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How can an alternative be more profitable? Targeted ads allow to TARGET someone. That means that instead of wasting views on someone that won't be interested (a

by dwild 9y ago

How can an alternative be more profitable? Targeted ads allow to TARGET someone. That means that instead of wasting views on someone that won't be interested (and thus, be a waste of money) you use it on people that will care. For sure if you have 5$ of budget per sale, if it takes 1000 views to get a sale or 1 views, you won't pay the same for views in both situation depending on the efficiency of the ad.

mattmanser 9y ago
Life isn't only about profit. Advertising often can have a very negative and destructive effect, we shouldn't base our societies around how best to sell stuff. Web companies and web advertising companies have been building huge, secret dossiers on all their visitors, unexpectedly selling, sharing and distributing sensitive data about their customers with totally unrelated third parties. Now society's saying, that's not cool. Here are the new rules. We'll heavily punish your companies if you do it again.
Sylos 9y ago
He did not say that an alternative would be more profitable. What he meant is that right now, because targeted ads exist, non-targeted ads sell far worse. Once targeted ads are not an option anymore, non-targeted ads will get more attention again, because the demand for advertising will not go away. There will be somewhat of a drop in demand, because advertising might be less effective, so it makes more sense for companies to invest into developing their products instead. But you can hardly justify unethical behaviour with some industry making money off of it. Drug dealing, slavery, forced prostitution etc. are also illegal, even though there's a hugely profitable market for those. You have to draw the line somewhere. Governments are supposed to draw the line there, where the effect of doing something results in a net negative for this society by given values that this society considers important. But even assuming a society only cares about its overall profit, I would be surprised if there's not some effects going on, due to targeted advertising being sharp enough of a tool to psychologically influence people to buy useless crap they don't need. And people buying useless crap they don't need is not good for the overall profit of a society. They could be buying useful crap that they can use to make more of a profit instead.

by dwild 9y ago

mattmanser 9y ago

Life isn't only about profit. Advertising often can have a very negative and destructive effect, we shouldn't base our societies around how best to sell stuff. Web companies and web advertising companies have been building huge, secret dossiers on all their visitors, unexpectedly selling, sharing and distributing sensitive data about their customers with totally unrelated third parties. Now society's saying, that's not cool. Here are the new rules. We'll heavily punish your companies if you do it again.

Sylos 9y ago

He did not say that an alternative would be more profitable. What he meant is that right now, because targeted ads exist, non-targeted ads sell far worse. Once targeted ads are not an option anymore, non-targeted ads will get more attention again, because the demand for advertising will not go away. There will be somewhat of a drop in demand, because advertising might be less effective, so it makes more sense for companies to invest into developing their products instead. But you can hardly justify unethical behaviour with some industry making money off of it. Drug dealing, slavery, forced prostitution etc. are also illegal, even though there's a hugely profitable market for those. You have to draw the line somewhere. Governments are supposed to draw the line there, where the effect of doing something results in a net negative for this society by given values that this society considers important. But even assuming a society only cares about its overall profit, I would be surprised if there's not some effects going on, due to targeted advertising being sharp enough of a tool to psychologically influence people to buy useless crap they don't need. And people buying useless crap they don't need is not good for the overall profit of a society. They could be buying useful crap that they can use to make more of a profit instead.