How does Kindle advertising work?
September 3, 2015 10:01 AM Subscribe
Why are the ads on my Kindle so completely off-base? I'm a BIG Amazon user. I buy tons of products of all sorts, many books, and many, many ebooks. So why does Amazon do such a terrible job of targeting ads to me via my Kindle?
The ads are uniformly, 100% wrong -- and while I know targeted advertising isn't always 100% correct, I've been flabbergasted to see just how completely wrong the ads they serve to my Kindle are. They range from books in genres I have never, ever purchased from (like, I've bought easily 100 romance novels this year, and here's an ad for a non-fiction book about Evangelical Christianity) to products I have literally already purchased from Amazon (oh, you're serving me an ad for your Kindle wall charger which I purchased FROM YOU six months ago).
I thought Amazon was a genius powerhouse about this sort of stuff, so what gives?
The ads are uniformly, 100% wrong -- and while I know targeted advertising isn't always 100% correct, I've been flabbergasted to see just how completely wrong the ads they serve to my Kindle are. They range from books in genres I have never, ever purchased from (like, I've bought easily 100 romance novels this year, and here's an ad for a non-fiction book about Evangelical Christianity) to products I have literally already purchased from Amazon (oh, you're serving me an ad for your Kindle wall charger which I purchased FROM YOU six months ago).
I thought Amazon was a genius powerhouse about this sort of stuff, so what gives?
Because they sell the ads to the highest bidder and sometimes that swamps any improvement they might get from better targeting. If someone wants to pay enough, you will see ads you really do not give a shit about.
posted by GuyZero at 10:21 AM on September 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by GuyZero at 10:21 AM on September 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
Best answer: It is entirely possible that they are not doing any sort of targeting with ads that appear on Kindle.
posted by joan_holloway at 10:23 AM on September 3, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by joan_holloway at 10:23 AM on September 3, 2015 [2 favorites]
BlahLaLa, would you like my Kindle ads? I ask because while I read almost nothing but short horror fiction, my Kindle is always trying to sell me romance novels! This is worse than non-targeting; it's, like, anti-targeting.
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:24 AM on September 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:24 AM on September 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
Best answer: I frequently get ads for things whose publishers could not possibly have paid Amazon more than a few bucks. Things like self-published children's books with zero reviews. I suspect that the function of the ads is not actually to sell anything but to annoy you into paying $20 for the ad-free upgrade.
posted by theodolite at 10:28 AM on September 3, 2015 [15 favorites]
posted by theodolite at 10:28 AM on September 3, 2015 [15 favorites]
It's not hard for me to believe that there's a big overlap between Evangelical Christians and romance novel readers, and often the best market for a product is people who have purchased that product before. You may know what ads are appropriate for you, but you may not know what ads are appropriate for people who, based on their Kindle reading habits, are very much like you.
posted by layceepee at 10:42 AM on September 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by layceepee at 10:42 AM on September 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
Best answer: The Kindle ads really are significantly worse than other Amazon ads - Amazon-on-the-web is pretty good at showing me things that I might actually want to buy, but the Kindle ads are almost universally irrelevant, generally poorly-produced, and it's often weirdly difficult to get from the ad to the purchase page (on the rare occasion when I actually want to know more).
Along the same lines as theodolite I suspect any money they get from the ads/ad-driven purchases is just a bonus, and all they really want is to give price-sensitive people (OK, we're skinflints) a loss-leader discount on Kindles (and if we then go on to get annoyed enough to buy the upgrade, even better).
posted by mskyle at 10:59 AM on September 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
Along the same lines as theodolite I suspect any money they get from the ads/ad-driven purchases is just a bonus, and all they really want is to give price-sensitive people (OK, we're skinflints) a loss-leader discount on Kindles (and if we then go on to get annoyed enough to buy the upgrade, even better).
posted by mskyle at 10:59 AM on September 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
"Because they sell the ads to the highest bidder"
Are you 100% sure about this? I've bought ad space from Amazon in the past (in Amazon SellerCentral-- not on Kindle) and it was strictly for number of impressions in a certain time period for a flat cost. I had to wait for a time period to come open, but there was no bidding involved.
My guess has always been that there's just not enough interest in advertising on the Kindle to target ads effectively. This is based on the fact that for a long time Kindle ads were for Amazon's own products, Kindle covers, etc. I figured they couldn't sell that ad space to an outside company and so just sold it internally.
Lately I've been seeing fewer Amazon specific ads, but the ads are still mostly garbage and seem to have no relevance to what I read/buy on Amazon.
posted by paulcole at 11:14 AM on September 3, 2015
Are you 100% sure about this? I've bought ad space from Amazon in the past (in Amazon SellerCentral-- not on Kindle) and it was strictly for number of impressions in a certain time period for a flat cost. I had to wait for a time period to come open, but there was no bidding involved.
My guess has always been that there's just not enough interest in advertising on the Kindle to target ads effectively. This is based on the fact that for a long time Kindle ads were for Amazon's own products, Kindle covers, etc. I figured they couldn't sell that ad space to an outside company and so just sold it internally.
Lately I've been seeing fewer Amazon specific ads, but the ads are still mostly garbage and seem to have no relevance to what I read/buy on Amazon.
posted by paulcole at 11:14 AM on September 3, 2015
I am not sure of that TBH. But the ads will be sold on either a CPM or CPC basis and if it's CPM then there's probably no targeting at all.
posted by GuyZero at 11:41 AM on September 3, 2015
posted by GuyZero at 11:41 AM on September 3, 2015
Also, part of the issue might be that the minimum spend is just too high for a lot of smaller companies. Amazon only wanted ad buys of at least $25K USD (we talked them down to $10k USD for a trial campaign).
At that rate, you've got to sell a lot of physical products to make it worth your while. I feel like only big companies with huge amounts of inventory on hand can really make that work.
posted by paulcole at 12:37 PM on September 3, 2015
At that rate, you've got to sell a lot of physical products to make it worth your while. I feel like only big companies with huge amounts of inventory on hand can really make that work.
posted by paulcole at 12:37 PM on September 3, 2015
Wow, I thought it was just me! When I purchased a Kindle I purposely did not pay to have it be ad free because I thought I would be seeing ads based on my reading preferences. Boy was I wrong! The very first time it advertised Disney stuff I paid to get them off my device.
posted by LilithSilver at 2:53 PM on September 3, 2015
posted by LilithSilver at 2:53 PM on September 3, 2015
I don't have an answer, but I recently paid $20 to have ads removed from my Kindle. Perfect.
posted by lhauser at 10:40 PM on September 6, 2015
posted by lhauser at 10:40 PM on September 6, 2015
Response by poster: Well, it's nice to see we're all in agreement. Kindle ads suck, and are poorly targeted and/or not targed at all. I'm glad I'm not the only one.
posted by BlahLaLa at 10:48 AM on October 4, 2015
posted by BlahLaLa at 10:48 AM on October 4, 2015
Response by poster: I just wanted to update this to say: I had a horrifying situation of a truly inappropriate ad showing up on my Kindle. I don't want to say exactly what it was, but it was akin to GET A GIANT DILDO NOW, YOU SEXY SLUT! Meaning, the kind of thing that made it so I literally had to hide my Kindle where my kid couldn't see it. It was deeply offensive to me to have this ugly, inappropriate thing shouting out to me.
And, like all the other boring but off-target ads, it was something that was just so profoundly not properly targeted to me. I mean, it was like the gross, offensive version of, "We see you're a Martian so we'll serve you an ad for food that Martians like to eat." Just 100% wrong.
At any rate, I ended up complaining to Amazon. They apologized and turned off the ads on all the Kindles associated with my account. So I guess that's one way to get rid of mistargeted ads.
posted by BlahLaLa at 8:30 PM on August 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
And, like all the other boring but off-target ads, it was something that was just so profoundly not properly targeted to me. I mean, it was like the gross, offensive version of, "We see you're a Martian so we'll serve you an ad for food that Martians like to eat." Just 100% wrong.
At any rate, I ended up complaining to Amazon. They apologized and turned off the ads on all the Kindles associated with my account. So I guess that's one way to get rid of mistargeted ads.
posted by BlahLaLa at 8:30 PM on August 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
First possibility, I imagine, is that they're having trouble selling ads, it's not a really attractive medium. So perhaps they can't target ads that effectively because they don't have many ad-buyers to choose from.
Second, if you previously bought an adapter from Amazon, you're probably much more likely than the average consumer to buy another adapter than someone who has never bought one.
posted by skewed at 10:06 AM on September 3, 2015