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Comment by fisherjeff | Hacker News Reader

I shop at Amazon quite a bit. They have more information about my purchasing and browsing habits than they could reasonably need, plus the same data on millions of others. On top of that, when I visit their website, they know I'm already there to spend money. Amazon's front page should be the absolute pinnacle of targeted advertising.

And yet, if I buy a coffee maker, the front page is covered in coffee makers for weeks. I've never bought anything based on what's on the front page and I'm not sure I've ever even clicked those suggestions. I'm sure targeted advertising can work in the long run, but at the moment the success rate seems so low that it's more often an annoyance than a convenience.

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...and then you see coffeemakers on Facebook for weeks. Its creepy. And as you suggest, ineffective. Whatever 1st-order ad-prediction algorithm they're using is clearly crap. How hard could it be to write something that predicts your next purchase based on a previous one? That could even be helpful.

How many consumers have this style of interaction:

* buy an item from Amazon (coffee maker or otherwise)

* realize the build quality/size is rubbish (which from some of the less well known sellers, it really can be)

* return the item using Amazon's generous returns policies (never had one rejected, I've used it many times)

* buy a different item in the same category.

* repeat?

If this type of purchase happens a non-negligible number of times, could that be the reason we see so many 'buy more of X!' style ads?

But wouldn't it make sense to only do that if the return actually happens? It's not like Amazon doesn't know whether or not the item has been returned.

I truly hope so, that means Amazon ad-networks' ads are hurting Amazon. Internalizing the externality of spam and privacy violations.

Haven't you ever wish for a 'Punch Advertiser' button during commercials? This would be like hearing they built it themselves.

(To be clear, by having someone making $0.03/click sign their customer up for buyer's remorse thus destroying the profit from serving them because those return policies, the customer service time, etc, aren't free.)

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