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New Parents Complain Amazon Baby-Registry Ads Are Deceptive (wsj.com) 58

Posted by msmash from the sneaky dept.
Unwanted gifts arrive after friends click on promotions tucked into wish lists. From a report: Kima Nieves recently received two Aveeno bath-time sets and a box of Huggies diapers through her baby registry on Amazon. The only problem? The new mother didn't ask for the products, or even want them. Instead, Johnson & Johnson and Kimberly-Clark each paid Amazon.com hefty sums to place those sponsored products onto Ms. Nieves's and other consumers' baby registries. The ads look identical to the rest of the listed products in the registry, except for a small gray "Sponsored" tag. Unsuspecting friends and family clicked on the ads and purchased the items, assuming Ms. Nieves had chosen them. "Very sneaky," said the 28-year-old health-care analyst from Fredericksburg, Va. "That's friends' and family's money going somewhere we didn't approve of."

Amazon in recent years has charged into advertising, building the third-largest digital ad business in the U.S. after Alphabet's Google and Facebook, according to eMarketer. Its ad revenue is on pace to double this year, to $5.8 billion, eMarketer estimates. As Amazon has monetized more space on its website, shoppers are increasingly encountering sponsored ads. Amazon is "starting to see how far they can push things," said Harry Brignull, a U.K.-based consultant who specializes in spotting web-design tactics that get people to click on something. Amazon's sponsored ads have appeared in its baby registries for more than a year. Responding to a Wall Street Journal inquiry about the ads, an Amazon spokeswoman declined to comment on criticism that the ads are deceptive, but said the retailer is now phasing out the sponsored listings. "We're constantly experimenting with new ways to improve the shopping experiences for customers," she said.
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New Parents Complain Amazon Baby-Registry Ads Are Deceptive More

New Parents Complain Amazon Baby-Registry Ads Are Deceptive

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  • bad marketing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Moblaster ( 521614 ) on Thursday November 29, 2018 @10:50AM (#57720148)

    if they were smarter they'd make them add-on bundle products, clearly marketed as such (perhaps w a special discount, as this would encourage gifters to add-on the products and get the new parents hooked on them)

    mainlining the sponsored products among parent-selected ones is very shortsighted and likely to lead to anger, because a registry should be a "trusted" information source

    • "if they were smarter they'd make them add-on bundle products, ..."

      Exactly! I'm seeing many, many examples of Amazon managers not being smart.

      It is VERY important to recognize ALL of the abusiveness of Amazon. Only a small part of that is mentioned here, in this re-post of a former comment, with added information:

      My opinion: Jeff Bezos is not a sufficiently capable manager. Evidence: Look at any Amazon web page. As you are researching some product that is interesting, you are often distracted by ot

  • Lol (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Former Amazon employee in marketing research... Not surprised at all.

  • It gets worse. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Thursday November 29, 2018 @11:03AM (#57720190)

    Kima Nieves recently received two Aveeno bath-time sets and a box of Huggies diapers through her baby registry on Amazon. The only problem? The new mother didn't ask for the products, or even want them.

    Not only that, she didn't make a baby registry on amazon, never even had a baby and wasn't even a woman! ;)

  • >> Registries are deceptive to people buying crap for new parents

    Buy your own stuff |
    Avoid problems with registries |
    Millennials wreck everything |
    Burma Shave!

    • Avoid problems with registries

      A registry is... very old. Recent advances include the 2004 addition of combining registries across multiple stores. It's purpose is to let people not duplicate gifts with each other and/or what the recipient doesn't want.

      Since baby showers (and the gifts that went with them) started during the post-WWII baby boom, your mom most likely had one, and received gifts (although maybe you're old than 70). This is no different than a friend of hers telling everyone that what your m

  • If it's a gift (Score:4, Informative)

    by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Thursday November 29, 2018 @11:17AM (#57720242)

    Return the unwanted items and buy what you actually wanted.

    Not indicating paid advertisements as such is unacceptable.

    • Re:If it's a gift (Score:4, Informative)

      by Nidi62 ( 1525137 ) on Thursday November 29, 2018 @11:24AM (#57720278)

      Not indicating paid advertisements as such is unacceptable.

      They indicate sponsored ads, but do so by using a small, grey banner (not much darker than the background white) right below the product name. It's underhanded, but in terms of internet sponsored ads/content sadly par for the course. The issue is inserting them into what are essentially private lists. That's where the line has been crossed. If they want to have at the bottom of the list a clearly demarcated section of "related" or "suggested" products, fine, but paid listings should not be interspersed through the list.

    • To me the worst part of the whole thing is not that the person received something they did not want - it's that someone meaning to buy them something they did want was tricked into buying something they did not. :-(

      It's a way to turn a nice gesture into a crappy experience. So even if you can return something it taints the whole reason to have a registry, at a time when you have no free time to worry about things like returns.

      • To me the worst part of the whole thing is not that the person received something they did not want - it's that someone meaning to buy them something they did want was tricked into buying something they did not. :-(

        Yeah, I've been wanting to talk to you about that case of Metamucil I gave you as a wedding present...

    • Not indicating paid advertisements as such is unacceptable.

      Apparently, they were indicated, but not very noticeably and the ads were placed in a spot the viewers weren't expecting to see paid advertisements, so they don't really get off the hook.

  • I'd expect that if three people with a total IQ of over 60 had sat down and thought about it for five minutes they'd have concluded that this was a bad idea.

    Unsupervised millenials again.

  • Since the FTC is cracking down on social media ads [adweek.com] not being clearly marked as such. I'd suspect Amazon will be contacted by them shortly. Even though Amazon did mark them as ads, I expect the FTC will be coming out with new rules specifying what "clearly marked" means.

  • Everyone is getting upset over the ad concept, but the reality is that the Amazon "store" is poorly designed. The fact that the UI pops a sponsored link in the middle of the visual area should be a giant red flag to any retailer in the world.

    It's what happens when an MBA comes in and make suggestions that while technically valid and short term boosts, the long term effect is not positive.

    • Other than the focus group and market testing to find out what style ad is technically notice while not actually being noticed by the largest percentage of shoppers. Notice designed and product tested to make sure it's not noticed isn't poor design.
  • Not to be one of those 'slippery slope' guys, but if Amazon thinks its OK to add items to people's baby registeries, other gift lists and wedding registeries are sure to follow. Newly married couples will find undersired items bought for them by mistake, and Christmas will be awkward getting the lastest Taylor Swift CD when it wasn't asked for. If Amazon wants to add a clearly marked off "Other Suggested Items" section where companies can pay for space, that's one thing, but to use subtle marking and plac

  • I would love a filter that simply blocked *all* "sponsored" content.

    I don't have a problem with ads that don't blink/move/bleat, don't slow my page loading, and don't track me. I've *never* blocked anything just for being an ad, even in the junkbuster era.

    But sponsored results are something I never considered, so eliminating them would save me effort.

    hawk

  • to steal from our customers.

  • Now we know how the sex doll wound up on that Ohio street.

  • It's deceptive. How to highlight it? (Score:4, Informative)

    by almitydave ( 2452422 ) on Thursday November 29, 2018 @06:29PM (#57722608)

    If you RTFA, you'll see the screenshot which shows that the ad looks identical to the baby registry items, except for the grey "sponsored" text, including the "0/1 Purchased" bit which can only be meant to deceive, since it indicates someone has requested some number of this item.

    Anyway, I've been bugged by this practice for a while. When you're scrolling through the results, you can't quickly pick out the ads from the real results without reading each item. If you have the Stylish browser extension, you can add the following rules to better highlight which items are ads. I just change colors to make them obvious, but I you could make them invisible if you wish:

    .s-sponsored-header {
            color: #f00 !important;
            font-weight: bold !important;
    } .AdHolder {
            color: #ddd;
            background-color: #ffa;
    }

  • I am trying to use their wish list to send gift ideas to my family. I found a book I want for $13.55. I added it to my wish list, it seems to work. But later I went back to see my list, and the book was there, but the cost was $20.99. Another book that I chose was higher too. Try it for yourself. Add this book to your wish list, then look at your wish list. https://smile.amazon.com/gp/pr... [amazon.com] My family will buy the more expensive book for me.

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