How Does Consumerist Know I’d Like Amon Duul II?
I was really surprised when I clicked through from a Consumerist posting in my NetNewsWire last week to get to an ad halfway down the page that featured the semi-obscure German psychedelic band I had been thinking of checking out: Amon Düül II.
Had it been a brick or a banner for the new Wilco album or something, I wouldn’t have even looked twice. But Amon Düül II? That was just way too strange (and coincidental). I might have even overlooked something like the Fiery Furnaces, figuring everybody and their mother listens to indie rock these days.
I quickly opened up a new Firefox browser tab, and noticed that I was logged into my Amazon profile, where I’d seen the band pop up in my Amazon favorites, after I’d indicated that I’d liked albums by Ash Ra Tempel (after my wife bought me a Hawkwind disc for Hannukah). So, this strange chain of events has me now seeing targeted advertising in one of my favorite blogs. How in the heck did this happen?
I turned to Chris Batty and Erin Pettigrew at Gawker for the answers. It turns out, it’s all a part of the public Amazon associates program. Geeks, you read that right: blogs like Gawker (or any dynamic page that’s part of the Amazon associate program) can read a cookie from another domain. Granted, they’re only using this program on Consumerist, and not on any other Gawker Media domains, Batty said. But this is big stuff.
This means that there’s a unified, individual-targeted advertising campaign going on in the blogosphere, potentially across hundreds of blogs. And it’s just a pre-packaged ad widget that comes from Amazon - no crazy coding. This type of link debuted about a year ago (with a few other integrated functions), according to Gawker’s Pettigrew. While it’s not unusual for a site to run an Omakase links (Japanese for “protected” or “entrusted”), I’ve never come across them in such a seemingly unlikely place. According to the link above to the Ask Dave Taylor post and discussion of Omakase links, Norton AntiVirus/Internet Security causes some ads not to appear properly. That’s bad for companies like Amazon, but good for people who want less personalization.
So, that means that most PC users could shut off the personalization if they found it a little bit too invasive. But I’m on a Mac, and, yes, I bought three Amon Düül II albums with my eMusic account this weekend. They were pretty damn good. Too bad I didn’t click through and give some change to Consumerist. But, who buys CDs anymore? Amazon’s digital music download program is still at least a few months away. Bummer. We could have had a deal.
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Serge Lescouarnec
Posted on July 18th, 2007 at 7:31 am.
I actually saw Amon Duul live in Concert in Paris something like 35 years ago (ouch!).
I like your site otherwise. Landed there after noticing a Launchsquad/Newsgator visit on my blog ‘Serge the Concierge’
Take care
Serge
‘The French Guy from New Jersey’
http://www.sergetheconcierge.com