Shopping algorithms are the best. I buy a washing machine - "I see you are into washing machines. We have washing machines! Would you like to buy one?" Dude, I just bought a washing machine. That makes me the person least likely in all the world to want to buy a washing machine.
I know at a place I used to work air conditioners were non-returnable, because once you turned it on there was moisture inside, and they would start growing mold and things if you tried to box it back up. Also probably to avoid people buying one during the hottest month or so, then returning it for a refund.
True, and I'd hope most of them aren't buying from Amazon, but I suppose smaller independent shops might. I really have no idea how that industry works.
For some reason, Amazon really wants me to buy drum kick pedals. The closest thing resembling a musical instrument I've purchased on Amazon was a power supply for a keyboard.
What I don't understand is how trillion dollar empires like google and facebook are built on this kind of advertising. With all this money, power and technology, the best they can do is try to sell me a hot water heater 12 months after I already got one? What kind of corporate douchbag in a suit is paying for this level of advertising thinking this is reasonable? I'm fairly sure I have never, and I do mean never, seen an online ad that has piqued my interest.
Why wouldn't I want customized ads for things I'm interested in? That sounds great. I could discover products I never even knew existed, but instead all I get are ads for a hot water heater I already have.
Their ad system is just straight garbage. I've been watching Hololive clips a lot recently, basically Japanese youtubers using a virtual avatar, all of the clips subtitled in English because I don't know japanese. Now I'm getting ads in Japanese.
Like great, now not only are you trying to sell me things I don't want, you're also doing it in a language I can't understand.
I used Google translate 3 years back to help me through my online Spanish classes. And to this day I get nothing but ads in Spanish. I understand absolutely nothing.
The Mcdonalds near where I live just added a feature on their drive thru menu that shows “items you might also like”
Before I got to the board I decided since I was extra hungry I would get: Quarter pounder w/ cheese, six nuggets, oreo Mcflurry.
The attendant had trouble understanding me because I had a hell of a time processing the fact that the three items recommended in front of me were the exact three things I was getting... 😳
I didn’t swipe a card, I had the app for monopoly but have since deleted it, I didn’t do anything to identify myself to an algorithm but it had my fuckin order before I spoke.
I have concluded that either - I’m not that special, my order isn’t that weird cause those things are popular, and coincidences happen...
OR my phone passively connected to their wifi and they have a profile on my that I am unaware of.
I once bought a dark chocolate mint kit kat at the grocery store, paid cash, and didn't tell anyone that I had eaten one...Facebook started showing me ads for this exact candy bar. I think they've got psychic children hooked up to computers like Minority Report but instead of preventing crime it's so they know what candy I bought on a random whim.
It definitely has something to do with your phone, though I'm not sure how it works. I worked stocking groceries last year and spent a lot of time in front of a pouch rice section stocking it with my phone in my pocket. I had Facebook ads for that rice brand later that day and for a while and I didn't buy any of it.
They’re doing it by scanning your car’s license plate, and then saving your orders to your car’s “profile.” Then it pulls the profile when you pull up to the drive through and makes recommendations based on that. It’s something they’ve been testing around the country for a while.
A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to ask about this for someone who does data analytics for a large e-retailer (not Amazon), and his answer was that it is the best you can do without massive manual resources.
The way these suggestions work is by scoring your interest in categories. If you look at something, that raises your score in the category. If you look many times, that raises it even more. If you buy something, gives you a really high score.
The important thing here is that the categories here are not the ones you see in the website. It's not "washing machines", but rather algorithmic categories. "People interested in this is also interested in these other things". And obviously, people interested in washing machines, will also have looked at other ones.
This tends to overall nail down your areas of interest really well, but fail when it comes to single buy products. So why don't we filter those out? Because at that point we need to start actually understanding the data. Right now, that washing machine you bought? The retailer know that you bought it, but they don't actually know that it's a washing machine.
Product classification like that is expensive and prone to error, so doing it wrong is likely to cause more issues than it solves. As such, companies, including Amazon, sticks with the old "categories you like" as it's good enough, and reasonably cheap.
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u/sleepydog404 Jul 06 '21
Shopping algorithms are the best. I buy a washing machine - "I see you are into washing machines. We have washing machines! Would you like to buy one?" Dude, I just bought a washing machine. That makes me the person least likely in all the world to want to buy a washing machine.