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People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

arstechnica.com

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Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#71

Post by hbosch »

Animats wrote: post #7

Do the "smart displays" monitor the behavior of people in the room say and do to determine what to pitch to them? They're already aware of whether someone is near the device. What else are they monitoring?

Unfortunately, they don't need to. Besides the troughs of data from third-party sources, the likelihood that an Echo user is also an Amazon shopper is probably approaching 100%. They get so many good ad signals just from retail, books, Prime Video, etc. that they really don't even need to actively monitor you with a mic or camera...

Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#72

Post by sanex »

jonhohle wrote: post #54
neilv wrote: post #10

I recently bought a Kindle/Fire device pre-owned, to save money. But seeing full-screen shitty consumer products ads on the 'covers of my books', sitting around my home was so depressing, I paid the extra $10-$15, to retroactively turn it into an ad-free device.[1] Though, even with Special Offers disabled, it still puts oversized icons for marketing promotions, bursting out of the search bar at the top of the home s…

I worked on Prime during the Prime Video launch. All of the marketing was around it being ad free and a new benefit of the Prime membership. Not too long later they started playing pre roll ads for Amazon Video offerings (maybe Amazon Studios, I don’t remember). I brought it up in a meeting and the business folks said it was OK because it wasn’t in the middle of the selected content. I’m pushed back, but it went nowh…

I'm always amazed at how little people will care about the customer experience for a shot at a 20k raise.

Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#73

Post by truCoat »

patja wrote: post #51
neilv wrote: post #10

I recently bought a Kindle/Fire device pre-owned, to save money. But seeing full-screen shitty consumer products ads on the 'covers of my books', sitting around my home was so depressing, I paid the extra $10-$15, to retroactively turn it into an ad-free device.[1] Though, even with Special Offers disabled, it still puts oversized icons for marketing promotions, bursting out of the search bar at the top of the home s…

I found the Kindle ads particularly infuriating when they advertised books I had already purchased from Amazon. They were insultingly brain dead in their targeting especially given how much Amazon knows about me

>.. insultingly brain dead in their targeting especially given how much Amazon knows about me.

Fascinating isn't it? It continues over decades. I cannot recall ever once opening an overt ad among, what, hundreds of thousands? Google `subverts' in search I've opened, but that only layers their more desperate enshittings. Newpipe escaped and saved me from Youtube's thousands of bearskin hoodies, butter and bowel movements, pink salt trick, something about men's erections and a tomato.

These must be smart people who engineer this, this `inverse' offensive ad targeting, it must be for some brilliant objective, but I remain completely lost at what it could possibly be.

Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#74

Post by paulryanrogers »

b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #55
nipperkinfeet wrote: post #18

These days, the general rule is to avoid buying anything 'smart'. They are all filled with advertisements and data-sharing practices and are designed to target you through their user interface and applications. They bombard you with offers for their other products and deals.

Matrix got it a bit wrong; the machines aren't interested in our body heat, they're going to put us in the goo pods and force use to watch adverts 24/7

Why? What do they or their creators get out of it?

Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#75

Post by Aloisius »

The most egregious thing for me is that companies aren't disclosing that these devices are used to advertise to you before you purchase them.

Nowhere on the Amazon Echo Show product page is there any mention of advertisements. The product screenshots don't show advertisements nor does the product video.

It absolutely should be illegal for a company to push a software update to an individual's device designed just to enrich themselves - certainly not without informed consent.

Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#76

Post by neilv »

sanex wrote: post #72
jonhohle wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked on Prime during the Prime Video launch. All of the marketing was around it being ad free and a new benefit of the Prime membership. Not too long later they started playing pre roll ads for Amazon Video offerings (maybe Amazon Studios, I don’t remember). I brought it up in a meeting and the business folks said it was OK because it wasn’t in the middle of the selected content. I’m pushed back, but it went nowh…

I'm always amazed at how little people will care about the customer experience for a shot at a 20k raise.

In all fairness to the MBAs, the "Customer Obsession" commandment could be interpreted multiple ways.

Such a metrics-driven company will surely know something about how incentives drive outcomes.

Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#77

Post by neverfrankled »

cyode wrote: post #68

Benjamin Franklin was so close. "Nothing is certain but death ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶a̶x̶e̶s̶.̶"̶, taxes, and ads."

Franklin was a publisher, and sold advertising, no?

Washington wasn't much of a Temperance preacher neither.

Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#78

Post by mbreese »

aomix wrote: post #62

I’m afraid to upgrade from my ~6 year old LG OLED with a damaged corner because I pair it with an Apple TV and only see Apple ads occasionally on the Home Screen. I don’t know if a newer tv would give me the same experience.

All TVs with an hdmi input (where the input is the default input used) will work for you. If the TV doesn’t show the last used input (so it could show you ads), that would be a major problem. Thankfully, I don’t think we are there yet for TVs that aren’t marketed ad supported … yet.

Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

#79

Post by ckemere »

cameldrv wrote: post #43
neilv wrote: post #10

I recently bought a Kindle/Fire device pre-owned, to save money. But seeing full-screen shitty consumer products ads on the 'covers of my books', sitting around my home was so depressing, I paid the extra $10-$15, to retroactively turn it into an ad-free device.[1] Though, even with Special Offers disabled, it still puts oversized icons for marketing promotions, bursting out of the search bar at the top of the home s…

Same thing with Audible. Very annoying. When you open the app, it shows you ads for books to buy instead of the books you already have or the book you're listening to now. Of course, they do not care. Whether you actually listen to the book isn't that important to them, as long as you buy it.

Audible is an Amazon brand, no?
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