Amazon’s Foray Into Advertising

Here’s an AdAge article on Amazon’s new online advertising initiatives:

Amazon isn’t exactly a newcomer to advertising, but until recently its ad efforts existed in a sort of extended beta: mainly as a way for Amazon’s suppliers to promote their products and, more recently, as a means to subsidize low Kindle prices. But now Amazon is going after agency business and brand advertising dollars as well. Last week it pulled the wraps off “Amazon Media Group,” a world of owned sites, devices and a third-party network that can use Amazon’s trove of purchase and browsing data.

Like everywhere Amazon plays, its ambitions in advertising are big. And as a global player that builds its own technology, the company is positioned to compete with the likes of Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Microsoft. We sat down with Amazon’s global head of advertising, Lisa Utzschneider, to find out more about Amazon’s plans.

via Advertising Becomes Amazon’s Newest Low-Price Weapon | Digital – Advertising Age.

Facebook raises fears with ad tracking

Facebook is working with a controversial data company called Datalogix that can track whether people who see ads on the social networking site end up buying those products in stores.

via Facebook raises fears with ad tracking – CNN.com.

Quick thoughts here:

- This is not a new thing.  Doubleclick tried this in 2000 and ultimately had to cancel their plans (DoubleClick postpones data-merging plan)

- There are companies that are already doing this.  They are just not doing it at Facebook scale.  There’s a huge difference operationally when you’re doing this stuff in the margins vs. doing it as one of the top online properties

- Big question to be answer is whether times have changed so much that users won’t push back on these plans this time around.  We shall see.

RT @jonathanmendez: Just discovered RapLeaf pivoted to an email data company

Just discovered RapLeaf pivoted to an email data company. Interesting.—
Jonathan Mendez (@jonathanmendez) June 28, 2012

Related posts on Rapleaf.

Value of personal data

Your personal data is not worth anywhere near what you think it’s worth.

Or maybe it really is.

Facebook Retargeting- Currently beta testing a feature that lets advertisers target users (or friends of users) who performed a specific Open Graph action via a specific application

via Noam Schwartz – FB retargeting?:

Facebook is currently beta testing a feature that lets advertisers target users (or friends of users) who performed a specific Open Graph action via a specific application. Together with smart CPM pricing tactics, that’s a game changer for app developers. Remember where you read it for the first time.

For example:

“targeting={‘countries’:['US'], ‘action_spec’:[{'action.type':

'video.view','application':12345667}]}”

Users can now be targeted based on their use of the app. In this example we can target FB users who viewed a video on the app with app ID 1234567.

Again, unless you are a FB partner, preferred developer or have access to one – you’ll have to wait a bit.

Link to Facebook page with specification (last updated two months ago, April 2012):
Action Spec Targeting › Ads API › Action Spec Targeting

Facebook is beta testing a targeting feature – called “Action Spec Targeting” — for our interested Ads API partners. The new feature is designed to help advertisers target users based on actions they have performed. Because this feature is still in beta, we expect it to change. Please keep that in mind as you test this new feature in your campaigns and tools.

Action specs are used to describe actions people have taken on Open Graph objects via an application or on on-Facebook objects directly. Action Specs can be used to target Ads at users or friends of users who have performed a specific action, e.g. target an ad group at users who listened to music on a specific app or commented on a page post. Please review the the action spec documentation for more details on how action specs are defined.

Note: It is not possible to target a ‘like’ of a Facebook page via action specs. Note: Action specs are limited to be a maximum of 4096 characters in length.