According to this article in Quartz, you might soon get to make this choice:

There’s potentially another reason for Amazon to promote the use of video in e-commerce. It now has a way to offer customers discounts for watching ads. In October, Amazon was awarded a patent for “content-based price reductions and incentives.” The patent says that “customers in an electronic environment can be presented with the option to receive advertising, such as audio, video, or interactive content, in order to receive discounted pricing or similar benefits.”

Questions:

• Imagine you work for Amazon and have to develop this program. How would you design it? A few additional questions to get you started:
  • Would you tie the amount of the discount to the length of the ad?
  • How long do you think the ideal ad will be? 
  • Would you let customers know the amount of the discount before they watch or after? 
  • How would you decide what products would have this feature? Would you limit it so that product companies have to pay you to have this option? 
• As a consumer, would you be a fan of this "watch an add and get a discount" strategy?
• Do you think this strategy will work for Amazon? 

About the Author

Tim Ranzetta

Tim's saving habits started at seven when a neighbor with a broken hip gave him a dog walking job. Her recovery, which took almost a year, resulted in Tim getting to know the bank tellers quite well (and accumulating a savings account balance of over $300!). His recent entrepreneurial adventures have included driving a shredding truck, analyzing executive compensation packages for Fortune 500 companies and helping families make better college financing decisions. After volunteering in 2010 to create and teach a personal finance program at Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto, Tim saw firsthand the impact of an engaging and activity-based curriculum, which inspired him to start a new non-profit, Next Gen Personal Finance.

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