While the chief absurdity is very clear (also mocked by Spitting Image - J.B. on a date: "You loved that steak? Good, I'll order another one!"), I am afraid that the intended idea may be that your memory about the ads of what you just bought will last as much as said goods.
Utter nightmare (unnatural obsolescence, systemic perversity, pollution...) but. I have met R'n'D who admitted the goal was just to have something new to have people want to replace the old, on unsubstantial grounds.
Sometimes you want a company like Facebook or google deliver ads to your potential costumer, but you don’t want, that the ad company knows how much product you sold.
You know your ROI, but your ad company doesn‘t.
I heard multiple stories from amazon, that hey still let the ad campaign or targeting running even if you bought the product for random times so external companies could not get insight in your businesses.
If you got the washing machine you will not click to buy another. If you pay per click, it makes no difference how long you let the campaign running if it is targeted.
College Humor--may it rest in peace :( :( :(--did a great bit about this a few years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbKdKcGJ4tM It is absolutely ridiculous how useless targeted ads actually are... and seeing a real person try to sell you this stuff really underscores the insanity.
Which is an extremely trivial check to add - if you got assigned that ticket, you'd probably point it at like 2 or so hours.
However, they've been like this for over a decade so it's likely there intentionally. here's one way that could be possible:
There could be some popular third party service that's integrated on many e-commerce sites that sells this information and doesn't actually give a damn if you bought the refrigerator or not. They're selling you, not the refrigerator.
That's the problem with data brokers, it's mostly low quality data.
> Which is an extremely trivial check to add - if you got assigned that ticket, you'd probably point it at like 2 or so hours.
Yep, totally a 2hr task for an engineer who works on homedepot.com to “check” that you bought a fridge from lowes.com after you first price shopped the other site. Also a two hour task for a Google engineer to know you bought one in person at Best Buy after researching online first.
Yes, there are basic cases (buying from same merchant as who’s suggesting) that should be handled, but let’s not foolishly pretend that’s the average case, let alone majority / all.
I haven't worked at Amazon in this vertical so if people know definitively feel free to correct.
The Amazon case could be the same problem I discussed before. Third party sellers can pay fees to promote/boost their listings on Amazon so ultimately the same incentive structure holds if there's fees for impressions and not just sales.
I cannot remember the reference now, but the reasoning I read was a person who just bought an item x might:
1. return the item if they are not satisfied with it and get a replacement Or
2. buy another one as a gift if they really like it.
Both of these result in a higher fraction of conversions in this kind of targeting vs other targeting criteria.
I think the reason this happens is that when you start looking for washing machines, you start getting ads for them. Then when you buy nobody tells the ad companies that you just bought a washing machine so they still send you ads because they think you’re still looking. Even if you just went straight to the model site and clicked “buy”.
Amazon can’t suggest a “product you might like” if their life depended on it. They have 19 years of purchase history for me spanning thousands of product categories. Want to know a category I’ve never looked at or bought from Amazon, women's handbags. What’s near the top of the suggestions right now on the homepage for me? You guessed it!
The weirdest thing is that at one point, I think it's now almost 10 years, they had somewhat OK recommendations. It's not like "you bought programming books and Battlestar Galactica DVDs, so you might be interested in Neal Stephenson's novels" is really advanced but it's still miles ahead of the "you just bought a washing machine, so you might be interested in washing machines" level.
I think the issue is that it’s no longer “recommendations”, instead it’s now “here’s the things which we can make the most money off you buying based on your recent spending”.
A slightly more ridiculous one I experienced recently was when I searched where to buy tool X. Started getting ads for why I need tool X and why it's the best tool ever. I already want one, I'm looking where to buy, not trying to learn what it's for!
> GPT can solve this! I prompted it with "Sarah bought a washing machine and a ". It completed "dryer.".
The most natural interpretation there is that Sarah bought a washing machine and a dryer simultaneously, not that, after buying a washing machine the month prior, she was finally ready to buy a dryer.
Fair enough regarding the washer/dryer, but I'm unimpressed by the hammer/nail example. If anything, I might want to buy "some nails" rather than "a nail", but I would argue that's not a brilliant guess either—if I'm buying a hammer I most likely already own the item that I want to hit with it. Some more interesting suggestions could have been for example "some pliers", "a set of screwdrivers", "a pair of work gloves", "safety goggles", etc.
