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>I have a sense that this is the dirty little secret of the spyware advertising industry, personalization just isn't that great. Personalized adverts and recommendations can be incredibly, horrendously dumb. Here's what I see when I hit amazon's homepage at the moment :
A "buy once again" column that features blackout curtains I bought 3 months ago (no, curtains don't need to be replaced every months, amazon.), USB cables I bought multiples of in the same time frame, a wireless charger (I already bought two before).
An entire line dedicated to showing me backpacks (I bought one less than a year ago)
An entire line dedicated to headphones (I recently bought wireless IEMs)
An entire line dedicated to watches (same) I don't get it. Supposedly the best and brightest work at firms like amazon and google to brainwash us to buy stuff, but classic, random, non-targeted advertisement is more likely to make me discover products I'd buy than targeted advertisement because the latter only shows me things after I don't need to buy them anymore! Here's what I would expect actually intelligent targeted advertising to do :
After buying a smartphone, recommend accessories (cases, screen protectors, USB-C dongles, chargers, whatever)
Here's what targeted advertisement actually does :
show me smartphones ads everywhere I go after I already selected and BOUGHT a smartphone. No, I don't need to buy another smartphone weeks after a recent replacement, amazon! The same sort of phenomenon can happen after google locks on searches I did to buy something. I can't wait to see the internet advertisement industry crash and burn, it's overvalued nonsense. |
Disagree there. About 75% of the things I buy on Amazon are repeating purchases that I nevertheless don't want to be automatically scheduled. It used to be a real pain in the neck to reorder something manually, so I'm glad they made that easier.
But yes, in general, Amazon is full of low-hanging fruit that's been neglected on the tree for a decade or more. Buying clothes from Amazon still manages to be a worse experience than going to the mall, for instance, which is really saying something.