Amazon announces the Ad Verification Program in the USA and UK. The target group is selected customers who participate in the Shopper Panel, an invitation-only program in which customers receive financial rewards under certain conditions.

Amazon: Monitoring participants’ online traffic

With this advertising verification program, Amazon tracks which ads participants saw, where they saw them, and what time of day they were viewed by monitoring users' online traffic. This includes Amazon's own ads and third-party ads on the platform.

The Amazon Shopper Panel

The Amazon Shopper Panel is an invite-only opt-in program that allows participants to earn monthly rewards by sharing receipts from purchases made outside of Amazon.com, completing short surveys, and ad review for the ads that they see from Amazon's own advertising or third-party companies advertising through Amazon Ads. If you share ten receipts or more, participants will receive $10 in store credit or a charitable donation. Each further participation in a survey will also be rewarded monetarily. The data obtained is intended to help Amazon to offer “better” products and to tailor Amazon advertisements even more precisely to the target groups, or to personalize the user experience even more.

The $2 reward applies only to users invited to join the program. There is a waiting list of uninvited customers for possible later participation. The company refuses to disclose the criteria used to select participants.

Data protection advocates are alarmed

With the ad verification program, which is currently limited to the USA and UK, the online retailer is fueling criticism from data protection advocates about the handling of sensitive user data. Experts are concerned about the handling of health-related data by the in-house health start-up OneMedical. But the popular Amazon smart home products such as Alexa or Ring are also criticized. In the specific case of the ad verification program, Amazon refers to the FAQs on the shopper panel and the data protection declaration. The company also emphasizes that participation is voluntary and users can unsubscribe at any time. Receipts that have already been uploaded could also be deleted at any time.

Exchanging data for money is nothing new.

In 2012, Google launched a similar program with the Screenwise browser extension. Users who added this to Google Chrome received $5 Amazon gift cards and additional cards every three months to a year. Again, the browser extension tracked everything users did on the internet.

In 2016, Facebook launched a program that offered teenagers and young adults between the ages of 13 and 25 monthly gift cards if they had their online activities monitored for market research purposes using the VPN app Facebook Research

Screenwise participants who agreed to use router hardware provided by Google to better analyze their behavior received an initial $100 and an additional $20 each month

In 2019, both the Facebook and Google programs were discontinued. For data protection reasons.

Surveillance VPN apps also common in Germany

However, anyone who believes that such surveillance programs are impossible in Germany is mistaken. The market research group Nielsen uses the Nielsen Computer & Mobile Panel, where a VPN app is downloaded to the participating devices. This is also about monitoring and analyzing users' data traffic, which is linked to their socio-demographic data, without which participation in the program is not possible.

“By participating in our Computer & Mobile Panel, you will not only help us better understand trends on the Internet. In addition, you will automatically be credited with reward points every month, which you can exchange for shopping vouchers or other rewards in our online shop.”

Nielsen

In contrast to Google or Facebook, Nielsen is a market research institute that evaluates the data it obtains and makes it available to companies anonymously, meaning it does not use it for its own purposes.

It is unknown whether Amazon plans to launch the ad verification program in the EU. However, the company is likely to attract the attention of European data protection officers.

Source:

Business Insider
The Verge
TechCrunch
Nielsen
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