Ads on Voice Devices

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What It Would Mean for Amazon to Bring Ads to Alexa

It's inevitable for the retailer. Here's how it would change your experience.   By Christina Bonnington in Slate

It was only a matter of time. This year, your Amazon Alexa experience will cease to be ad-free as the retail giant reportedly works to secure advertising partnerships with a handful of consumer companies.

Amazon is currently in talks with Clorox, Procter & Gamble, and others to promote their products on Alexa, the company’s virtual assistant, according to a CNBC report. Amazon is reportedly testing out various ad types, including videos and promoted paid search results (a la Google). CNBC reports that Amazon is preparing for a “serious run at the ad market” that could begin as soon as this year. (Update, Jan. 3, 2017: In an emailed statement Wednesday, an Amazon spokesperson said that the company has “no plans to add advertising to Alexa.”)

As Wired noted in December, some brands already have a presence on Amazon’s Alexa platform through their own third-party apps, called skills. You can order a Starbucks frappuccino, a Domino’s pizza, or an Uber, for example. But while you might see some of these highlighted in Amazon’s Alexa app, they’re just skills—not ads. Up until now, true advertisements on Alexa have been extremely rare. You can listen to streaming music providers that include between-song advertisements, and you may also hear an ad or two if you get daily flash briefings. Otherwise, Amazon’s policy sagely bans ads in third-party skills. As a burgeoning platform, if customers had been bombarded with ads from the get-go, it’s unlikely that Amazon would have seen the tremendous success that it has. Now that it’s already in roughly 15 million homes, Amazon can slowly start tinkering with how to make more money off its captive, indoctrinated audience.  ...."