I still hate how I'll buy something that is clearly an expensive one time purchase from amazon (such as a lawnmower or an audio receiver) and the best its dumb algorithm can come up with is, "Hey, wanna buy another lawnmower?"
Actually this recommendation makes a lot of sense. You generally have 30 days to return your purchase, no questions asked. The algorithm knows that you're now quite likely to buy another lawnmower/audio receiver. Perhaps there is a fat chance you may even spend more the second time over (after returning your previous purchase)?
They might be weighting by E(rev|ad_shown) in which case you'd only need a very small amount of repeat users to make it worthwhile to show it to everyone.