The difference is that Gizmodo is "upfront" about it.
For amazon to say, "Use _____ to remove that stain," and allow my company to put in a $0.35 per request bid to fill it in with "Jeremy's Awesome Cleaning Sauce," seems inherently more wrong.
For amazon to say, "Use _____ to remove that stain," and allow my company to put in a $0.35 per request bid to fill it in with "Jeremy's Awesome Cleaning Sauce," seems inherently more wrong.
It could be useful to allow people bid on specific kinds of general queries. "You can use our cleaning product for that" is a better answer than "Sorry, I don't know."
There's also some signalling here. It shows that someone is willing to bet money that they have what I want. This is similar to search engine ads.
Like with search engine ads, transparency & privacy are really important. I want to know when I'm receiving sponsored content. I want to know what information was used to decide to show me that content. Duck Duck Go gets this right. Podcasts that play special background music during ad breaks get this right.
Maybe Alexa needs a separate voice or tone for responses with sponsored content.
When I ask for, what I expect to be, a data-driven opinion about toothpaste from a device that is effectively my oven timer, I expect it to be honest!