[HN Gopher] Adtech is built on a privacy fault line
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Adtech is built on a privacy fault line
Author : iamacyborg
Score : 115 points
Date : 2023-08-02 15:21 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (iapp.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (iapp.org)
| leptons wrote:
| I worked at an Adtech company for a short while. It was the most
| toxic place I've ever worked. Beyond how they treated their
| employees, they were giddy with excitement about making a deal
| with a large hotel chain that gave them access to smart tvs so
| they could listen in and "capture data" from people staying at
| the hotel. When I realized what kind of people were running the
| place I quickly found another job. I had no doubt they would have
| used information gathered about me to try to control me as an
| employee, so I left before they could try.
| Given_47 wrote:
| That's wild. I wonder if those people were just so immersed
| that they never actually took a step back and considered the
| larger picture? Cuz anecdotally ik some advertisers that don't
| consider themselves "advertisers" but rather their ads as a
| piece of art and then expressing their creativity.
|
| Honestly not sure if I would feel better if it was some
| heuristic blocking a true realization of their actions or just
| classifying them as evil lol
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| It's the same vibe as wallstreet bloodsuckers 2007 making
| money off people getting thrown out of their homes
| latchkey wrote:
| Same. One time my boss (the head of engineering) got so pissed
| at his cousin, that he hired through nepotism, that he punched
| a filing cabinet. It was a wild sight.
| secondcoming wrote:
| I've worked at an Adtech company. It was great. The people were
| fantastic and diverse. The actual 'tech' part of Adtech is
| actually really interesting and also challenging.
| leptons wrote:
| >I've worked at an Adtech company. It was great. The people
| were fantastic and diverse.
|
| Thanks for sharing your anecdote, but the same "fantastic and
| diverse" people you worked with could still be doing morally
| and ethically questionable things to get their paychecks.
|
| >The actual 'tech' part of Adtech is actually really
| interesting and also challenging.
|
| Atomic bombs are also "interesting and challenging" to make,
| that doesn't mean that using them is a good thing.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Without major changes to its operating model, each day the
| targeted advertising infrastructure is inching closer to
| collapse.
|
| Boy, I sure hope so. Adtech is a horrible, abusive industry that
| deserves to be buried and forgotten.
| mrweasel wrote:
| I feel like it was bound to happen. There has been a huge
| momentum behind the online ad industry for almost 20 years. The
| results are questionable, but we've just kept moving forward.
| It's a lot like the dotcom boom in some sense, there's now a
| huge number of people working in advertising who honestly knows
| very little about advertising. They know a lot about ad-spend,
| how to click around in Adwords, SEO and putting trackers on
| websites, but not running a successful advertising campaign.
| They've almost broke the internet with their shit, certain
| categories are now completely gone from some search engines,
| replaced by ads, poorly written blogs and SEO junk.
|
| On LinkedIn I follow a few of these people, people I know from
| working in e-commerce years ago. They have no glue about what's
| happening. They see the thing they've worked on for 15 years
| fall apart, but won't accept any of the blame. They blame
| Apple, the EU, anyone but themselves. They don't see any of the
| damage that they caused. The internet and it's users is
| something to extract value from, not something that holds any
| value on it's own in their minds.
|
| It's time that the online ad business get a reset. Ads will
| still be important, but the way they are managed and
| implemented needs to be adjusted.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > The internet and it's users is something to extract value
| from, not something that holds any value on it's own in their
| minds.
|
| When in the 21st century _hasn 't_ this been true?
|
| The internet is a commodity you pay for from an ISP. They
| control your traffic and log it to whatever extent they
| desire. Site operators choose to allow or deny visitors based
| on arbitrary things; membership, adblock, browser choice,
| etc. If you don't provide enough value to the site operator
| (or alternatively, cost too much to host) then advertisement
| becomes inevitable. Even your browser was monetized and
| weaponized since Microsoft realized they could pack-in web
| clients. Now everyone is being abused by some corporate
| benefactor.
|
| The online ad business is a reflection of how every first
| world government has let FAANG roll all over them and
| consequentially exploit their citizens. The only way we
| "reset" the ad industry is by bullwhipping Big Tech until
| they recognize your freedom as a computer owner.
| speed_spread wrote:
| Adtech will not collapse because it is too useful as a
| surveillance tool. State actors will subsidize the ad
| industry as much as needed to ensure that the user activity
| data stays collected by the private sector in countries
| outside their realm of network control.
| imchillyb wrote:
| In countries /inside/ their realm of network control as
| well.
|
| Governments purchasing 3rd party collected data isn't
| illegal whereas the government obtaining the collected data
| themselves would be illegal.
| polalavik wrote:
| I'm working on starting an ad-not-so-tech business.
|
| Fixed number of ad slots per month, fixed price per slot, and
| advertised on a network of high traffic blogs (also fixed with an
| upper bound in terms of # of blogs allowed on the network). No
| tracking besides impressions served and maybe # of clicks. The
| blogs split a pool of half the revenue.
|
| I think it could be a win-win for the network and the business if
| executed right. Trying to focus on specific domains: web, ML/AI
| and hardware/electronics engineering only. I'm currently looking
| for blogs to join the company which is the difficult part. The
| next difficult part will be reaching out to companies.
| secondcoming wrote:
| How is this different from a PMP?
| codetrotter wrote:
| > I'm currently looking for blogs to join the company which is
| the difficult part.
|
| Are low-traffic blogs welcome to join? Or are you mainly
| looking for blogs with big readership?
|
| Also, are other kinds of sites welcome to join? For example
| PeerTube instances? (Server similar to YouTube but open source,
| self hosted and uses peer to peer tech to stream videos.)
| polalavik wrote:
| Happy to work with low traffic blogs and any sort of website
| or service where ads can be displayed. Especially if there is
| growth potential. Open to chat if interested - feel free to
| email: hardwareteams at gmail
| codetrotter wrote:
| Sent you an email :)
| drivebyhooting wrote:
| Not trying to be snarky. Where can a software engineer with
| adtech (big data, ML, distributed systems) experience go and
| still earn $600K+ total comp? Liquid, mind you.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| I wonder if shutting off the firehose means that the adtech
| companies will try to eke out a living riffing off all the old
| data they managed to acquire about all of us up to now, so we'll
| get even less relevant spam, tied to what we were shopping for
| years ago. Someone needs to build a GPT adblocker that just
| recognizes "this seems to be trying to sell you something, hiding
| now..."
| kstrauser wrote:
| I want less relevant ads. If I continually saw ads for, say, a
| new Raspberry Pi accessory, I might start considering it even
| though I don't need it. No amount of ad bombardment would ever
| get me to buy feminine hygiene products.
| jamiequint wrote:
| What do you think pays for the free and open internet? Or are
| you just well off enough that you don't have to care?
| bigbillheck wrote:
| Sounds like they'll have to figure out something else.
| ifdefdebug wrote:
| I pay a whopping 80 euro per month for my free and open
| internet to our ISP, one fiber and two mobile devices.
| nceqs3 wrote:
| Straw-man. The grandparent is pointing out that services
| like Google, Instagram and YouTube would be behind paywalls
| without ads. There is no free internet without ads.
| sethammons wrote:
| > There is no free internet without ads.
|
| of course there is. Because there was. It existed.
| Eventually we got banner ads. It just got worse after
| that. People ran their own servers, so did companies.
| They paid to have their own content online for whatever
| reason they wished. And often you would get cut off, "so
| and so's website can only serve 200 requests a day, come
| back tomorrow." My server runs ad free for no other
| reason than I want it there with some of my content. Ads
| enabled a bigger internet and "content creators" who work
| full time growing the internet. The internet was just
| fine without these professional content creators.
| nceqs3 wrote:
| So only rich people who can afford to run their own
| servers and have the technical knowledge to put one
| together should be allowed to share content?
| sethammons wrote:
| people who didn't run servers shared stuff all the time
| (email, forums, etc). For it to be hosted, someone had to
| find it worthwhile and have the funds, yeah.
| JohnFen wrote:
| You don't need to be rich or have any strong technical
| knowledge. Setting up and running your own website is
| cheap and easy, and even if you don't want to do that,
| there are plenty of others who provide fora to you.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > There is no free internet without ads.
|
| Nonsense. Of course there is. It may not include Google,
| IG, YouTube, etc., true, but that's very far from the
| entire internet.
|
| And, notably, I pay money to YouTube.
| pdimitar wrote:
| It's not a straw-man, a question has been asked and
| answered.
|
| I pay my ISP bill. Everyone else can take their problems
| with my "free" internet to them.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I think it's a stretch to call the larger web "free and open"
| at this point. But there was a day, before ads, that it
| certainly was!
| pc86 wrote:
| The internet isn't free if you have to give up your privacy
| for invasive ads and tracking in order to read a recipe on a
| blog.
| pithou wrote:
| [dead]
| classified wrote:
| > Ad value is not intrinsically tied to the extraction of
| personal data.
|
| It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his
| salary depends on his not understanding it.
| [deleted]
| dspillett wrote:
| Adtech isn't even that successful as far as I can see.
|
| While I block a lot of internet stalkers via PiHole at home and
| so forth I'm sure a lot about me and my activity gets through to
| the data hoarders. So then why has a lot of my recent advertising
| on Facebook in recent days been for feminine health products? For
| example: why would I, a middle-aged, long single (with no
| particular plans to change that state), child-less man, be
| interesting in a device that claims to help reduce period cramps?
|
| Most of the other advertising I see ATM is wall-to-wall Temu.
| Even if I would ever have ordered something from them I likely
| won't now as they've successfully got in my nerves.
|
| The only advertising that has worked on me in recent memory is a
| sponsored segment in a podcast (an event relevant to the subject
| matter of that podcast that I may book into), and getting that
| advert in front of me didn't involve tracking my movements
| wherever I go online & in the real world.
| roland35 wrote:
| I think us pihole users are a tiny tiny minority! Even in my
| household my wife doesn't use the pihole I set up since it
| occasionally (maybe 1%?) does not work with some websites and
| apps. I have no problem going in and disabling it for a minute
| but it is a hassle for her and I understand.
|
| Adtech is still very lucrative even with a few of us blockers
| m463 wrote:
| The ads you see aren't for you. Companies selling devices to
| reduce cramps bid to get to your eyeball because you (poorly)
| fit some demographic they want to reach.
|
| The companies you are interested in - well, they already reach
| your wallet just fine without banner ads.
|
| What gets me is what happens when you try to get a hotel, a
| plane ticket, a rental car, an emergency plumber, a tow truck
| or a ride somewhere.
| tootie wrote:
| Advertising and ad targeting is a numbers game. Conversion
| rates for most campaigns are very low. On order of 1%. Running
| a highly targeted campaign that boosts conversion from 0.9% to
| 1.4% would be considered a huge win even though it's still
| invisible to 98.6% of people. And sometimes it's about the ads
| that don't hit you. Not wasting ad spend on people who aren't
| in your addressable market at all.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| > Adtech isn't even that successful as far as I can see.
|
| And then
|
| > While I block a lot of internet stalkers via PiHole at home
|
| People who don't buy things after clicking on ads, who block
| all the ads they see, who are completely immune and hate ads,
| are not really qualified to talk about whether they work or
| not.
|
| Not only is this pure anecdote, and the billions spent on
| advertising every year as a glaring counterpoint to your
| comment, but you are obviously biased against the concept.
|
| This whole site is rabidly anti-advertising. Like we should all
| still be using terminal BBS and VIM because they are "better."
| These posts are so tiring.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| > Like we should all still be using terminal BBS and VIM
| because they are "better."
|
| Well, to be fair...tabs ARE objectively better than spaces
| for tabulating a coherent hierarchy.
|
| ...and terminal BBS and vim are better.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> tabs ARE objectively better than spaces_
|
| It takes two to make an argument, and I think both those
| viewpoints are wrong!
|
| Tabs for indentation, spaces for alignment.
|
| (actually, I have an idea for dynamic tabs which might do
| both jobs better that I need to throw a demo of together to
| try to convince code editors that it is worth implementing)
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| "Tabs for identation, spaces for alignment" _is_ "tabs
| for tabulation of hierarchy." Alignment is formatting,
| not hierarchical.
| dspillett wrote:
| You have made some significantly incorrect assumptions there:
|
| 1. That I block things everyehere. "PiHole at home" does not
| cover all my browsing, far from it.
|
| 2. That "PiHole at home" blocks everything at home. Again,
| far from it. Many wish it were that effective.
|
| 3. That "PiHole at home" blocks all the data tracked by the
| likes of Facebook in-app. It is massively ineffective against
| that, and a few other techniques.
|
| 4. That I am, in fact, anti-advert. I'm anti being stalked
| around most of my life which does not have to be the same
| thing. Unfortunately blocking the latter also blocks the
| former because currently they _are_ the same thing, or at
| least very closely overlapped. I don 't use sponsor-block,
| because the segments that it blocks are not based on stalking
| but are often relevant to the information being consumed (not
| always of course: if I'm watching a summary or an IP related
| legal case the relevance of, for instance, a tank based
| casual game is at best dubious). I'm also anti-other-
| irritating patterns (auto-playing audio, auto-playing video,
| eating CPU and draining my battery when mobile, etc.) which
| are also endemic to advertising and like the tracking they do
| not need to be.
|
| 5. That companies paying billions for advertising means that
| the stalking works (as the old joke says: "Eat shit, 136x1015
| flies can't _all_ be wrong!". The adtech industry is grossly
| disingenuous in both directions: to us when they tell us they
| value our privacy and to their customers when they make
| exaggerated claims about how effective their huge personal
| data dataset is as getting extra sales for any arbitrary
| products /services, compared to just advertising in places
| relevant to the product/service (or just carpet bombing our
| senses, the method apparently being employed by Temu ATM).
| The companies paying into this have little choice because the
| vast majority of adtech is doing exactly the same things and
| making pretty much the same claims. Everyone in adtech does
| it because if they didn't they'd lose sales to those who do
| and convince ad-space buyers that it makes a significant
| difference.
|
| _> are not really qualified to talk about whether they work
| or not_
|
| Some might question whether a person making five incorrect
| sweeping assumptions in three sentences, is really qualified
| to talk about whatever it is that they are talking about :)
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "Some claim that the death of targeted advertising is equivalent
| to the death of the ad-supported internet. This is a fallacy. Ad
| value is not intrinsically tied to the extraction of personal
| data."
|
| IAPP is not HN. The organisation predates this forum. It is not
| comprised of consumer privacy activists or anyone with "disdain
| for AdTech". Quite the opposite. It's focused on corporate
| compliance.
|
| People outside of HN are quite capable of seeing through bogus
| arguments put forth by so-called "tech" companies and their
| service providers. The later a group that sees licentious,
| surreptitous data collection as a "business model".
| johndhi wrote:
| I'd believe this article if it were written by Google or an
| adtech company... But this is iapp, a professional org for
| privacy professionals. Their understanding of the industry is
| more limited than we realized.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| Does personally targeted advertising even add that much value
| over contextual advertising?
|
| I occasionally click on AdWords ads, or look up a company I see
| on an ad in the subway station, or follow up on Internet ads that
| I know are contextually targeted. But I generally have no idea
| how AdSense ads came to me.
|
| Amusingly, since I started making an effort to improve my Spanish
| last year, my partner's started getting a lot of ads in a
| language she doesn't speak inserted into her English-language
| podcast episodes.
| sethammons wrote:
| 20 years ago, marketing classes taught you that you don't get
| to know all your ad impressions that will expose you to your
| potential customer. However, they did studies and people needed
| to see a logo some six times before it stood out.
|
| When online marketing blew up, marketers were lured in by the
| belief that they were getting all those previously untrackable
| impressions. They still aren't, but there is a big segment they
| can now track. At that point, I feel it became an optimization
| problem where they cant escape the local optimum. They can't
| even imagine not having the not-entirely-valid data.
|
| FWIW, I feel that non targeted ads make so much more sense. If
| I'm reading a tech blog, I actually may want ads from a tech
| service. I don't need my wife's browsing habits to show me
| dresses.
| skydhash wrote:
| The whole blu-ray.com website is pretty much ads. But I don't
| mind and I often visit the site to see what movies has been
| released and read the review to see if it's worth watching
| (production wise). Goodreads also is ads, because the
| description is written to appeal to you. I don't want to see
| blu-ray ads when I'm shopping for clothes, and I don't want
| to see books ads when I'm buying electronic gears (unless the
| book is about the gears). So yeah, ads can be targeted. It's
| just that companies now feel entitled to your attention 24/7
| that the whole adtech spac is what it is now.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| My instagram and Facebook ads are almost entirely outdoor gear,
| golf equipment, and things for new parents.
|
| Considering I spend most weekends hiking/backpacking, I golf
| somewhat regularly with my friends, and I'm expecting a baby in
| a few months, it's pretty accurate.
|
| I have bought several things from these ads in the past and
| will probably continue to do so.
| Barraketh wrote:
| There seems to be a really strong disdain on HN for AdTech in
| general, which I think is misguided, and comes fundamentally from
| a "web consumer" mentality. I think that it would be valuable to
| reframe the question from the producers point of view: 1) I am a
| niche small business - how do I let people know that I exist? 2)
| I run a website and would like to monetize it - how can I get
| paid for the content that I produce?
|
| The ad-tech solution is actually quite elegant in theory - if you
| can show ads only to the people to whom they are relevant, then,
| as a small business you can let people know you exist without
| blowing your ad budget, and, as a content producer, the more
| valuable an ad-view is, the more you can charge for it.
|
| The current movement to avoid tracking is an extremely powerful
| centralizing force. The large platforms know a lot about you
| already - Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, etc. So, in a way,
| "we're not going to let AdTech track users" = "we're going to
| make only ads on large platforms effective", which means that
| both content producers and advertisers will prefer them, and then
| people ask "where did the old internet go"?
|
| The AdTech system isn't ideal, but it would be great if the
| people who criticize it came up with something other than "fuck
| the small businesses and content producers".
| indymike wrote:
| > There seems to be a really strong disdain on HN for AdTech in
| general, which I think is misguided, and comes fundamentally
| from a "web consumer" mentality.
|
| I think the disdain is against surveillance and invasive
| content.
|
| > The current movement to avoid tracking is an extremely
| powerful centralizing force.
|
| No, this is just removing the third party. If I'm on a Meta
| property seeing an ad served by Meta targeted by my data from
| using Meta, then there's not third party.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| > and comes a fundamentally from a "web consumer" mentality.
|
| Because literally all of us are web consumers, so we're hostile
| to things that are hostile to web consumers. This is like
| saying there's really strong disdain for leaded gasoline which
| comes from a "human being breathing air" mentality.
|
| > I think that it would be valuable to reframe the question
| from the producers point of view: 1) I am a niche small
| business - how do I let people know that I exist? 2) I run a
| website and would like to monetize it - how can I get paid for
| the content that I produce?
|
| I don't fucking care. This isn't my problem, and I'm really
| annoyed that we've build a giant world-spanning surveillance
| apparatus out of people trying to make it my problem.
| Aerroon wrote:
| How many videos on vine do you watch these days?
|
| How the companies, where you consume content, monetize is
| very much relevant to you. You have a choice though - you can
| choose to not watch the content and you won't get advertised
| to.
| pxc wrote:
| > > and comes a fundamentally from a "web consumer"
| mentality.
|
| > Because literally all of us are web consumers
|
| Exactly. GP might as well have written
|
| > The problem is that you're considering your own interests.
| I think it would be useful for you to consider _my_
| interests.
| bee_rider wrote:
| "What about small businesses" seemed like a better counter-
| argument during the previous round of ad tech, the kind of
| annoying flash pop ups that and third party JavaScript that
| only sometimes contained viruses.
|
| Nowadays it is a major funding keystone of the attention
| economy, which is spreading propaganda and conspiracy theories,
| destabilizing governments. Propaganda spread over Facebook
| helped enable the Rohingya genocide. This isn't a little
| annoying thing anymore.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| If you are a small business, sponsor a podcast relevant to the
| people you are targeting. I am still going to skip over you,
| but thats your best chance to get in front of people, and it
| involves zero privacy invasions.
| footy wrote:
| I have long wondered how people who work in adtech live with
| themselves and this was illuminating.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "The ad-tech solution is actually quite elegant in theory - if
| you can show ads to the people to whom they are relevant, then,
| as a small business you can let people know you exist without
| blowing your ad budget, and, as a content producer, the more
| valuable an ad-view is, the more you can charge for it."
|
| Elegent. In theory. How about in practice.
|
| What problem does this proposed "solution" solve. Once we have
| answer then we ask whether it is effective at solving it.
| Proposing "solutions" to problems where 100% of the time the
| solution uses a computer is easy. We're drowning in such
| "solutions". The question is whether they actually work.
|
| If ad tech isn't very effective then is it even a "solution".^1
| It could just be a very successful marketing gimmick.
|
| The "if we regulate data collection, bad things will happen" is
| a lame argument used by the ad tech incumbents and ad tech
| startups. "You'll lose what you have." More likely, the person
| making the argument will lose what _they_ have. This type of
| "argument" is made by self-interested parties. It's speculative
| and there is no evidence to support it. Fear mongering. Without
| regulation, these ad tech startups, if they ever begin to grow
| larger, will surely be acquired by the incumbents, ideally
| producing a massive windfall for the founders and investors. We
| know this because we have watched it happen over and over. It's
| like arguing "we need to let the next DoubleClick grow and
| thrive". Soon followed by "we need to stop the governemnt from
| blocking our merger with Google." The truth is, bad stuff is
| happening right now. That isn't speculation. It's fact.
|
| There's a problem. Data collection. And people are looking for
| a solution. Not the other way around. (A data collection
| "solution" looking for a problem.) Letting unfettered data
| collection continue is certainly not a solution to the problem
| of data collection.
|
| Another line of reasoning is "it's too late to regulate data
| collection for future generations because some data has already
| been collected". It's like suggesting "it's too late to
| regulate pollution because the environment is already
| polluted". Not sure I should even call this reasoning.
|
| HN could be "misguided" on its views of so-called "ad tech", if
| we accept such generalisations. But what about others, who are
| not "web consumers", outside HN. The OP is one example. There
| are others.
|
| https://digiday.com/marketing/confessions-of-an-ad-exec-most...
|
| https://www.newsmediaalliance.org/ad-tech-its-worse-than-we-...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/11/technology/bad-digital-ad...
|
| https://adage.com/article/digitalnext/ad-tech-worst-thing-ha...
|
| https://martech.org/stop-calling-ad-tech-advertising/
|
| https://tbtech.co/business/why-billions-of-dollars-are-being...
|
| It's funny that so-called "tech" companies, as intermediaries
| (middlemen), claim that they prioritise "users", but then they
| do not like it when they see "users" commenting about so-called
| "tech" on HN.
| Barraketh wrote:
| So, since you seem particularly upset about it, I'd love to
| know - what is the problem of "data collection"? I've still
| never seen an example of damage to a user by AdTech data
| collection. What I have seen are
|
| 1) Data leaks by companies that collect and store true PII -
| this is your Equifaxes of the world, and they didn't collect
| that data using cookies. 2) People are generally creeped out
| by the idea of their movements across the web being tracked.
|
| And so, even though no ad-tech company has ever really had a
| data leak, and although the tracking across the web has never
| really resulted in any negative outcomes, people are using
| (2) to try and kill ad-tech for often disingenuous reasons.
| whoopdedo wrote:
| > if you can show ads only to the people to whom they are
| relevant,
|
| Except that's not what is happening. The information brokers
| learned that there's no money to be made in selling to someone
| who already knows they want to buy that product. With the ad
| you're getting 90% conversion but without you're only down to
| 70% conversion.
|
| The real value is in convincing someone who had no interest in
| a product to spend money they wouldn't have otherwise. And
| targeting makes this happening by giving the advertisers tools
| to custom make campaigns that create new engagements. The role
| of the advertiser is not to connect potential purchasers with
| the products they want, but to trick unwary consumers into
| buying irrelevant junk.
|
| And on top of that, it doesn't help small businesses because
| they only spend money on small campaigns. A tiny micro-targeted
| set of ads always loses the auction to an algorithmic carpet
| bombing of manipulative clickbait. That is, they'll "win" a few
| impressions at first until their budget caps out and then the
| spam ads will fill in the rest. Which means someone in that
| cohort will in any period see more of the bad ads than the good
| ones.
|
| There is no incentive for anyone in adtech to fix this because
| the "solution" right now is charging more money for better ads.
| Consumers disliking ads and being inundated with malvertising
| is the system working as intended.
| ssss11 wrote:
| People should pay for products. Advertising should be static.
| There I solved it.
| TheIronMark wrote:
| A lot of Internet users don't want to pay for content and don't
| want ads. I guess they're hoping some deity will magically pay
| all the content producers.
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| > I am a niche small business - how do I let people know that I
| exist?
|
| Is this a serious question? You advertise. Just like people
| have been doing for generations. You advertise in publications
| or spaces that will attract people interested in your product
| or service. You're going to have to do more to convince me that
| we need individual level targeted for businesses to succeed.
|
| We're not mad if the new bakery in town advertises in the town
| paper or sends postcards to everyone in the zipcode. We're not
| mad if the new geeky t-shirt website puts ads on geeky
| subreddits or Facebook groups. We're not mad if your new auto
| detailing service comes up if I Google "auto detailing <my
| city>". We're mad that those ads creepily follow us around the
| internet, reminding us of the scale of the enormous data
| collection that enables such behavior.
|
| Don't tell me that bakeries or t-shirt shops or auto detailers
| can't thrive without targeted marketing. We've had those things
| for way longer than we've had targeted marketing.
| MildRant wrote:
| > We've had those things for way longer than we've had
| targeted marketing.
|
| You've had way less of those things as well. I'm not
| defending targeted marketing but you are ignoring that there
| are way more bakeries and t-shirt shops now than ever. As a
| small business, you aren't competing against other local
| t-shirt shops you are competing against every t-shirt shop
| that can setup a webpage and put a shirt in the mail.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > You advertise in publications or spaces that will attract
| people interested in your product or service.
|
| Are those publications most popular products, the online
| versions, selling advertising in the way their print only
| counterparts have? Or, are they just offering you targeting
| through their already extant advertising setup?
|
| > Don't tell me that bakeries or t-shirt shops or auto
| detailers can't thrive without targeted marketing.
|
| Local advertising and national advertising are two entirely
| different things and the campaigns even have two entirely
| different purposes and metrics for measurement.
|
| One of the great forces of the internet was to allow me to do
| regular and successful business with niche operations that
| may not be local to me. It was supposed to expand upon the
| previously existing model. Adtech is trying to stand across
| this gap, which still hasn't been filled for anyone outside
| of a local goods retailer.
| humanistbot wrote:
| > 1) I am a niche small business - how do I let people know
| that I exist? 2) I run a website and would like to monetize it
| - how can I get paid for the content that I produce?
|
| You don't have a right to violate my privacy in exchange for
| this.
| Barraketh wrote:
| I think this is a genuinely interesting point, and I wish
| that we as a society had a more nuanced discussion about what
| that right is. AdTech is largely anonymous in the same way
| that crypto / web3 is anonymous - it shuttles around cookies
| / identifiers, but largely does NOT care about any
| information that is actually personally identifying. If the
| laws were regulating storage / transmission of information
| that is actually personally-identifying (addresses, emails,
| names, etc), that would be much more reasonable in my mind.
| JohnFen wrote:
| That would be insufficient for a number of reasons,
| including that even if you only collect non-PII (and don't
| let's get started on what "PII" actually is), if you
| collect enough of it and correlate it in databases (like ad
| companies do), then it's _all_ personally identifying.
|
| But I think that's not the main reason it's not sufficient.
| The main reason, in my view, is because it's _still_
| companies spying on me, my machines, and /or my use of my
| machines. Even if the data is genuinely anonymous, if you
| don't have my informed consent then collecting it is spying
| and unethical.
|
| If we're going to have regulation (and it's increasingly
| looking like any solution will have to be), then the
| regulation should be about the collection of the data.
| amelius wrote:
| Ads are wrong because:
|
| 1. They nudge people towards buying stuff they wouldn't
| otherwise buy. This causes a tremendous amount of real waste.
|
| 2. Ads are a distraction. When I'm looking up something for
| work, don't bother me with ads, even if *you* think they are
| relevant. When I'm working, I'm not looking for a new job, or
| new pants.
|
| 3. On a fundamental level, ads work against the free market:
| not the best product wins, but the product with the biggest
| advertising budget.
|
| And there are many more reasons ... Ads suck! And people
| working in ad-tech should be deeply ashamed!
| secondcoming wrote:
| You just demonstrated how advertising works.
| spost wrote:
| I don't believe anyone is arguing that advertising _doesn't
| work_.
| elisbce wrote:
| Ads suck. But you know what's worse than Ads? Selfish people.
| If Google, YouTube and everywhere else starts asking you to
| pay high subscription fees for using their services, are you
| willing/going to pay? You looked up information for work, for
| life, for leisure, you spend hours online each day, gorging
| information and content for free. You even learned valuable
| things and made money using their services and information.
| And yet all you have to say is don't bother me while I'm
| leeching off your free content.
| mikrl wrote:
| >If Google, YouTube and everywhere else starts asking you
| to pay high subscription fees for using their services, are
| you willing/going to pay?
|
| Based on my rudimentary knowledge of microeconomics, it
| depends on how much they charge.
|
| But bringing economics into it, it does seem strange that
| the internet is probably the only industry where this form
| of exchange (ads, producers, consumers) exists.
|
| In any other industry, the producer pays money to ads, the
| ads get me to the place and I pay the producer.
| amelius wrote:
| We already pay these fees ourselves collectively because
| the advertising costs are incorporated into the price of
| products.
|
| Plus we now pay an additional tax on top of it to Google et
| al.
|
| Plus we pay with our attention, and with our data (as
| someone else already noted).
|
| On top of this all, the near-monopoly of Google is forcing
| prices for ads up, and there is a vicious cycle where
| companies need to buy increasingly expensive ads to
| outcompete each other (or, to stay relevant). Which, of
| course, the consumer ultimately pays for.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >They nudge people towards buying stuff they wouldn't
| otherwise buy.
|
| It allows people to find things they value that they were not
| aware of before.
|
| >Ads are a distraction.
|
| Yes, which is why apps need to design good ad experiences to
| balance monetization with user satisfaction.
|
| >On a fundamental level, ads work against the free market:
| not the best product wins, but the product with the biggest
| advertising budget.
|
| If something really is the best product, why aren't they the
| one with the largest advertising budget?
| amelius wrote:
| > It allows people to find things they value that they were
| not aware of before.
|
| There are better ways for that. For instance I look it up
| in the yellow pages. Or I find someone in some store to
| talk to.
|
| This happens when *I* want to look for something, not when
| *you* want to sell something.
|
| > Yes, which is why apps need to design good ad experiences
| to balance monetization with user satisfaction.
|
| So far, it has been a complete disaster. And there is no
| sign of it getting any better. The incentives are wrong to
| begin with.
|
| > If something really is the best product, why talent they
| the one with the largest advertising budget?
|
| What does this even mean? Typo? Are you suggesting that the
| company with the biggest ad budget also makes the best
| products by definition, somehow?
| jasode wrote:
| _> There are better ways for that. For instance I look it
| up in the yellow pages. Or I find someone in some store
| to talk to._
|
| Yes, I hate ads too but that said... The Yellow Pages are
| geared towards _services_ rather than new unknown
| products. Also, asking a store clerk or flipping through
| Yellow pages doesn 't work when the customer _doesn 't
| even know the existence of a new product_ to ask about.
|
| Anybody in any hobby (woodworking, sewing, car engine
| modifications, etc) that uses tools and gadgets will get
| their first exposure to the _existence_ of a potentially
| helpful product via advertisements. Sure, some awareness
| comes via word-of-mouth... but the people passing that
| info to you -- got their awareness from ads. Or maybe a
| trade show demonstration (which is also a form of
| advertisement.)
|
| Of course, I've gotten bad and unnecessary tools because
| of ads. But I also got some genuinely useful and time-
| saving tools too.
|
| Even though a few ads helped make my life better, I will
| admit that 99% of ads are not relevant to me and just
| obnoxious noise. I just saw a Wood Whisperer video on
| Youtube yesterday and the pre-roll ad was "Estee Lauder
| cosmetics for women". Given that 95% of the demographic
| watching woodworking channels are men, it seems like
| Google/Youtube is wasting Estee Lauder's ad spending --
| all while irritating viewers like me. A lose-lose
| situation.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| Ads operate under a supply and demand model. There are
| far far more companies pushing their products via
| psychological manipulation to win market share then some
| novel product relevant to your favorite hobby.
|
| Every ad needs to be sold to a pair of eyes and those
| relevant, novel, and interesting prdocuts that would
| actually be useful to you have a much smaller budget and
| just are not that common. And so you get to watch liberty
| mutual and geico commercials, for the 55th time instead.
| amelius wrote:
| Can you agree that ads (or product recommendations) can
| be limited to a time and place chosen by the customer
| rather than by the seller?
| MildRant wrote:
| > Or I find someone in some store to talk to.
|
| Stores are limited by the amount of shelf space they have
| and employees will lead you towards certain products they
| have an incentive to sell.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| This is basically the value prop for mom n pop shops. If
| the salesperson is also the owner, they have a lot more
| incentive to get to know you and steer you towards the
| things that will be best _for you_ , in order to
|
| 1) keep you coming back 2) navigate highly localized
| politics
| MildRant wrote:
| Mom n Pop shops are great but getting rid of ads doesn't
| put the genie back in the bottle when it comes to big box
| stores and Amazon. It also doesn't solve the shelf space
| problem. I've found incredibly niche and useful things
| through online retail ads that a local business would be
| insane to stock because they would have dead inventory.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >This happens when _I_ want to look for something, not
| when _you_ want to sell something.
|
| Not all consumers are aware of what is out there, nor do
| they actively make an effort to learn what is out there.
|
| >What does this even mean? Typo?
|
| yes
|
| >Are you suggesting that the company with the biggest ad
| budget also makes the best products by definition,
| somehow?
|
| No, I am suggesting that a company that makes a purely
| superior product can always outbid their competitors in
| advertising.
| the8472 wrote:
| Well, ok, let's assume for a moment that ads are valuable
| to some users, perhaps informing them of a solution to a
| problem they didn't even know had solutions. That still
| wastes the attention of everyone who doesn't actually need
| that thing. Making it worth _everyone 's_ time can be
| incentivized by taxing eyeball-pixel-seconds. The numbers
| reported to the tax authority must be consistent with those
| reported to the advertising customer and the site owner.
| This way one would only place ads when it's almost certain
| that there's some unmet demand.
| whatshisface wrote:
| > _If something really is the best product, why aren 't
| they the one with the largest advertising budget?_
|
| If they are already the company with the highest revenue,
| why would they need to advertise...
|
| If these are the arguments in favor of ads then they really
| must be that bad.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >If they are already the company with the highest
| revenue, why would they need to advertise...
|
| Because their potential customers may not be familiar
| with them. If a competitor makes themselves known they
| may just go with the competitor despite a better option,
| that they don't know about existing.
| jrh3 wrote:
| We tried funding the internet with banner ads and that didn't
| take. So early 2000s we sold our privacy to fund it. The "web
| consumer" mentality was built on the latter funding, which is
| now going away.
|
| Small business is being hurt the most (because they benefitted
| the most from being able to buy targeted ads with a small
| budget).
|
| I want my privacy private, and I'm not willing to share it. It
| is definitely interesting to see what AdTech can figure out
| next, especially for small business.
| dahwolf wrote:
| 1. Especially for a niche business, contextual ads should be
| great. Appear in search results as well as content pages
| related to your niche. Relevant by default and requires zero
| personal data.
|
| 2. I'm afraid it's too late. The centralization has already
| happened. Most people consume content from a handful of mobile
| apps (youtube, social networks, etc). AI will escalate this
| even further. Small websites outside of big tech can't really
| monetize content reliably, exceptions aside. Likewise, your
| content has to be extremely special for people wanting to pay
| for it.
| imchillyb wrote:
| > The AdTech system isn't ideal, but it would be great if the
| people who criticize it came up with something other than "fuck
| the small businesses and content producers".
|
| Found the 'ad-guy...'
|
| Look. We don't need to offer a solution in order to point out
| how broken adtheft is. They're stealing my time, my bandwidth,
| my cpu resources, my gpu resources, my memory resources, and my
| body's own motion by forcing me to click away or click gone or
| click click click.
|
| Here's my solution: Take your ads and place them somewhere
| dark, moist, and smelly, preferably limited to your own person.
| Barraketh wrote:
| So, out my now 15+ year career, only about 4 were in AdTech,
| and I've been out of that game for more than 7 years. But
| fair enough - happy to play 'ad-guy' for the purposes of this
| discussion :)
|
| I guess my main contention is that businesses really like
| ads. But that's usually ok - because it funds cool content!
| The majority of television historically was produced just to
| sell ads, but it still created awesome television. And if we
| make ads worse, well, the people who are gong to suffer are
| the businesses and the content creators. OR, like i mentioned
| above, we will just drive everyone to large platforms, which
| is essentially what's happening now.
|
| Another way to frame the question - GDPR came out in 2016. Do
| you feel like the web is getting better?
| ok123456 wrote:
| > Another way to frame the question - GDPR came out in
| 2016. Do you feel like the web is getting better?
|
| In Europe, yes. User hostile ad-tech is forced to opt-out
| of those markets.
| pasc1878 wrote:
| Also there are a lot of websites not meeting GDPR rules
| but major sites do even if it is block all visitors from
| Europe - cookie consent rules are also broken by many but
| that is an different law.
|
| Usual problem with laws who enforces them.
| Aerroon wrote:
| No it hasn't. All I've noticed is that I get more pop-ups
| than ever before and some of the sites I would like to
| visit block me with a 451 error code.
|
| Phone browsing is a nightmare these days.
| iamdbtoo wrote:
| > The majority of television historically was produced just
| to sell ads, but it still created awesome television.
|
| That's because there was an incentive to create awesome
| television to lure people away from other channels to watch
| the ads on your channel. Part of the discussion around the
| writers and actors on strike right now is the streaming
| services believe they can make worse content cheaper using
| AI and still retain subscribers.
| traverseda wrote:
| I don't think businesses really like ads. Businesses are
| forced to buy ads. On Facebook if you want to reach your
| entire audience you need to pay them, they gate off people
| seeing content they're subscribed to unless you pay. Google
| is terrible at surfacing relevant local events.
|
| Ads are forced on small business because regular methods of
| discovery are intentionally nerfed.
| brickteacup wrote:
| > On Facebook if you want to reach your entire audience
| you need to pay them
|
| Yeah, it's a private business, if you want to use them to
| reach people you need to pay. What exactly is wrong with
| that?
|
| > regular methods of discovery
|
| What are these "regular methods of discovery"? Do you
| think that small businesses _didn 't_ advertise before
| Facebook/Google/etc came along?
| traverseda wrote:
| Having a website, showing up in search results.
|
| Being in the yellow pages.
|
| Putting a flyer on a community board or telephone pole.
| My city has special poles just for flyers.
|
| Word of mouth.
|
| Newspaper ads.
|
| ---
|
| Sure, some of those are advertising but they're not
| intrusive or unethical. There aren't as many options for
| ethically advertising online but that's very intentional,
| with companies doing the digital equivalent of limiting
| word of mouth and tearing down flyers.
| mocamoca wrote:
| Intrusion-wise I agree, those communication channels are
| more "pull" than "push"
|
| Even though the search engine is ad-funded (I don't know
| any free search engine) and can be more or less intrusive
| (IE. Duckduckgo is not)
|
| Which channels have been intentionally nerfed?
| [deleted]
| Havoc wrote:
| >There seems to be a really strong disdain on HN for AdTech in
| general,
|
| The ads aren't the problem, the targetting and the granular
| privacy invading data collection practices it implies.
|
| It's not about "fuck small businesses" at all but rather that
| I'd love to scroll through some content without my 100ms pause
| over a specific post influencing what I see in future and thus
| shaping the reality I see.
|
| That's how we got to a position where the various "factions" in
| society are seeing so different realities that to each the
| other seems unreasonable and they can't understand why the
| others don't see their (to them) obviously correct perspective.
| Adtech is actively contributing towards societal splits.
| zb3 wrote:
| Well actually fuck "professional content producers", there's
| always someone there who writes just because they want others
| to read, I'll just read them instead and it'd be good if the
| search engine let me find them instead of that SEO spam.
| skydhash wrote:
| > The AdTech system isn't ideal, but it would be great if the
| people who criticize it came up with something other than "fuck
| the small businesses and content producers".
|
| The thing is that people do hear about products and contents.
| Trailers are ads, products announcement are also ads.
| Sponsorship is ads. What people do not want is intrusive ads.
| It feels like someone going through my bedroom and bathroom,
| then talking to people about my underwear. Next, these people
| shout to me when I'm going to buy groceries. This is what the
| adtech is like nowadays.
|
| So content creators, paywall your content and add sponsorship.
| Small businesses, announce your product and sponsor articles on
| relevant forums. But stop interrupting people when they're
| doing nothing that's relevant to you.
| celestialcheese wrote:
| I don't get this. I find "passive" advertising like banners,
| mid-roll, etc so much easier to ignore/block/
|
| The type of advertising that's invasive for me is the
| "sponsored content" or paid product placements, especially in
| movies. It feels like every big-budget movie I see these days
| is littered with "ads" for some car or electronics company.
| There's no way to block this, and sometimes its hard to tell
| if something is paid or just someones honest recommendation.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > and comes fundamentally from a "web consumer" mentality
|
| Not for me, it doesn't, For me, it comes from an "I don't want
| to be spied on" mentality.
|
| If the online ad world would do everything that they currently
| do, but actually leave me out of it when I tell them to, I
| wouldn't consider them to be evil. But not only don't they do
| that, they put a lot of time, effort, and money into actively
| working around the various defenses I put up against them.
|
| > I think that it would be valuable to reframe the question
| from the producers point of view
|
| You're talking as if the problem is the ads themselves. It's
| not. It's the spying that's the problem.
|
| > The ad-tech solution is actually quite elegant in theory
|
| I don't assert that it's not elegant. I assert that it's deeply
| unethical unless informed consent has been obtained from the
| people the data is being gathered from.
|
| > then people ask "where did the old internet go"?
|
| People ask that right now, and adtech is one of the things that
| have killed it.
|
| > it would be great if the people who criticize it came up with
| something other than "fuck the small businesses and content
| producers".
|
| Plenty of proven alternatives are brought up all the time. Even
| the IAPP article here mentions the strongest one: have ads, but
| don't target them based on data extracted from unwilling
| participants. Target them based on the context in which the ads
| appear.
|
| Just like newspapers, magazines, TV, etc.
|
| The adtech world doesn't want to do that because they can make
| even more money by being bastards, instead.
| Barraketh wrote:
| > People ask that right now, and adtech is one of the things
| that have killed it.
|
| I don't think this is actually true. When I think about the
| old internet vs new internet, a lot of it is about people
| running their own blogs / websites vs. platforms. And I think
| most of that is not really about ad-tech at all, but about
| the mechanisms of content and audience discovery. But the
| fact remains that if you want to say... publish videos of
| some kind, you are likely to make much more on YouTube vs
| uploading them to your own website, and that's at least
| partially because Google is able to show effective ads.
|
| > Target them based on the context in which the ads appear.
|
| Possible, but in some cases significantly less effective. As
| I mentioned above, ad-tech comes with some very interesting
| progressive effects, where the people who spend the most
| money are the ones who end up paying the most in aggregate
| for content. An interesting example is luxury goods, which
| are both high-value and niche. If you run say... a news site,
| or something else that's general purpose, you probably don't
| want to be showing Rolex ads to everyone. But rich people
| still read news, and if you could target your Rolex ads to
| them, that basically subsidizes everyone else.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > But the fact remains that if you want to say... publish
| videos of some kind, you are likely to make much more on
| YouTube vs uploading them to your own website
|
| Yes, but you're only talking about people who are intending
| to make money here. There's a much larger world out there
| than that.
|
| > but in some cases significantly less effective
|
| True, but so what? At least doing it that way isn't
| abusive, and it would eliminate quite a lot of the anger
| people have about online advertising.
|
| It's very disturbing when the response to "stop being
| abusive" is "but then we'll make less money."
| Barraketh wrote:
| Well, this has been a fun discussion. A salient point that I
| haven't mentioned but that actually plays a big role is
| attribution. Many advertisers run ad campaigns not to get a
| clickthrough to their site, but to just keep their product 'top
| of mind', so that next time you go buy a car you buy a BMW. So
| from that point of view, if you see an ad and later go and sign
| up for a BMW test-drive, BMW would attribute that test drive to
| the ad that you saw. If you can't track attribution, it becomes
| really hard to figure out where you should be advertising in
| the first place. To everyone saying "use contextual
| advertising" - how do you know which contexts produce better
| results if you can't measure performance?
|
| This is particularly relevant to mobile apps, because if you
| show the user an ad, they are extremely unlikely to switch
| contexts to go and actually click on it. If you can track users
| from the app to the purchasing site, then you can say "hey, I
| have a really valuable audience - you should pay me hella money
| to show them ads". This has been less GDPR and more Apple, but
| the result is the same - it makes ads generically less
| valuable.
|
| And that is why I'm fundamentally pro ad-tech. I don't have any
| direct monetary interest in it, but I _do_ want the digital
| economy to be growing and efficient, and in an ideal world
| decentralized beyond the 4-5 large platforms. People spending
| money online is GOOD. It 's good for businesses, it's good for
| the people (under a rational agent model at least ;)), and it's
| good for me as a software engineer who wants to keep getting
| paid silicon-valley salaries.
| rebeccaskinner wrote:
| > 1) I am a niche small business - how do I let people know
| that I exist? 2) I run a website and would like to monetize it
| - how can I get paid for the content that I produce?
|
| The thing is, this isn't my problem. The fact that someone
| wants to market their business doesn't entitle them to my
| attention.
| ryandrake wrote:
| That's really the root of it. Unless I am actively searching
| for the exact something your small business offers, I don't
| care whether your business exists. I don't want to know about
| it. I don't want you to "reach" me. Your ability or inability
| to let me know that you exist is not my problem.
|
| My browsing to a website (or watching a TV show, or driving
| along a road with billboards, or filling up my gas tank) does
| not entitle anyone to my attention.
| brickteacup wrote:
| > doesn't entitle them to my attention
|
| if you're looking at someone's website then yes they are
| entitled to your attention. what gave you the idea that
| you're entitled to consume for free content that other people
| payed to produce and host?
| JohnFen wrote:
| > what gave you the idea that you're entitled to consume
| for free content that other people payed to produce and
| host?
|
| The fact that they made it available to be looked at in
| such a way, perhaps?
| brickteacup wrote:
| They didn't, though, they made it available to be looked
| at _alongside advertisements_.
|
| HN users just love twisting themselves in circles to
| justify their belief that they're somehow entitled to
| consume content from private websites without consuming
| the ads that support that content. (If you don't want to
| see ads, there's a really simple solution: don't look at
| websites that display them! No one's forcing you to!)
| livueta wrote:
| > what gave you the idea that you're entitled to consume
| for free content that other people payed to produce and
| host?
|
| The fact that their HTTP server replied 200 OK. If they
| want to put up a paywall or use a different protocol
| they're totally free to do so, but permission was
| inherently granted by the act of serving the content.
|
| Acting like anyone who views a webpage has any obligations
| regarding how they render or reproduce it is like putting a
| barbecue on the side of the road with a free sign on it
| after hiding a bill inside, then getting mad when you don't
| get paid. Trying to tack on riders that fundamentally alter
| the mechanics of the underlying protocol is fundamentally
| invalid.
| Aerroon wrote:
| You're right, permission was given. Your browser also
| gave all of that data to the webserver and happily shows
| you that ad. Both sides were voluntary.
| brandall10 wrote:
| If you're not paying for a product in which you see the ad,
| it is your problem though, no? What's in the ad space is
| immaterial, just that is how the product is monetized.
| [deleted]
| amelius wrote:
| The freaking ad is making me pay twice. Once with my
| attention, and then again with my money if I buy the
| product (since the advertising cost is incorporated into
| the price).
| JohnFen wrote:
| And a third time with your data.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Problem is though that everyone is being tracked, whether
| they use free products that show ads based on that data or
| not. I don't want to be tracked like that but I have very
| little power here other than blocking certain domains which
| is never perfect.
| pessimizer wrote:
| If everybody pays, the ads come right back. Paying
| customers are more lucrative to advertisers than deadbeats.
| Barraketh wrote:
| Well kinda. The business wanting to market themselves
| certainly isn't your problem, but the "how does the website
| monetize itself" is exactly your problem, or rather, it's
| part of the interaction between the owner of the website
| you're visiting and you.
|
| You could say "oh, they should just charge for their
| content", and some definitely do. But the ad model allows for
| really interesting price discrimination in terms of "who pays
| for the content". So, if someone buys say.. a Tesla through a
| website, that conversion subsidizes a million poor kids who
| don't have to pay anything. In some ways the ad-supported
| model is the most progressive way to pay content creators -
| the people who end up paying are the people who spend the
| most money online.
| zb3 wrote:
| I'd prefer reading content written by people who are just
| interested in the topic and sharing their thoughts. I want
| genuine interaction, not commercial garbage.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Adtech is a fraud. I am using Brave and IOS than they do a really
| good job of blocking Facebook trackers. However Facebook knows
| where I went to school and some of my interests - because I told
| it.
|
| It would not be hard to extrapolate ads that might be interesting
| for a person who has graduated with a CS degree 10+ years ago
| (cool gadgets anyone? AI services?) but the ads I see are
| attrocious. It can only make any sense if Facebook isn't even
| trying, which only makes sense if they don't want anybody to know
| how little value they add.
|
| Its the same with Googles topics - if you want to show me ads for
| things that might be relevant for me, then _let me choose those_.
| But it is almost as if the thought can't even cross their minds.
| nobadcrypto wrote:
| This exists. You can choose what ads you want to see on Google.
| jamiequint wrote:
| > Ad value is not intrinsically tied to the extraction of
| personal data
|
| Ad value may not be tied to the extraction of personal data, but
| it's unambiguously tied to the use of it. Obviously more targeted
| ads perform better.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > Obviously more targeted ads perform better.
|
| If that's true at all, it depends on the targeting. Consider
| the classic "I bought a toilet seat, so now Amazon gives me
| loads of suggestions to buy more of them". I remain convinced
| that lots of ads are poorly or incorrectly targeted with the
| results that the additional information didn't actually help
| them and may have even hurt them.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| > I remain convinced that lots of ads are poorly or
| incorrectly targeted with the results that the additional
| information didn't actually help them and may have even hurt
| them.
|
| There are certainly poorly targeted ads. Not sure what that
| has to do with the technology, though.
| pasc1878 wrote:
| That is purely the technology doing that bad targeting -
| humans arn"t saying that as you bought a toilet seat you
| want to see more adverts for more of them.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| No, there are a lot of bad and lazy marketers that set up
| bad targeting.
|
| Some ad tech may be responsible for the bad targeting,
| depending on your vendor. But there is also ad tech that
| has scary capabilities that rarely misses.
| johnnyworker wrote:
| Yes, but existing ads perform infinitely better than ads that
| don't exist. Hence "fault line". Maybe the ground just below
| the volcano is very fertile, but in long run, you don't want to
| live there.
|
| > Without major changes to its operating model, each day the
| targeted advertising infrastructure is inching closer to
| collapse. Those who build and maintain the adtech metropolis
| now face a decision: shore up defenses around their strategic
| interests with slight tweaks and creative legal theories,
| buying themselves as much time as possible, or rebuild before
| the crash.
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| As long as there are imperfect markets, there is demand from
| sellers for advertising to do targeting.
|
| If the goal is to remove advertising, then it may be better to
| set up mechanisms for consumers to share information with
| sellers, rather than play whack-a-mole with adtech.
| convolvatron wrote:
| are you suggesting I should..publish my preferences so
| companies can decide if they want to pitch to me? or that I
| should just show up ready to hear whatever they have to say?
| really confused here.
| skydhash wrote:
| AKA consumer surveys.
|
| Telemetry in software is never worth it in my opinion. The
| only part that is useful is crash detection and logging.
| But if the goal is to decide what is important or no, the
| data just become self reinforcing. You have all those
| feature request boards and items with multiple votes on it
| and the company never act on them (Looking at you,
| Spotify), so what is the usefulness on the telemetry then?
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| More along the lines of giving you control to allow brands
| you trust to know more about you. Imperfect markets exist
| because of the unbalance of information, which is why
| adtech with its information is in demand.
|
| This is already happening with Whole Foods / Amazon, REI,
| and other loyalty programs.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > giving you control to allow brands you trust to know
| more about you.
|
| I'd be thrilled with this, as long as I can choose zero
| brands, and companies will refrain from collecting data
| about me.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > Obviously more targeted ads perform better.
|
| Do we honestly know if that's true in any meaningful way? It
| also depends on what you mean by targeted. If it's advertising
| power tools to someone who's clearly searching things related
| to DIY, sure, make sense. If we mean: "Push this product to men
| between 30 and 40, who works in construction and have 2 kids"
| then I'd love to see an A/B test that suggested that a broader
| campaign isn't cheaper and equally effective. You're cutting of
| a lot of potential customers when you're targeting is to narrow
| and I don't think that's accounted for in general.
| Aerroon wrote:
| Something you want to consider is language. If I open up
| Youtube without being logged in 6 of the 10 recommended
| videos at the top are in a language I cannot understand. I
| don't see how untargeted ads would be much different in that
| regard.
|
| Another factor to consider is location. Very few
| services/products that are advertised globally will be
| available where you actually are.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| We probably don't. Empirically demonstrating the
| effectiveness of an advertising campaign is notoriously
| difficult and expensive and few people in the adtech industry
| have any interest in paying for that kind of research.
|
| See, for example:
| https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/1963405.1963431
|
| There was a point in an episode of the podcast You're Wrong
| About where one of the hosts made a comment about how much
| you can learn about people just by observing what kinds of
| things we don't require evidence to believe.
|
| I think that the effectiveness of tracking-based advertising
| might be one of those things. It seems to be tied to an
| assumption that, where data is concerned, bigger is always
| better. Ironically, statisticians and philosophers of science
| have already known that this isn't actually true for about a
| century now.
| jamiequint wrote:
| lol, there are literally hundreds of billions of
| performance focused ad dollars a year chasing returns. If
| there is some hidden secret to running high-ROI ad
| campaigns without using the data that is locked up by
| Meta/Google etc, it's a miracle nobody has figured it out
| yet.
|
| (p.s. Citing 12 year old research on advertising makes you
| look clueless, most of ad targeting barely existed then and
| the performance was absolute shit compared to modern ad
| platforms)
| jklinger410 wrote:
| Why do you assume that the statisticians and analysts who
| work in the adtech sphere are incompetent?
|
| That they know the whole thing is a big lie, and contextual
| ads definitely work better, but they are either stupid or
| corrupt and forcing this concept down everyone's throats?
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I don't. But I know from experience as someone who gets
| paid to do statistics that you work with the constraints
| that are set by your employer, and the person who gets to
| have the job is the person who's willing to do the job.
| Spivak wrote:
| Oh they're definitely not incompetent, it's that "do the
| ads actually work and how well" doesn't matter all that
| much to the people running the auction house. What does
| matter is identifying situations where advertisers are
| willing to bid higher for a particular ad spot. If I'm an
| online record store and Google shows me a man in his
| early thirties wearing a band t shirt, who's been to
| multiple live concerts in the last 6 months, and who is
| in the 90th percentile of Spotify listeners that looks a
| _juicy_ lead compared to an 18 year old woman whose only
| experience with live music was a 1975 concert.
|
| But is it? Maybe? It could also be the case that our
| thirty year old is perfectly content with Spotify and has
| no interest in records, or it could be that he has been
| going to the same local shop for the last decade and
| can't be tempted away. And it could also be that our 18
| year old actually _loves_ the 1975 and thinks records are
| a vibe but isn 't connected to her local music scene and
| is would love a way to browse and buy records that
| doesn't involve the social anxiety of going to in IRL
| store where she feels like an outsider. But you can't
| really capture this kind of data which is why we still
| get ads like "bought a vacuum -> you must be a vacuum
| enthusiast."
| jklinger410 wrote:
| > "do the ads actually work and how well" doesn't matter
| all that much to the people running the auction house
|
| The people running the ads are measuring the results in
| different ways. Whether or not they see measurable
| increases attributed to their ad spend is what keeps them
| coming back, or not.
|
| Auction houses are inextricably linked to the results
| they are driving. It's most of the reason they get most
| of their business.
|
| This is why companies like Google and Facebook control so
| much of the ad market. Not just because they are popular
| publishers, but because they have some of the most
| sophisticated ad delivery and measurement platforms.
|
| I can transfer an ad click ID through to a sale and into
| my CRM, showing a 100% direct attribution. This
| attribution determines my likelihood to choose an
| "auction house" in the future.
|
| It's kind of crazy the level of disrespect and outright
| dismissal the HN community gives to the ad world.
| mocamoca wrote:
| There is a shelf-space issue.
|
| Let's assume most of high-quality ad-spaces are available for
| "broader campaigns". Once each small business broadcasts ads
| here, they will compete for space. Price of space-unit goes
| up.
|
| Then some ad-space-seller opens Pandora's box: "hey I can
| allow you to narrow the audience by location targeting. Each
| unit is more expensive but conversion rate is higher so you
| will end up with a better margin overall"
| jklinger410 wrote:
| > then I'd love to see an A/B test that suggested that a
| broader campaign isn't cheaper and equally effective
|
| Do you think no one has done this?
| mrweasel wrote:
| I think a few large companies, say Coca Cola, have done it.
| What I doubt is if anyone has done it for small / medium
| sized companies, or for highly localized companies.
|
| My thinking is that any positive results they've seen from
| targeted ads are just a result of them running any time of
| advertising campaign and not specifically a targeted one.
|
| The targeted ads might also have been proved to be more
| effective, in at least some cases, for some companies, but
| are they significantly better, like 20, 50 or 100%? They
| might be 5% better, but is that enough to justify the
| amount of data collection?
| jklinger410 wrote:
| > They might be 5% better, but is that enough to justify
| the amount of data collection?
|
| Now this is a nuanced take I am here for. I think if we
| put a value on personal data, much like a carbon tax,
| personalized ads would instantly become less profitable
| than contextual. In a heartbeat.
|
| No, the increase in efficiency is not worth the data
| collected.
|
| However with improvements in machine learning, behavioral
| ads will get even better (this is happening as I write
| this). And that value comparison may flip yet again.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| Especially when I block ads everywhere but my mom loves to
| screenshot things and send them to me lol it's entirely
| possible a 50-60s baker living in a different household can
| affect my spending habits as an engineer.
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