5 ms·

Amazon, Advertising's Sleeping Giant, to Awaken in 2013

49 points by kjhughes 14y ago

cm2012 14y ago
On a side note: As a third party seller on Amazon (jewelry), my experience with Amazon Product Ads is that it is a poorly put together product. The metrics are unreliable and the interface is difficult and time consuming to use. I would, of course, still try Amazon's new ad platform if it comes out.
- jpdevereaux 14y ago
  I just started using Amazon's Product Advertising API (for referral marketing) and it too seems to be fairly obtuse. They clearly don't put as much effort into their not-as-public products.
  - robryan 14y ago
    I don't really think those ads are something they are pushing very hard. From what I have read online people have had limited success with them, the main game is still just to be listed on the marketplace.
- kmfrk 14y ago
  I think it's ridiculous that they don't even bother to provide some half-way good-looking affiliate banners to put on your site. I have to design one myself, if I don't want to make embarrass myself to my visitors.
- inthewoods 14y ago
  You're not the target for the offering - the target is really large CPG companies such as P&G.
hammerzeit 14y ago
There have been rumblings for a while that advertising is one of Amazon's upcoming long-term bets like cloud services were 3-5 years ago. I feel like this is a little bit outside of HN's normal areas of interest, but it's worth stressing that this seems like it has the potential to be a Big Deal. That's for a few reasons: 1. The display advertising ecosystem has, for years, been talking about data-driven display. The truth of the matter is, though, that most of the data is indirectly inferred and extremely low-quality. Companies like Google and Facebook tread very lightly when it comes to offering data for targeting for fear of massive privacy backlash, but it seems like Amazon could sidestep that. If Amazon is allowing implicit/indirect access to Amazon purchase history, it will be far and away better than anything else out there. More importantly, the unevenness of the data and of performance has really held back broader adoption -- if they're smart they may be able to bring over many of the holdouts. 2. Advertisers and agencies have an extremely wary relationship with Google and are cautious about Facebook too. If they play it right, Amazon can be the major non-aligned player in the industry -- a technology without inventory. It's also worth noting that I've recently noticed Amazon ramping up its own retargeting programs more aggressively. Assuming that retargeting performs for them like it does for virtually every other e-commerce site out there, I would not be surprised to see a significant jump in Amazon's revenue attributed to that over the next few quarters. There should be some very interesting opportunities for startups to piggyback themselves on this when it comes out.
- ojilles 14y ago
  "major non-aligned player in the industry -- a technology without inventory" Huh? What am I missing here? Amazon is a combination of own inventory and x2C inventory right?
  - brandnewlow 14y ago
    I think he's assuming Amazon will rent its data for use across other inventory sources rather than build its own ad network.
- brandnewlow 14y ago
  "1. The display advertising ecosystem has, for years, been talking about data-driven display. The truth of the matter is, though, that most of the data is indirectly inferred and extremely low-quality. Companies like Google and Facebook tread very lightly when it comes to offering data for targeting for fear of massive privacy backlash, but it seems like Amazon could sidestep that. If Amazon is allowing implicit/indirect access to Amazon purchase history, it will be far and away better than anything else out there. More importantly, the unevenness of the data and of performance has really held back broader adoption -- if they're smart they may be able to bring over many of the holdouts." This is very true. It's a quiet but widely accepted truth that "data" doesn't work for direct response advertising due it being too expensive and too diluted to drive results. If Amazon is able to solve this by selling their data direct, yes, it would be a big deal for DR.
johnrgrace 14y ago
Amazon bought a digital marketing agency in NYC a few years ago, they often make smalll buys that later are related to major offering they make a few years later. I think the great tension for all of this will be, Amazon can sell almost anything itself so if they're selling you ad space it's value to them is going to be less than the price you paid. Amazon is pretty smart, thus I suspect it will often be a bad deal to buy Ads from them.
andybak 14y ago
Amazon's access to my entire purchasing history hasn't helped it produce a remotely enticing store on my Kindle device or the Android App. The suggestions are incredible mediocre and the list is pretty much "Here's a few suggestions. Like them or lump them" with very little filtering or sorting.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  Amazon's software UX as a whole is quite mediocre. Their web design is quite appalling, and their Android skin/apps are pretty bad too. In my eyes, the only good thing about Amazon is that you can buy a lot of stuff really cheap from their site and get it within 2 days. That seems to be more about supply chain management than software.
- lsc 14y ago
  Yeah; I really like my kindle, but I got it with advertising, 'cause I'm cheap, and hell, even from a "how I'm seen" point of view, I don't want to be seen as the sort of person that would pay $40 extra to change what is on my kindle when it is turned off. But I'm pretty sure that amazon is targeting their ads... not to get me to actually click on them, but instead to embarrass me into paying the $40 (you can pay the money you saved buying the kindle with ads and turn off ads later.) I mean, my kindle is full of technical books, and has a bunch of project gutenburg history texts, too. A smattering of sci-fi. And I get ads for "Dove for men" - or "twilight" Yeah, only thing I can figure is that they think that I'll pay them because I'm afraid of that girl in the coffee shop thinking I'm some kind of fruit. Or, maybe it's just that technical books don't have marketing budget? who knows?

49 points by kjhughes 14y ago

cm2012 14y ago

On a side note: As a third party seller on Amazon (jewelry), my experience with Amazon Product Ads is that it is a poorly put together product. The metrics are unreliable and the interface is difficult and time consuming to use. I would, of course, still try Amazon's new ad platform if it comes out.

jpdevereaux 14y ago
I just started using Amazon's Product Advertising API (for referral marketing) and it too seems to be fairly obtuse. They clearly don't put as much effort into their not-as-public products.
- robryan 14y ago
  I don't really think those ads are something they are pushing very hard. From what I have read online people have had limited success with them, the main game is still just to be listed on the marketplace.
kmfrk 14y ago
I think it's ridiculous that they don't even bother to provide some half-way good-looking affiliate banners to put on your site. I have to design one myself, if I don't want to make embarrass myself to my visitors.
inthewoods 14y ago
You're not the target for the offering - the target is really large CPG companies such as P&G.

hammerzeit 14y ago

There have been rumblings for a while that advertising is one of Amazon's upcoming long-term bets like cloud services were 3-5 years ago. I feel like this is a little bit outside of HN's normal areas of interest, but it's worth stressing that this seems like it has the potential to be a Big Deal. That's for a few reasons: 1. The display advertising ecosystem has, for years, been talking about data-driven display. The truth of the matter is, though, that most of the data is indirectly inferred and extremely low-quality. Companies like Google and Facebook tread very lightly when it comes to offering data for targeting for fear of massive privacy backlash, but it seems like Amazon could sidestep that. If Amazon is allowing implicit/indirect access to Amazon purchase history, it will be far and away better than anything else out there. More importantly, the unevenness of the data and of performance has really held back broader adoption -- if they're smart they may be able to bring over many of the holdouts. 2. Advertisers and agencies have an extremely wary relationship with Google and are cautious about Facebook too. If they play it right, Amazon can be the major non-aligned player in the industry -- a technology without inventory. It's also worth noting that I've recently noticed Amazon ramping up its own retargeting programs more aggressively. Assuming that retargeting performs for them like it does for virtually every other e-commerce site out there, I would not be surprised to see a significant jump in Amazon's revenue attributed to that over the next few quarters. There should be some very interesting opportunities for startups to piggyback themselves on this when it comes out.

ojilles 14y ago
"major non-aligned player in the industry -- a technology without inventory" Huh? What am I missing here? Amazon is a combination of own inventory and x2C inventory right?
- brandnewlow 14y ago
  I think he's assuming Amazon will rent its data for use across other inventory sources rather than build its own ad network.
brandnewlow 14y ago
"1. The display advertising ecosystem has, for years, been talking about data-driven display. The truth of the matter is, though, that most of the data is indirectly inferred and extremely low-quality. Companies like Google and Facebook tread very lightly when it comes to offering data for targeting for fear of massive privacy backlash, but it seems like Amazon could sidestep that. If Amazon is allowing implicit/indirect access to Amazon purchase history, it will be far and away better than anything else out there. More importantly, the unevenness of the data and of performance has really held back broader adoption -- if they're smart they may be able to bring over many of the holdouts." This is very true. It's a quiet but widely accepted truth that "data" doesn't work for direct response advertising due it being too expensive and too diluted to drive results. If Amazon is able to solve this by selling their data direct, yes, it would be a big deal for DR.

johnrgrace 14y ago

Amazon bought a digital marketing agency in NYC a few years ago, they often make smalll buys that later are related to major offering they make a few years later. I think the great tension for all of this will be, Amazon can sell almost anything itself so if they're selling you ad space it's value to them is going to be less than the price you paid. Amazon is pretty smart, thus I suspect it will often be a bad deal to buy Ads from them.

andybak 14y ago

Amazon's access to my entire purchasing history hasn't helped it produce a remotely enticing store on my Kindle device or the Android App. The suggestions are incredible mediocre and the list is pretty much "Here's a few suggestions. Like them or lump them" with very little filtering or sorting.

w1ntermute 14y ago
Amazon's software UX as a whole is quite mediocre. Their web design is quite appalling, and their Android skin/apps are pretty bad too. In my eyes, the only good thing about Amazon is that you can buy a lot of stuff really cheap from their site and get it within 2 days. That seems to be more about supply chain management than software.
lsc 14y ago
Yeah; I really like my kindle, but I got it with advertising, 'cause I'm cheap, and hell, even from a "how I'm seen" point of view, I don't want to be seen as the sort of person that would pay $40 extra to change what is on my kindle when it is turned off. But I'm pretty sure that amazon is targeting their ads... not to get me to actually click on them, but instead to embarrass me into paying the $40 (you can pay the money you saved buying the kindle with ads and turn off ads later.) I mean, my kindle is full of technical books, and has a bunch of project gutenburg history texts, too. A smattering of sci-fi. And I get ads for "Dove for men" - or "twilight" Yeah, only thing I can figure is that they think that I'll pay them because I'm afraid of that girl in the coffee shop thinking I'm some kind of fruit. Or, maybe it's just that technical books don't have marketing budget? who knows?