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These companies know "more about your life than you do", but yet the targeted ads continue to be pretty useless. The ad on this site was an Amazon ad for a poo

These companies know "more about your life than you do", but yet the targeted ads continue to be pretty useless. The ad on this site was an Amazon ad for a pool filter I bought on Amazon about a week ago. It should know that I don't need these for like another year now. The other was for a cruise which I just got back from last week. Maybe some after-sun lotion or something vehicle related for the fact I drove 6 hours each way? The ads I always see just never seem that smart given the terabytes of data that everyone supposedly has on me. They really just seem to reflect my search history.

Swizec 9y ago
Hint: they don't care. It works well enough. I use remarketing and it definitely annoys some people and they complain that I'm following them around. But you know what? They buy. Without remarketing they forget. I would love to turn it off after they do buy, but it's too hard to configure and hey, it reminds them to actually use the thing they bought. Customers are great, but only users tell their friends,
- bdamm 9y ago
  The better ad would market the product your friend just bought to you. The privacy concerns are enormous, but regardless, the data is there today and I'd be surprised if it isn't already at work.
  - Swizec 9y ago
    Facebook has a "People who liked your page and their friends" audience option for ads. Another great one is "lookalike audience based on LTV". So you only advertise to people who are like your biggest customers.
- iamnothere 9y ago
  Your comment explains something crucial about targeted advertising that other people often fail to understand. The ad tech companies provide a platform for advertising, but it is up to the user (the advertiser) to configure and use the platform correctly. Often, advertisers may configure their targeting in ways that are suboptimal. Or, their e-commerce platform may not be properly set up to record conversions and associate them with targets. (Depending on the platform, they may not even have that option.) Poorly configured ad targeting happens just as often as poorly configured firewalls, servers, Wordpress installs, cloud deployments, etc... probably more often since the consequences aren't as dire. (Not a fan of targeted ads either, but I often see people complaining about post-purchase targeted ads as if this is a universal problem. So much depends on the specific platforms involved, the skill levels and intentions of the many different ad buyers on each platform, and so on. Results will vary.)
jpdaigle 9y ago
I'm asking for something even more basic from ad targeting: as a Canadian, with a Canadian IP address, don't advertise products/services to me that are US-only. You'd think the web advertising industry would at least figure out how to never show me an ad for Hulu or Blue Apron, seeing how those companies don't do business outside the US so the ROI on having me click that is zero.
- blacksmith_tb 9y ago
  Ah, but they are "building brand awareness" (or who knows, maybe even legitimately testing the waters to see if they want to expand to Canada).
- Godel_unicode 9y ago
  Nobody from the US ever visits Canada? This is a good example of how the spotlight effect combines with confirmation bias to make advertising look awful. All algorithms like this are going to have false positive rates, if their most successful ads are the ones shown to Americans in Canada should they stop because sometimes Canadians see them and are annoyed by them?
  - tomdell 9y ago
    It's doubtful that the most successful ads are ones specifically shown to Americans in Canada, and the number of Americans in Canada at any given time is probably very insignificant compared to the number of Canadians in Canada. It really does seem like a boneheaded advertising strategy to market yourself to a consumer audience when the overwhelming majority of them can't pay for your products, and when it's presumably easy to screen that audience out by IP address.
- yellow_postit 9y ago
  Reverse IP lookup is far from perfect when it comes to location identification. Also if you've recently travelled to the US wouldn't be out of the question to have a cookie set with that location info.
gaius 9y ago
The purpose of these ads is not to sell you stuff. Its to sell advertising to companies that don't understand this internet stuff but are terrified of being "left behind". The ads need to be plausible, thats why someone has to see them, but who that is literally doesn't matter.
- spyspy 9y ago
  Ad companies make money based on clicks, not views. It's in their interest to make them interesting enough to click on.
  - blowski 9y ago
    _Some_ ad companies make their money on clicks. Others charge per impression, and others charge per acquisition.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - gaius 9y ago
    I don't think that's true, because who is clicking on these ads for things they already own?
    - logfromblammo 9y ago
      An intelligent advertising engine would know the typical interval between two purchases of the same product, and start advertising similar products just before that interval has elapsed since the last purchase. Examples: pool filter: 12 months reptile UV lamp: 6 months gift-wrapping paper: 12 months oil filter, recycling box, 5 qt oil: 4 months 8-ct paper towel rolls: 2 months television: 4 years automobile: 10 years magazine subscriptions: 1 year tacos: every Tuesday
      - gaius 9y ago
pmoriarty 9y ago
One of the points of advertising is to get you to recognize the brand, so that in the future when you shop for similar products you'll think of theirs as a familiar brand (even tough you may have no memory of ever having seen their ads). Ads also often get you to associate positive feelings with the brand or product. Again, this might not result in directly buying the product right away, but next time you think of it, you'll be more likely to buy it than if you never saw the ad.
II2II 9y ago
A local grocery store has a points card that bases its offers on prior purchases, and suffers from the problem that you identified. I have often wondered if it would be practical to turn the tables by making a token purchase just before an anticipated sale, then reaping the rewards the following week.
gpawl 9y ago
You confuse "slightly imperfect" with "useless"
ajc-sorin 9y ago
The seemingly lack of intelligence isn't due to them being ineffective, but rather being effective at a task you weren't necessarily evaluating. The key difference between marketing and advertising is that marketing is advertising with the added intent of creating a sale to the person viewing the advertisement - advertising directly to their target market. Advertising is more about brand awareness and viral marketing. You bought a pool filter and won't need one for another year, but you probably have friends/live near/know people who may be in the market for a pool filter, and if they ask you about buying one, the brand awareness may encourage you to suggest that brand, even though you may not have used it yet or no anything else about other brands - which is another key benefit. Essentially, advertising has a 2-tier benefit. Firstly, it solidifies brand awareness, and secondly, it takes up space that would have gone to a competitor. Now the cost of competing is that much higher, because in order to get your business a competitor would need to invest in a superior product and invest in bringing awareness to you. "If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it's stupid."
koonsolo 9y ago
I live in Belgium with 2 main languages, Dutch and French. YouTube still shows me French adds, while I speak Dutch.
bahmboo 9y ago
It shows that even with huge inefficiencies web ads are making tons of money for all the major players both supply and demand (sorry bloggers). Amazon and Google are well aware of the problem and working on it to some extent but I guess there are bigger fish to fry in the meantime.
jakub_g 9y ago
I used to think the same but I've read recently the rationale as follows: apparently, you're most likely to buy a pool filter just after you bought one, because maybe the one you bought broke, or you don't like it, or whatever else, and you need a new one. Not sure how much truth is there behind it, but maybe there's a bit. Obviously, it does not apply much to the cruise though.
knz 9y ago
> These companies know "more about your life than you do", but yet the targeted ads continue to be pretty useless It always amuses me when Facebook reminds me that it was my wife's birthday the previous day. A real AI would alert me at least a week in advance!

Swizec 9y ago

Hint: they don't care. It works well enough. I use remarketing and it definitely annoys some people and they complain that I'm following them around. But you know what? They buy. Without remarketing they forget. I would love to turn it off after they do buy, but it's too hard to configure and hey, it reminds them to actually use the thing they bought. Customers are great, but only users tell their friends,

bdamm 9y ago
The better ad would market the product your friend just bought to you. The privacy concerns are enormous, but regardless, the data is there today and I'd be surprised if it isn't already at work.
- Swizec 9y ago
  Facebook has a "People who liked your page and their friends" audience option for ads. Another great one is "lookalike audience based on LTV". So you only advertise to people who are like your biggest customers.
iamnothere 9y ago
Your comment explains something crucial about targeted advertising that other people often fail to understand. The ad tech companies provide a platform for advertising, but it is up to the user (the advertiser) to configure and use the platform correctly. Often, advertisers may configure their targeting in ways that are suboptimal. Or, their e-commerce platform may not be properly set up to record conversions and associate them with targets. (Depending on the platform, they may not even have that option.) Poorly configured ad targeting happens just as often as poorly configured firewalls, servers, Wordpress installs, cloud deployments, etc... probably more often since the consequences aren't as dire. (Not a fan of targeted ads either, but I often see people complaining about post-purchase targeted ads as if this is a universal problem. So much depends on the specific platforms involved, the skill levels and intentions of the many different ad buyers on each platform, and so on. Results will vary.)

jpdaigle 9y ago

I'm asking for something even more basic from ad targeting: as a Canadian, with a Canadian IP address, don't advertise products/services to me that are US-only. You'd think the web advertising industry would at least figure out how to never show me an ad for Hulu or Blue Apron, seeing how those companies don't do business outside the US so the ROI on having me click that is zero.

blacksmith_tb 9y ago
Ah, but they are "building brand awareness" (or who knows, maybe even legitimately testing the waters to see if they want to expand to Canada).
Godel_unicode 9y ago
Nobody from the US ever visits Canada? This is a good example of how the spotlight effect combines with confirmation bias to make advertising look awful. All algorithms like this are going to have false positive rates, if their most successful ads are the ones shown to Americans in Canada should they stop because sometimes Canadians see them and are annoyed by them?
- tomdell 9y ago
  It's doubtful that the most successful ads are ones specifically shown to Americans in Canada, and the number of Americans in Canada at any given time is probably very insignificant compared to the number of Canadians in Canada. It really does seem like a boneheaded advertising strategy to market yourself to a consumer audience when the overwhelming majority of them can't pay for your products, and when it's presumably easy to screen that audience out by IP address.
yellow_postit 9y ago
Reverse IP lookup is far from perfect when it comes to location identification. Also if you've recently travelled to the US wouldn't be out of the question to have a cookie set with that location info.

gaius 9y ago

The purpose of these ads is not to sell you stuff. Its to sell advertising to companies that don't understand this internet stuff but are terrified of being "left behind". The ads need to be plausible, thats why someone has to see them, but who that is literally doesn't matter.

spyspy 9y ago
Ad companies make money based on clicks, not views. It's in their interest to make them interesting enough to click on.
- blowski 9y ago
  _Some_ ad companies make their money on clicks. Others charge per impression, and others charge per acquisition.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- gaius 9y ago
  I don't think that's true, because who is clicking on these ads for things they already own?
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    An intelligent advertising engine would know the typical interval between two purchases of the same product, and start advertising similar products just before that interval has elapsed since the last purchase. Examples: pool filter: 12 months reptile UV lamp: 6 months gift-wrapping paper: 12 months oil filter, recycling box, 5 qt oil: 4 months 8-ct paper towel rolls: 2 months television: 4 years automobile: 10 years magazine subscriptions: 1 year tacos: every Tuesday
    - gaius 9y ago

pmoriarty 9y ago

One of the points of advertising is to get you to recognize the brand, so that in the future when you shop for similar products you'll think of theirs as a familiar brand (even tough you may have no memory of ever having seen their ads). Ads also often get you to associate positive feelings with the brand or product. Again, this might not result in directly buying the product right away, but next time you think of it, you'll be more likely to buy it than if you never saw the ad.

II2II 9y ago

A local grocery store has a points card that bases its offers on prior purchases, and suffers from the problem that you identified. I have often wondered if it would be practical to turn the tables by making a token purchase just before an anticipated sale, then reaping the rewards the following week.

gpawl 9y ago

You confuse "slightly imperfect" with "useless"

ajc-sorin 9y ago

The seemingly lack of intelligence isn't due to them being ineffective, but rather being effective at a task you weren't necessarily evaluating. The key difference between marketing and advertising is that marketing is advertising with the added intent of creating a sale to the person viewing the advertisement - advertising directly to their target market. Advertising is more about brand awareness and viral marketing. You bought a pool filter and won't need one for another year, but you probably have friends/live near/know people who may be in the market for a pool filter, and if they ask you about buying one, the brand awareness may encourage you to suggest that brand, even though you may not have used it yet or no anything else about other brands - which is another key benefit. Essentially, advertising has a 2-tier benefit. Firstly, it solidifies brand awareness, and secondly, it takes up space that would have gone to a competitor. Now the cost of competing is that much higher, because in order to get your business a competitor would need to invest in a superior product and invest in bringing awareness to you. "If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it's stupid."

koonsolo 9y ago

I live in Belgium with 2 main languages, Dutch and French. YouTube still shows me French adds, while I speak Dutch.

bahmboo 9y ago

It shows that even with huge inefficiencies web ads are making tons of money for all the major players both supply and demand (sorry bloggers). Amazon and Google are well aware of the problem and working on it to some extent but I guess there are bigger fish to fry in the meantime.

jakub_g 9y ago

I used to think the same but I've read recently the rationale as follows: apparently, you're most likely to buy a pool filter just after you bought one, because maybe the one you bought broke, or you don't like it, or whatever else, and you need a new one. Not sure how much truth is there behind it, but maybe there's a bit. Obviously, it does not apply much to the cruise though.

knz 9y ago

> These companies know "more about your life than you do", but yet the targeted ads continue to be pretty useless It always amuses me when Facebook reminds me that it was my wife's birthday the previous day. A real AI would alert me at least a week in advance!