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Would you rather see ads for cat food? (Even though you don't have a cat.) This is not a rhetorical question: please answer it. The reason for this question
by logicallee 9y ago
Would you rather see ads for cat food? (Even though you don't have a cat.) This is not a rhetorical question: please answer it.
The reason for this question is that even though you don't have a cat lots of people do! It's absolutely not a false dichotomy. Either people who have no cats must see cat food advertisements (bad choice), or cat food advertisements must be shown to people who probably have a cat (better choice). There's really nothing in between.
This is the world we live in, and you should prefer to see baby diaper ads vs cat food ads, when you do have a baby but don't have a cat. The statistical number of cats or babies is irrelevant. As you may know, Google is pretty good (not perfect) about not allowing keyword targeting that gets down to individual people so the privacy implications really are pretty limited.
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That said, I have a funny story to share. (About adapting to this world.) I am learning a foreign language and I decided to watch baby cartoons in that language. But before I did, I thought to myself, "Okay if I start searching YouTube for cartoons for 1 year olds, pretty soon Google is going to decide that I'm a new mother and I'll see nothing but baby cartoons in my feed for the next 5 years."
I was sure enough in my reasoning that I went ahead and created a brand new Google account for the express purpose of being able to pollute its YouTube feed. I only watch stuff related to that language learning on that account.
This had the exact effect that I wanted. That youtube became absolutely awesome for spending focused time on my language learning, using all sorts of related videos. It includes people documenting what life in that country is like for tourists and foreigners, it includes foreign-language teachers' channels, it includes related cartoons and films at a good level for me, it includes political speeches from that country subtitled in English. I couldn't be happier with the result.
You know those acknowledgments we've been clicking through for the past few years by Google saying "Hey!! We're doing this. READ THIS"? I think it makes what they do pretty above-board.
As a consumer we're able to adapt to this, but it's not something I have any problem with.
(Disclaimer: I indirectly contributed to Google in the past but not now, I would definitely list it as a disclaimer if it were happening now but I remember that it changed how I wrote about Google especially when I was the most critical of them, so I think it's worth mentioning still. I am a bit nicer when I'm really pissed off at them as a consumer - but this is not the case in this instance.)
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EDIT: I carefully edited this as it is falling to -1. I stand by the sentiments in this comment: they are correct. Downvoters are wrong.
- lostlogin 9y agoYou’re ok with someone reading your mail then spamming you after learning something from it? Does that only apply to email, or physical mail too (with your permission in a vast TOS document of course). What if someone looked in your windows then sent you advertising based on what they saw? I’m always a bit startled at what people are ok with.
- jehlakj 9y agoHe means a disposable, anonymous mailbox that is subscribed to only the relevant sources.
- logicallee 9y agoThis (what you just wrote): >You’re ok with someone reading your mail then spamming you after learning something from it? Does not match this (OP): >When our daughter was born, and I sent an announcement via GMail, I started seeing ads for diapers. I can see how the language "I started seeing ads" might sound like it applies to spam (unsolicited mail or messages) but to me it's clear that the poster just meant that the types of textual gmail ads they see changed to include baby ads. They're talking about this: https://www.google.com/search?q=gmail+text+ads&source=lnms&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=gmail+text+ads&source=lnms&t... Now there's something actually interesting here. We don't have enough information to decide, but I bet this is the reason that poster paid so much attention to those text ads: they used to be highly relevant for them! I bet they used to be filled only with stuff like industry conferences, IoT dev kids they were really interested in, security whitepapers, all sorts of stuff. (An indication of this is that they did not learn to mentally filter those parts of their inbox out as irrelevant.) On one of my computers I have a hosts file that blocks Google's ads - so I often have to copy the ad URL and open it myself: because I clicked on it, and still want to see it after it doesn't open, and after knowing very clearly that it's an advertisement. Advertising doesn't get much better than this.
- danpalmer 9y ago> Would you rather see ads for cat food? Yes. I do not own a cat but would prefer to see cat food ads. I would suggest however, that cat food brands should advertise on pet channels on Youtube, or on pet related blogs perhaps. This allows targeting, but without collecting data about the users, many of whom do not know enough about online advertising to provide informed consent. The best adverts I've seen were from Carbon[1] and Fusion (which seem to have merged now?). They were well targeted, unobtrusive, respected my privacy, and generally fit well with the content I was reading around the web. [1]: https://carbonads.net/ https://carbonads.net/