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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday November 29 2018, @04:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the another-brick-in-the-wall dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Parents putting together baby registries on Amazon have begun to notice a pesky problem, one that has resulted in parents receiving items they neither listed nor wanted. The online retailer has been placing sponsored products in baby registries, the Wall Street Journal reports, but because the ads look so similar to other registry items, people are purchasing them, unaware that the items weren't added to the registry by parents. Like added items, the sponsored products include an image, rating, price and a "0 of 1 Purchased" tag. The only thing that distinguishes them is a small, gray "Sponsored" label situated just above the item name.

[...] One new dad told the Wall Street Journal that he only realized Amazon had placed sponsored products in his baby registry when the Aveeno bath-time set arrived at his home. He said the ads were "blatantly trying to trick you." "Worst part is a friend spent money on something we didn't want. And Amazon profited," he added. While users can remove these ads from their registries, Amazon reportedly told advertisers that around 60 percent were left in place.

Source: https://www.engadget.com/2018/11/28/amazon-inserting-sponsored-products-baby-registries/


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday November 29 2018, @04:43PM (6 children)

    by Knowledge Troll (5948) on Thursday November 29 2018, @04:43PM (#767780) Homepage Journal

    All modern marketing is based on the idea of getting people to buy crap they don't need by showing advertising that tricks their brain into feeling good about it bypassing the logical purchasing decision.

    It sounds like Bezos found a way to optimize this: why invest a ton of work in a commercial? This is a much quicker easier way to trick people into having crap they don't even want.

    100% marketing success.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by urza9814 on Thursday November 29 2018, @06:37PM (1 child)

    by urza9814 (3954) on Thursday November 29 2018, @06:37PM (#767835) Journal

    I've seen a few studies showing that people are becoming less and less susceptible to traditional forms of advertising...here's one such report for example:

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnewman/2015/04/28/research-shows-millennials-dont-respond-to-ads/ [forbes.com]

    First they had the traveling salesman. Then people started to learn that the salesman would be long gone with your money by the time your found out that the product sucked, so they stopped buying the "snake oil" and other products.

    So then they had stuff like TV/radio ads and big national brands. You can trust them, because you know where they are! Except they'd still sell you pure lies, they just had a new shield -- legalese and fine print. But people again learned to be cautious and "don't believe everything you see on TV"

    Then we get product placement, but we start to learn how that works too, and pretty soon instead of "Spiderman drinks Coca-Cola!", we see the can and go "Nice attempt at product placement ya jerks"

    So now they impersonate your friends and family and pretend the ads are coming from someone you know. I'm really not sure how the hell they're shielding themselves from fraud laws in doing so...but I guess they've bought out enough politicians by now...

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 29 2018, @10:59PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday November 29 2018, @10:59PM (#767993)

      Research shows: millennials are just like every other generation - except that they're significantly less wealthy.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 29 2018, @07:09PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 29 2018, @07:09PM (#767854)

    100% marketing success.

    100% short-term thinking. These people are new parents and are going to be buying a lot of stuff for their kid(s). Tainting their view of Amazon will probably translate to less future sales from these parents and their families (whether it's for their kids, their family or themselves).

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Thursday November 29 2018, @07:54PM (1 child)

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 29 2018, @07:54PM (#767885)

      All Amazon employees are short term, I don't mean the company is going to fail (immediately) but if company policy is to make sure very few people survive past three years of employment, well, most decisions made are not going to care about post three year effects, probably leading eventually to the death of the company.

      Everyone I've ever met who's worked there in any form from the lowest manual labor to the highest skilled cloud IT described it as some kinda hell on earth where everyone's trying to escape, in the long run companies like that always eventually die.

      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 29 2018, @09:15PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 29 2018, @09:15PM (#767934)

        Short term employees are problematic, but I was talking about losing customers for life (and the life of their children) for a quick additional profit. "We don't trust Amazon because they tried to take advantage of our child's birth" is not something that is easily forgotten, and is something they will mention every time they see an Amazon box, product or ad.

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 30 2018, @02:08AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 30 2018, @02:08AM (#768105) Journal
    It's not advertising, it's fraud just like if one faxes to a business advertising disguised as an invoice. On that latter activity, you can read an amazing story about one such case, "Anatomy of A Scam" [popehat.com]. From Chapter One [popehat.com], we have this interesting observation:

    But first, let me anticipate the scammers' defense and the devil's-advocate arguments I may draw: how can it be fraudulent if the invoice says right on it "Thank you for your business. This is not a statement for services rendered but for preventative maintenance"?

    Simple: fraud law doesn't work like that.

    Whether a communication is fraudulent — for the purposes of criminal law, torts, or consumer protection law — depends upon communications as a whole. Scammers cannot insulate themselves with fine print, hidden disclosures, or contradictory disclaimers when the entire solicitation is intended to defraud and is misleading to a reasonable person. Now I go all lawyery on your ass: See, e.g., Federal Trade Commission v. Cyberspace.com LLC, 453 F.3d 1196 (9th Cir. 2006) (apparent "refund check" that, if cashed, signed up recipient for monthly fee was deceptive even if back had disclaimer that would have informed customers if pointed out to them).

    Here are the reasons why the UST Development, Inc. "invoice", taken as a whole, is fraudulent:

    1. It's made to look exactly like an invoice for services rendered.

    2. UST Development will argue that it's only a solicitation for business, but nothing on the invoices advertises or describes the type of services UST Development offers, or why a consumer should choose them, making it appear even more like an invoice rather than a solicitation. (See Cyberspace.com, supra (“[t]he receipt of a check, the perusal of which would reveal no obvious mention of an offer for services, no product information, and no indication that a contract is in the offing, coupled with an invoice that has no advertising or solicitation purpose, creates an overall impression that the check resolves some small, out-standing debt.") What honest and competent advertiser would try to solicit business with a document that describes the services offered only as "preventative maintenance," without offering any indication whatsoever of what type of maintenance is involved or why the recipient should choose this particular business to provide it?

    There are more points which were specific to faxed/mailed advertising which looks like invoices. But consider those first two points with respect to the Amazon ads. The ads are made to look just like any other item on the baby registry and nothing aside from an ambiguous "sponsored" is present to indicate that it is an ad. My view is that Amazon better shut it down and lawyer up fast. Amazon's clients who put ads on these registries may want to do that as well.