4 ms·

> Highly doubtful has any idea of even gender and age. That depends if they know that you visit websites which are also visited a lot by other males between th

by sumedh 9y ago

> Highly doubtful has any idea of even gender and age. That depends if they know that you visit websites which are also visited a lot by other males between the age group of 20 to 30, then they can almost assume that you are a male between 20 - 30.

tjoff 9y ago
Big woop, what are they going to do with that information? They can "target" me with an ad meant for males in their 20-30s (which again, is just a very crude guess). Which will guaranteed to be a much worse fit than just targeting to the content of that site. No tracking needed. Much better accuracy and return.
- sumedh 9y ago
  Big woop? you just said its highly doubtful they have any idea about your demographics, I explained you how they can easily do that and much more like know your race and income bracket. The days of just targeting you based on the content site are over, now demographics and your search/click history plays a role too.
  - tjoff 9y ago
    Because their accuracy is abysmal. Maybe they have a few percent better accuracy than guessing at random. And that might be worth a few billions. But on an individual level they just don't have the slightest clue. edit: State of the art tracking seems to be "look at what products user x has looked at, show the exact same product everywhere after he/she probably bought it". Now if you do have and use a facebook account that is another thing.
    - sumedh 9y ago
      > Because their accuracy is abysmal. Can you give some sources for your claim?
      - tjoff 9y ago
        Not really, but it is kind of obvious. I have a very weird setup which would be quite easy to fingerprint (probably a handful in the world and likely only one in my town uses my display setup for one). I am the only one using my devices and noone else is using my IP (and I don't switch IPs either) and I don't use any ad-blockers. Yet ad networks haven't got a clue, often even get gender wrong. (And as a male i interested in tech that should probably be the easiest scenario imaginable) I guess the most tangible data point is when google allowed you to look at what google thought if you (gender, age, interests etc.) and how bad they are at it unless you actually use their services. It is obvious they would be far better of targeting sites than users without accounts. But that is not where their competitive edge is so they downplay that. Also, I guess they are big enough to not care about people without accounts.

by sumedh 9y ago

tjoff 9y ago

Big woop, what are they going to do with that information? They can "target" me with an ad meant for males in their 20-30s (which again, is just a very crude guess). Which will guaranteed to be a much worse fit than just targeting to the content of that site. No tracking needed. Much better accuracy and return.

sumedh 9y ago
Big woop? you just said its highly doubtful they have any idea about your demographics, I explained you how they can easily do that and much more like know your race and income bracket. The days of just targeting you based on the content site are over, now demographics and your search/click history plays a role too.
- tjoff 9y ago
  Because their accuracy is abysmal. Maybe they have a few percent better accuracy than guessing at random. And that might be worth a few billions. But on an individual level they just don't have the slightest clue. edit: State of the art tracking seems to be "look at what products user x has looked at, show the exact same product everywhere after he/she probably bought it". Now if you do have and use a facebook account that is another thing.
  - sumedh 9y ago
    > Because their accuracy is abysmal. Can you give some sources for your claim?
    - tjoff 9y ago
      Not really, but it is kind of obvious. I have a very weird setup which would be quite easy to fingerprint (probably a handful in the world and likely only one in my town uses my display setup for one). I am the only one using my devices and noone else is using my IP (and I don't switch IPs either) and I don't use any ad-blockers. Yet ad networks haven't got a clue, often even get gender wrong. (And as a male i interested in tech that should probably be the easiest scenario imaginable) I guess the most tangible data point is when google allowed you to look at what google thought if you (gender, age, interests etc.) and how bad they are at it unless you actually use their services. It is obvious they would be far better of targeting sites than users without accounts. But that is not where their competitive edge is so they downplay that. Also, I guess they are big enough to not care about people without accounts.