from N online travel agencies(OTA). If you do a broad search on OTA website, then you're likely to book the same hotel that you stayed last time... Thus pushing it up is a great way of getting you to book... But that depends on how much the hotel is contributing in marketing
- reaperducer 8y agoAnd Booking pushing advertisements for the exact same hotel I've just checked on their service. I can't understand how that would seem like a good idea to anyone. This happened to me just last week. Unfortunately, it's the least of Booking's user-hostile traits. Like sending me e-mails pestering me to review a hotel I checked into less than an hour before. Or flashing "Hurry! Only 1 room left!" when I know for a fact that the hotel I'm inquiring about is 90% empty. Or flashing "23 people booked this hotel in the last 24 hours!" when I know the inn only has 4 rooms and is in probably the lest popular destination in North America. Unfortunately, there's a particular place I have to travel to which only has one motel within 70 miles, and the only way to book a room in advance is through Booking.
- rchaud 8y agoAll those little tricks you described are part of a strategy usually called Conversion Rate Optimization. They do this because it works. What you described was likely A/B tested. Some visitors to the site saw the nagging message, while others didn't.
- ABCLAW 8y agoTurns out you can grease your numbers by manipulating user sentiment. Who cares if you need to lie a little bit, right?
- JAlexoid 8y agoA hotel can be 90% empty and Booking could have only 1 left in their inventory to sell.
- r3bl 8y agoThe opposite works as well. On one occasion, I've tried booking straight from the hotel, it told me no rooms available for the selected dates. I've tried Booking, and sure enough, that same room I had my eyes on was available.
- 8y ago
- JAlexoid 8y agoActually... That one works, if certain conditions are met. They also don't update that fast. You looked at a hotel in London and a certain hotel is the best revenue generator in the area - for a little bit you're going to see that ad... or maybe you're going to see that ad for a long time, if there are no better options to advertise.
- delinka 8y agoThis seems to be ingrained deeper than targeted ads. Orders give me the option to "buy it again" for things that I only ever need one of.
- Scoundreller 8y agoOr, sometimes in my experience, something I was selling. I browsed retailers to copy the specs into my ad.
- kiallmacinnes 8y agoIn fairness, this is an understandable mistake for any automated system to make, even more so when compared to Amazon thinking everything is a consumable I repurchase every month. Hint to Amazon: not everything is a consumable ;)
- badwolf 8y agoThis is a point I bring up when casually talking with non-tech minded friends when they start talking about machine learning taking over everything... I bought a Dyson last summer. Amazon is still suggesting that I buy more vacuum cleaners.
- itissid 8y agoAnd selling Hawaii vacation packages to people after they have been there. And I live on the east coast.
- fastball 8y agoTbf Amazon has the least experience with ML of the FAANGs.
- hawski 8y agoIt seems that it would pay out a lot for them to do a few simple heuristics by hand. For example: if just bought something do not show a thing from the same category. At most show a thing from accessories category, which I think they do.
- rusk 8y agoMaybe that just goes to show just how much money they're making that they don't really need to feel bothered!
- tmoravec 8y agoNah. That's not AI enough!
- hashhar 8y agoUp until recently i used to work at a major Indian eCommerce and can confirm that most companies use a mix of the simple heuristics you suggest together with some data mining. So, they would take your recent purchases, clicks, searches and wish listed products and recommended products from some accessory category or related products. ie. Traditional mining combined with heuristics. It also helps to have separate widgets for similar products and for cross-sell products.
- frereubu 8y agoMe too - but I do wonder sometimes if there's a long game involved, where it's more likely to make you recommend it, or give it as a gift. I can't quite see how that would work in practice, but it just seems so utterly stupid otherwise.
- tivert 8y ago> Me too - but I do wonder sometimes if there's a long game involved, where it's more likely to make you recommend it, or give it as a gift. I can't quite see how that would work in practice, but it just seems so utterly stupid otherwise. I'm going to go with Occam's razor here: the advertisers are not scarily competent but instead typically bumbling and stupid.
- frereubu 8y agoOr the slightly more prosaic British version: cock-up, not conspiracy. Me too, on balance. But it seems like it should be easy to mark entire categories - particularly large purchases like vacuum cleaners - as "recently bought one of those, try something else."
- therealx 8y agoI've heard this is done sometimes to make you feel good about your purchase and the decision you made by showing you inferior options.
- vuyani 8y agocan you elaborate more on this or perhaps drop a link?