Amazon Omakase Links, contextual advertising?
Amazon has been running beta with their Omakase Links, where associates can automatically display the products and content that visitors to the page are most likely to buy.
Aside from being ’smarter’, the compensation plan for the Omakase Links is the same as existing compensation plan for associates.
Amazon will show matching products once the ad is viewed several times on associates’ website (typically 2 - 3 times). When the ad is displayed the first and second time Amazon may display selected bestsellers from various product lines.
Some webmasters (like me) are using traditional Amazon associate ads in conjunction with premier contextual ads program like Google Adsense or Yahoo Publisher Network because it’s within the terms of both programs to display the traditional Amazon link in the same page with contextual ads.
But with the introduction of Omakase Links it create a grey zone of whether it’s breaching the TOS of Adsense and YPN as the technology used by Omakase sounds so contextual basis.
From some webmaster forums, it’s posted that response from Adsense team are ok to have Omakase ads alongside Adsense ad units in the same page.
As safety precaution, I will and I suggest that we should send an email ourselves to confirm this matter when we are ready to use Omakase with Adsense or YPN.
Btw, Omakase is a Japanese word meaning ‘leave it up to us’.
Source: Omakase FAQ from Amazon