In the News: Amazon Offers $10 to Track Your Data—What Do You Think?

Amazon Assistant. On this year’s Prime Day, Amazon offered customers a $10 credit to install its deal-finding plugin. This made a splash in the news as it appeared to be a bit of a consumer data tracking play and kicked off an industry discussion around the hot-button topic of the future of data privacy. What do you think of this move? Skai’s Margo Kahnrose gives her take.

In the new ChiefMarketer.com post, Amazon Assistant and the Value of Ecommerce Data, Skai SVP of Marketing, Margo Kahnrose, comments on Amazon’s recent Prime Day push to customers to install the Amazon Assistant browser plugin that “helps you discover Amazon products and compare prices as you shop across the web.”

Although the plugin is promoted as a deal finder with other Amazon customer features, the bigger news story was that an Internet giant was enticing consumers to enable tracking them around the web in exchange for $10.

Strategically, this makes a lot of sense for Amazon. As Kahrose points out, “It’s no surprise that Amazon would go for those opt-ins during deal days. Unlike Google, Apple and Microsoft, Amazon doesn’t have its own browser to leverage as a portal into what’s happening off its own site—data it could use to improve its marketing, products, and services.”

Amazon Assistant is a browser plugin that helps consumers find deals

Amazon Assistant…just the start of user-permissioned tracking?

Even though Amazon has been somewhat blasted in the blogosphere on this move, Kahnrose’s take is that after decades of data privacy issues by big corporations, “…if anything, Amazon’s promotion should be seen as a sign of progress.”

Consumer data and privacy are certainly some of the biggest things on the minds of advertisers these days as more and more regulations and policies—such as Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention—are being put in place to make tracking users harder for marketers. The new changes will impact all aspects of online advertising from targeting to measurement and the industry is holding its collective breath right now and waiting to see how things will eventually shake out.

Should more companies be looking to create fair value exchanges with consumers for the right to track them? What do you think?

To learn more about this newsmaking issue, head over the ChiefMarketer.com and read this post!

Book a Meeting of Skai