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Amazon are terrifically bad at the “things I have already purchased” advertising. They _know_ with 100% certainty that I bought a webcam 6 months back - because

Amazon are terrifically bad at the “things I have already purchased” advertising. They _know_ with 100% certainty that I bought a webcam 6 months back - because I bought it on Amazon. Yet they’re still sending me email and putting ads on webpages for webcams, including the exact model I bought from them... (I totally expect some shitty AdTech startup to start buying remarketing ads for NFTs any minute now. )

jefftk 6y ago
Have you considered that Amazon is very good at what they do, and that perhaps people who buy a webcam are much more likely than then general public to buy another one?
- sillydrivings 6y ago
  Considering that the same thing happened to me when I last bought a movie on DVD from them and then got ads for that very same movie for weeks, no.
- someguyorother 6y ago
  You'd be surprised how often the people who are supposed to be good at ads aren't. Organizational inefficiency explains a lot of it: https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-here-its-called-online-advertising/13228924500-22d5fd24 https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-h...
  - jefftk 6y ago
    That may happen in many companies, but I'd be very surprised if it happens with remarketing ads and Amazon? Performance-based advertising with solid experiments that appropriately consider both counterfactuals and long-term user value is one of their core strengths.
- bigiain 6y ago
  > Have you considered that Amazon is very good at what they do Cynical-me considers Amazon to be the least-worst of all the companies trying to do what they do. I'm sure their "re-advertise stuff people bought before" thing works great for some of what they sell - toilet paper or laundry detergent or cat food. So just like every "data driven" VC backed startup, they've "validated the business model" and are now pumping advertising dollars into "scaling" their proven toilet paper sales pipeline to webcams. They're probably busy running multivariate testing to find if the optimal repurchase advertising repeat rate for webcams is down near 4.3 weeks like laundry detergent, or way up at 9.1 weeks like toilet paper. 'cause the data doesn't lie, right? :sigh:
Viliam1234 6y ago
Maybe the victim in this case is not you, but the company paying for the ads. Think about it this way: You buy a webcam from some company X. The company X wants to sell more webcams, so they buy ads. Amazon shows those ads to you. At the end of the year, company X gets a report saying "we displayed your ads to bigiain, and bigiain bought your webcam" (the little detail that you bought the webcam before seeing the ads is not mentioned). Would this seem to the company X as money well spent?

jefftk 6y ago

Have you considered that Amazon is very good at what they do, and that perhaps people who buy a webcam are much more likely than then general public to buy another one?

sillydrivings 6y ago
Considering that the same thing happened to me when I last bought a movie on DVD from them and then got ads for that very same movie for weeks, no.
someguyorother 6y ago
You'd be surprised how often the people who are supposed to be good at ads aren't. Organizational inefficiency explains a lot of it: https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-here-its-called-online-advertising/13228924500-22d5fd24 https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-h...
- jefftk 6y ago
  That may happen in many companies, but I'd be very surprised if it happens with remarketing ads and Amazon? Performance-based advertising with solid experiments that appropriately consider both counterfactuals and long-term user value is one of their core strengths.
bigiain 6y ago
> Have you considered that Amazon is very good at what they do Cynical-me considers Amazon to be the least-worst of all the companies trying to do what they do. I'm sure their "re-advertise stuff people bought before" thing works great for some of what they sell - toilet paper or laundry detergent or cat food. So just like every "data driven" VC backed startup, they've "validated the business model" and are now pumping advertising dollars into "scaling" their proven toilet paper sales pipeline to webcams. They're probably busy running multivariate testing to find if the optimal repurchase advertising repeat rate for webcams is down near 4.3 weeks like laundry detergent, or way up at 9.1 weeks like toilet paper. 'cause the data doesn't lie, right? :sigh:

Viliam1234 6y ago

Maybe the victim in this case is not you, but the company paying for the ads. Think about it this way: You buy a webcam from some company X. The company X wants to sell more webcams, so they buy ads. Amazon shows those ads to you. At the end of the year, company X gets a report saying "we displayed your ads to bigiain, and bigiain bought your webcam" (the little detail that you bought the webcam before seeing the ads is not mentioned). Would this seem to the company X as money well spent?