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The economic value of ad personalization is measured in hundreds of billions of dollars a year. A part of that value goes to Facebook, Google, and other social

by _cs2017_ 8y ago

The economic value of ad personalization is measured in hundreds of billions of dollars a year. A part of that value goes to Facebook, Google, and other social media and advertising firms. A part goes to publishers, who provide free shit such as news to billions of people. A part goes to advertisers who get to sell more stuff. A part goes to consumers who get to see the aforementioned free news, plus occasionally see slightly less shitty ads. When Apple blocks user data, it destroys a lot of economic value, which costs jobs; a lot of them are in the US since the biggest advertisers, publishers, and ad firms are US based. Maybe it's worth it because privacy. But it certainly hurts millions of people who depend, directly or indirectly, on the effectiveness of ads.

soneil 8y ago
I can't really think of a nicer way to say this: I don't care. I get the theory. I get that everyone wants everything for free, and many providers still need a return. But we've let adtech run wild, and they've just got scummier and scummier. "When in hole, stop digging". adtech really need to start taking responsibility for their own actions. They've been at war with users for far too long, and still play victim when the user doesn't appreciate it.
- rootusrootus 8y ago
  One the one hand, I agree wholeheartedly. But then there is reality. You can make two equally nice services, and charge a nominal fee for one while making the other one free but with lots of offensive advertising and tracking ... and you could tell users the truth about all of it ... and still, the 'free' one would dominate and the paid one would go out of business. This is the world we live in.
- _cs2017_ 8y ago
  When your say "scummier", are you referring to Facebook ads that follow your recent activity online? Or something else? On another note, as you put it, everyone wants everything for free. Is it really your place to tell them they can't have it, by disrupting the flow of money that makes that free stuff possible?
  - soneil 8y ago
    This is the industry that created the popup/pop-under, and abused it until it got to the point where every reasonable browser has integrated functionality to block & whitelist them. Now they're abusing mass data harvesting and profiling until it too gets to the point where every reasonable browser will integrate functionality to block & whitelist it. This is an industry that targets users as prey, and cries foul when we play hard to get. For me, most advertising lives on a scale. At one end we have advertising that seems mutually beneficial to all, like sponsorship of podcasts. At the other end of the scale, we have unsolicited bulk email, which I've never seen anyone try to defend. It feels like each generation of web advertising starts somewhere in the upper third of this scale, and then digs and digs to sink as low as it can, until some measure is brought in to make this generation ineffective. Then they go off, come back with a new model, and start digging all over again. Ultimately I do wish they'd come up with a model that isn't abusive of users, publishers and even their own advertisers; but at this point I'm inclined to believe this leopard can't change its spots, and will always sink as low as we allow it to.
jocoda 8y ago
>The economic value of ad personalization is measured in hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Would like to know more about this. Who says this? How was this measured? Would like to see the data that supports this statement and how it was done. My problem with the internet and advertising is pretty simple.The site can to do whatever they wish to do there, ads, tracking, whatever. BUT - the site itself is the only other party in this relationship. The current reality is that there are dozens of hidden parties in the mix.
- _cs2017_ 8y ago
  Just take ad revenues (not just gross profits since we also want to count the money going to publishers) of large tech firms. Then deduct however much of that you think was the reduction in offline advertising (most of it, non personalized) as ad spend shifted to online. Then add another 20-50% of typical ROI (an advertiser would only spend $1 on ads if they think it would increase their profits by $1.20-$1.50). You would easily arrive at the ballpark of several hundred billion. If you disallow sites from using third party ads and ad tech, they would only get a small fraction of their normal ad revenues. Even without that, many publishers end up giving up on the ad model, either going for paid content / promos (far more misleading IMO), subscriptions, transactions, or just shut down entirely. If you reduce ad income by several times, a lot of free stuff on the web will disappear, and with it the jobs at those publishers and the advertisers who sell more things due to those ads (non personalized ads aren't very effective). I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying that's something worth knowing before settling on an opinion about this topic.

soneil 8y ago

I can't really think of a nicer way to say this: I don't care. I get the theory. I get that everyone wants everything for free, and many providers still need a return. But we've let adtech run wild, and they've just got scummier and scummier. "When in hole, stop digging". adtech really need to start taking responsibility for their own actions. They've been at war with users for far too long, and still play victim when the user doesn't appreciate it.

rootusrootus 8y ago
One the one hand, I agree wholeheartedly. But then there is reality. You can make two equally nice services, and charge a nominal fee for one while making the other one free but with lots of offensive advertising and tracking ... and you could tell users the truth about all of it ... and still, the 'free' one would dominate and the paid one would go out of business. This is the world we live in.
_cs2017_ 8y ago
When your say "scummier", are you referring to Facebook ads that follow your recent activity online? Or something else? On another note, as you put it, everyone wants everything for free. Is it really your place to tell them they can't have it, by disrupting the flow of money that makes that free stuff possible?
- soneil 8y ago
  This is the industry that created the popup/pop-under, and abused it until it got to the point where every reasonable browser has integrated functionality to block & whitelist them. Now they're abusing mass data harvesting and profiling until it too gets to the point where every reasonable browser will integrate functionality to block & whitelist it. This is an industry that targets users as prey, and cries foul when we play hard to get. For me, most advertising lives on a scale. At one end we have advertising that seems mutually beneficial to all, like sponsorship of podcasts. At the other end of the scale, we have unsolicited bulk email, which I've never seen anyone try to defend. It feels like each generation of web advertising starts somewhere in the upper third of this scale, and then digs and digs to sink as low as it can, until some measure is brought in to make this generation ineffective. Then they go off, come back with a new model, and start digging all over again. Ultimately I do wish they'd come up with a model that isn't abusive of users, publishers and even their own advertisers; but at this point I'm inclined to believe this leopard can't change its spots, and will always sink as low as we allow it to.

jocoda 8y ago

>The economic value of ad personalization is measured in hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Would like to know more about this. Who says this? How was this measured? Would like to see the data that supports this statement and how it was done. My problem with the internet and advertising is pretty simple.The site can to do whatever they wish to do there, ads, tracking, whatever. BUT - the site itself is the only other party in this relationship. The current reality is that there are dozens of hidden parties in the mix.

_cs2017_ 8y ago
Just take ad revenues (not just gross profits since we also want to count the money going to publishers) of large tech firms. Then deduct however much of that you think was the reduction in offline advertising (most of it, non personalized) as ad spend shifted to online. Then add another 20-50% of typical ROI (an advertiser would only spend $1 on ads if they think it would increase their profits by $1.20-$1.50). You would easily arrive at the ballpark of several hundred billion. If you disallow sites from using third party ads and ad tech, they would only get a small fraction of their normal ad revenues. Even without that, many publishers end up giving up on the ad model, either going for paid content / promos (far more misleading IMO), subscriptions, transactions, or just shut down entirely. If you reduce ad income by several times, a lot of free stuff on the web will disappear, and with it the jobs at those publishers and the advertisers who sell more things due to those ads (non personalized ads aren't very effective). I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying that's something worth knowing before settling on an opinion about this topic.