{"id":1758,"date":"2012-06-21T06:00:31","date_gmt":"2012-06-21T10:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iamdann.com\/?p=1758"},"modified":"2012-06-20T16:37:09","modified_gmt":"2012-06-20T20:37:09","slug":"amazons-failure-at-targeted-advertising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iamdann.com\/2012\/06\/21\/amazons-failure-at-targeted-advertising","title":{"rendered":"Amazon’s Failure at Targeted Advertising"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Let’s talk about companies that squander targeted\u00a0advertising\u00a0opportunities.<\/p>\n

Amazon has the perfect\u00a0opportunity\u00a0to serve amazingly targeted ads directly to me, on a device I use at least twice a day. I’ve owned every generation of the Kindle since the original launch, working my way to the $79 Kindle Wi-Fi with Special Offers<\/a>, the absolute best Kindle device thus far1<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n

Not only do I use a Kindle every day and buy into Amazon’s ebook ecosystem, I’m also an enthusiastic Prime member. Despite a general mistrust of their business practices<\/a>, the ease, availability, and convenience of Amazon’s free 2-day shipping makes me a regular consumer. I also take full advantage of their wishlist features, creating multiple lists with helpful names. I even use Prime Instant Video every once in a while.<\/p>\n

With all of this personal information, which I have voluntarily given to Amazon, why do they continue to serve me ads that are completely irrelevant to my needs? If Target knows when people are pregnant<\/a> before they know themselves, and adjust their snail-mail\u00a0advertising\u00a0accordingly, why can’t Amazon get it right?<\/p>\n

This is especially\u00a0egregious given that I specifically purchased a device that serves ads. I could have spent another $30 and\u00a0received\u00a0the exact same unit without screensaver adverts, but I volunteered to subsidize the cost of the device with\u00a0advertising. I even saw (see?) value in\u00a0receiving\u00a0a daily reminder about items I may need. Amazon, however, chooses \u00a0to display an image baby bending over when I put my device to sleep.<\/p>\n

The Kindle should be filled with targeted, relevant, impulse purchases. How about some big text asking if I’m low on toilet paper? Why not a Amazon’s top rated coffee sampler set, targeted towards the morning subway commuters (they know I live in New York City). What about that item I added to my wishlist last week? It’s Friday and I just got paid.<\/p>\n

Instead, my current ad rotation includes a deal for framing (despite never purchasing an image, picture, or frame), a baseball related life-sized wall graphic, and a Pampers\/Swiffer ad. Besides the Swiffer wipes2<\/a><\/sup>, every single item is completely irrelevant to me.<\/p>\n

Amazon, what’s the deal?<\/p>\n

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  1. I’ll save my discussion about touchscreen e-readers for another time. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Those things are awesome<\/em>. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Let’s talk about companies that squander targeted\u00a0advertising\u00a0opportunities. Amazon has the perfect\u00a0opportunity\u00a0to serve amazingly targeted ads directly to me, on a device I use at least twice a day. I’ve owned every generation of the Kindle since the original launch, working my way to the $79 Kindle Wi-Fi with Special Offers, the absolute best Kindle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1759,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[111],"tags":[676,56,224],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.iamdann.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/amazon-kindle-ads.jpg?fit=475%2C490&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p123kB-sm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iamdann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1758"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iamdann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iamdann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iamdann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iamdann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1758"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.iamdann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1764,"href":"https:\/\/www.iamdann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1758\/revisions\/1764"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iamdann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iamdann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iamdann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iamdann.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}