Amazon has been losing a fortune with their Amazon Echo devices. Connected speakers and displays are in millions of homes, but they have never been profitable. The company’s hope was that they would become a vehicle to sell more products on its e-commerce platform, but that goal was never met. Now Amazon has found a way to get a lot out of them: to put advertising in them for good. Lots of advertising.
Why is it important. Amazon has just launched on the market your new Echo Show and Eco Dot. Prices have risen in all cases, but they also arrive with Alexa+ —although not in Spain at the moment—, the AI assistant that the company has been working on for several months. These products are supposed to offer important advantages in the user experience, but at the moment what is happening is that these devices are displaying advertisements frequently.
Wasted. Between 2017 and 2021 Amazon lost more than $25 billion with its Amazon Echo. The idea seemed good: they could sell them at a loss if they later amortized them by converting them into products to sell us things. Instead, users ended up taking advantage of them for little more than setting timers and musicand that has ended up being a huge problem for Amazon.
Ads everywhere. There are several users of Amazon’s connected screens—the Echo Show—who are seeing surprise ads appear on these screens. a user Reddit account how the alarm clock feature on your Echo Show 5 became an annoying ad. Other user checked that in addition to one advertisement, songs that he had not specified were playing, while another he complained about how his Echo Show kept advertising the Amazon Plus service.
Ads now appear more frequently on Prime Video. Source: Xataka.
Flooded with advertising. These screens don’t stop showing ads, match other users, but in addition none of those users accepted that their devices could be used to display advertising, and there is no switch or configuration parameter that stops this behavior. Even people who are paying $20 for Alexa+, Amazon’s new AI assistant, are complaining from all that advertising avalanche.
Also on Prime Video. Personally, I don’t have an Echo Show, but I have noticed that when enjoying series and movies on Prime Video, advertisements are broadcast with greater frequency and duration. I am not he only (not much less). Amazon allows customize preferences regarding advertising, but those who have done it affirm that this does not hardly reduce the frequency with which advertisements appear.
What Amazon says. An Amazon spokesperson stated the following: at Ars Technica:
“Advertising is a small part of the experience and helps customers discover new content and products they may be interested in. If customers don’t like a suggestion, they can swipe to the next card on the screen or directly provide feedback by tapping the info icon or tapping the screen.”
If you move away, I announce to the song. The Amazon Ads website details the ad formats, and the text explains that “The ad viewing experience dynamically adapts based on the customer’s proximity to the device.” Once it is detected that the user is more than 1.2 meters away from their device, “the ads are displayed in full screen alternating with other content, such as the weather, recipes, sports and news.”
This seems to be getting worse. The latest comments seen on Reddit or on X (formerly Twitter) seem to make it clear that Amazon is increasing the amount of advertising it displays on its devices and services. The question, of course, is how far they will go… and how that will impact both sales of their devices and subscriptions to their platforms.
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