Amazon Smart Displays Are Now Being Bombarded With Ads

"Amazon Echo Show owners are reporting an uptick in advertisements on their smart displays," reports Ars Technica. The company's Echo Show smart displays have previously shown ads through the company's Shopping Lists feature, as well as advertising for Alexa skills. Additionally, Echo Shows may play audio ads when users listen to Amazon Music on Alexa. However, reports on Reddit (examples here, here, and here) and from The Verge's Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, who owns more than one Echo Show, suggest that Amazon has increased the amount of ads it shows on its smart displays' home screens.

The Echo Show's apparent increase in ads is pushing people to stop using or even return their Echo Shows.
The article notes Amazon's smart displays have also started showing ads for Alexa+ — and The Verge's reporter saw ads on one (but not all) of her Echo Shows this week. (Even when the display is set to show personal photos, ads sometimes appear for herbal supplements, Quest sports chips, and tabletop picture frames.

Ars Technica notes that users "are unable to disable the home screen ads." When reached for comment, an Amazon spokesperson told Ars Technica: "Advertising is a small part of the experience, and it helps customers discover new content and products they may be interested in..." Amazon declined to comment on whether it has increased Echo Show ad loads... According to Amazon, Echo Show home screen ads change based on how close someone is to the gadget. "When the customer is more than four feet away from their device, ads will display full-screen in rotation with other content such as weather, recipes, sports, and news..."

Buy a device made to spew ads!

[oldgraybeard]

And people are unhappy it spews ads?

Part of the experience

[fahrbot-bot]

an Amazon spokesperson told Ars Technica: "Advertising is a small part of the experience, and it helps customers discover new content and products they may be interested in..."

And if a user isn't interested in having that experience? Ditching/returning the unit seems like a bad sole option. Funny how forcing something unwanted on others is "part of the experience." (Hmm, that sound familiar now...)

Echo Show home screen ads change based on how close someone is to the gadget. "When the customer is more than four feet away from their device, ads will display full-screen in rotation with other content such as weather, recipes, sports, and news..."

This seems even worse.

Re:

[93 Escort Wagon]

Lots of people buy garbage like this simply because of the low price - sometimes priced even below the cost of production. If it's cheaper than the competition, that's all they look at. But somehow it doesn't occur to them that the manufacturer expects to recoup that money, one way or the other...

Of course, if the product description didn't make clear that advertisements are "part of the experience", there is always the option of class action.

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

Can't you just return it? If an update makes it unsuitable or fundamentally and irreversibly changes its nature, your consumer rights should kick in and a refund be issued.

Re:

[alvinrod]

A brick through the window of an Amazon executive may help them discover representative shops in their area that they may be interested in.

You'd be doing them a service really. Think of the experience they'll have.

And they want humanoid robots in your home...

[locater16]

Imagine when the human shaped robot that normally does your laundry starts spewing ads at you. Next thing you now it's pulled a knife and taken you hostage until you order 3 cases of Perrier water and pledge undying fealty to Nestle.

Re:

[sg_oneill]

We have a joke in my band that we could do the most diabolical marketing ever by driving around the suburbs with a megaphone blaring out "Alexa, please buy the new album" really loud.

Not sure if it'd work, those devices are banned in my house since they day long ago I was woken up by a Google assistant at 3am in the moning by it reading out the Wikipedia page for "Human Skull". The GF wanted it gone straight away lol

Re: And they want humanoid robots in your home...

[Ilove_Noname]

Pretty sure this allready happened once with the news having an exposer about gow a little girl ordered something via alexa and they played her ordering it and all sorts of other alexas tried to place the same order. The little girl had ordered a doll house and augar cookies. https://www.today.com/video/tv... [today.com]

Zero compassion

[gweihir]

You voted for this with your wallet.

It could be worse

[YuppieScum]

They might start to display dupes [slashdot.org].

Re:

[crunchy_one]

It's a story so nice that they had to report it twice.

Re:

[registrations_suck]

So far.

oh no

[toutankh]

Who could have seen this coming? Anyway,

Lesson learned...

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

Unplug it and move on with life.

What's the problem?

[spaceman375]

All I see are knee-jerk reactions: "Ooo, ad bad!". The ads are silent this time around. Anytime alexa says "By the way" I immediately say "Alexa shut up!". But you don't have to look at it. These ads are easy to ignore.

To be clear, I have both amazon and google devices. I've set google to use a male voice so I can call them him and her without saying "she who must not be named".

Slashdot Articles Are Being Bombarded With Dupes

[TigerPlish]

Seriously, I know it's tradition, but this is ridiculous. Do you guys get paid per post? Like, if you post a story 3 times with 3 slightly different wordings, does that get you paid 3 times as much?

The World Wonders

Slashdot would be improved by AI "editors"

[couchslug]

AI can weed out dupes.

WE'RE HELPING PEOPLE, DAMN IT.

[laxr5rs]

repeat after me! helping!

Enshittification

[Tablizer]

always happens.

Empty chair representing the customer

[sonamchauhan]

Apparently, Amazon meetings have an empty chair. It is supposed to represent the customer in the room.

Do they now use the chair for 'Pin the tail on the donkey' games?

From personal experience, Prime video has become unusable after I refused their shakedown to pay extra to skip ads.

1984 Telescreen

[awwshit]

These things are actual Telescreens from the book 1984. If you bought one of these products, enjoy your dystopia.

Never been profitable

[kiwioddBall]

The Alexa division has never been profitable.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/amazo... [wsj.com]
https://www.mobileworldlive.co... [mobileworldlive.com]

You can bet that a part of the Alexa+ strategy is to turn that around. You are going to see tons of ads, those AI CPU cycles are super expensive.

Re:

[Computershack]

The Alexa division has never been profitable.

You're missing the point. It's point isn't to be profitable on its own, it's to put advertisements into your home to drive sales, to listen to your conversations to harvest data which it can sell and also use to drive sales. Alexa is very profitable when you factor in the profits Amazon make from sales they wouldn't have otherwise done without tailored ads fed to Alexa devices from the data said device has harvested from you.

Reminder to self: Do Not Buy !!

[bsdetector101]

Don't need Alexa either.

Advertising is a small part of the experience....

[Computershack]

Advertising is a small part of the experience....one that people don't want especially on a device they've paid for which has a service they have to pay a subscription to use.