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Amazon Sets Its Sights on the $88B Online Ad Market

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161–170 of 239 posts

Re: Amazon Sets Its Sights on the $88B Online Ad Market

#161

If they have your information, every public company today will try and sell it. No exceptions. :-/

They will try to sell access to you based on the information that they have about you, but they will generally not sell the information they have about you. (For one thing, they could only do that once...)

Re: Amazon Sets Its Sights on the $88B Online Ad Market

#162
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to say your comment sounds like an opinion, that may or may not be true; furthermore you are assuming there is $5-10 profit margin on a $25 item on Amazon... this does not seem very likely or rather an exception not the norm in the cutthroat and competitive selling arena that is Amazon. How about AdWords; can Amazon get 50 bucks a click on a search? Nope they can't, but Google does. I don't see Amazon dethroni…

I'm in the industry, I hear people talk about ads all the time. The $25 per action is from a talk I was at 2 weeks ago from someone doing 8 figures a year on shopify and a ton on amazon as well who made this point specifically. Generally private label on Amazon has high margins but high competition, in the good niches at least. Everything eventually dies and gets commoditized. People spend 10-30% ACoS all day long, p…

> Typically people will buy amazon ads at breakeven or worse in order to gain sales rank to get more organic sales.

This is a very important point. I sell on Amazon and I run ads at break even profit to get more organic reviews and higher sales rank. Much more retained value compared to paid search engine ads in ecommerce

Re: Amazon Sets Its Sights on the $88B Online Ad Market

#163

This is my bear case for Google. Google offers the least precise targeting compared to Facebook and Amazon. Facebook knows more about its users because users tell it about themselves and Amazon knows more about purchasing habits of its users because of thier purchase and search history. If I’m searching for something with the intention on buying it, I am going to go to the specific site - like Priceline, hotels.com,…

Google shows you ads based on what you type in so you are directly telling them what you're looking for at that moment. That's a pretty good position to be in as an advertiser. Some people will do what you do and go right to a specific search site, but others will start that process at Google.

Amazon can do the same, but the user is probably already looking to buy, although with less breadth of category coverage. Amazon is also more of a closed ecosystem, which is less flexible for advertisers but probably better for conversion.

Re: Amazon Sets Its Sights on the $88B Online Ad Market

#164
Slightly different topic but what are the big ad networks doing these days to address the proliferation of malware across their networks? I've been having a lot of issues with browser hijacking lately from ads that appear to be served from legitimate ad networks (after some cursory investigation namely from Doubleclick), and typically from HN submissions.

I've attempted to report these issues on a number of occasions. But the amount of attention it gets suggests at worse a level of complicity.

Re: Amazon Sets Its Sights on the $88B Online Ad Market

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's Google known for? Search. This means people tell it exactly what they want. Who cares what your relationship status is when I can see you type in "wedding ring" into a search box? Who cares where you like to eat in the past when you searched for "chinese food" on maps, and potentially even clicked on an ad for a restaurant? This is called "intent" and it's incredibly powerful because you can advertise for exac…

Why users will stick to Google forever for those queries? they can search those on shopping/review apps.

Because Google has better results? What app has managed to take any serious amount of search queries from Google?

Re: Amazon Sets Its Sights on the $88B Online Ad Market

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people are checking in then they are also online, and if you're online then your location is available. This is not hard to do.

On iOS, your location isn’t available to Google though. iOS has three per app settings for location permissions for apps - never, while using, and always. Google can only get location data if you are actively using Google Maps.

You're stuck on Google Maps and checkins but that is not the only thing that people use, nor is GPS necessary. Anyone sitting down at a restaurant and using the internet on their device via any app or website will shed location details that Google and other networks can pickup.

Re: Amazon Sets Its Sights on the $88B Online Ad Market

#167
post #164

Slightly different topic but what are the big ad networks doing these days to address the proliferation of malware across their networks? I've been having a lot of issues with browser hijacking lately from ads that appear to be served from legitimate ad networks (after some cursory investigation namely from Doubleclick), and typically from HN submissions. I've attempted to report these issues on a number of occasions…

It's a business problem, not technical. Lack of any regulation or consequences means no real economic incentive to stop malware in the industry.

Also most of the malware is not directly on the big networks but specialized and spammy networks that sites run because they pay more.

Re: Amazon Sets Its Sights on the $88B Online Ad Market

#168
post #160
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you don't need too many stat techniques for basic tracking: 1) Set up Facebook pixel on your checkout thank you page + collect referral into into a database. 2) Spend $1,000 3) See how many purchases Facebook reports came from Facebook, check out how many sales you get recently have the Facebook referrer. 4) Repeat if sales revenue > $1,000. This is obviously the simplest use case possible, but there you are.…

I guess for (4) you mean, "repeat if [attributable] _profit_ increase [vs control] > $1,000"? Not much point in driving $1,000 in _revenue_ with $1,000 in marketing spend unless your margins are 100%.

yes

Re: Amazon Sets Its Sights on the $88B Online Ad Market

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why users will stick to Google forever for those queries? they can search those on shopping/review apps.

Because Google has better results? What app has managed to take any serious amount of search queries from Google?

You are being naive here, the edge is data size, what made Amazon stuck out is they have shopping specific data, that's what matters, so too will those specific apps.

Re: Amazon Sets Its Sights on the $88B Online Ad Market

#170
If I run some large customer-facing services on AWS (or any service, for that matter), doesn't that provide Amazon with the same (or even better) detailed insights on customer behavior I can have?

Am I the product as well as the customer on AWS?

While Google with their cloud services has the same opportunity, this additional source of data is not available to FB.

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