Spotted! Amazon’s push accuracy may be in jeopardized
For so long, Amazon’s own Amazon Ads tool has been considered best among thousands of Amazon sellers. It out-priced Google Ads a lot. But thanks to its abundant user data on Amazon, it usually helps the sellers reach more sales. However, a recently revealed accusation may give us some insights on how Amazon got so much data and how it impacts Amazon’s future performance. Amazon has been accused of illegally using Alexa voice recordings for user analysis and advertisement purpose.
To give a little context, Alexa is the voice assistant that Amazon developed, usually installed on Amazon App and Amazons’ Echo Device. And they function just like a Siri on iPhone. From playing music to give weather forecast, from offering traffic update to play favorite music, Alexa has been doing a really good job. And according to this report, there are more than 80 million devices operating in 50 million homes.
So what was the issue here? For years Amazon has been accused for illegally using the voice recording they acquired from Alexa. And now according to this law suit, based on the now publicly-available-documents, Amazon has acknowledged to illegally acquired and used voice recordings for advertisement purpose. Though the lawsuit was just brought up, it could still bring negative impact on Amazon and the performance of its Amazon Ads.
Here are a few consequence that Amazon Ads may face:
- Less analyzable data
Over the privacy concerns and potential government regulations, the voice recordings may not or in reduced amount to be used in modeling anymore. With the change in customer groups, the current model may be less and less effective.
- Decreased sales
As a result of less analyzable data and less accurate model, the sellers heavily reliant on Amazon Ads may need to find alternative to maintain their profit margin. And also the buyers may start to shift away from Amazon platform over trust issue.
So in one word, even though the current law suit does not bring any imminent danger to sellers, there is substantial long term risk with Amazon Ads users.
