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I'm fine with advertising; I see it every day on TV, in magazines, as I walk down the street. What the ad networks want, though, is pervasive, persistent, pers

I'm fine with advertising; I see it every day on TV, in magazines, as I walk down the street. What the ad networks want, though, is pervasive, persistent, personally identifiable cross-domain tracking across the entire WWW. Obnoxious and unskippable autoplaying videos. Obnoxious, garish popups. 1/5 of the on screen real estate to be advertising often only loosely related to the content, more often than not totally disinteresting to the reader, and potentially serving up malware via their active content. No. Apple is doing the right thing, and the networks brought it on themselves. I have ZERO sympathy, and anyone who relies on their parasitic behaviour to exist doesn't really offer any value worth paying for anyway. I bet content becomes meaningful enough to be worth paying for, as the rest will die.

clarkenheim 9y ago
I don't necessarily think this is true. Advertisers want to be able to attribute revenue to the types of ads that they show, that way they can spend less money on advertising and focus it on the channels which actually work for them. Cookies are the best way of attributing online ads to online sales. TL;DR they want effective attribution, not to wreck your browsing experience.
- jtbayly 9y ago
  Sure. They want effective attribution, because that leads to more effective ads. But they are also perfectly willing to do any and all of those other things to get "effective ads." Those other things mean that the next big data hack/leak won't be your SSN & DOB, but your SSN, DOB, and porn preference.
geocar 9y ago
> What the ad networks want... What advertisers want is a real, credible KPI. When it's television, and you can show evidence that 2m people watch this program, so sponsoring gets you 2m of your target audience (or whatever you want to argue). With online, there are few web pages that get 2m people to read them in a day... and surely there's some effect from all those other sites out there. Some of them are even niche, so they might be a hard audience to get... Ad networks offer "all those other sites", and since you can't verify that the 50 people who went to that web page aren't included in the 20 people who read that other web page without "cross-domain tracking" you can't piggy-back on that argument being made in Television. Then you've got the second-screen phenomenon: Few people had two televisions in the same room, but almost everyone has at least two screens. Did I get this part of my target audience on their phone or on the desktop. Choices are, buy everyone twice (halving the advertising budget), or be a little more efficient: Ad networks know what they'd prefer, so they want that tracking to personally identify you now. These ad networks are the ones convincing advertisers they need a super mega cookie to track everything. And so on.
- pfranz 9y ago
  Amazon has been around for 23 years now (Amazon Prime for 12 years). People have been heavily using Amazon daily for online retail and wishlists for over a decade. For most people I know, they've been the go-to place for most Christmas and birthday shopping for years. They're terrible at recommendations--they're the best case scenario. Google and other advertisers are worse. No matter how much information they have, they're just awful. There's also distrust between ad networks, advertisers, and users. So even if they collect all this deep information, you can't trust the other group to be telling you the truth to the other group. I would love a scenario where I get personalized matches for my needs even if that means me handing over more info. Podcasts seem to be the only place where they're a) big enough to get direct sponsorship but b) small enough that the sponsors are still relevant...and they're using the same techniques as traditional media like TV/radio.
Howitzer 9y ago
I work for a software/web development company in the automotive industry. It's unbelievable how much of a website project consists of tracking. For one client, we have four different tracking systems running. The thing that counts most is knowing who visits their website, what they do and how they do it. The website itself is almost an afterthought. It's come to the point where basic functions like a contact form simply don't work when you have adblock or Disconnect running.
- letsgetphysITal 9y ago
  Fine by me. Those are the sites that don't get my business, and increasingly it's not nerds like me who are using ad- and tracking-blocking tools. They are accessible, reliable, and more frequently being included and enabled by default. It's not something ad networks can fix. Once active content is blocked on the client, it's game over. Your content simply doesn't work, and we'll to your competitor with the working site for what we need.

clarkenheim 9y ago

I don't necessarily think this is true. Advertisers want to be able to attribute revenue to the types of ads that they show, that way they can spend less money on advertising and focus it on the channels which actually work for them. Cookies are the best way of attributing online ads to online sales. TL;DR they want effective attribution, not to wreck your browsing experience.

jtbayly 9y ago
Sure. They want effective attribution, because that leads to more effective ads. But they are also perfectly willing to do any and all of those other things to get "effective ads." Those other things mean that the next big data hack/leak won't be your SSN & DOB, but your SSN, DOB, and porn preference.

geocar 9y ago

> What the ad networks want... What advertisers want is a real, credible KPI. When it's television, and you can show evidence that 2m people watch this program, so sponsoring gets you 2m of your target audience (or whatever you want to argue). With online, there are few web pages that get 2m people to read them in a day... and surely there's some effect from all those other sites out there. Some of them are even niche, so they might be a hard audience to get... Ad networks offer "all those other sites", and since you can't verify that the 50 people who went to that web page aren't included in the 20 people who read that other web page without "cross-domain tracking" you can't piggy-back on that argument being made in Television. Then you've got the second-screen phenomenon: Few people had two televisions in the same room, but almost everyone has at least two screens. Did I get this part of my target audience on their phone or on the desktop. Choices are, buy everyone twice (halving the advertising budget), or be a little more efficient: Ad networks know what they'd prefer, so they want that tracking to personally identify you now. These ad networks are the ones convincing advertisers they need a super mega cookie to track everything. And so on.

pfranz 9y ago
Amazon has been around for 23 years now (Amazon Prime for 12 years). People have been heavily using Amazon daily for online retail and wishlists for over a decade. For most people I know, they've been the go-to place for most Christmas and birthday shopping for years. They're terrible at recommendations--they're the best case scenario. Google and other advertisers are worse. No matter how much information they have, they're just awful. There's also distrust between ad networks, advertisers, and users. So even if they collect all this deep information, you can't trust the other group to be telling you the truth to the other group. I would love a scenario where I get personalized matches for my needs even if that means me handing over more info. Podcasts seem to be the only place where they're a) big enough to get direct sponsorship but b) small enough that the sponsors are still relevant...and they're using the same techniques as traditional media like TV/radio.

Howitzer 9y ago

I work for a software/web development company in the automotive industry. It's unbelievable how much of a website project consists of tracking. For one client, we have four different tracking systems running. The thing that counts most is knowing who visits their website, what they do and how they do it. The website itself is almost an afterthought. It's come to the point where basic functions like a contact form simply don't work when you have adblock or Disconnect running.

letsgetphysITal 9y ago
Fine by me. Those are the sites that don't get my business, and increasingly it's not nerds like me who are using ad- and tracking-blocking tools. They are accessible, reliable, and more frequently being included and enabled by default. It's not something ad networks can fix. Once active content is blocked on the client, it's game over. Your content simply doesn't work, and we'll to your competitor with the working site for what we need.