The world according to GRP — Wednesday, March 12, 2008:
Amazon needs ad widget with whitelist product selection
I used to carry Amazon Omakase ads (see https://widgets.amazon.com). But I got rid of them because they kept advertising ... ahem ... inappropriate products, in spite of my category selections, and in spite of the lack of any warrant in the content of my web pages.
In that sense product categories are too permissive. But in another sense they are too restrictive: what if I am willing to advertise products from several categories? The same objections apply to "Recommended Product Links": the keywords won't screen out inappropriate products, and you can't select multiple categories or subcategories.
SOLUTION: Amazon needs a new type of ad unit in which products are selected from a whitelist (opt-in list) specified by the affiliate. The interface for building the whitelist could be similar to that for building Product Links, except that the button would say (e.g.) "Add to whitelist" instead of "Get HTML".
Of course the number of products on the whitelist would normally be much greater than the number that could be displayed in any ad unit. Hence the need for a selection algorithm. The selection could be random (for early implementation), or context-based, or based on performance for the affiliate in question, or (best of all?) based on past performance at the URL on which the ad unit appears. The last option would require a fallback method pending the accumulation of click-thru stats and sales stats for the relevant URL. But even random selection from a whitelist would be better than the present arrangement.
If I could protect myself against inappropriate ads by creating a single whitelist — instead of laboriously placing every product on every page or template — I would gladly increase the number of Amazon ad units on my domain and subdomains. Surely I am not the only affiliate in that position.
[Featured in the 9th "Resource for Bloggers" Carnival at All Tips and Tricks, the March 14 edition of Blog to Earn, the "carnival of struggling bumbling newbies" (March 15) at SuccessPart2.Com, and the 5th Carnival at Internet Business Opportunities.]
Copyright © Gavin R. Putland except as otherwise attributed. Posted at The world according to GRP under the title Amazon needs ad widget with whitelist product selection. You may republish this item verbatim on your website or blog provided that you include this notice (with hyperlinks).
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