[HN Gopher] Euro privacy watchdog calls for end of targeted adve...
___________________________________________________________________
Euro privacy watchdog calls for end of targeted advertising
Author : LinuxBender
Score : 155 points
Date : 2021-02-12 14:26 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| h4ck32n3w5 wrote:
| TLDR: The author presumes that the call for banning is nothing
| more than an aggressive negotiation stance that isn't intended to
| stand.
|
| I agree
| noobface1337 wrote:
| Welp, there goes Facebook's whole business model.
|
| In all seriousness though, there are times that I really don't
| mind targeted ads since they are somewhat relevant to me. But at
| other times, it does get super creepy how much these ad-tech
| companies know me.
| 5tefan wrote:
| Advertising should not be a valid reason to collect my data.
| Collecting the data should be illegal in the first place.
| tompccs wrote:
| As much as we love to hate targeted advertising here on HN, it's
| a godsend to small businesses. And, dare I say...some people like
| it? Step outside the techie bubble and I have friends who
| actually curate their Facebook interests to make the adverts more
| relevant to them (yes, they know it's making them easier to sell
| to and invading their privacy and no, they don't care!). I'm
| buying my girlfriend a PS100 wool jumper for her birthday because
| she saw an advert on Facebook, from a company I've never heard
| of.
|
| Targeted advertising (especially on social media) really levels
| the playing-field, as smaller businesses can target niche
| audiences. It's sad that Big Tech have ended up the de-facto
| middleman between _all_ advertisers and _all_ communities, but
| that 's a separate question. If you want to make it easier for
| competing advertising agencies to carve out parts of the market
| the worst thing you can do is add onerous complex regulation.
| CubsFan1060 wrote:
| IMHO, targeted advertising is completely ok, as long as you
| know you're being targeted. I think most people can deduce that
| their actions on Facebook change their ads on Facebook.
|
| The problem is when you walk into an auto parts store, have to
| wait in line, so you play whatever the newest game is on your
| phone. The game figures out where you are via gps, reports that
| to facebook, and suddenly you're getting car part ads on
| facebook. This is not clear to most people. And I'd even say
| this behavior is just fine if you opt-in to it.
|
| And it gets worse. You have a friend in your contacts list
| (which you shared with Facebook for some reason). Facebook
| thinks that they probably share the same interests as you, so
| now THEY are getting auto parts ads.
|
| At least for me, as long as this is all clear and accepted, I'm
| fine with it. As of now, consumers either don't have a choice,
| or the choice they do have is so hidden that they don't know
| they have it.
| Animats wrote:
| _As much as we love to hate targeted advertising here on HN, it
| 's a godsend to small businesses._
|
| It's become more of an extortion scheme. Ask a small business
| about Yelp.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| That is completely unrelated to this.
| seibelj wrote:
| You have friends that actually spend their free time _modifying
| their profile to make advertising easier_? The fuck? Is this a
| psyop post from FB lobbying group?
| gpderetta wrote:
| > some people like it
|
| well, it is liked by the perpetrators, not the victims.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| Let's just make it the end of advertising altogether, finally.
| Advertising's goal is to influence your behaviour in a way that
| benefits somebody else, not necessarily yourself. Of course we
| can easily imagine why having such a system in place is also
| beneficial for governments. That is IMHO all the more reason why
| it should be a basic human right to be free from advertising in
| all aspects of your life, if you want.
| wsgeorge wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean by "advertising" here, but the way
| you state the goal of advertising is too close to the general
| goal of communication to make a blanket ban on advertising
| quite totalitarian.
|
| And I say this as someone with an instinctual dislike for
| advertising and practically any sort of opportunistic
| promotion/marketing.
| Animats wrote:
| Sao Paulo, Brazil banned outdoor advertising signs in 2007.[1]
| Big win. It can be done.
|
| I'd argue that advertising should not be a tax-deductible
| business expense. That would discourage overdoing it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Limpa
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| That's so awesome. Wish every other brazilian city did the
| same.
| jraby3 wrote:
| Wouldn't that mean an end to a lot of free services? If I want
| to pay for email there are plenty of services. If I want to
| trade viewing some ads for free email service shouldn't that
| choice be up to me?
| danbruc wrote:
| _Wouldn't that mean an end to a lot of free services?_
|
| They are not free, you pay for them with everything you buy,
| with the ad budget share of the price. And you are not only
| paying for the service you want, you are also paying for the
| entire ad industry on top of that.
| pb7 wrote:
| Whatever the cost, it will increase significantly without
| advertising. Advertising pushes product into more hands
| which makes unit costs lower. Targeted advertising reduces
| ad costs because they are more effective.
|
| Free services have no reason to exist without advertising.
| danbruc wrote:
| _Advertising pushes product into more hands which makes
| unit costs lower._
|
| This is at the very least not obvious. Advertising does,
| again at least not obviously, increase the amount of
| money consumers [can] spend. If they shift money to one
| product, another one will see reduced consumption and get
| more expensive to manufacture.
|
| Also what prevents one or a few companies from being very
| successful with their advertisement, becoming a oligopoly
| or even a monopoly and then inflating the price for more
| profit and to the disadvantage of the consumers?
| pb7 wrote:
| >Also what prevents one or a few companies from being
| very successful with their advertisement, becoming a
| oligopoly or even a monopoly and then inflating the price
| for more profit and to the disadvantage of the consumers?
|
| I think this is just as muddy as the bits you pointed
| out. Incumbents don't need to advertise but new players
| do and they have a better chance to gain market share
| with targeted advertising due to more effective use of
| their often limited budgets.
| danbruc wrote:
| _I think this is just as muddy as the bits you pointed
| out._
|
| You are of course right, I only wanted to given some
| scenario with opposite outcome for customers. My point
| was more that one will have to provide much better
| arguments or evidence than some random macroeconomic
| interaction to convince me that advertising has any net
| positive effect.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Even before influencing behaviour (which is not inherently
| wrong, by the way. Everyone tries to influence others all the
| time) the aim of advertising is to make your product or service
| known, it's to make potential customers know that you exist so
| that if they need what you sell you at least have a chance that
| they'll buy it from you. Advertising is an essential part of a
| market economy.
|
| It's always useful to go back to basics: Let's say I'm a
| teenager and I want to make some money to buy a new bike by
| mowing lawns. Will I just sit on my front porch and hope that
| my neighbours will read my mind? Of course not, I'll advertise
| by knocking on doors or distributing flyers.
|
| Then, targeted advertising is putting flyers only in the
| mailboxes of houses that have a lawn instead of distributing at
| random.
|
| Banning advertising altogether is at best an ill-thought-out
| position, at worst a call to enforce a planned soviet-style
| economy. Banning targeted advertising does not seem much better
| (of course the article qualifies this proposed ban as only
| being "on the basis of pervasive tracking", not general).
| smartties wrote:
| > Let's just make it the end of advertising altogether,
| finally.
|
| Are you ready to pay 5$/month to have access to google search,
| then 2$/month for hackernews, another 5$ for youtube, and then
| 3$ for your mail address... ? The web runs on ads
| bondarchuk wrote:
| Yeah definitely. If we assume that advertising works, then it
| follows that the total sum that all advertisers pay is
| extracted from all users in aggregate, only in a roundabout
| way. If we outlawed advertising totally (which is more severe
| than what I proposed in my first post) then it would just
| mean the hidden cost (or damage, in some cases) incurred by
| users due to advertising is made explicit. If that means some
| people won't use some services, I would say it's only fair,
| it's better than tricking people into paying for stuff
| indirectly.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| I agree that even untargeted advertising can be manipulative.
| However, to end advertising completely would require the
| presence of established _Consumer Reports_ -type media that are
| widely known in society, so that consumers are aware of what
| products are out there for their needs. Since most countries
| lack such prominent independent sources of product news,
| consumers have few other sources of information on what options
| they have than media that, in some way or another, is linked
| with advertising.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| If advertisers want to inform people, and people actually
| want to be informed, I'm sure together they will find a way
| to communicate, even if it does not include shoving stuff
| into other people's faces. Of course well-researched,
| unbiased consumer-oriented media are very nice but the bar
| for replacing advertising as it currently is is much lower.
| You just need a place to put stuff, maybe sort it into
| categories, and give more room to advertisers who pay more.
| The only difference is that people will engage with it
| voluntarily.
| mrcartmenez wrote:
| I want this so much. If your business model relies on invading
| people's privacy. Then screw your business model.
| drak0n1c wrote:
| Small restaurants rely on postcards sent to targeted addresses
| in the neighborhood to get off the ground. I can appreciate
| those. Is that targeted?
| [deleted]
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Anonymously targeting neighboorhoods is OK, no one's name is
| involved in that, just a list of addresses.
|
| This is different than surveilling people's private and
| intimate communications, building a profile from those, then
| targeting against those built profiles.
| pb7 wrote:
| How do you feel about grocery stores inflating prices and
| then offering discounts across the board when using their
| loyalty programs for which you have to give up your
| information? This is then used to mail you targeted flyers
| for products they think you will want to buy based on your
| purchase history.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| It's a good indicator of the market price on privacy.
|
| I can always not use the loyalty card if I really want a
| purchase to be private, but that would only be really
| true if:
|
| - I approached the store not using any type of vehicle
| with a government identifier that could be potientially
| observed or tracked,
|
| - I paid cash,
|
| - I wore a disguise to not show up on the store's
| security cameras or be recognizable to others,
|
| - and I didn't bring a cell phone and/or any other device
| broadcasting a MAC address to a potential sniffer.
| mrec wrote:
| Is it? If it was really that easy to track and identify
| customers without using loyalty cards, why would they
| bother with the faff and expense of loyalty cards?
|
| I half-wonder whether there's a more pernicious plan
| which actively wants customers to know they're being
| tracked, on the assumption that if they see their
| purchases as contributing to a persistent profile with
| unknown distribution, they'll try to curate that profile
| to make themselves "look good" the same way they do on
| Facebook etc. Don't want everyone to think I'm a
| cheapskate, better buy that more expensive brand even
| though I can't taste the difference...
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| 1. What could I buy at a grocery store that would make me
| look bad? If I'm rich enough to be around people who will
| look down on me for what I buy at the grocery store I'm
| also rich enough to simply not care. Are there really
| rich or well-to-do people that actually care what
| cackling Karens think of them while shopping? This is a
| social issue not a surveillance-advertising issue.
|
| 2. Grocery stores are retail. They spend money on bulk
| product, mark it up, then sell it. Why would a grocery
| store simply not stock things it doesn't want people to
| buy?
|
| 3. If there is some master plan behind the scenes, who's
| paying the grocery store to keep product it's trying to
| shame people into not buying with loyalty cards?
| pb7 wrote:
| It's not that no one buys certain products, it's that the
| stores know who buys what and sends targeted advertising
| and coupons based on that. If they know you buy dog food,
| they can send you a coupon for a certain brand that isn't
| selling well and they're overstocked on. You're
| manipulated into buying things you otherwise wouldn't
| have just like advertising on the web.
| mrec wrote:
| It's more of an idle speculation than a serious
| hypothesis, but...
|
| To your 1, I don't know but I wouldn't be surprised.
| "Value" own-brand ranges are typically packaged to _look_
| cheaper and cruder than fancier lines. The cardboard
| costs the same either way.
|
| To your 2 and 3, it's about capturing consumer surplus,
| not stopping value sales altogether. The customer who can
| only afford the cheapest lines will still buy the
| cheapest lines. The one who _could_ afford something a
| bit more upscale, but wouldn 't normally care enough,
| might be nudged.
|
| And looking further into the dystopian future: what if it
| becomes more than just status anxiety? What if buying the
| "wrong" things affects your (social?) credit score, or
| your health insurance premiums?
| gpderetta wrote:
| otherwise known as spam.
| danbruc wrote:
| As far as I am concerned, we can prohibit advertising
| altogether and replace it with independent reviews.
| junippor wrote:
| Not sure if you're trolling or genuinely don't know how this
| works.
| danbruc wrote:
| I am serious. A bit exaggerated but essentially you pay
| someone to lie to you. And that does not sound like
| something I would want to support.
| jfk13 wrote:
| I wonder who'd fund that, and how we'd ensure independence?
| danbruc wrote:
| Here in Germany we have Stiftung Warentest [1] and it is
| financed by selling their reports as magazines and online.
| They also receive some government support from the consumer
| protection ministry. Not sure if there are any competitors,
| Stiftung Warentest is certainly by far the most well known
| one.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiftung_Warentest
| jakub_g wrote:
| There's a similar thing in France called "60 Millions de
| consommateurs":
|
| https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&u=http
| s:/...
|
| which is great, but I think DE and FR are way ahead
| compared to other countries in that area.
|
| Edit: also in UK there's "Which?":
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Which%3F
| jfk13 wrote:
| Yes, I'm aware of _Which?_ -- my parents used to get it
| when I was growing up.
|
| It was only ever able to cover a tiny part of the market
| for a few selected things, though. (And of course only a
| small minority of people would ever see it.)
|
| I'm not sure how well that would scale.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| That would be an utopia indeed. Advertising suffers from a
| massive conflict of interest. People would be much better
| served by independent third parties evaluating products and
| publishing the results. We just gotta make sure they aren't
| corrupted.
| mdpopescu wrote:
| After that, we can also make sure politicians are honest
| and children are well-behaved.
| TuringTest wrote:
| I wouldn't mind some targeted advertising. If it were
| contained in a single place, to visit whenever I wanted to.
|
| Double gain if it would eliminate tracked advertising on the
| rest of the internet.
| endymi0n wrote:
| Please, no. Advertising is like drugs: There's always a
| demand, and if it's not satisfied legally and transparently,
| it will find a way through other means. I already can't trust
| most influencers or any other "independent" reviewers.
|
| Pushing ad dollars into prohibition will make the problem
| much worse than it already is.
| danbruc wrote:
| _There's always a demand [...]_
|
| Maybe I am out of touch with reality but it seems to me
| that there is mostly a demand, or maybe better a desire, to
| advertise something while I do not think that there is the
| same demand or desire to consume those advertisements. But
| all kind of media will happily take some of those
| advertising dollars and force the ads onto us, whether
| online, on paper, on TV, or billboards. And people don't
| complain because they get stuff cheaper or even for free,
| or so they think.
| dekken_ wrote:
| No, Advertising is propaganda.
|
| Period.
| tremon wrote:
| _Advertising is like drugs: There's always a demand, and if
| it's not satisfied legally and transparently, it will find
| a way through other means_
|
| If by that you mean that we should incarcerate influencers
| like we do drug traffickers, I'm all for it!
| shin_lao wrote:
| You will have a very hard time to define what is advertising
| and what's not. How can a business tell you about its
| existence?
| ashton314 wrote:
| As a possible alternative, what if we just prohibited the use of
| passively collected data for monetization purposes? Instead, if a
| company wanted to do targeted advertising, they would have to ask
| you explicitly about your preferences, kind of like how YouTube
| sometimes throws up those interest surveys.
|
| This is still a nascent idea; I don't know how this would be
| enforced, and there are a lot of blurry boundaries. I think this
| would be an interesting thing to explore.
| TuringTest wrote:
| Europe's GDPR is exactly that. It forced the creation of modal
| popups that harass you on every web site you enter, prompting
| you to "Accept" being tracked and monetized.
|
| And apparently it wasn't enough, since the EU was lobbied to
| update the law with "special interests" that allow companies to
| track and monetize you without opt-in anyway. So, the worst of
| both worlds.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| These sites are likely non-GPDR-compliant, as the "Deny" must
| be as easy as the "Accept", and clicking "Deny" must afford
| you the same functionality. This is frequently not the case.
| TuringTest wrote:
| Even those places with a "Reject" button have the "special
| interests" enabled, and you need to explicitly opt-out -
| even from them building a targeted profile.
|
| Yes, it's likely that those opt-out checks, hidden under a
| folded option and requiring literally hundreds of clicks to
| remove all third-party ad providers, are illegal. [1] That
| doesn't seem to deter popup developers from designing them
| that way.
|
| [1] https://dma.org.uk/uploads/misc/5b0523a0d1a2b-5ae1fbf5c
| 60fd-...
| guerrilla wrote:
| This sounds like it'll have a million loopholes like taxes. Not
| that I'd object but I'd rather prioritize ads being banned
| entirely.
| ksm1717 wrote:
| So glad euro privacy watchdog has made their stance clear on
| whether the end of targeted advertising should be called for. Ive
| spent too many sleepless nights wondering who will call for the
| end of targeted advertising, and when. For euro privacy watchdog
| to end all the speculation and call for the end of targeted
| advertising is a surprise, but a welcome one indeed, bravo sir!
| elbelcho wrote:
| Wiewiorowski's advocacy for an eventual prohibition on targeted
| advertising may be more of a negotiating position than a
| realistic goal.
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| Instead of increasing regulation, the burden of which will fall
| on small businesses, the EU should encourage online micro-
| payments.
|
| If individual users could pay a few cents to access content
| across thousands of websites, with the total spend level
| aggregated, this could replace the need for advertising.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| That just leads to a scenario where people pay for stuff _and_
| are subjected to ads. There is no situation where business
| owners wouldn 't benefit from putting ads into their stuff.
| Choosing not to do it means leaving money on the table.
| nofunsir wrote:
| All advertising is a non-necessary evil, with ONE exception only:
|
| I'm IN a store, show me ads with spec sheets for items IN your
| store only. I save time. You sell more, more easily.
| Lev1a wrote:
| Or if you subscribe to your local/regional weekly newspaper and
| it includes a few brochures of local supermarkets (with
| selection of discount offers for the week). Makes the planning
| for the (bi-)weekly shopping for cheap necessities easier
| without the constant information bombardment and invasive
| tracking that's inherent to internet-based advertising.
| dagorenouf wrote:
| Wouldn't the death of tailored advertising hurt early-stage
| startups a lot (caveat: I'm one of them)?
|
| When you're a tiny operation, you can't spend millions on a broad
| fishing net and hope somebody will match your ideal customer.
| Having the ability to precisely target who sees your ads is a
| great way to get some initial momentum and traction, without
| going under.
| jkubicek wrote:
| > Such measures should include a phase-out leading to a
| prohibition of targeted advertising on the basis of pervasive
| tracking
|
| It sounds like targeted advertising based on a user's behavior
| on a specific site would still be allowed? i.e. I watch a lot
| of backpacking videos on Youtube, show me backpacking gear
| advertisements _on youtube_.
| godelski wrote:
| Right? I research products when I buy them and I'm more than
| happy to have ads on. I think a lot of people don't
| understand the real reasons I (and many others) use an
| adblocker though. 1) malvertising is a common attack vector
| and I can't trust most sites 2) tracking scripts 3) ads are
| fashy and distracting with popups and popunders 4) page load
| times are substantially faster. As long as there are enough
| bad actors in the space I'll keep doing it, but right now
| those bad actors include every major website (hitting all 4
| points). Show me relevant ads _to the topic at hand_ , don't
| shove it in my face, don't play sounds or be flashy, don't
| track me, don't put a billion scripts on your website, just
| respect me.
| diggernet wrote:
| Target the context, not the user. In your case, don't watch
| your behavior on YouTube, just put the ads on backpacking
| videos.
| godelski wrote:
| Targeted advertising has always existed and always will, the
| difference is micro targeting. Google originally made all its
| revenue from targeted advertising. You search for books? Get
| sponsored ads for Amazon and Barnes and Noble. A big thing is
| that this kind of advertising isn't invasive on user privacy. I
| don't feel like my privacy is invaded when I see ads for
| NordVPN when watching YouTube videos nor Rocket Mortgage when
| listening to podcasts.
| McDyver wrote:
| Honest question: As a company, would you think "I don't care
| about the users' privacy, I want a marketing company that gives
| me as much of my target audience as possible"? Would you care
| how that marketing company got the users' information?
|
| How would you feel as a user? Are you always interested in
| being a "consumer" and willing to have your habits sold so you
| are the target of ads?
|
| How does your target audience feel?
| krelian wrote:
| I'm a user and I prefer to see targeted ads instead of
| generic crap. I prefer to get recommendations that are based
| on my known preferences. I like the idea that my data helps
| makes services better. I also like to have the option to use
| some services for "free" instead of paying.
|
| I _would_ like to have total transparency about which
| personal information was used to target me so that I can opt-
| out of sharing a certain piece of information if I 'm so
| inclined.
|
| I _would_ like to have the ability to revoke access to my
| personal information from companies that I don 't personally
| like.
|
| ------
|
| I understand the anti-ad/privacy fanatics and share most of
| the values but the extreme end sins in too much short-
| sightedness and hypocrisy. Understand that if your will
| becomes reality day 1 will be a very different day from what
| you had in mind. In the meantime put your money where your
| mouth is and _stop_ using any services that uses users '
| private data for improving the product: search, maps,
| youtube, twitter... you're pretty much left with Wikipedia.
| Oh, and thank you for the cookie bars, great addition.
| Forbo wrote:
| Seeing generic crap helps me to ignore the consumerist
| propaganda that's being hurled at me from all angles. It's
| easier to recognize it for what it is: an attempt to exert
| undue influence over my decision making.
| McDyver wrote:
| You make some valid points; I would disagree with the term
| "privacy fanatics", though.
|
| Privacy is a human right, and you seem to be putting the
| burden on the user to protect it, rather than on the
| companies to stop abusing it.
|
| We live in "1st world countries" - I assume you do too -
| and we have the luxury of having regulations that allow us
| to opt out of some things, but others might not be so
| fortunate; I believe we should lead the way in preventing
| people from being products. It might be a pipe dream, but
| things are obviously not working at the moment
| diggernet wrote:
| If we upvote this story to the moon, will it come true?
| netsharc wrote:
| It brings back a memory of an online shop that offered a discount
| if you didn't use Internet Explorer, they said maintaining the
| site for IE cost them extra money, so it makes sense.
|
| I wonder if online shops would start offering a discount if the
| user says yes to targetted advertising.
| idrios wrote:
| I wouldn't even mind this. There are a lot of services I would
| pay for to not have ads. But I also actually know people who
| like having ads tailored to them
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Amazon offers discounts on their Kindle devices if you accept
| ads on it (as I recall they're fairly nonintrusive, appearing
| when the device is otherwise inactive not pop-ups jumping out
| at you during normal use). This is the same premise as some
| older free internet services and very cheap "internet
| appliances", back when those were a thing.
| tpmx wrote:
| Which (giant to very large) companies besides Alphabet/Google and
| Facebook would suffer dramatically if this happened? (I couldn't
| really think of any.)
| gerash wrote:
| I don't mind good regulations but last time Europe wrote a law
| for the web this is what users ended up with:
| https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/1180978631054508034?s=20
|
| Let's clean that up first before creating a new set of rules.
| haditab wrote:
| Totally off-topic, but which phone had 5G in October 2019?
| teddyh wrote:
| The ugliness of the web site as shown in your link is not
| directly caused by any law. The obnoxious cookie banners are
| _meant_ to be obnoxious, in order to 1. get you used to
| clicking "OK" all the time and 2. convince you that the law
| that _was_ made is somehow to blame for all this. It is not. If
| companies _really_ wanted to make a nice clean experience, they
| would do what the law requires and _stop hoarding all personal
| information_. But they don't want that; they want to make a
| political statement about how that nasty law is somehow making
| them do annoying things. But they brought it all on themselves.
| Don't be fooled.
| gerash wrote:
| What would you say if there was a law that said everytime you
| made a purchase from a shop that uses a credit card reader
| then there had to be a lawyer present from the business to
| walk you through 50 pages of legalize that you had to read,
| initial and sign for your "privacy" because Visa might get a
| record of what you bought. You'd had to do this for every new
| store you visited even if it's to just pick up milk on your
| way home.
|
| At that point I wouldn't care about "intentions" behind such
| regulation.
| majewsky wrote:
| The cookie law was intended to get website to stop using
| tracking cookies. Instead the pain was offloaded to users and
| the tracking continues. In a way, the proposal in TFA would be
| the "cleaning up" that you ask for.
| opensmtpd wrote:
| I have the impression that google claims that personalized
| advertising somehow benefits users. I think I saw this kind of
| claims in some of their campaigns or somewhere. But is this
| really the case?
|
| Well I can see how personalized ads benefit advertisers. But
| users? I mean at first, it seems like it make sense because
| personalized ads are based on what I'm interested in. But more I
| think about it, I'm not really sure if it is actually beneficial
| to me.
|
| For example, if I want to buy a hard drive, the ads don't tell me
| what kinds of hard drives there are and what the pros and cons of
| each of them are. The ads are just what an arbitrary company X
| wants me to think of their product in order to change my
| behavior. They are rarely actually informative. Can someone give
| me an example why personalized ads are beneficial to users
| compared to non-personalized ads or no ads at all?
|
| Edit: I'm afraid I haven't elaborated enough. I'm not saying that
| non-personalized ads are better than personalized ads. I just
| think they don't add much informational value. If I want to buy
| something, information access is so trivial these days that I can
| easily look for products myself, and the information I find will
| likely be a lot more helpful than ads. So what I'm trying to say
| is that personalized and non-personalized ads don't look a lot
| different in terms of benefits they bring to the viewer.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| I think non-personalized ads are better for users.
|
| The less that advertisers have the ability to manipulate me,
| the better.
| andreygrehov wrote:
| You don't have to buy the hard drive that is being advertised
| to you. At the end of the day, it's your decision. If ads were
| not targeted, you'd see a milk shake ad instead. How's that
| better?
|
| Edit: my milk shaker example is not even that great. If
| targeting was killed, you'd most likely see ads from massive
| corporations only - those who have a lot of cash to spend on
| ads. Little players (small business owners, startup owners)
| would have zero chance to compete against those corporations.
| They'd lose every single ad auction.
| deltron3030 wrote:
| >If targeting was killed, you'd most likely see ads from
| massive corporations only - those who have a lot of cash to
| spend on ads.
|
| Why? If I run a niche site with ads I'd want to pick ads that
| fit my site and audience, similar to picking affiliate
| programs. Picking relevant ads should be my job a as a site
| owner.
| andreygrehov wrote:
| Because most businesses run their ads through exchanges,
| where supply and demand meets each other. An exchange runs
| an auction. The winning bidder is the one whose ad your
| users will see. If small businesses won't be able to target
| their niche users, corporations will increase their bid
| price and swallow smaller auction participants.
| opensmtpd wrote:
| I think you're right that it would be bad for small
| businesses. But for users(I meant users as viewers of the
| ads), I still don't think it adds much value. If getting
| information wasn't easy like the old days, I can understand
| how targeted ads are beneficial. But I can look for hard
| drive info and reviews easily these days. And the information
| I find will likely be a lot better than ads. Personalized ads
| and non-personalized ads don't look a lot different in terms
| of benefits they bring to the viewer.
| cmroanirgo wrote:
| > _Little players... would have zero chance_
|
| This is not entirely correct. It comes back to CTR (click
| thru ratio) and with the loss of 'targeting' then the CTR
| will plummet unless the platform reverts back to 'market
| targeting'. That is, websites will need to choose the class
| of ads on their websites, and the more irrelevant they
| choose, the less they'll get paid (because CTR will drop).
| So, from a small advertiser's perspective, they'll need to
| make sure their ads only appear on relevant websites (eg.
| tech on tech sites, milk shakes on food sites).
|
| A one-man-show (eg a plumber's business) already knows that
| social ads work better for them anyhow. Maybe billboards and
| local classified ads will make a resurgence as a result.
|
| Edit: I should add that Goog is already ahead of the
| targeting ads for the small local business, with their "my
| business" product, which allows you to search locally for
| businesses.
| dabbledash wrote:
| "How's that better?"
|
| Because it doesn't require invasive surveillance.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > For example, if I want to buy a hard drive, the ads don't
| tell me what kinds of hard drives there are and what the pros
| and cons of each of them are.
|
| Even if ads did this, would anyone believe it? The obvious
| conflict of interest removes all legitimacy from any claim in
| any advertisement.
|
| Now people just search for reddit posts instead. We want to see
| what real people think about the product, not some paid-for
| opinion. We want to see the products compared with their
| competitors. Advertisers figured this out and have started
| astroturfing on reddit as well...
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _" Now people just search for reddit posts instead. We want
| to see what real people think about the product, not some
| paid-for opinion."_
|
| You're dead right, there is no other way to get real/accurate
| facts about products other than to check the experience of
| others.
|
| One gets good at it too, one quickly learns how to
| distinguish those who've vested interests and hype up their
| products over those of rivals, similarly one learns to ignore
| the clueless who down rate a good product simply because
| they're incapable of reading the manual.
|
| I've foubd that doing such research across multiple sites to
| be absolutely invaluable.
| Kiro wrote:
| I seldom buy stuff I see in ads (or anything really) but I
| recall one case where targeted ads actually helped me.
|
| I was looking to buy an item but the store had so many options
| that I got completely overwhelmed with choice paralysis.
| Afterwards I started getting ads from said store in chunks of
| three items. It made it possible to evaluate things in peace
| over time since I was only exposed with a few options at a time
| in my regular feeds. I finally ended up buying one of those
| options.
|
| Maybe it's more of a problem of choice paralysis but the fact
| that the options naturally and slowly showed up when I wasn't
| actively looking made it much easier.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Was looking for a light weight laptop with very a very long
| battery life and an add for one showed up on my Facebook feed.
| I wouldn't buy it just from that ad, but I definitely looked
| that model up and considered it - ultimately I went for the new
| Mac, but if not that would have been a good candidate too.
|
| To the contrary I got an add for the local bus service, which I
| checked out and found to be targeted to everybody living in
| Denmark and being 18+. It was extremely not relevant to me
| because I am a happy driver (happy in particular that I don't
| have to use the bus service).
| TrianguloY wrote:
| Ideally ads should be like a recommendation system. If you want
| to buy a hard drive, the 'best' ads should be of hard drives
| that suits you, either because of their price, their features,
| or whatever you personally want. In order to build this
| profile, the recommendation system should know you, your data.
| Lots of recommendation systems exists, and those who's first
| objective are users seems the best ones (preferably if they are
| offline so your data is not shared).
|
| But what about an ad? By definition it's something someone pays
| to be shown. When Google shows you targeted ads, they aren't
| showing you the best ads for you, they are showing you the best
| ads of those companies who paid for it (and probably the price
| influences its ranking). The user is not the first objective.
|
| In an ideal world, personalized ads wouldn't be called ads, and
| would be like having an assistant. You want a hard drive? Here
| is the best hard drive _for you_ , or a list if you prefer, and
| then you buy it and the company earns your money.
|
| In the current world, that's far from the reality.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _" In an ideal world, personalized ads wouldn't be called
| ads, and would be like having an assistant."_
|
| Right, I'm truly stretched to the limit to think of any ad
| that I've seen on the web that's actually been truly
| informative to me. For that I have to go back to ads in
| specialized technical magazines that used to list detailed
| specifications for the products they were selling, today web
| advertisers simply don't do that - all we get is hyped-up
| uninformative and often misleading crap that interferes with
| our access to the site's web pages.
|
| Similarly, many, many websites that are selling stuff are
| cluttered, disorganized and otherwise hard to navigate (as
| well as being very, very slow). Of course, this is a
| deliberate marketing ploy but the effect on me is that I'm
| straight out of there as fast as possible.
|
| Internet advertising has always been an unmitigated mess and
| unlike those old magazine ads, almost without exception, it's
| gotten in the way of the main presentation to the utter
| annoyance of website visitors. It's little wonder so many use
| ad blockers.
|
| For years, my solution has been to block ads as well as all
| the accompanying JavaScript of which much is devoted to
| spying on the user.
|
| Eliminating both ads and JS not only speeds up websites
| enormously but also it eliminates all those hesitant pauses
| and other jerky/delay-like responses that make browsing such
| a damn pain.
|
| I'm now so used to 'clean' browsing that I cannot ever
| imagine myself returning to the standard defaults - ads and
| JS. For those who ask 'how do you do this or that without
| JS?' I'd just say this, there are millions of sites on the
| web, if one blocks me then I instantly move on (one good
| point about the web is that most of the information on it is
| paralleled across multiple sites and there are many sites
| that are more user friendly than others). That said, there
| are rare situations where I still have to use JS. When
| necessary I just toggle it on and off, the default being off.
|
| As far as I'm concerned the web has been ruined by invasive
| advertising and we need a new paradigm to fix it. There are
| many options for that but it's too big a subject to discuss
| here.
| andreygrehov wrote:
| > But what about an ad? By definition it's something someone
| pays to be shown. When Google shows you targeted ads, they
| aren't showing you the best ads for you, they are showing you
| the best ads of those companies who paid for it (and probably
| the price influences its ranking). The user is not the first
| objective.
|
| I mean, that is an assumption, unless you work at Google and
| is currently sharing the algorithm with us. Most likely, they
| show you the best ad they can based on targeting criterias
| and the information they know about you. It could very well
| be possible that Google not always picks the highest bidder.
| The winning score is most likely calculated based on a
| combination of signals, eg bidding price, user's preferences,
| user's buying history, etc.
| godelski wrote:
| Interestingly a problem we as nerds often have is thinking
| that if we have the best product or best skills that it will
| win out. In reality the best often doesn't win because there
| are many other factors (and we can see a history of superior
| technologies being beat out). That assistant that acts as an
| actual recommendation system and removes the human element
| could bring us closer to that meritocracy based product
| world, which seems beneficial to everyone. But determining
| what is best is a very difficult problem to begin with.
| mattlutze wrote:
| Good long-term relationship building can be as compelling a
| feature as what the product actually does. It's short-
| sighted to discount the value of enjoying having bought
| what you buy.
| [deleted]
| mnd999 wrote:
| The New York Times stopped doing it in Europe, and it wasn't a
| problem:
|
| https://digiday.com/media/gumgumtest-new-york-times-gdpr-cut...
|
| Perhaps it's not much of a loss.
| hogFeast wrote:
| The CMA in the UK did an investigation into this, and targeting
| is worth a 30% bump in price. It is very effective for all
| parties.
|
| That being said, it is possible to get around this. The trade-
| off is: the privacy cost versus efficiency of advertising. I
| don't think there are any easy solutions short of coming down
| definitively on privacy. All the pop-ups are very annoying, and
| introduce friction to just using the website (I go onto Google,
| I search, I click result, stuff starts leaping on my
| screen...Agree to this...ad blocker on? Do this please...what a
| mess).
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