I’m more than a little disappointed with Amazon today. If you know me, you know my crazy deep love for amazon. They’ve had minor mis-steps over the years, but nothing as big at the current one:
Ads.
Amazon is a commerce site, a store; they sell goods. And the last time I checked, they were doing pretty good. Yet, they feel compelled to further monetize the site by shoving non-contextual, ugly, intrusive banner ads into the experience.
Why Amazon? Why?
Why is it that all businesses seem inclined to eventually shove as many ads into your life as humanly possible? Whether it’s banner ads on amazon, ads on airplane tray tables, or random spam included in my credit card statement, why do businesses so often forget that key phrase "Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should"?
Hopefully this is just an experiment that will quickly die. When I’m trying to spend my money, I have very little interest in being hit over the head to spend more money, on completely unrelated, uninteresting products on an completely different Web site.
(Which is particularly funny – amazon doesn’t want to link you back to their home page when you’re in the middle of checking out, yet they apparently have no problem sending you to an entirely different site when you’re shopping. Very odd.)
