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One reason I'm using Adblockers and Ghostery is the immense number of trackers found on any website that are supposed to help in delivering personalized ads to

by sveme 11y ago

One reason I'm using Adblockers and Ghostery is the immense number of trackers found on any website that are supposed to help in delivering personalized ads to any future website visit. Seriously, ad companies: Stop trying to show me personalized ads! Please, serve ads that have something to do with the stuff I'm looking at. When looking at a coding site, why do I have to see an advertisement for the jeans that I did not want to buy four days ago? Why not show me books/websites/hosters/whatever that are related to the coding problem I'm currently trying to solve? It used to be somwhat like that, years ago. We should all go back to that and stop tracking users with dozens of trackers, all connecting to their servers when loading a site, crumpling the speed with which I'm seeing the content.

elorant 11y ago
Please, serve ads that have something to do with the stuff I'm looking at. I second that. I couldn't agree more with this comment. I use to make a lot of searches for pharmaceutical products for one of my projects and then Google decides to show me tons of drug related ads regardless of the context of the site I'm currently visiting. It's frustrating to say the least. Like I don't have any other interests. But I'd like to hear from people hosting AdSense on their sites. Has profiling raised CTR rates significantly?
- chimeracoder 11y ago
  > But I'd like to hear from people hosting AdSense on their sites. Has profiling raised CTR rates significantly? Probably hard to tell, since there are a lot of confounding variables. Most notably, conversion across the board has plummeted in recent years (I forget the exact percent, but I think it's about one third). So if you're a website funded by ads and your traffic has grown 10% since last year, you've actually taken a pay cut!
kevincennis 11y ago
As a consumer, I would love this. But my understanding is that most/many companies have found "retargeting" to be very effective. So it's annoying, but we also seem to respond to it. As long as that second part remains true, I don't think it's going away.
jbob2000 11y ago
It's useless to "serve ads that have something to do with the stuff I'm looking at". I read an article about smart thermostats the other day. I don't need a thermostat, I rent a shitty apartment! My HVAC is wrapped into my rent, I don't even care how much it costs. I saw an ad for bleach laundry detergent on YouTube, which I would never use because I listen to punk rock and don't own white anything. I've pretty much stopped watching TV because all they show are make-up and tampon commercials. The advertisers need trackers, otherwise they're just yelling into the void. It never used to be like this because people were pretty homogeneous. A few decades of globalization and multiculturalism have made us much more diverse, and an impossible target for generalized advertising. I'm not defending them, just pointing out the challenges product-makers and advertisers face.
- joosters 11y ago
  I've pretty much stopped watching TV because all they show are make-up and tampon commercials. You base your TV viewing on the advertising?
  - PeterWhittaker 11y ago
    He's not alone: I cancelled cable a couple of years ago for two reasons, the cost (for little to no value), and the terrible UX of ad-funded viewing. Streamed shows with no ads, ah! Wonderful, good value, even at a higher price (Netflix, IMHO, is leaving money on the table).
mpeg 11y ago
Note that Ghostery will block trackers but they do sell your usage data themselves. Use privacy badger or a tracker-blocking list for your ad blocker if you're that concerned about privacy. On another note, as an ad person, context-aware ads are alive and well, for instance if you mention a specific thing in your Facebook updates you're more likely to see an ad for it. But the hard fact is that personalisation and retargeting works very, very well. The real mistake ad companies do is that you should not see that ad if you didn't want to buy the jeans (or you bought them on a different device), which is hard to guess but not impossible
- sveme 11y ago
  Shouldn't that be off by opting out of Ghostrank? Personalisation does work to some degree, I can see that on Facebook. But especially in that place it tends to creep me out and I do make an effort to never visit Sponsored Content.
  - mpeg 11y ago
    Yes, I believe you should be fine if you opt out. Still, as much as I understand the need for Ghostery to monetise, I personally prefer to trust the EFF.
- teaneedz 11y ago
  Ad targeting is alive and well only to those building it. Targeting via tracking does not work : http://zgp.org/targeted-advertising-considered-harmful/ http://zgp.org/targeted-advertising-considered-harmful/ Maybe someone fromThe Deck could comment on why their approach is better.
  - mpeg 11y ago
    "Targeting via tracking does not work" is a very bold claim. Better targeting is a selling point of billion-dollar ad tech companies, and retargeting just pushes more products. Some sorts of tracking are harmful, I don't like the current state of affairs either and cookie syncing is downright evil (the practice of calling a pixel from a third party domain to "sync" your first party cookie with theirs) and abused. I just don't think it's as black and white as some people make it sound, not all advertising is obnoxious and unwanted and as a consumer it's ultimately almost impossible to escape trackers completely (unless you expect consumers to run Tails and browse websites as static html)
bad_user 11y ago
As a full disclosure, I used to work on a platform for serving ads. For one, while certain websites or apps show a clear signal that can be used (e.g. coding, hence the user can be shown ads on coding tools), many other websites or apps are not giving a signal on preferences or intent, this besides the ads inventory being an issue. For example when you're reading political news, or when you're playing chess, what ad could you be shown that could be related to politics or chess? I can answer this - without a user profile, best case scenario is that you're shown something at random, with a disastrous conversion rate. And worst case scenario is ads being used for spreading pieces of propaganda on controversial issues and I remember for example how a certain gold mining company was attempting to manipulate with downright lies the viewers of certain YouTube videos that were criticizing their open-pit project. And because such ad spots are basically worthless, they can be bought for cheap. I'm personally all about privacy and the security of my data, being downright paranoid. But privacy is one thing, blocking ads is another. If you don't like ads, then don't use those services or websites. That's how you end up rewarding alternatives and personally I rewarded many alternatives that way. Even if you want to punish bad actors, you still give them the eyeballs, you still distribute those links to your friends, etc. The concept of voting with your wallet is basically broken. And contrary to the music and film industry that has pushed for DRM, this time people that block ads don't have the proper moral ground to stand on and also the industry is not going to go down without a fight. Consider that you can't block ads in mobile apps without having root privileges. This will turn out to be a whack-a-mole game and it won't last for long. Just wait until these websites will start to serve ads from their own domain, with ads being indistinguishable from the surrounding content ... oh wait, this is already happening ;-) Worst of all is that you end up hurting other people - from publishers, many of whom are already on the verge of bankruptcy, to people that will suffer the consequences even if they don't use ad-blockers, as the history of video gaming can teach us. Do you enjoy the DRM laden pay-to-win gaming industry that others have created for you? As personally I'm thankful that I've outgrown video games.
- micampe 11y ago
  > ads being indistinguishable from the surrounding content I think this is an improvement, compared to the current situation of ads getting in the way of the content I want to read.
eli 11y ago
You want the ads to be better targeted for you but you don't want to be profiled or tracked? That is going to be difficult for most publishers. My company could do that because we sell our ads directly and approve each one by hand and therefore have our own sales and ad operations staff. A lot of sites don't have the resources or scale to do that though.
- sveme 11y ago
  No. If I have to take up with ads, I want them to fit to the content I'm currently looking at, not stuff I looked at days ago. Paraphrasing another comment (though disagreeing with him), the probability that I'm interested in smart thermostats while I'm looking at content on smart thermostats is vastly larger than the probability of me being interested in jeans while I'm looking at content on smart thermostats.
  - eli 11y ago
    Unfortunately the dirty secret of ad targeting algorithms is that they don't actually work very well. Computers aren't good at understanding context. It's a hard problem. Google is better at it then most and, well, you've seen AdSense. It's just OK. Both consumers and advertisers are mostly aligned in that they want relevant ads. The idea that taking away information about the user is going to somehow make the ads better seems like a stretch.
    - kuschku 11y ago
      Well, there is a simple way to solve that: website owner and Ad creator both describe their site/Ad in categories with some hashtags. Just match based on those.
mbubb 11y ago
Please, serve ads that have something to do with the stuff I'm looking at. I understand your point and feel yr pain but: How do you do that without some sort of tracking? Advertising as well as the 'recommendation engines" in Netflix or Amazon track your clicks to see what you are interested in. Otherwise you get programmatic advertising. Which means you get beer ads during football games; luxury brands in the NYTimes Magazine; etc.
- kuschku 11y ago
  Yes, exactly. Just do programmatic advertising. And select it manually, not through a shitty algorithm like Google does today.

by sveme 11y ago

elorant 11y ago

Please, serve ads that have something to do with the stuff I'm looking at. I second that. I couldn't agree more with this comment. I use to make a lot of searches for pharmaceutical products for one of my projects and then Google decides to show me tons of drug related ads regardless of the context of the site I'm currently visiting. It's frustrating to say the least. Like I don't have any other interests. But I'd like to hear from people hosting AdSense on their sites. Has profiling raised CTR rates significantly?

chimeracoder 11y ago
> But I'd like to hear from people hosting AdSense on their sites. Has profiling raised CTR rates significantly? Probably hard to tell, since there are a lot of confounding variables. Most notably, conversion across the board has plummeted in recent years (I forget the exact percent, but I think it's about one third). So if you're a website funded by ads and your traffic has grown 10% since last year, you've actually taken a pay cut!

kevincennis 11y ago

As a consumer, I would love this. But my understanding is that most/many companies have found "retargeting" to be very effective. So it's annoying, but we also seem to respond to it. As long as that second part remains true, I don't think it's going away.

jbob2000 11y ago

It's useless to "serve ads that have something to do with the stuff I'm looking at". I read an article about smart thermostats the other day. I don't need a thermostat, I rent a shitty apartment! My HVAC is wrapped into my rent, I don't even care how much it costs. I saw an ad for bleach laundry detergent on YouTube, which I would never use because I listen to punk rock and don't own white anything. I've pretty much stopped watching TV because all they show are make-up and tampon commercials. The advertisers need trackers, otherwise they're just yelling into the void. It never used to be like this because people were pretty homogeneous. A few decades of globalization and multiculturalism have made us much more diverse, and an impossible target for generalized advertising. I'm not defending them, just pointing out the challenges product-makers and advertisers face.

joosters 11y ago
I've pretty much stopped watching TV because all they show are make-up and tampon commercials. You base your TV viewing on the advertising?
- PeterWhittaker 11y ago
  He's not alone: I cancelled cable a couple of years ago for two reasons, the cost (for little to no value), and the terrible UX of ad-funded viewing. Streamed shows with no ads, ah! Wonderful, good value, even at a higher price (Netflix, IMHO, is leaving money on the table).

mpeg 11y ago

Note that Ghostery will block trackers but they do sell your usage data themselves. Use privacy badger or a tracker-blocking list for your ad blocker if you're that concerned about privacy. On another note, as an ad person, context-aware ads are alive and well, for instance if you mention a specific thing in your Facebook updates you're more likely to see an ad for it. But the hard fact is that personalisation and retargeting works very, very well. The real mistake ad companies do is that you should not see that ad if you didn't want to buy the jeans (or you bought them on a different device), which is hard to guess but not impossible

sveme 11y ago
Shouldn't that be off by opting out of Ghostrank? Personalisation does work to some degree, I can see that on Facebook. But especially in that place it tends to creep me out and I do make an effort to never visit Sponsored Content.
- mpeg 11y ago
  Yes, I believe you should be fine if you opt out. Still, as much as I understand the need for Ghostery to monetise, I personally prefer to trust the EFF.
teaneedz 11y ago
Ad targeting is alive and well only to those building it. Targeting via tracking does not work : http://zgp.org/targeted-advertising-considered-harmful/ http://zgp.org/targeted-advertising-considered-harmful/ Maybe someone fromThe Deck could comment on why their approach is better.
- mpeg 11y ago
  "Targeting via tracking does not work" is a very bold claim. Better targeting is a selling point of billion-dollar ad tech companies, and retargeting just pushes more products. Some sorts of tracking are harmful, I don't like the current state of affairs either and cookie syncing is downright evil (the practice of calling a pixel from a third party domain to "sync" your first party cookie with theirs) and abused. I just don't think it's as black and white as some people make it sound, not all advertising is obnoxious and unwanted and as a consumer it's ultimately almost impossible to escape trackers completely (unless you expect consumers to run Tails and browse websites as static html)

bad_user 11y ago

As a full disclosure, I used to work on a platform for serving ads. For one, while certain websites or apps show a clear signal that can be used (e.g. coding, hence the user can be shown ads on coding tools), many other websites or apps are not giving a signal on preferences or intent, this besides the ads inventory being an issue. For example when you're reading political news, or when you're playing chess, what ad could you be shown that could be related to politics or chess? I can answer this - without a user profile, best case scenario is that you're shown something at random, with a disastrous conversion rate. And worst case scenario is ads being used for spreading pieces of propaganda on controversial issues and I remember for example how a certain gold mining company was attempting to manipulate with downright lies the viewers of certain YouTube videos that were criticizing their open-pit project. And because such ad spots are basically worthless, they can be bought for cheap. I'm personally all about privacy and the security of my data, being downright paranoid. But privacy is one thing, blocking ads is another. If you don't like ads, then don't use those services or websites. That's how you end up rewarding alternatives and personally I rewarded many alternatives that way. Even if you want to punish bad actors, you still give them the eyeballs, you still distribute those links to your friends, etc. The concept of voting with your wallet is basically broken. And contrary to the music and film industry that has pushed for DRM, this time people that block ads don't have the proper moral ground to stand on and also the industry is not going to go down without a fight. Consider that you can't block ads in mobile apps without having root privileges. This will turn out to be a whack-a-mole game and it won't last for long. Just wait until these websites will start to serve ads from their own domain, with ads being indistinguishable from the surrounding content ... oh wait, this is already happening ;-) Worst of all is that you end up hurting other people - from publishers, many of whom are already on the verge of bankruptcy, to people that will suffer the consequences even if they don't use ad-blockers, as the history of video gaming can teach us. Do you enjoy the DRM laden pay-to-win gaming industry that others have created for you? As personally I'm thankful that I've outgrown video games.

micampe 11y ago
> ads being indistinguishable from the surrounding content I think this is an improvement, compared to the current situation of ads getting in the way of the content I want to read.

eli 11y ago

You want the ads to be better targeted for you but you don't want to be profiled or tracked? That is going to be difficult for most publishers. My company could do that because we sell our ads directly and approve each one by hand and therefore have our own sales and ad operations staff. A lot of sites don't have the resources or scale to do that though.

sveme 11y ago
No. If I have to take up with ads, I want them to fit to the content I'm currently looking at, not stuff I looked at days ago. Paraphrasing another comment (though disagreeing with him), the probability that I'm interested in smart thermostats while I'm looking at content on smart thermostats is vastly larger than the probability of me being interested in jeans while I'm looking at content on smart thermostats.
- eli 11y ago
  Unfortunately the dirty secret of ad targeting algorithms is that they don't actually work very well. Computers aren't good at understanding context. It's a hard problem. Google is better at it then most and, well, you've seen AdSense. It's just OK. Both consumers and advertisers are mostly aligned in that they want relevant ads. The idea that taking away information about the user is going to somehow make the ads better seems like a stretch.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    Well, there is a simple way to solve that: website owner and Ad creator both describe their site/Ad in categories with some hashtags. Just match based on those.

mbubb 11y ago

Please, serve ads that have something to do with the stuff I'm looking at. I understand your point and feel yr pain but: How do you do that without some sort of tracking? Advertising as well as the 'recommendation engines" in Netflix or Amazon track your clicks to see what you are interested in. Otherwise you get programmatic advertising. Which means you get beer ads during football games; luxury brands in the NYTimes Magazine; etc.

kuschku 11y ago
Yes, exactly. Just do programmatic advertising. And select it manually, not through a shitty algorithm like Google does today.