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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/
(Score: 5, Insightful) by urza9814 on Thursday November 29 2018, @06:37PM (1 child)
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
Research shows: millennials are just like every other generation - except that they're significantly less wealthy.
🌻 [google.com]