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Bezos famously says Amazon's "secret sauce" is "obsessive compulsive focus on the customer." Isn't this move at odds with that focus? Customers don't want to se

Bezos famously says Amazon's "secret sauce" is "obsessive compulsive focus on the customer." Isn't this move at odds with that focus? Customers don't want to see ads.

jasonvorhe 8y ago
So wasn't throwing Chromecasts out of the Amazon Store and showing rival products when searching for Chromecasts.
chrischen 8y ago
In theory customers do want to see ads, if the ads are working.
- dannycastonguay 8y ago
  In practice, ads are there because sponsors are ready to pay for something good that consumers have no desire to pay for. Thank you, advertisers, for paying for Gmail and all those good products.
  - 908087 8y ago
    "Our products are so good that nobody is willing to pay for them" doesn't sound very convincing.
    - dannycastonguay 8y ago
      Maybe you have something to teach me. Are you not convinced that Google Search, DDG, Gmail, Facebook, WhatsApp, Snapchat are all "good" products in the eye of many people? As far as I can tell, all of those products are paid for by sponsors.
    - joshuamorton 8y ago
      On the other hand "consumers choose our products even though there are other free alternatives" does.
      - 908087 8y ago
        These platforms have been coasting on network effects alone for years. The "I'd quit but I have no other way to stay in touch with (friends/family/whoever)." / "but all my (whoever) are on it" justifications you constantly see from people are evidence to support that.
        joshuamorton 8y ago
        Yes, email and web-search, the peak of consumer-side vendor lock in. Indeed, networks effects may sometimes be relevant to some of these tools. But that's certainly not always true.
- n42 8y ago
  this is just not true, and only describes a very specific subset of advertisement. for a very large portion of ads, the advertisers want people to see it even if it doesn't translate to a direct sale of something the user already wanted. Disney does not expect someone to see an ad for Disney World and immediately win a click-through conversion for a $2k vacation. They do expect to remain relevant, and the ads have "worked" when Disney pops into mind when I try to plan my next vacation. So they make sure to continue to advertise to families. I do not want to see those ads.
  - everdev 8y ago
    > Disney does not expect someone to see an ad for Disney World and immediately win a click-through conversion for a $2k vacation Having run CPC campaigns many times, companies do care about conversion rates. However, you are tracked across multiple sites and days. But companies do want to know who converted after seeing the ad and who converted after clicking the ad. So, you're right they might not care that you convert immediately. But they do care that people convert over time or they'll pull the ad.
  - bduerst 8y ago
    You're conflating direct response with awareness marketing, which are both valid. It is a concept of information theory for imperfect markets. In a perfect market, the consumer and seller know everything about each other and every other product and service that they could conceivably ever want. Since we live with imperfect markets, consumers do not have all the information about everything on the market. Sellers will pay money to communicate to consumers about their brand, product, service, etc. A percentage of consumers will be aware of this seller the next time they research or consider making a purchase decision. The perfect ad is only shown the consumers that it is relevant to. Search/display ads are still not perfect, but they're closer to this than previous mediums of communication.
    - n42 8y ago
      you're missing my point. many ads "work", and even in a perfect world where I only see the ads that "work" for me, that doesn't mean I want to see them.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  If you presume rational choice theory is true except for the assumption of complete information, and presume that ads always improve the overall accuracy of information and thus justify the leap from “induced into a transaction by the presence of ads” to “wants ads”, sure. However, this is obviously false in many respects.
- newsbinator 8y ago
  If this were true people wouldn't unsubscribe from emails that are relevant to them. Customers want to get on with their day in general. Looking at ads, relevant or not, isn't their end goal.
djhworld 8y ago
The customer of Amazon Ads is the advertisers.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
dpflan 8y ago
Are suggested products in Amazon -- like the view of customers who bought X also bought Y -- equivalent to or considered ads in Amazon?
- thinkling 8y ago
  My impression is that if someone paid for placement, Amazon will label the items as such. So in a detail page you'll see "Frequently bought together" (not paid placement), "Sponsored products related to this item" (paid), "Customers who bought this item also bought" (not paid). Whether or not you think it's an ad is up to you... they're all trying to get you to buy more. :-)
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
okmokmz 8y ago
>Amazon's "secret sauce" is "obsessive compulsive focus on the customer." I feel like this used to be true, but hasn't been the case for at least the past year
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  The biggest example to me that Amazon no longer cares about the customer is their experience for non-Prime users. Random, regular items like Blu-ray discs or diapers will randomly get marked as "Prime Exclusive", and cannot be ordered from Amazon without a Prime subscription, even at a higher price. Prime Exclusive items are, mystifyingly, not even a better price, and usually the same or cheaper elsewhere. Amazon is literally giving you the choice to get Prime or shop elsewhere, and... I go shop elsewhere. Completely mystifying decision on Amazon's part. Amazon just seems to enjoy screwing with anyone who doesn't have Prime, and has done it for years. It's never gotten a lot of coverage because of the pervasiveness of Prime: Anyone reading this comment probably never knew this, because they already had Prime.
  - okmokmz 8y ago
    I've had prime for years, and I think I'm going to let it lapse this year and try to stop using amazon altogether
    - jimmy1 8y ago
      As someone currently doing this: I miss nothing. Walmart offers free 2-day shipping on most goods I would typically order from Amazon, and often cheaper. Best Buy has whatever tech thing I want, I get it same-day, and price-matched at Amazon, and I know it isn't counterfeit. Most book publishers (my original reason for using Amazon) have long ditched the platform and directed me towards ordering direct from them which usually nets me reduced price/shipping. Apple music is better than Amazon Music. Audible is separate anyways, having Prime didn't help me out much there. Netflix is better than Amazon streaming, and so on. The biggest benefit so far? I am generally ordering less stuff overall. I felt like I had to order x amount of stuff to make my prime membership "worth it", but it was never "worth it". It just resulted in me spending more money with Amazon, even if I had better alternatives around me.
tehlike 8y ago
You need to find out the scale of the numbers. Even if 5% does, and clicks on them, it is a crazy number.
- blang 8y ago
  5% would be an extremely high click through rate
  - tehlike 8y ago
    I said people, and i know what the average ctr, cvr and cpm by format is :)
losteric 8y ago
Bezos' real customer is shareholders. The people buying on Amazon have been products for a long time now.
atomical 8y ago
“Your margin is my opportunity" is a better quote for this move.
anth_anm 8y ago
Bezos says lots of things. Amazon is better at customer service than their competitors, usually. They still do stupid shit. See the joke that was AIV on Android for years.
hanniabu 8y ago
It's all relative to who the customer is. In this case it's business and the focus is right in line with their desires.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> Bezos famously says Amazon's "secret sauce" is "obsessive compulsive focus on the customer." Isn't this move at odds with that focus? So is not dealing with commingling. Amazon's focus is on driving down costs, and finding every way to leverage existing position for additional revenue. The claim of customer focus is true only to the extent of finding and greasing every possible route between the customer’s wallet and Amazon's bottom line. Anything else is (as one should expect of any executive’s public statements) simply PR.
- ikeboy 8y ago
  Commingling helps consumers (they get products quicker) and has very little downside. Typically people who are saying it does don't realize that Amazon still tracks which seller sold any particular unit regardless of which order Amazon shipped it for. If A sells a unit and Amazon ships B's inventory to fulfill it faster, Amazon still knows to get A in trouble if there's an issue.
  - putlake 8y ago
    Isn't that the point though? It was B's inventory that was fake so why should A get in trouble?
    - ikeboy 8y ago
      Sorry, was a typo. Can't edit now but the point is they can get the right person in trouble.
  - bit_logic 8y ago
    The problem with commingling is counterfeits. Counterfeits are often not easily detected by the customer without significant effort.
    - ikeboy 8y ago
      That's an issue with or without commingling.
taurath 8y ago
Amazons customers are their sellers and now companies selling ads.
vishnugupta 8y ago
> "obsessive compulsive focus on the customer." Internally at Amazon, the definition of customer depends on the team. For 3rd party seller team seller is a customer. And so for the advertisement team, advertisers are customer. When they say customer obsession this is what is meant. In times of conflict though (e.g., marketplace team and Single Detail Page team when it comes to amount of data to be loaded Vs page latency) the decision is usually made in favour of Customer, i.e., buyer.
aylmao 8y ago
> Bezos famously says Amazon's "secret sauce" is "obsessive compulsive focus on the customer." Isn't this move at odds with that focus? Depends who you mean by "customers". Customers will be advertisers, and you bet they'll obsess over making a great product for them.
- drilldrive 8y ago
  I wouldn't be too sure. There was a time where there were plenty of online competitors for purchasing such items, and what made Amazon stand out was user accessibility. Once he won that market, for sure he was just lucky with the timing to hit the billions.
drusepth 8y ago
There's a weird duality in ads based on their quality. As a customer, I most certainly do want to see ads if they're for things I'm interested in. I don't want to see ads for things I don't care about, though. I'd say most ads nowadays aim to be in the former group, which makes them helpful. Whether they actually make it into that group is up to implementation, but the intent is to be something customers want to see.
matthewaveryusa 8y ago
Bezos' secret sauce is being at the right place at the right time. Once you capture the market you can define what you think made you successful. This is just a finely curated marketing sound bite to 'ouuuhh' and 'ahhhhh' the public into thinking that amazon is 'good'
- jhall1468 8y ago
  Yeah, it was all "luck" and certainly had nothing to do with execution. You can just make all that shit up later.
  - matthewaveryusa 8y ago
    why are you quoting luck? I didn't say it, but somehow you conjecture that bezos won the lottery. Absolutely false: he is the _right_ person to execute, among a pool of a lot of other people capable of executing at the same level as him. To have 5-10 years of running a business without competition (AWS) is almost unheard of. He wouldn't have been able to do it pre commoditization of virtualization technology. edit: Bah to a certain extent you're right, plenty of tech is before its time and me saying being at the right place at the right time is a hind-sight 20-20 sort of comment. What I'm trying to say is I think lots of people have the same vision. Some people have it too early, some have it too late, and some have it at the time where the stars align: customers get it, VC gets it, and your company gets and and has the ability to execute on it. long story short I hope we can agree that while the ability to execute is a requirement it simply isn't enough.
    - jhall1468 8y ago
      "right place at right time" implies luck was the direct result of Amazon rather than any kind of underlying skill. I'm certainly not suggesting luck didn't play a role, but I'm happily suggesting that you're implication was that luck was the primary factor. I disagree.
  - rchaud 8y ago
    Not just luck. Amazon started in '94, but they didn't have to charge sales taxes in most US states, giving them a regulatory loophole advantage that lasted well past 2010. Plus their survival in the early days also had to do with the millions in venture capital propping them up for a decade until they finally became profitable in 2004.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
golergka 8y ago
> Customers don't want to see ads. This strange assumption keeps perpetuated at HN as if it was the only possible opinion - but it's far from it. Personally, most of the ads I see on the internet are next versions of my favourite products, their next versions and related offerings, and I generally enjoy them and seldom click through to actually purchase something. And from talking to a lot of non-tech people, I actually tend to think that there's a lot more of people with similar experience that are just very silent in the whole ad debate.
mises 8y ago
Who is the customer here? This means that now, businesses are customers as well.

Bezos famously says Amazon's "secret sauce" is "obsessive compulsive focus on the customer." Isn't this move at odds with that focus? Customers don't want to see ads.

jasonvorhe 8y ago

So wasn't throwing Chromecasts out of the Amazon Store and showing rival products when searching for Chromecasts.

chrischen 8y ago

In theory customers do want to see ads, if the ads are working.

dannycastonguay 8y ago
In practice, ads are there because sponsors are ready to pay for something good that consumers have no desire to pay for. Thank you, advertisers, for paying for Gmail and all those good products.
- 908087 8y ago
  "Our products are so good that nobody is willing to pay for them" doesn't sound very convincing.
  - dannycastonguay 8y ago
    Maybe you have something to teach me. Are you not convinced that Google Search, DDG, Gmail, Facebook, WhatsApp, Snapchat are all "good" products in the eye of many people? As far as I can tell, all of those products are paid for by sponsors.
  - joshuamorton 8y ago
    On the other hand "consumers choose our products even though there are other free alternatives" does.
    - 908087 8y ago
      These platforms have been coasting on network effects alone for years. The "I'd quit but I have no other way to stay in touch with (friends/family/whoever)." / "but all my (whoever) are on it" justifications you constantly see from people are evidence to support that.
      - joshuamorton 8y ago
        Yes, email and web-search, the peak of consumer-side vendor lock in. Indeed, networks effects may sometimes be relevant to some of these tools. But that's certainly not always true.
n42 8y ago
this is just not true, and only describes a very specific subset of advertisement. for a very large portion of ads, the advertisers want people to see it even if it doesn't translate to a direct sale of something the user already wanted. Disney does not expect someone to see an ad for Disney World and immediately win a click-through conversion for a $2k vacation. They do expect to remain relevant, and the ads have "worked" when Disney pops into mind when I try to plan my next vacation. So they make sure to continue to advertise to families. I do not want to see those ads.
- everdev 8y ago
  > Disney does not expect someone to see an ad for Disney World and immediately win a click-through conversion for a $2k vacation Having run CPC campaigns many times, companies do care about conversion rates. However, you are tracked across multiple sites and days. But companies do want to know who converted after seeing the ad and who converted after clicking the ad. So, you're right they might not care that you convert immediately. But they do care that people convert over time or they'll pull the ad.
- bduerst 8y ago
  You're conflating direct response with awareness marketing, which are both valid. It is a concept of information theory for imperfect markets. In a perfect market, the consumer and seller know everything about each other and every other product and service that they could conceivably ever want. Since we live with imperfect markets, consumers do not have all the information about everything on the market. Sellers will pay money to communicate to consumers about their brand, product, service, etc. A percentage of consumers will be aware of this seller the next time they research or consider making a purchase decision. The perfect ad is only shown the consumers that it is relevant to. Search/display ads are still not perfect, but they're closer to this than previous mediums of communication.
  - n42 8y ago
    you're missing my point. many ads "work", and even in a perfect world where I only see the ads that "work" for me, that doesn't mean I want to see them.
dragonwriter 8y ago
If you presume rational choice theory is true except for the assumption of complete information, and presume that ads always improve the overall accuracy of information and thus justify the leap from “induced into a transaction by the presence of ads” to “wants ads”, sure. However, this is obviously false in many respects.
newsbinator 8y ago
If this were true people wouldn't unsubscribe from emails that are relevant to them. Customers want to get on with their day in general. Looking at ads, relevant or not, isn't their end goal.

djhworld 8y ago

The customer of Amazon Ads is the advertisers.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

dpflan 8y ago

Are suggested products in Amazon -- like the view of customers who bought X also bought Y -- equivalent to or considered ads in Amazon?

thinkling 8y ago
My impression is that if someone paid for placement, Amazon will label the items as such. So in a detail page you'll see "Frequently bought together" (not paid placement), "Sponsored products related to this item" (paid), "Customers who bought this item also bought" (not paid). Whether or not you think it's an ad is up to you... they're all trying to get you to buy more. :-)

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

okmokmz 8y ago

>Amazon's "secret sauce" is "obsessive compulsive focus on the customer." I feel like this used to be true, but hasn't been the case for at least the past year

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
The biggest example to me that Amazon no longer cares about the customer is their experience for non-Prime users. Random, regular items like Blu-ray discs or diapers will randomly get marked as "Prime Exclusive", and cannot be ordered from Amazon without a Prime subscription, even at a higher price. Prime Exclusive items are, mystifyingly, not even a better price, and usually the same or cheaper elsewhere. Amazon is literally giving you the choice to get Prime or shop elsewhere, and... I go shop elsewhere. Completely mystifying decision on Amazon's part. Amazon just seems to enjoy screwing with anyone who doesn't have Prime, and has done it for years. It's never gotten a lot of coverage because of the pervasiveness of Prime: Anyone reading this comment probably never knew this, because they already had Prime.
- okmokmz 8y ago
  I've had prime for years, and I think I'm going to let it lapse this year and try to stop using amazon altogether
  - jimmy1 8y ago
    As someone currently doing this: I miss nothing. Walmart offers free 2-day shipping on most goods I would typically order from Amazon, and often cheaper. Best Buy has whatever tech thing I want, I get it same-day, and price-matched at Amazon, and I know it isn't counterfeit. Most book publishers (my original reason for using Amazon) have long ditched the platform and directed me towards ordering direct from them which usually nets me reduced price/shipping. Apple music is better than Amazon Music. Audible is separate anyways, having Prime didn't help me out much there. Netflix is better than Amazon streaming, and so on. The biggest benefit so far? I am generally ordering less stuff overall. I felt like I had to order x amount of stuff to make my prime membership "worth it", but it was never "worth it". It just resulted in me spending more money with Amazon, even if I had better alternatives around me.

tehlike 8y ago

You need to find out the scale of the numbers. Even if 5% does, and clicks on them, it is a crazy number.

blang 8y ago
5% would be an extremely high click through rate
- tehlike 8y ago
  I said people, and i know what the average ctr, cvr and cpm by format is :)

losteric 8y ago

Bezos' real customer is shareholders. The people buying on Amazon have been products for a long time now.

atomical 8y ago

“Your margin is my opportunity" is a better quote for this move.

anth_anm 8y ago

Bezos says lots of things. Amazon is better at customer service than their competitors, usually. They still do stupid shit. See the joke that was AIV on Android for years.

hanniabu 8y ago

It's all relative to who the customer is. In this case it's business and the focus is right in line with their desires.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> Bezos famously says Amazon's "secret sauce" is "obsessive compulsive focus on the customer." Isn't this move at odds with that focus? So is not dealing with commingling. Amazon's focus is on driving down costs, and finding every way to leverage existing position for additional revenue. The claim of customer focus is true only to the extent of finding and greasing every possible route between the customer’s wallet and Amazon's bottom line. Anything else is (as one should expect of any executive’s public statements) simply PR.

ikeboy 8y ago
Commingling helps consumers (they get products quicker) and has very little downside. Typically people who are saying it does don't realize that Amazon still tracks which seller sold any particular unit regardless of which order Amazon shipped it for. If A sells a unit and Amazon ships B's inventory to fulfill it faster, Amazon still knows to get A in trouble if there's an issue.
- putlake 8y ago
  Isn't that the point though? It was B's inventory that was fake so why should A get in trouble?
  - ikeboy 8y ago
    Sorry, was a typo. Can't edit now but the point is they can get the right person in trouble.
- bit_logic 8y ago
  The problem with commingling is counterfeits. Counterfeits are often not easily detected by the customer without significant effort.
  - ikeboy 8y ago
    That's an issue with or without commingling.

taurath 8y ago

Amazons customers are their sellers and now companies selling ads.

vishnugupta 8y ago

> "obsessive compulsive focus on the customer." Internally at Amazon, the definition of customer depends on the team. For 3rd party seller team seller is a customer. And so for the advertisement team, advertisers are customer. When they say customer obsession this is what is meant. In times of conflict though (e.g., marketplace team and Single Detail Page team when it comes to amount of data to be loaded Vs page latency) the decision is usually made in favour of Customer, i.e., buyer.

aylmao 8y ago

> Bezos famously says Amazon's "secret sauce" is "obsessive compulsive focus on the customer." Isn't this move at odds with that focus? Depends who you mean by "customers". Customers will be advertisers, and you bet they'll obsess over making a great product for them.

drilldrive 8y ago
I wouldn't be too sure. There was a time where there were plenty of online competitors for purchasing such items, and what made Amazon stand out was user accessibility. Once he won that market, for sure he was just lucky with the timing to hit the billions.

drusepth 8y ago

There's a weird duality in ads based on their quality. As a customer, I most certainly do want to see ads if they're for things I'm interested in. I don't want to see ads for things I don't care about, though. I'd say most ads nowadays aim to be in the former group, which makes them helpful. Whether they actually make it into that group is up to implementation, but the intent is to be something customers want to see.

matthewaveryusa 8y ago

Bezos' secret sauce is being at the right place at the right time. Once you capture the market you can define what you think made you successful. This is just a finely curated marketing sound bite to 'ouuuhh' and 'ahhhhh' the public into thinking that amazon is 'good'

jhall1468 8y ago
Yeah, it was all "luck" and certainly had nothing to do with execution. You can just make all that shit up later.
- matthewaveryusa 8y ago
  why are you quoting luck? I didn't say it, but somehow you conjecture that bezos won the lottery. Absolutely false: he is the _right_ person to execute, among a pool of a lot of other people capable of executing at the same level as him. To have 5-10 years of running a business without competition (AWS) is almost unheard of. He wouldn't have been able to do it pre commoditization of virtualization technology. edit: Bah to a certain extent you're right, plenty of tech is before its time and me saying being at the right place at the right time is a hind-sight 20-20 sort of comment. What I'm trying to say is I think lots of people have the same vision. Some people have it too early, some have it too late, and some have it at the time where the stars align: customers get it, VC gets it, and your company gets and and has the ability to execute on it. long story short I hope we can agree that while the ability to execute is a requirement it simply isn't enough.
  - jhall1468 8y ago
    "right place at right time" implies luck was the direct result of Amazon rather than any kind of underlying skill. I'm certainly not suggesting luck didn't play a role, but I'm happily suggesting that you're implication was that luck was the primary factor. I disagree.
- rchaud 8y ago
  Not just luck. Amazon started in '94, but they didn't have to charge sales taxes in most US states, giving them a regulatory loophole advantage that lasted well past 2010. Plus their survival in the early days also had to do with the millions in venture capital propping them up for a decade until they finally became profitable in 2004.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

golergka 8y ago

> Customers don't want to see ads. This strange assumption keeps perpetuated at HN as if it was the only possible opinion - but it's far from it. Personally, most of the ads I see on the internet are next versions of my favourite products, their next versions and related offerings, and I generally enjoy them and seldom click through to actually purchase something. And from talking to a lot of non-tech people, I actually tend to think that there's a lot more of people with similar experience that are just very silent in the whole ad debate.

mises 8y ago

Who is the customer here? This means that now, businesses are customers as well.