I’ve been an Amazon Associate for years and have been wondering when they might offer some sort of context-sensitive ad box a la Google AdSense. It appears my wishes have finally come true with the beta release of their new Omakase Links program. What can you tell me about it, Dave, and how hard is it to get working properly?
I’m with you, I’ve also been watching Amazon for a long time, wondering when they’d join the Web 2.0, dynamic context revolution, even if just a toe in the proverbial pond. It’s interesting that I’ve been an affiliate / associate for years too, and had no idea that they’d introduced this new program until your query came in!
Anyway, here’s their brief explanation: “Omakase – leave it up to us! Omakase links will show an Associate’s visitors what they’re most likely to buy based on Amazon’s unique understanding of the site, the user, and the page itself. To create Omakase links, simply modify the template and appearance elements below and copy the resulting code on to your page. Then leave the rest to Omakase!”
My first question, of course, is where the heck the name comes from! Fortunately, they have the answer in their FAQ: “Omakase is a Japanese word meaning ‘leave it up to us’. It is commonly used in Japanese restaurants for a meal where the chef uses their experience and knowledge to select and prepare the meal for a customer without specific directions.” Cool indeed!
So on the assumption that we’re not going to get the sushi that no-one ordered the previous evening, let’s dig into the program just a bit and see how it works! 🙂
To get to the Omakase links area, log in to your Amazon Associates account as usual and click on “Build Links”. Now you can see the new choice:
Click on “Build Links” and you’ll see a range of customization choices curiously reminiscent of Google’s AdSense customization area:
I’m quite impressed with the range of different customizations you can apply and, of course, the fact that Amazon can now scan pages and match the most valuable products is terrific and long overdue!
I’ll make a few tweaks and here’s what I get as a basic Omakase box for this very page:
If you dig into the source, you’ll find that it’s all done with some basic JavaScript, and the attributes that I’ve changed from their default are shown as name=value pairs. Here’s what I mean:
amazon_ad_tag = “davetaylor”;
amazon_ad_width = “300”;
amazon_ad_height = “250”;
amazon_ad_logo = “hide”;
amazon_ad_border = “hide”;//–></script>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://www.assoc-amazon.com/s/ads.js”></script>
As you can see, I’m using a 300×250 block here, hiding the ad border, hiding the logo, and using my associate ID of “davetaylor”. Also, as with any other advertising block you add to your site, the more you can integrate the links into your existing content, the more success you’ll have with actually making sales. Try to match your colors, disable any borders, have the background color match the area of your page, and don’t be afraid to have the Omakase block front and center in your design.
Note: if you’re just seeing a generic Amazon shopping block here, well, that’s interesting, isn’t it? It means that Amazon can’t figure out what the page is actually about, or the site. Maybe it suggests that they need some “keyword suggestion” capability to be included too?
Two additional notes on Omakase worth making:
1. Check out their interesting legal disclaimer: “Legal Disclaimer: You acknowledge that by using Omakase Links requires a search of your site by technical means for relevant content and you understand that any technical protections you may have installed on your website preventing the use of technical means for the search of your site, will prevent the intended features of the link from operating. We may therefore decide not to serve any content to your site if such protections prevent us from searching your site. You also must ensure that when using the Omakase Links the “Privacy Information” link included with the Omakase Links is always displayed and not obscured in any way. We may terminate your participation in the Amazon Services Associates Program if you fail to properly maintain the prominence of the Privacy Information link as described above.” Yow.
Update: Point #2 is not true, as it happens. I have communicated with the Google AdSense team and they assure me that “According to our program policies, Omakase may be displayed on the same page as Google ads on your site.” My belief is that this isn’t a violation because while Omakase is a contextual system, it’s not an advertising system, per se. In any case, if you want to intermingle Omakase blocks and AdSense blocks, you’re good to go!
In any case, congrats to the Amazon team for the beta launch of Omakase and I look forward to hearing from Amazon Associates who have had good results with this new program.
I have tried to use amazon omakase but icould nt understand their You do not allow our system to crawl / spider the sites “Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; AMZNKAssocBot/4.0)”
how to do this any ideas???
Dave,
I would like to create an Amazon search using my Amazon Associates code. Would you be mind explaining how that could be done?
Thank you!
GOOGLE will flush your site if you use OMAKASE – guaranteed. I run over 50 websites and try different things to garner revenue. In three instances over the last three years I have tried omakase. Within one week of putting omakase on my site – the site literally disappeared from google search within 10 days. my recent site http://www.hasanyoneever.com went from 1900 visitors per day, 95 percent from google do to 35 visitors a day 0 percent from google. You cannot even find my site on google by typing in the full url.
Stay away from omakase
Jane, yes, you can have both on your site. If you’re finding that AdSense isn’t working, then email the AdSense support team (link from their site) and ask for some help. Good luck!
Can you put Google AdSense and amazon affiliate on the same page, like on my site .I just wondering why AdSense doesnt work
Good question, Mike. I have a good connection with Google’s AdSense team, so I’m sure that they would have let me know if this policy had changed at all.
Post is 3 years old, interesting did anybody check is adsense and omkase usage policy still the same?
I have started using Omakase links now. Eager to see the results.
Hello, I wonder if you would perhaps educate me. I am very new at this.
I have recently put up a website that incorporates goodle adsense, ebay partners and amazon a store.
I advertise via adwords.
The problem is the impressions on both ebay partner and amazon associates does not equal (they are much less) than the impressions on google adword.
I understand that not everyone will click on one or the other sites, however, my amazon account has not changed since I started my adwords adversting, and neither has my ebay partners.
Any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated.
I wonder if the code will break in sidebar widgets on wordpress – it doesn’t play well with javascript. Also, it would be cool if they could target ads based on tags on a tag, vs. trying to scan the entire page and guess which content works best.
Norton Antivirus/Internet Security interferes seriously with Omakase ads & I have to turn Norton off completely otherwise the ads do not appear at all on my site after loading. It’s very annoying!
Rather than hiding the border, is it possible to change the color by editing your code? Also the font colors & the black bar at the top? I’d prefer a navy blue instead of black.
Good overview.
Omakese links are cool and innovative, so I added them to my page.
But I have yet to understand how placement effects the displayed items.
When I placed the links near a specific content block, it sometimes displays links from sidebar content. I wish they explained exactly how the links read your webpage.
My favorite Omakase use, and not JUST because it’s mine:
We tried Omakase on our site…
http://www.texasgigs.com/blogs/notmusic/2006/jul/25/amazon/
And it led to our first expose’:
http://www.texasgigs.com/news/2006/aug/07/cuban-hdnet-true-music/
Brian, I have direct confirmation from the AdSense team that it *is* perfectly acceptable to run both Omakase and AdSense on the same page. Where have you seen specific data from Google that it would not be considered acceptable?
So, I have still seen conflicting reports – can we use this with adsense? or no?
brian
I would to like know what they base the comment on that states “it’s not an advertising system, per se”. If it’s not an advertising system, I’d like to better understand what it is, but at any rate, thanks for the tip and I’ll definitely be looking into using this one as time goes on!