Mimpy Posted January 7, 2007 Report Share Posted January 7, 2007 Many sites feature Amazon products on the sidebars and whatnot and if you click on them...it directs you to the Amazon website where you can purchase said item. The products that are advertised on these other sites....who chooses which products to advertise? Usually when you refresh the site, a different product is featured. I ask because there's one site I visit where the advertisements are very frequently Rand's books or books about O'ism. The site I'm referring to has nothing to do with philosophy at all. Is it just a coincidence? Do the publishers of the book pay for advertisements on other sites? Does Amazon choose which products it wants to advertise on other sites based on what it thinks will sell and won't sell? Does anyone know how it all happens? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
softwareNerd Posted January 7, 2007 Report Share Posted January 7, 2007 Most of the one's I've seen are where the site is displaying Amazon Ads in order to earn some extra money as an "Amazon Associate". One does not even need one's own site. All one does is signs up as an Amazon associate and get people to buy a book using a link that tells Amazon that you made the referral. For instance, GreedyCapitalist has an Amazon search box on the main page of this site. If one searches for "Atlas Shrugged" using this text box, this is the resulting URL. Click and look at what's displayed in your browser; you'll notice "tag-=greedy-capital20". If you then buy the book from Amazon, he'll get a percent of the proceeds. So, if (say) you sign up as an associate, then anytime you mention Atlas Shrugged on the web, in forums, comments, etc. you could provide a URL that does not simply link to Amazon, but also has your personal "tag". Most sites that I've seen show links to books that they somewhat agree with. Site-hosting software will also allow one to have a long list of such books and the software will pick out 4 or 5 (randomly or otherwise) each time a page is displayed. There may also be software that displays ads that are "relevant" to the page (based on keyword-matches). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mwickens Posted January 7, 2007 Report Share Posted January 7, 2007 (edited) There's one site I visit where the advertisements are very frequently Rand's books or books about O'ism. The site I'm referring to has nothing to do with philosophy at all. Is it just a coincidence? The site is probably using Amazon's "Omakase" ads. These work based, in part, on Amazon's knowledge about you (past purchases, for example). Here's a description from their affiliates site: Omakase links uniquely combine information on each site visitor's taste, the site's content, and historical trends to dynamically generate relevant ads that Amazon serves to your site. With simple, yet powerful, customization options, Omakase lets you automatically provide personalized product ads to your site visitors that complement your site design. Mark http://randex.org/ Edited January 7, 2007 by mwickens Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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