
Amazon, Advertising's Sleeping Giant, to Awaken in 2013 - kjhughes
http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/amazon-advertisings-sleeping-giant-awaken-2013-145964
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hammerzeit
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.

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ojilles
"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?

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brandnewlow
I think he's assuming Amazon will rent its data for use across other inventory
sources rather than build its own ad network.

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johnrgrace
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.

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cm2012
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.

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jpdevereaux
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.

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robryan
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.

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andybak
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.

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lsc
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?

