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Amazon owns a whole collection of secret brands

qz.com

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Re: Amazon owns a whole collection of secret brands

#61

Post by nnutter »

mcwm wrote: post #52
x2398dh1 wrote: post #10

What's funny about this article is: 1. It's obvious clickbait - "secret" brands - how salacious! Yeah, as though a company wants to keep things it sells secret. 2. Each time you click on a link from the Quartz article, you are given a url with a link tracker tag. For example, for the Arabella brand, you get: 16352060011?tag=quartz07-20 So basically someone sat there behind a computer, authoring an article while using…

Hello: author here! I honestly have no idea what that tracking tag is, but 07/20 was the date I started writing this story! Guessing it's just Amazon tracking to see where traffic is coming from. But if you have any other questions about the story or my journalistic integrity, I'm here to answer them!

How would Amazon know the date you started writing the article?

Re: Amazon owns a whole collection of secret brands

#63

Post by callumlocke »

mcwm wrote: post #52
x2398dh1 wrote: post #10

What's funny about this article is: 1. It's obvious clickbait - "secret" brands - how salacious! Yeah, as though a company wants to keep things it sells secret. 2. Each time you click on a link from the Quartz article, you are given a url with a link tracker tag. For example, for the Arabella brand, you get: 16352060011?tag=quartz07-20 So basically someone sat there behind a computer, authoring an article while using…

Hello: author here! I honestly have no idea what that tracking tag is, but 07/20 was the date I started writing this story! Guessing it's just Amazon tracking to see where traffic is coming from. But if you have any other questions about the story or my journalistic integrity, I'm here to answer them!

That tracking tag is an affiliate ID allowing Quartz to receive a small cut whenever someone clicks through and buys something. Most likely it was added automatically by the Quartz CMS, as is common practice.

Probably just ignore the guy questioning your journalistic integrity.

Re: Amazon owns a whole collection of secret brands

#64

Post by silencio »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #29
x2398dh1 wrote: post #10

What's funny about this article is: 1. It's obvious clickbait - "secret" brands - how salacious! Yeah, as though a company wants to keep things it sells secret. 2. Each time you click on a link from the Quartz article, you are given a url with a link tracker tag. For example, for the Arabella brand, you get: 16352060011?tag=quartz07-20 So basically someone sat there behind a computer, authoring an article while using…

I feel a little differently here. 1. Amazon most likely does want to keep it quiet that these are house brands, only because they have to walk the line between third party sellers, traditional retail and their house brands. There are examples of Amazon straight up copying items and putting them under their "Amazon Basics" brand - check out their laptop stands vs the Rain Design mStand. 2. I suspect that it's just a s…

I didn't even realize that these were supposed to be secret. I vaguely recall getting emails about Happy Belly and Wickedly Prime (I guess the author left out Wickedly Prime...). I'm pretty sure I've also gotten emails and physical mailers about Lark & Ro and Scout & Ro, but maybe Amazon was targeting people (like me) that buys a lot of women's and children's clothing on the site? Amazon Fashion does their own thing all the time.

I also get targeted a lot for Simple Joys by Carter's, which is a baby clothing line made just for Amazon Prime members but not a white label product, which I find very fascinating. And the last thing I bought under that brand was so much nicer than the general Carter's experience of ripping twenty million of those plastic tags off.

Re: Amazon owns a whole collection of secret brands

#65

Post by Frondo »

komali2 wrote: post #33
x2398dh1 wrote: post #10

What's funny about this article is: 1. It's obvious clickbait - "secret" brands - how salacious! Yeah, as though a company wants to keep things it sells secret. 2. Each time you click on a link from the Quartz article, you are given a url with a link tracker tag. For example, for the Arabella brand, you get: 16352060011?tag=quartz07-20 So basically someone sat there behind a computer, authoring an article while using…

I don't understand this kind of callous judgement of writers trying to make money. We don't see judgement here for the Amazon engineers that wrote the ref system, or Amazon for, well, selling product. I find it frustrating - somehow the writer has no integrity because they want money for their work? What, to you, would have been an acceptable way for this writer to present their research? Raw data handed to the inter…

"somehow the writer has no integrity because they want money for their work?"

Heck yeah, on this point, I'd much rather the writer get a few cents from anyone who chooses to buy the thing--crowd-source that revenue--than just a lump sum from a manufacturer.

Re: Amazon owns a whole collection of secret brands

#66

Post by nnutter »

mcwm wrote: post #52
x2398dh1 wrote: post #10

What's funny about this article is: 1. It's obvious clickbait - "secret" brands - how salacious! Yeah, as though a company wants to keep things it sells secret. 2. Each time you click on a link from the Quartz article, you are given a url with a link tracker tag. For example, for the Arabella brand, you get: 16352060011?tag=quartz07-20 So basically someone sat there behind a computer, authoring an article while using…

Hello: author here! I honestly have no idea what that tracking tag is, but 07/20 was the date I started writing this story! Guessing it's just Amazon tracking to see where traffic is coming from. But if you have any other questions about the story or my journalistic integrity, I'm here to answer them!

Confirmed through several sources that `tag=` links are definitely referral links.

Re: Amazon owns a whole collection of secret brands

#67

Post by taco_emoji »

mcwm wrote: post #52
x2398dh1 wrote: post #10

What's funny about this article is: 1. It's obvious clickbait - "secret" brands - how salacious! Yeah, as though a company wants to keep things it sells secret. 2. Each time you click on a link from the Quartz article, you are given a url with a link tracker tag. For example, for the Arabella brand, you get: 16352060011?tag=quartz07-20 So basically someone sat there behind a computer, authoring an article while using…

Hello: author here! I honestly have no idea what that tracking tag is, but 07/20 was the date I started writing this story! Guessing it's just Amazon tracking to see where traffic is coming from. But if you have any other questions about the story or my journalistic integrity, I'm here to answer them!

How would Amazon change the URLs on your article? More likely, if you didn't do it on purpose, is that Quartz's CMS automagically appends that tag into any Amazon.com links.

Re: Amazon owns a whole collection of secret brands

#68

Post by ryandrake »

justinjlynn wrote: post #40
tptacek wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, it's not the story of the century, but I found it interesting and clicked around most of the links to the Amazon brands. And only among Internet nerds are affiliate links seen as sleazy.

> And only among Internet nerds are affiliate links seen as sleazy. Given the subject matter of the article, that may be an unwarranted assumption.

I'd argue that the only reason "only Internet nerds" find affiliate links sleazy is that they're the only ones who know what they are. If the average Joe realized that merely clicking on a link and going shopping might monetarily reward the person who published the link, he'd find that sleazy too.

Affiliate link defenders: Imagine this scenario. One of your family members or a close friend has been sending you "links to a few cool/funny sites" every few weeks for the last 5 years. Your friend can find such great web sites! That last one with cats swimming in a pool was hilarious! Then all of a sudden you learn that all this time he was getting paid every time you clicked on one of those links, but never disclosed this to you. Wouldn't you feel like that was just a tiny bit sleazy?

Re: Amazon owns a whole collection of secret brands

#69

Post by 33W »

mcwm wrote: post #52
x2398dh1 wrote: post #10

What's funny about this article is: 1. It's obvious clickbait - "secret" brands - how salacious! Yeah, as though a company wants to keep things it sells secret. 2. Each time you click on a link from the Quartz article, you are given a url with a link tracker tag. For example, for the Arabella brand, you get: 16352060011?tag=quartz07-20 So basically someone sat there behind a computer, authoring an article while using…

Hello: author here! I honestly have no idea what that tracking tag is, but 07/20 was the date I started writing this story! Guessing it's just Amazon tracking to see where traffic is coming from. But if you have any other questions about the story or my journalistic integrity, I'm here to answer them!

Hi Mike - can you clarify this sentence from near the end of the article? I'm only seeing two payments to Amazon.

It’s now gotten to the point where it’s quite easy to pay Amazon three times in one order: for shipping, which you get access to through Prime, and for a product that’s actually just an Amazon-made product.

Re: Amazon owns a whole collection of secret brands

#70

Post by philfrasty »

aembleton wrote: post #62

So, this is like Lidl, Aldi, Sportsdirect or Poundshops. Pretty normal stuff really.

Always thought Aldi & Lidl mostly do private-label deals (so essentially you have the same product in the package).

Seems AZ builds products from scratch: „...decide to work with manufacturers to make the product itself...“.

edit: spelling

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