Amazon is shutting down a controversial advertising program that let brands slip samples into delivery boxes

Hollis Johnson/Business Insider

Advertisers paid to have samples included in people's deliveries.

• Amazon confirmed it would shut down a program that let advertisers include samples in people's orders.
• The program requires advertisers to spend a minimum of $50,000 for 25,000 samples, said Laura Meyer, founder and CEO of e-commerce agency Envision Horizons.
• The program has raised privacy concerns because Amazon used people's shopping data to send the samples.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Amazon said it's ending a sampling program that some shoppers saw as creepy.

Under the program, advertisers paid to send shoppers free products included with their orders. The program used machine learning and predictive analytics to crunch Amazon data and identify consumers who are likely to try products.

In January, Axios reported that Amazon was expanding the program. Amazon used a pilot program with brands including Folgers and Maybelline to differentiate its advertising business from Facebook and Google with physical products and retail data.

Dunkin' Donuts, Kind, and Quaker have also participated in the program, according to Amazon's website. Consumer-packaged-goods brands represent Amazon's biggest advertisers.

An Amazon spokesperson confirmed that the program would shut down in early 2020.

"Amazon is constantly testing and launching new offerings to innovate on behalf of customers. At this time, we have decided to discontinue the sampling program in 2020," the spokesperson said.

Amazon described the program on its site as recommendations and says customers don't review the products or pay for them. "It's like Amazon's product recommendations, but real, so you can try, smell, feel, and taste the latest products," reads the website.

Laura Meyer, founder and CEO of Amazon-focused ad agency Envision Horizons, said Amazon charged $2 per sample in addition to the cost of the samples themselves. The program required advertisers to buy a minimum of 25,000 samples, equivalent to $50,000.

The sampling program was a small part of Amazon's ad business

Amazon doesn't publicize the sampling program in its $11 billion advertising business but it is mentioned in Amazon Advertising's terms and conditions.

Amazon primarily sells advertisers ads that run on its own site and app as well as a demand-side platform that places ads on third-party publishers and OTT placements within Amazon Fire TV and IMDb TV.

Outside of its advertising business, Amazon offers other types of sampling programs that are managed by teams like merchandising and business development. For example, Meyer said a client who makes baby products ran a program with Amazon's baby registry team that sent samples to shoppers who created an account.

Some consumers saw the program as creepy

Amazon's sampling program raised privacy concerns for some shoppers. The company uses its data to guess what products consumers are likely to buy, and on social media, some customers called the program creepy.

Others said on social media that the samples were well-targeted based on products they already buy.