Amazon’s New Way Of Shopping Gets You Discounts

Amazon just received a patent that might change how you shop, and it’s designed to keep you on their website longer. Check out the details.

By nowproducerdave on December 4, 2017
(Photo by Mark Makela/Getty Images)

Long story short, Amazon has just patented a new way to shop online, and it involves them running videos on their site. You watch the ads, see videos, and get discounts.

So, most of us shop on Amazon. Many of us read product reviews before purchasing something, and some of us even write those reviews to help inform other buyers of product quality, accuracy to the ad, or issues we may have run into. What Amazon is trying to do now is what social media has been doing for quite some time – videos. Videos are popping up everywhere online. We all watch videos, whether it’s a 10-second clip of a kitten going to sleep and falling over, or one of those text-over-slideshow news stories, video is a clear dominating force online and in our pockets. Amazon wants to capitalize on this by showing videos on their own website, and they go along with the products.

Say you’re browsing for a new blender. You open a highly-rated but affordable option in Amazon, and start looking for a product review. But wait – a video is alongside the product photos. In the video, the seller demonstrates the product, its features, included accessories, and may even fire it up for a test run. The product reviews may even contain videos, showing us regular consumers running the product, fiddling with accessories, or demonstrating it’s durability – or faults.

Basically, what Amazon is trying to do is keep shoppers on their own page, rather than sending traffic to YouTube where people can then search for videos on the product. This will keep shoppers on Amazon’s page longer, which may mean that they’ll buy more things, or sell more advertisements. Speaking of advertisements, one theory into how Amazon might offer discounts for watching videos is this. Say you’re watching the video about the blender. Suddenly an ad starts playing in the video. You sit through the ad, and then the price of that blender suddenly drops a little bit. Would you sit through a 15-second ad to save some cash on a blender? Probably. Ads are annoying, but saving cash is awesome, right? That might be a possibility, since back in October Amazon got a patent for something called “content-based price reductions and incentives.” That sounds exciting.

Now, that’s all a theory, but likely at least a possibility for how they might use a video feature. No matter how they use it, they’re clearly going after social media and YouTube, trying to become the one-stop-shop for anything and everything.

Like we already don’t spend too much on Amazon…

Check out some more info here.

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