4 ms·

>If anything, GDPR should be seen as an opportunity to disrupt the quasi-monopolistic online ad market. It's amazing to me how people manage to fool themselves

>If anything, GDPR should be seen as an opportunity to disrupt the quasi-monopolistic online ad market. It's amazing to me how people manage to fool themselves into thinking there is hope when the world is crumbling around them. If Google can't make ads profitable in the EU what makes you think some tiny European company will be able to disrupt the ad market? How would they even do it without tracking? I can see the conversation with major brands now EU Ad Startup - "Trust us, the ads you are paying for are performing great. We are very confident that they are driving conversions on your website." Brand- "Ok, do you have any numbers to prove we are receiving conversions due to your ads?" EU Ad Startup - "No as that would be illegal under GDPR, but please trust our business."

camillomiller 8y ago
Which is how the paper and TV ads industry worked for more than half a century, forcing brands to push creative limits in creating campaigns that we regard sometimes as a pinnacle of arts and media culture. Just because the Internet lets you laser focus a campaign by profiling the shit out of people, it doesn’t mean that is how things should work.
- lajhsdfkl 8y ago
  > Which is how the paper and TV ads industry worked for more than half a century, forcing brands to push creative limits in creating campaigns that we regard sometimes as a pinnacle of arts and media culture. Just because the Internet lets you laser focus a campaign by profiling the shit out of people, it doesn’t mean that is how things should work. How did the paper and tv industry work? Oh yeah, advertisers would crowd around and bid up the largest players. Small niche products would receive little to no revenue and die quick deaths. That is what I suspect will happen in the EU. Without tracking Advertisers will be unable to know how their ads are performing. Without metrics such as conversions which require end to end tracking advertisers will need to rely on the reputation of the platform. Products such as google and facebook will receive significant attention from advertisers. The tiny blog you enjoy reading that is barely scraping by will receive very little.
  - tannhaeuser 8y ago
    > Without metrics such as conversions which require end to end tracking advertisers will need to rely on the reputation of the platform. Products such as google and facebook will receive significant attention from advertisers. Yes that's a valid concern. But blogging hasn't been profitable or even sustainable for a very long time now in the way it used to be ten or fifteen years ago, with YouTube, Fb, microblogging platforms, and news aggregators having taken this space instead. Those who keep on running blogs do so for promoting their own services, products, or other agendas, or as a hobby, and will continue to do so. So it's not a terrible loss really; the great starving of blogs has already happened in the past. But sites such as product review blogs could get a boost by ad money being in need to be allocated in innovative ways. Post-GDRP advertising requires thinking a little bit out of the box, and leaving the "ad" model as we know it behind which isn't very effective to begin with. If you consider attention a scarce resource to compete for, I could imagine ad money going into more and new native advertising sites, temporary sites for local events with direct sponsoring, focused sites for special interests, etc.
  - usrusr 8y ago
    Small niche products thrived on their inherently high precision in content-based targeting. When their niche had ad buyers. (edit: actually I meant "if", niche content providers without much on-topic ad budget are a winner of tracking-based targeting) The more recent capability of targeting those niche ads also on random click-bait sites didn't exactly help those small niche products. (Edit, for clarification: with unrestricted tracking, if you publish to a niche with good ad money, the few ads that you do show, for a tiny fraction of the ad budget of your niche, become the information source used for drawing much of your niche's ad money to ads displayed to your audience on unrelated sites. Your ad-network should practically "steal" your content-targeting information to divert on-topic ad money to entirely unrelated sites)
    - tannhaeuser 8y ago
      An excellent argument that isn't receiving the attention it deserves IMHO.
    - 8y ago
Grollicus 8y ago
It should be possible to track ad campaigns and therefore see exactly the turnover ratios as long as the campaigns are broad enough that they don't target individual users. In the analog world they do this for example via coupon codes which are unique to the ad.
- lajhsdfkl 8y ago
  >It should be possible to track ad campaigns and therefore see exactly the turnover ratios as long as the campaigns are broad enough that they don't target individual users. In the analog world they to this for example via coupon codes which are unique to the ad. This will severely undercount the number of conversions. It's not atypical for someone to view/click an ad and then purchase at a later date through a different channel. It was possible to track that before GDPR. It is not possible now.
christophilus 8y ago
By following a different business model? Employ a small team, sell ads based on relevance to the content you're reading, going after niches... It's not like there's only one formula for success. GDPR is going to force a different formula on the market.
- Mirioron 8y ago
  This relies on the fact that your business can be served anywhere. What if you're in a niche that can only be limited to your area or to people who speak a specific language in that geographical area?

camillomiller 8y ago

Which is how the paper and TV ads industry worked for more than half a century, forcing brands to push creative limits in creating campaigns that we regard sometimes as a pinnacle of arts and media culture. Just because the Internet lets you laser focus a campaign by profiling the shit out of people, it doesn’t mean that is how things should work.

lajhsdfkl 8y ago
> Which is how the paper and TV ads industry worked for more than half a century, forcing brands to push creative limits in creating campaigns that we regard sometimes as a pinnacle of arts and media culture. Just because the Internet lets you laser focus a campaign by profiling the shit out of people, it doesn’t mean that is how things should work. How did the paper and tv industry work? Oh yeah, advertisers would crowd around and bid up the largest players. Small niche products would receive little to no revenue and die quick deaths. That is what I suspect will happen in the EU. Without tracking Advertisers will be unable to know how their ads are performing. Without metrics such as conversions which require end to end tracking advertisers will need to rely on the reputation of the platform. Products such as google and facebook will receive significant attention from advertisers. The tiny blog you enjoy reading that is barely scraping by will receive very little.
- tannhaeuser 8y ago
  > Without metrics such as conversions which require end to end tracking advertisers will need to rely on the reputation of the platform. Products such as google and facebook will receive significant attention from advertisers. Yes that's a valid concern. But blogging hasn't been profitable or even sustainable for a very long time now in the way it used to be ten or fifteen years ago, with YouTube, Fb, microblogging platforms, and news aggregators having taken this space instead. Those who keep on running blogs do so for promoting their own services, products, or other agendas, or as a hobby, and will continue to do so. So it's not a terrible loss really; the great starving of blogs has already happened in the past. But sites such as product review blogs could get a boost by ad money being in need to be allocated in innovative ways. Post-GDRP advertising requires thinking a little bit out of the box, and leaving the "ad" model as we know it behind which isn't very effective to begin with. If you consider attention a scarce resource to compete for, I could imagine ad money going into more and new native advertising sites, temporary sites for local events with direct sponsoring, focused sites for special interests, etc.
- usrusr 8y ago
  Small niche products thrived on their inherently high precision in content-based targeting. When their niche had ad buyers. (edit: actually I meant "if", niche content providers without much on-topic ad budget are a winner of tracking-based targeting) The more recent capability of targeting those niche ads also on random click-bait sites didn't exactly help those small niche products. (Edit, for clarification: with unrestricted tracking, if you publish to a niche with good ad money, the few ads that you do show, for a tiny fraction of the ad budget of your niche, become the information source used for drawing much of your niche's ad money to ads displayed to your audience on unrelated sites. Your ad-network should practically "steal" your content-targeting information to divert on-topic ad money to entirely unrelated sites)
  - tannhaeuser 8y ago
    An excellent argument that isn't receiving the attention it deserves IMHO.
  - 8y ago

Grollicus 8y ago

It should be possible to track ad campaigns and therefore see exactly the turnover ratios as long as the campaigns are broad enough that they don't target individual users. In the analog world they do this for example via coupon codes which are unique to the ad.

lajhsdfkl 8y ago
>It should be possible to track ad campaigns and therefore see exactly the turnover ratios as long as the campaigns are broad enough that they don't target individual users. In the analog world they to this for example via coupon codes which are unique to the ad. This will severely undercount the number of conversions. It's not atypical for someone to view/click an ad and then purchase at a later date through a different channel. It was possible to track that before GDPR. It is not possible now.

christophilus 8y ago

By following a different business model? Employ a small team, sell ads based on relevance to the content you're reading, going after niches... It's not like there's only one formula for success. GDPR is going to force a different formula on the market.

Mirioron 8y ago
This relies on the fact that your business can be served anywhere. What if you're in a niche that can only be limited to your area or to people who speak a specific language in that geographical area?