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I honestly would not be surprised if the difference in effectiveness of targeted vs untargeted advertisement turns out to be none, negligible or even unfavorabl

I honestly would not be surprised if the difference in effectiveness of targeted vs untargeted advertisement turns out to be none, negligible or even unfavorable to targeted. Sure, NYT is not enough data to be significant, especially when compensating for my confirmation bias, but I would really like to see more sites stop tracking, at least from an ethical standpoint.

buboard 8y ago
most of the big websites can afford to stop tracking. The problem is that smaller / weird niche websites can't , and gdpr is disproportionally hurting them.
- hjanssen 8y ago
  Which is a non-argument if it turns out that tracking doesnt contribute to higher ad revenue
- cribbles 8y ago
  Source for this claim?
  - buboard 8y ago
    https://digiday.com/media/impact-gdpr-5-charts/ https://digiday.com/media/impact-gdpr-5-charts/ https://voxeu.org/article/short-run-effects-gdpr-technology-venture-investment https://voxeu.org/article/short-run-effects-gdpr-technology-...
    - vertexFarm 8y ago
      Some of this shows it's hurting smaller adtech companies (read: advertisers who aren't google, facebook, amazon) but nothing here really shows it's hurting smaller site's revenue in general. There's some speculative stuff like how investors are reacting.
- detaro 8y ago
  Why do weird niche websites need more tracking? I'd assume their user base is way more specific, and thus can be targeted better without needing tracking. That I visit the NYT tells you way less about my interests than that I'm reading your blog about aquarium filters.
  - buboard 8y ago
    this logic (barely) works for blogs. if your game is an aquarium game, it doesn't mean that your users are only interested in aquarium cleaning products.
    - reitanqild 8y ago
      > if your game is an aquarium game, it doesn't mean that your users are only interested in aquarium cleaning products. Correct. On the other hand, the topic of the game is just one of the contexts. A trivial example: At least we can infer that the player likes to play games, so advertising for mobile games, discount gaming consoles etc might be a better match.
      - buboard 8y ago
        yeah but the category "plays games" is too broad, rivaled by "reads blogs". And after the users have seen enough of gaming ads (and not responded) they are offeered the bottom of the barrel: russian brides (true story). If we are going to go down the road of doing increasingly detailed ad customization as publishers, we will have come full circle to reinventing targeted ads by another name.
        Tsubasachan 8y ago
        Targeted ads have always been around. Everyone targets their ads. Decide whether to put your ad in the Times or the Sun. Its the unsolicited tracking/stalking of individuals across communication networks GDPR forbids.
        reitanqild 8y ago
raverbashing 8y ago
You mean that following the users with the same repetitive ads across the net (for things that he might have even bought already) is not so effective? Yeah, tracking probably throws the ads into a local minima. But ad algos don't care about conversion, they care about charging the ad buyer more.
- mnw21cam 8y ago
  You mean advertising a Widget to someone who has just bought one? Yeah, I can see how that would be counter-productive.
  - raverbashing 8y ago
    I think even Amazon suggests other cellphone models "because I bought 'Y phone' recently"
- lotu 8y ago
  From professional and personal experince, remarketing ads, what you are describing, are much more effective ($ spent / products sold) for the advertiser than traditional ads. So why do ads follow you even after you bought the product? Well the ads are still less than 1% effective (products sold / by ads shown), so for the average company (not Amazon) it is just not worth the engineering effort for a < 1% savings on your remarketing budget. Secondly, this is more speculation, but for many products the chance of buying a product given you have already bought one (e.x. a spare or a gift) is still higher than chance for a random person. As such the ads are still effective. So what is the deal with the NYTimes? They a huge popular publisher (especially amount rich people) already command high ad prices through traditional adverstising. The value of a remarking ad (to the advertiser) is largely independent of the site that it is shown on. So The New York Times would naturally have fewer of these ads because the adverstiser gets more ads/$ on other sites. A diffrent site like a local paper might have a diffrent story. However remarketing ads have never been a large percentage of ads shown so from a revenue stand point publishers care a lot less about them.
  - friday99 8y ago
bad_user 8y ago
Ads that are not in context, do not convert, unless they appeal to a majority (e.g. the big brands). Note that ads can still be targeted, except that the article's context (or whatever the user is looking at) can be used instead of the user's profile and you're not violating anybody's privacy. And on the web this works great due to the long tail, available articles, movies, searches, etc. telling you a lot about what the user wants, without having to profile that user. It's not like on TV where the content has to appeal to a wide demographic, quite the contrary. The problem with ad exchanges is that they are designed to violate the user's privacy by leaking user data on purpose, like the user's IP address and now with GDPR they rely on good actors, because the ad exchanges can't control who gets that data based on consent, with the threshold for vendors signing up being really low.
josefresco 8y ago
Does this include "remarketing"? From what I read it's much more effective. For those that don't know, remarketing involves showing ads to only people who have visited your website, or interacted with your brand before. Is this considered targeted?
- wukerplank 8y ago
  I always wonder if this really works? Amazon uses it a lot and all I get ads for are products that I already bought. Which is pointless.
  - josefresco 8y ago
    I think what you're referring to is different or more advanced. Simple remarketing involves putting a tracking pixel on your website, and then your ads show only to those users on another platform such as Facebook. It usually (on the base level) does not include purchase history.
    - pavlov 8y ago
      I think that's the exact problem to which GP poster is referring: tracking only knows about URLs visited but not purchase history. A visit to the product page "vacuum cleaner WheezyMatic 3K" will get you flagged as interested in that product and you'll get shown ads for it — even though you already bought it on the original site.
      - JCharante 8y ago
        Maybe the ads could have content along the lines of "The WheezyMatic 3K: The Best On The Planet" and so when someone who already has bought the product sees those ads, they're instead reassured about their purchasing decision.
  - kristianc 8y ago
    It is possible for advertisers to configure it so that this does not happen (in theory), but a lot simply do not bother. I've seen some compelling case studies that it does work, and even at low conversion % for big-ticket items (like hotels etc) it's insanely cost effective.
deleted 8y ago
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cm2187 8y ago
But also does targeted advertising increases the size of the advertising pie? Companies have an advertising budget, they will spend it where they think it will yield the most sales. But is that budget increasing because they can do more targeted ads?
pytyper2 8y ago
This makes sense to me. If you are targeting me, I have told you I like it, and therefore don't need you to tell me about it.
- haste410 8y ago
  Depends on how the targeting is done. You can be aware of a product but not looked into it or purchased it. In that case the targeting is trying to move you along to become a customer.
- i_cant_speel 8y ago
  I often get targeted ads for upcoming shows in my area. Just because you have identified that you like a subject does not necessarily mean you have spent all the money you are going to spend on that subject.
- jarfil 8y ago
  The worst kind of targeting is when I go to a website, browse some similar items comparing their features and price, buy one... and now you decide to show me ads about those same products for the next week even if it should be clear that I've already made up my mind (I'm looking at you, Amazon).
  - wlesieutre 8y ago
    Customers who bought this television also bought: 1) different television 2) another television 3) alternate listing of the same television and 4x the price because it's controlled by some idiot algorithm 4) more television 5) yet another television Suuuuure they did
    - detaro 8y ago
      One possible explanation I've heard (of which I have no idea if it is true) for both this and ads showing after you've made a big purchase is that people actually are somewhat more likely to buy an appliance close to another purchase of one, since they only buy them a) after several years, if the previous one has broken or is outdated, or b) shortly after they bought another one, which they returned for some reason.
MarkMc 8y ago
I would be absolutely astounded if targeted ads did not provide significant long-term advantage to a big player like Google. How can it be that having intimate knowledge of someone would not allow you to sell them more stuff? John has a 10th wedding anniversary coming up. Mary is single and goes to the gym every day. Steve just got a promotion and likes the BMW 3 series. Michael is overweight but has just gone on a diet. Are such details of no significance determining what ads to show these people? Having said that, I'm constantly surprised by how bad Google is at targeted advertising. For example, today when I visit nytimes.com I see an ad from Google with the ad text in French. Hey Google, despite my recent visit to Paris I don't speak French - maybe your AI experts could analyse my 13 years of Gmail and search history to figure that out! PS: I'm a Google shareholder, so my confirmation bias is in the other direction :)
- Nursie 8y ago
  >Are such details of no significance determining what ads to show these people? Perhaps the question is whether that turns to sales and engagement, or if people who don't click ads don't click ads regardless of content, and those that do, do.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  Maybe the cost for effective targeted advertising is too high. You have to collect a ton of data and analyze it which costs a lot of money. Maybe untargeted are more cost effective.
- rock_hard 8y ago
  You be surprised how much less sophisticated Googles and Facebooks ad targeting is! We are far away from a machine classifying you as being single and going to the gym every day or liking BMW and having gotten a promotion. Not that I don’t think we couldn’t get there...but today these system are far away from it! Just go to your Facebook ad settings to understand how primitive the information is they have about you. But I agree that targeted ads (as primitive as they are) are more efficient then I untargeted ads
  - codq 8y ago
manigandham 8y ago
This has nothing to do with effectiveness of targeting. It's about advertisers having no data to target so they do bigger blind ad deals and deal with fewer but bigger publishers. It's why TV ads are so expensive and wasteful, but lucrative for networks.
chooseaname 8y ago
I wonder how many people are turned off by targeted ads because they find them creepy.
thkim 8y ago
targeted advertisement is not by itself inferior or superior to untargeted advertisement. Method can only be effective when used correctly.
ehnto 8y ago
NYT advertising is still targeted to their demographic though. NYT would know their demographic pretty intimately at this point. I would be surprised if there is no difference, but advertising worked for decades without hyper-targeted ads, I'm sure it will keep working.
Tsubasachan 8y ago
What if I told you the NYT has been doing "untargeted" advertising for 150 years? Besides if you advertise in the NYT you ARE technically targeting people: namely NYT readers. Thats a demographic right there. And a lucrative one.
- snowwrestler 8y ago
  National newspapers have several ways to target print ads: - Calendar: You can buy an ad for one day, a whole week, the weekend, just Sunday, etc. - Section: You can run your ad in the Travel section instead of Sports. - Region: For national papers, you can have your ad printed in only one region--for example buying a full-page NY Times ad that is only printed in the papers printed in DC. - Edition: Papers use to run a morning edition and an updated afternoon and evening edition. Some papers now produce a free thin version that is handed out free to commuters. Big papers have also long offered ad campaign management services, where you work with their staff to optimize a campaign (including creative sometimes) to target the audience you want.
  - tivert 8y ago
    > National newspapers have several ways to target print ads: Broad content-based targeting kind of targeting we or the GDPR is talking about. The issue here are individually targeted ads that are only possible with computerized ad delivery.
- x0x0 8y ago
  The NYT is one of the premier ad properties just because of exactly that: the demographics of their readers. Breaking google ads works out great for the very tippy-top of premier properties like the nyt. It doesn't work out well for non-premier properties.
- mrweasel 8y ago
  >Besides if you advertise in the NYT you ARE technically targeting people: namely NYT readers At that point wouldn't all ads be targeted, to some extend? The only sites that would be in "trouble" is massive news aggregations sites.
paulsutter 8y ago
Examples of effective targeting: - Intent targeting via search remains by far the most effective form of targeting. Type life insurance into Google, very high value ads. Mortgage, a car model, etc. This is why Google is so valuable. - For display, the biggest lift from targeting is via retargeting (showing you the shirt you considered on a commerce site) New York Times was definitely using ad exchanges only for their remnant inventory, so there is nothing surprising or interesting about this article.
- hrktb 8y ago
  > Intent targeting I wonder how effective it is actually. The narrative we are lead to believe is that the user will be thankful to get the information it needs surfaced right in front of them. Or the difference between the paid ad and the organic results will be blurry enough to not have an impact. Yet I think it works only if: - the ad effectively matches what the user is looking for (that's not a given, even amazon throws a lot of random things supposed to be in relation to search results), and if the product pushed by the ad is seen as legit. - the ad is from a brand the user somewhat trust in the first place. For instance most people won't choose an ad from an unknown phone maker if they were searching for an iPhone (or they're getting scammed, and that's another issue). I see very few things average people would just search on Google and buy from a random supplier, especially for mortgage or anything high value. What I am getting at is, there's a significant amount of effort needed on the vendor part to make an ad work, and I wouldn't be surprised if the brands going these length are not already appearing pretty high in the search results in the first place. Having the top stop could still make a difference, but that's just a nudge, and not something critical or that valuable compared to the rest.
  - soared 8y ago
    > The narrative we are lead to believe is that the user will be thankful to get the information it needs surfaced right in front of them. This is not the point of advertising at all. You’re operating on incorrect assumptions. There are many different objectives of advertising. Imagine you’re in market for a vacuum. You might only be aware of a few brands, so other brands need to advertise so you become aware of their product. You may have forgotten about a brand that you previously liked, so they advertise. You might be considering one vacuum, but are potentially open to spending more on a premium model. You might be doubting the trustworthiness of a brand, until you seen them advertising on NYT. You might also need a new broom if you’re buying a new vacuum. What about this new product I invented, scented bags. How am I supposed to inform you about those?
pdpi 8y ago
> Sure, NYT is not enough data to be significant Even just a few hours of NYT ad traffic ought to be statistically significant enough to say that the difference is within a few percent. The problem is that the data might not be _representative_. NYT traffic might behave differently enough from yours that their results don't apply to you.
koonsolo 8y ago
YouTube keeps presenting me French advertisements as a Flemisch person. So I guess "targeted ads" will remain not as targeted as you think. Also, when I just bought some appliance online, maybe it's time to stop showing me ads for it on every page that I visit.
- tatersolid 8y ago
  What’s your browser language set to? Are you actually in Belgium? If your browser is sending “Accept-Language: nl-BE, <other stuff>” I wouldn’t be surprised if they showed French ads. It’s one of the official languages of Belgium after all. They may not have any relevant Dutch inventory to show, or they’re getting more money for the French-language ads which also target Belgium.
  - koonsolo 8y ago
    My browser language is English, and I live in Flanders. I never search, read or watch anything in French. So there is no reason to show me French ads, except that I live in a country where there is also a French speaking part. I honestly don't care why they show French ads, but you cannot call such things "targeted", if you cannot even get the language correct, out of a choice of either Dutch or English.
rchaud 8y ago
Targeted online advertising is at its most effective if you are a small player targeting a very niche market. When you're a well-known brand, you won't see the same ROI. Also, you'll be able to get away with a lot more than you would with a TV or print ad, that would require human verification. Take something like Alex Jones' male virility supplements. There are numerous 'brands' selling this type of snake oil to vulnerable, ideologically zealous people. Brands like these are fly by night, they wouldn't invest in an ad on say, The Economist. But you would definitely want that ad showing on someone's feed when they've already indicated they follow pages and personalities that make it obvious you're the target customer, i.e. an easy mark.
deleted 8y ago
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sonnyblarney 8y ago
Targeting ads matter, this is not really a debate. It's a big paradox that I personally loathe Facebook but would be dead in the water without them as an ad platform: he are the only place that gives us material ability to target people. We don't go that specific or that deep, but it's far more than most others provide. This is again an issue of the EU killing business with 'well intentioned' but possibly maligned legislation. The NYT as mentioned in the article is a major brand, and they are effectively selling that. Buyers know roughly what they are getting, and transactions back and forth are not small. Small companies do not have even the budget to access NYT, even then it would be a bad idea in most circumstances. Smaller companies depend generally on very actionable ads, whereas only at a certain scale does the marginal value of ads matter for brand campaigns etc.. So kudos to the NYT, but this is not good for many as we now have one (major) less place to advertise.
naravara 8y ago
I would bet targeted advertising works best for certain classes of things, but I rarely actually see targeted ads for them. Like, fashion and clothing can be pretty individualistic so it might actually help to micro-target. Not even just for styles, but if you're a swim suit maker who specializes in plus-sized clothes you can target ads at them. You could even not bother sending ads for a sale on jeans to people with, say, size 30 inseams if you're sold out of jeans in that size. I never see them used this way though. But almost every use case I can think of that is mutually beneficial (like the sizing), seems to be demographic information rather than behavioral analytics. I'm having trouble coming up with a way to leverage behavioral analytics in a way that doesn't seem invasive or impertinent. I guess it might work for content curation/recommendation engines (movies, books, music, etc.) But even then, you just need to know people's backlogs and basic demographics, you don't need to start snooping on their web browsing behavior.
quickthrower2 8y ago
If you believe that, have I got a Koi Carp to sell you.
wdr1 8y ago
> I honestly would not be surprised if the difference in effectiveness of targeted vs untargeted advertisement turns out to be none, negligible or even unfavorable to targeted. The devil in the detail is how well the targeting is done. Is there a big difference between poor targeting & untargeted? Not really. Is there a big difference between good targeting & untargeted? Massive amounts of data to say yes.
- vertexFarm 8y ago
  I'd like to see some data which was collected in a quantifiable, carefully controlled and rigorous way. I'm not trying to be snarky or saying it doesn't exist, I'd just like to see some credible data. I was able to find this study after banging my head against a bunch of paywalled sites trying to charge money for public domain research: https://beesystrategy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Chris-Summers_An-Audience-of-One.pdf https://beesystrategy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Chris-S... Working on reading through. Seems like it would be difficult to control an experiment like this, since the subjects know they will be seeing advertisements as part of a study and won't really be purchasing these items. I don't know, I'm looking forward to learning more about the experimental procedure. Also they seem to be measuring somewhat vague self-reported impressions about the ad in context of being targeted / untargeted, not the actual sales they produce. Drawing a line between these impressions and real ad performance seems to be mostly a matter of opinion. As I said it seems like a tough thing to quantify, and I'm hoping that people smarter than myself have found credible methods to truly measure it. Do you have anything you'd like to recommend?
Osiris 8y ago
I keep seeing the same ad over and over again even though I'm clearly not interested. The variety that I see is really narrow. Wouldn't it be better to give people a much higher variety of ads rather than bombarding them with the same ones over and over?
- thomasmeeks 8y ago
  It sounds like you're being hit with a retargeting ads (you look at a fridge, and then suddenly the entire internet showing you fridges from that, or related, retailers). Retargeting is considered to be a pretty efficient ad spend. Though sometimes I do wonder if the numbers are inflated by people like me: I'll tend to look at an item, throw it in the back of my mind, and purchase weeks/months later after some consideration. It's a longstanding habit, and I block the very vast majority of ads -- so retargeting doesn't factor in as far as I'm aware.
mensetmanusman 8y ago
How would a small business advertise a new short-term promotion to people in the area when all local papers are gone?
itcheeze 8y ago
I think there is evidence that in some cases targeted advertising works fairly well. In the book, "The Power of Habit," for instance, it goes into the Target story about their marketing to expecting mothers. This for instance is an opportunity for marketers and businesses to acquire new customers at a point in their life when they're likely to shop somewhere else and become regular customers. They were able to do this by analyzing purchasing patterns and according to the book were fairly successful. I'd imagine that online tracking when combined with other sources of data provide a lot of insight into what customers are looking for and in some cases can provide a big payoff.

buboard 8y ago

most of the big websites can afford to stop tracking. The problem is that smaller / weird niche websites can't , and gdpr is disproportionally hurting them.

hjanssen 8y ago
Which is a non-argument if it turns out that tracking doesnt contribute to higher ad revenue
cribbles 8y ago
Source for this claim?
- buboard 8y ago
  https://digiday.com/media/impact-gdpr-5-charts/ https://digiday.com/media/impact-gdpr-5-charts/ https://voxeu.org/article/short-run-effects-gdpr-technology-venture-investment https://voxeu.org/article/short-run-effects-gdpr-technology-...
  - vertexFarm 8y ago
    Some of this shows it's hurting smaller adtech companies (read: advertisers who aren't google, facebook, amazon) but nothing here really shows it's hurting smaller site's revenue in general. There's some speculative stuff like how investors are reacting.
detaro 8y ago
Why do weird niche websites need more tracking? I'd assume their user base is way more specific, and thus can be targeted better without needing tracking. That I visit the NYT tells you way less about my interests than that I'm reading your blog about aquarium filters.
- buboard 8y ago
  this logic (barely) works for blogs. if your game is an aquarium game, it doesn't mean that your users are only interested in aquarium cleaning products.
  - reitanqild 8y ago
    > if your game is an aquarium game, it doesn't mean that your users are only interested in aquarium cleaning products. Correct. On the other hand, the topic of the game is just one of the contexts. A trivial example: At least we can infer that the player likes to play games, so advertising for mobile games, discount gaming consoles etc might be a better match.
    - buboard 8y ago
      yeah but the category "plays games" is too broad, rivaled by "reads blogs". And after the users have seen enough of gaming ads (and not responded) they are offeered the bottom of the barrel: russian brides (true story). If we are going to go down the road of doing increasingly detailed ad customization as publishers, we will have come full circle to reinventing targeted ads by another name.
      - Tsubasachan 8y ago
        Targeted ads have always been around. Everyone targets their ads. Decide whether to put your ad in the Times or the Sun. Its the unsolicited tracking/stalking of individuals across communication networks GDPR forbids.
      - reitanqild 8y ago

raverbashing 8y ago

You mean that following the users with the same repetitive ads across the net (for things that he might have even bought already) is not so effective? Yeah, tracking probably throws the ads into a local minima. But ad algos don't care about conversion, they care about charging the ad buyer more.

mnw21cam 8y ago
You mean advertising a Widget to someone who has just bought one? Yeah, I can see how that would be counter-productive.
- raverbashing 8y ago
  I think even Amazon suggests other cellphone models "because I bought 'Y phone' recently"
lotu 8y ago
From professional and personal experince, remarketing ads, what you are describing, are much more effective ($ spent / products sold) for the advertiser than traditional ads. So why do ads follow you even after you bought the product? Well the ads are still less than 1% effective (products sold / by ads shown), so for the average company (not Amazon) it is just not worth the engineering effort for a < 1% savings on your remarketing budget. Secondly, this is more speculation, but for many products the chance of buying a product given you have already bought one (e.x. a spare or a gift) is still higher than chance for a random person. As such the ads are still effective. So what is the deal with the NYTimes? They a huge popular publisher (especially amount rich people) already command high ad prices through traditional adverstising. The value of a remarking ad (to the advertiser) is largely independent of the site that it is shown on. So The New York Times would naturally have fewer of these ads because the adverstiser gets more ads/$ on other sites. A diffrent site like a local paper might have a diffrent story. However remarketing ads have never been a large percentage of ads shown so from a revenue stand point publishers care a lot less about them.
- friday99 8y ago

bad_user 8y ago

Ads that are not in context, do not convert, unless they appeal to a majority (e.g. the big brands). Note that ads can still be targeted, except that the article's context (or whatever the user is looking at) can be used instead of the user's profile and you're not violating anybody's privacy. And on the web this works great due to the long tail, available articles, movies, searches, etc. telling you a lot about what the user wants, without having to profile that user. It's not like on TV where the content has to appeal to a wide demographic, quite the contrary. The problem with ad exchanges is that they are designed to violate the user's privacy by leaking user data on purpose, like the user's IP address and now with GDPR they rely on good actors, because the ad exchanges can't control who gets that data based on consent, with the threshold for vendors signing up being really low.

josefresco 8y ago

Does this include "remarketing"? From what I read it's much more effective. For those that don't know, remarketing involves showing ads to only people who have visited your website, or interacted with your brand before. Is this considered targeted?

wukerplank 8y ago
I always wonder if this really works? Amazon uses it a lot and all I get ads for are products that I already bought. Which is pointless.
- josefresco 8y ago
  I think what you're referring to is different or more advanced. Simple remarketing involves putting a tracking pixel on your website, and then your ads show only to those users on another platform such as Facebook. It usually (on the base level) does not include purchase history.
  - pavlov 8y ago
    I think that's the exact problem to which GP poster is referring: tracking only knows about URLs visited but not purchase history. A visit to the product page "vacuum cleaner WheezyMatic 3K" will get you flagged as interested in that product and you'll get shown ads for it — even though you already bought it on the original site.
    - JCharante 8y ago
      Maybe the ads could have content along the lines of "The WheezyMatic 3K: The Best On The Planet" and so when someone who already has bought the product sees those ads, they're instead reassured about their purchasing decision.
- kristianc 8y ago
  It is possible for advertisers to configure it so that this does not happen (in theory), but a lot simply do not bother. I've seen some compelling case studies that it does work, and even at low conversion % for big-ticket items (like hotels etc) it's insanely cost effective.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

cm2187 8y ago

But also does targeted advertising increases the size of the advertising pie? Companies have an advertising budget, they will spend it where they think it will yield the most sales. But is that budget increasing because they can do more targeted ads?

pytyper2 8y ago

This makes sense to me. If you are targeting me, I have told you I like it, and therefore don't need you to tell me about it.

haste410 8y ago
Depends on how the targeting is done. You can be aware of a product but not looked into it or purchased it. In that case the targeting is trying to move you along to become a customer.
i_cant_speel 8y ago
I often get targeted ads for upcoming shows in my area. Just because you have identified that you like a subject does not necessarily mean you have spent all the money you are going to spend on that subject.
jarfil 8y ago
The worst kind of targeting is when I go to a website, browse some similar items comparing their features and price, buy one... and now you decide to show me ads about those same products for the next week even if it should be clear that I've already made up my mind (I'm looking at you, Amazon).
- wlesieutre 8y ago
  Customers who bought this television also bought: 1) different television 2) another television 3) alternate listing of the same television and 4x the price because it's controlled by some idiot algorithm 4) more television 5) yet another television Suuuuure they did
  - detaro 8y ago
    One possible explanation I've heard (of which I have no idea if it is true) for both this and ads showing after you've made a big purchase is that people actually are somewhat more likely to buy an appliance close to another purchase of one, since they only buy them a) after several years, if the previous one has broken or is outdated, or b) shortly after they bought another one, which they returned for some reason.

MarkMc 8y ago

I would be absolutely astounded if targeted ads did not provide significant long-term advantage to a big player like Google. How can it be that having intimate knowledge of someone would not allow you to sell them more stuff? John has a 10th wedding anniversary coming up. Mary is single and goes to the gym every day. Steve just got a promotion and likes the BMW 3 series. Michael is overweight but has just gone on a diet. Are such details of no significance determining what ads to show these people? Having said that, I'm constantly surprised by how bad Google is at targeted advertising. For example, today when I visit nytimes.com I see an ad from Google with the ad text in French. Hey Google, despite my recent visit to Paris I don't speak French - maybe your AI experts could analyse my 13 years of Gmail and search history to figure that out! PS: I'm a Google shareholder, so my confirmation bias is in the other direction :)

Nursie 8y ago
>Are such details of no significance determining what ads to show these people? Perhaps the question is whether that turns to sales and engagement, or if people who don't click ads don't click ads regardless of content, and those that do, do.
maxxxxx 8y ago
Maybe the cost for effective targeted advertising is too high. You have to collect a ton of data and analyze it which costs a lot of money. Maybe untargeted are more cost effective.
rock_hard 8y ago
You be surprised how much less sophisticated Googles and Facebooks ad targeting is! We are far away from a machine classifying you as being single and going to the gym every day or liking BMW and having gotten a promotion. Not that I don’t think we couldn’t get there...but today these system are far away from it! Just go to your Facebook ad settings to understand how primitive the information is they have about you. But I agree that targeted ads (as primitive as they are) are more efficient then I untargeted ads
- codq 8y ago

manigandham 8y ago

This has nothing to do with effectiveness of targeting. It's about advertisers having no data to target so they do bigger blind ad deals and deal with fewer but bigger publishers. It's why TV ads are so expensive and wasteful, but lucrative for networks.

chooseaname 8y ago

I wonder how many people are turned off by targeted ads because they find them creepy.

thkim 8y ago

targeted advertisement is not by itself inferior or superior to untargeted advertisement. Method can only be effective when used correctly.

ehnto 8y ago

NYT advertising is still targeted to their demographic though. NYT would know their demographic pretty intimately at this point. I would be surprised if there is no difference, but advertising worked for decades without hyper-targeted ads, I'm sure it will keep working.

Tsubasachan 8y ago

What if I told you the NYT has been doing "untargeted" advertising for 150 years? Besides if you advertise in the NYT you ARE technically targeting people: namely NYT readers. Thats a demographic right there. And a lucrative one.

snowwrestler 8y ago
National newspapers have several ways to target print ads: - Calendar: You can buy an ad for one day, a whole week, the weekend, just Sunday, etc. - Section: You can run your ad in the Travel section instead of Sports. - Region: For national papers, you can have your ad printed in only one region--for example buying a full-page NY Times ad that is only printed in the papers printed in DC. - Edition: Papers use to run a morning edition and an updated afternoon and evening edition. Some papers now produce a free thin version that is handed out free to commuters. Big papers have also long offered ad campaign management services, where you work with their staff to optimize a campaign (including creative sometimes) to target the audience you want.
- tivert 8y ago
  > National newspapers have several ways to target print ads: Broad content-based targeting kind of targeting we or the GDPR is talking about. The issue here are individually targeted ads that are only possible with computerized ad delivery.
x0x0 8y ago
The NYT is one of the premier ad properties just because of exactly that: the demographics of their readers. Breaking google ads works out great for the very tippy-top of premier properties like the nyt. It doesn't work out well for non-premier properties.
mrweasel 8y ago
>Besides if you advertise in the NYT you ARE technically targeting people: namely NYT readers At that point wouldn't all ads be targeted, to some extend? The only sites that would be in "trouble" is massive news aggregations sites.

paulsutter 8y ago

Examples of effective targeting: - Intent targeting via search remains by far the most effective form of targeting. Type life insurance into Google, very high value ads. Mortgage, a car model, etc. This is why Google is so valuable. - For display, the biggest lift from targeting is via retargeting (showing you the shirt you considered on a commerce site) New York Times was definitely using ad exchanges only for their remnant inventory, so there is nothing surprising or interesting about this article.

hrktb 8y ago
> Intent targeting I wonder how effective it is actually. The narrative we are lead to believe is that the user will be thankful to get the information it needs surfaced right in front of them. Or the difference between the paid ad and the organic results will be blurry enough to not have an impact. Yet I think it works only if: - the ad effectively matches what the user is looking for (that's not a given, even amazon throws a lot of random things supposed to be in relation to search results), and if the product pushed by the ad is seen as legit. - the ad is from a brand the user somewhat trust in the first place. For instance most people won't choose an ad from an unknown phone maker if they were searching for an iPhone (or they're getting scammed, and that's another issue). I see very few things average people would just search on Google and buy from a random supplier, especially for mortgage or anything high value. What I am getting at is, there's a significant amount of effort needed on the vendor part to make an ad work, and I wouldn't be surprised if the brands going these length are not already appearing pretty high in the search results in the first place. Having the top stop could still make a difference, but that's just a nudge, and not something critical or that valuable compared to the rest.
- soared 8y ago
  > The narrative we are lead to believe is that the user will be thankful to get the information it needs surfaced right in front of them. This is not the point of advertising at all. You’re operating on incorrect assumptions. There are many different objectives of advertising. Imagine you’re in market for a vacuum. You might only be aware of a few brands, so other brands need to advertise so you become aware of their product. You may have forgotten about a brand that you previously liked, so they advertise. You might be considering one vacuum, but are potentially open to spending more on a premium model. You might be doubting the trustworthiness of a brand, until you seen them advertising on NYT. You might also need a new broom if you’re buying a new vacuum. What about this new product I invented, scented bags. How am I supposed to inform you about those?

pdpi 8y ago

> Sure, NYT is not enough data to be significant Even just a few hours of NYT ad traffic ought to be statistically significant enough to say that the difference is within a few percent. The problem is that the data might not be _representative_. NYT traffic might behave differently enough from yours that their results don't apply to you.

koonsolo 8y ago

YouTube keeps presenting me French advertisements as a Flemisch person. So I guess "targeted ads" will remain not as targeted as you think. Also, when I just bought some appliance online, maybe it's time to stop showing me ads for it on every page that I visit.

tatersolid 8y ago
What’s your browser language set to? Are you actually in Belgium? If your browser is sending “Accept-Language: nl-BE, <other stuff>” I wouldn’t be surprised if they showed French ads. It’s one of the official languages of Belgium after all. They may not have any relevant Dutch inventory to show, or they’re getting more money for the French-language ads which also target Belgium.
- koonsolo 8y ago
  My browser language is English, and I live in Flanders. I never search, read or watch anything in French. So there is no reason to show me French ads, except that I live in a country where there is also a French speaking part. I honestly don't care why they show French ads, but you cannot call such things "targeted", if you cannot even get the language correct, out of a choice of either Dutch or English.

rchaud 8y ago

Targeted online advertising is at its most effective if you are a small player targeting a very niche market. When you're a well-known brand, you won't see the same ROI. Also, you'll be able to get away with a lot more than you would with a TV or print ad, that would require human verification. Take something like Alex Jones' male virility supplements. There are numerous 'brands' selling this type of snake oil to vulnerable, ideologically zealous people. Brands like these are fly by night, they wouldn't invest in an ad on say, The Economist. But you would definitely want that ad showing on someone's feed when they've already indicated they follow pages and personalities that make it obvious you're the target customer, i.e. an easy mark.

deleted 8y ago

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sonnyblarney 8y ago

Targeting ads matter, this is not really a debate. It's a big paradox that I personally loathe Facebook but would be dead in the water without them as an ad platform: he are the only place that gives us material ability to target people. We don't go that specific or that deep, but it's far more than most others provide. This is again an issue of the EU killing business with 'well intentioned' but possibly maligned legislation. The NYT as mentioned in the article is a major brand, and they are effectively selling that. Buyers know roughly what they are getting, and transactions back and forth are not small. Small companies do not have even the budget to access NYT, even then it would be a bad idea in most circumstances. Smaller companies depend generally on very actionable ads, whereas only at a certain scale does the marginal value of ads matter for brand campaigns etc.. So kudos to the NYT, but this is not good for many as we now have one (major) less place to advertise.

naravara 8y ago

I would bet targeted advertising works best for certain classes of things, but I rarely actually see targeted ads for them. Like, fashion and clothing can be pretty individualistic so it might actually help to micro-target. Not even just for styles, but if you're a swim suit maker who specializes in plus-sized clothes you can target ads at them. You could even not bother sending ads for a sale on jeans to people with, say, size 30 inseams if you're sold out of jeans in that size. I never see them used this way though. But almost every use case I can think of that is mutually beneficial (like the sizing), seems to be demographic information rather than behavioral analytics. I'm having trouble coming up with a way to leverage behavioral analytics in a way that doesn't seem invasive or impertinent. I guess it might work for content curation/recommendation engines (movies, books, music, etc.) But even then, you just need to know people's backlogs and basic demographics, you don't need to start snooping on their web browsing behavior.

quickthrower2 8y ago

If you believe that, have I got a Koi Carp to sell you.

wdr1 8y ago

> I honestly would not be surprised if the difference in effectiveness of targeted vs untargeted advertisement turns out to be none, negligible or even unfavorable to targeted. The devil in the detail is how well the targeting is done. Is there a big difference between poor targeting & untargeted? Not really. Is there a big difference between good targeting & untargeted? Massive amounts of data to say yes.

vertexFarm 8y ago
I'd like to see some data which was collected in a quantifiable, carefully controlled and rigorous way. I'm not trying to be snarky or saying it doesn't exist, I'd just like to see some credible data. I was able to find this study after banging my head against a bunch of paywalled sites trying to charge money for public domain research: https://beesystrategy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Chris-Summers_An-Audience-of-One.pdf https://beesystrategy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Chris-S... Working on reading through. Seems like it would be difficult to control an experiment like this, since the subjects know they will be seeing advertisements as part of a study and won't really be purchasing these items. I don't know, I'm looking forward to learning more about the experimental procedure. Also they seem to be measuring somewhat vague self-reported impressions about the ad in context of being targeted / untargeted, not the actual sales they produce. Drawing a line between these impressions and real ad performance seems to be mostly a matter of opinion. As I said it seems like a tough thing to quantify, and I'm hoping that people smarter than myself have found credible methods to truly measure it. Do you have anything you'd like to recommend?

Osiris 8y ago

I keep seeing the same ad over and over again even though I'm clearly not interested. The variety that I see is really narrow. Wouldn't it be better to give people a much higher variety of ads rather than bombarding them with the same ones over and over?

thomasmeeks 8y ago
It sounds like you're being hit with a retargeting ads (you look at a fridge, and then suddenly the entire internet showing you fridges from that, or related, retailers). Retargeting is considered to be a pretty efficient ad spend. Though sometimes I do wonder if the numbers are inflated by people like me: I'll tend to look at an item, throw it in the back of my mind, and purchase weeks/months later after some consideration. It's a longstanding habit, and I block the very vast majority of ads -- so retargeting doesn't factor in as far as I'm aware.

mensetmanusman 8y ago

How would a small business advertise a new short-term promotion to people in the area when all local papers are gone?

itcheeze 8y ago

I think there is evidence that in some cases targeted advertising works fairly well. In the book, "The Power of Habit," for instance, it goes into the Target story about their marketing to expecting mothers. This for instance is an opportunity for marketers and businesses to acquire new customers at a point in their life when they're likely to shop somewhere else and become regular customers. They were able to do this by analyzing purchasing patterns and according to the book were fairly successful. I'd imagine that online tracking when combined with other sources of data provide a lot of insight into what customers are looking for and in some cases can provide a big payoff.