6 ms·

I like relevant ads, click them, and usually get really happy when I find cool stuff with them. I've bought at least a handful of things off of instagram ads th

by vasco 8y ago

I like relevant ads, click them, and usually get really happy when I find cool stuff with them. I've bought at least a handful of things off of instagram ads that were relevant to my interests. I also discovered a dog carrier backpack I now use to cycle with my dog to the beach every weekend from a Facebook ad that I got while browsing a dog owner Facebook group. I'm just leaving enough data to support my assertion because I'm tired of this meme that "nobody looks at ads" or "all ads are bad". I also deliberately do not use any ad blocking even though I know they exist and would save me bandwidth because I do get value from personalized ads.

nothrabannosir 8y ago
Fair point, although: > a dog carrier backpack ... from a Facebook ad that I got while browsing a dog owner Facebook group That’s not a personalised ad. That’s just an ad. (I.e. it doesn’t need tracking) But the rest of your (masochistic ;P ) point stands.
saiya-jin 8y ago
You are an exception to the rule, if you are actually honest here (and I have some doubts). Nobody I know, IT or not, likes ads anywhere - TV, radio, side road, internet, whatever. They actively decrease the experience of everything one does (block the view around the road, forces loud delays into movies, takes space and are absolute nuisance almost anywhere on the web). I don't hate them, just actively ignore them even if there would be a genuine new porsche being offered for $1. If you want to reach me anyhow, ads are the worst possible way. And I am not alone.
- cocochanel 8y ago
  Well, Google's balance sheet tells me otherwise.
  - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
    How so? The willingness to pay for digital ads actually has nothing to do with whether ads are effective (the statistical problem of attribution). For example, this was a pretty damning research paper on the topic, - https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=018087083066114098080080104114097102052027021001058001027075086064094094086122078077099118053037011111023120101067023076079110122027038089015091126120124006029096006049011063124020084000126076075000101097007096097114092123019097028095103066019095003078&EXT=pdf https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=0180870830661140...
    - cocochanel 8y ago
      The paper is about predicting ROI, and that is a well known problem in advertising. Now, the same author of the paper you linked, Randall A. Lewis, has a paper about whether advertising actually works [1] and it does, "we find statistically and economically significant impacts of the advertising on sales. " [1] http://www.davidreiley.com/papers/DoesRetailAdvertisingWork.pdf http://www.davidreiley.com/papers/DoesRetailAdvertisingWork....
      - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
        You are wrong. The second paper is attempting to measure sales lift (with randomization, which many ad campaigns disallow because the marketer doesn’t want to pay for holdout inventory, so it’s not really the same situation that most companies are in when calculating lift), but sales lift does not mean there was positive ROI. You can increase sales all day, but if you’re spending more than you’re making to do so, it’s not effective and usually indicates some unsustainable effect that is more about short term attention than about a meaningful effect of information transfer about a product (and indeed in [1] the authors found a very similar effect - that there is usually positive lift on a customer activity like visits or site shopping cart checkouts, but that among users driven to the site by digital ads, their purchases were far less in total value, enough to more than offset the cost of advertising to drive them). [1]: https://marketing.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Johnson-Garrett-PAPER-VERSION-2.pdf https://marketing.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/... I think you’re confused. I’m not disputing whether ads create positive lift in intermediate metrics like visits, clicks or sales. I’m saying the research pretty conclusively shows that despite that created positive lift in intermediate metrics, it does not translate to positive ROI, or a weaker version is that it may create positive ROI but on average marketing campaigns even from the country’s biggest marketers would need to be 10x-1000x larger than they are to even be able to distinguish such wildly incompatible outcomes as +100% ROI vs -50% ROI, to the point that for most companies buying digital ads, they literally have no idea if they are making money or losing money by doing so.
        cocochanel 8y ago
kenneth 8y ago
I bought a pair of shoes off of a Facebook ad that I absolutely love. I was expecting them to suck because they came through an ad but was pleasantly surprised. Vessi shoes. Fully waterproof shoe (I've literally walked into a pool with them) but breathable with a nano-fabric that has holes too small for water molecules but big enough for air/steam. (Supposedly, though H2O sounds like a pretty small molecule so I'm not sure if there's more to it than just size, perhaps viscousness.)
metafunctor 8y ago
When I go to a popular website right now, with ad blocking disabled, I see, above the fold: * One huge video ad for a home decoration magazine (I could not care less) * One animating ad for car loans (no interesting in that) * One animating flash ad for payday loans (actively hate these) * One static banner ad for a gas grill (no interest, just got a new one last summer) These do not seem to be particularly tailored to me, and definitely are not tailored to the content I've chosen to view. They're on the main page of the site. This is why I use ad blockers. Browsing the web without one is agonizing. Also the reason I don't really watch TV anymore, the ads put me off. Maybe I'm in the minority, but it sure seems to me like this minority is growing.
- 542458 8y ago
  Your ad blocker probably blocks the tracking as well, no? So turning it off for one page just shows the default non-tracked ads.
  - metafunctor 8y ago
    Fair point, I haven't browsed the web without an ad blocker for years. Hopefully, ad networks don't have much of a profile on me. I'd like to keep it that way. I feel that keeping a permanent profile on my interests without my consent is wrong, and I take measures against anyone easily building such a profile on me. Wouldn't a good compromise be to deliver ads that are relevant to the content I'm viewing, instead of ads tailored to my profile? Search ads, for example, are quite fine in my book, as long as they match my immediate search history instead of a personal profile secretly built over a long time.
    - geocar 8y ago
      > Hopefully, ad networks don't have much of a profile on me. You can find out: http://bluekai.com/registry http://bluekai.com/registry has a tool that shows you what data BlueKai/Oracle have on you (or any of their third-party branded and unbranded data suppliers). > I'd like to keep it that way. I feel that keeping a permanent profile on my interests without my consent is wrong, and I take measures against anyone easily building such a profile on me. That's why we have (and should have) the GDPR. These cookie countermeasures are annoying for application developers... > Wouldn't a good compromise be to deliver ads that are relevant to the content I'm viewing Yes. These are context-sensitive ads and they're by-far the most common.
DataWorker 8y ago
Some people like to get urinated on and even pay a lot of money for it. It’s abnormal and a bit disturbing to others but I wouldn’t want to make it illegal if that’s what you want to seek out. But I don’t want pee on my face or the faces of those I love.
jasonhansel 8y ago
That puts you in a small (17%) minority: https://www.emarketer.com/content/do-people-actually-want-personalized-ads https://www.emarketer.com/content/do-people-actually-want-pe...

by vasco 8y ago

nothrabannosir 8y ago

Fair point, although: > a dog carrier backpack ... from a Facebook ad that I got while browsing a dog owner Facebook group That’s not a personalised ad. That’s just an ad. (I.e. it doesn’t need tracking) But the rest of your (masochistic ;P ) point stands.

saiya-jin 8y ago

You are an exception to the rule, if you are actually honest here (and I have some doubts). Nobody I know, IT or not, likes ads anywhere - TV, radio, side road, internet, whatever. They actively decrease the experience of everything one does (block the view around the road, forces loud delays into movies, takes space and are absolute nuisance almost anywhere on the web). I don't hate them, just actively ignore them even if there would be a genuine new porsche being offered for $1. If you want to reach me anyhow, ads are the worst possible way. And I am not alone.

cocochanel 8y ago
Well, Google's balance sheet tells me otherwise.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  How so? The willingness to pay for digital ads actually has nothing to do with whether ads are effective (the statistical problem of attribution). For example, this was a pretty damning research paper on the topic, - https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=018087083066114098080080104114097102052027021001058001027075086064094094086122078077099118053037011111023120101067023076079110122027038089015091126120124006029096006049011063124020084000126076075000101097007096097114092123019097028095103066019095003078&EXT=pdf https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=0180870830661140...
  - cocochanel 8y ago
    The paper is about predicting ROI, and that is a well known problem in advertising. Now, the same author of the paper you linked, Randall A. Lewis, has a paper about whether advertising actually works [1] and it does, "we find statistically and economically significant impacts of the advertising on sales. " [1] http://www.davidreiley.com/papers/DoesRetailAdvertisingWork.pdf http://www.davidreiley.com/papers/DoesRetailAdvertisingWork....
    - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
      You are wrong. The second paper is attempting to measure sales lift (with randomization, which many ad campaigns disallow because the marketer doesn’t want to pay for holdout inventory, so it’s not really the same situation that most companies are in when calculating lift), but sales lift does not mean there was positive ROI. You can increase sales all day, but if you’re spending more than you’re making to do so, it’s not effective and usually indicates some unsustainable effect that is more about short term attention than about a meaningful effect of information transfer about a product (and indeed in [1] the authors found a very similar effect - that there is usually positive lift on a customer activity like visits or site shopping cart checkouts, but that among users driven to the site by digital ads, their purchases were far less in total value, enough to more than offset the cost of advertising to drive them). [1]: https://marketing.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Johnson-Garrett-PAPER-VERSION-2.pdf https://marketing.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/... I think you’re confused. I’m not disputing whether ads create positive lift in intermediate metrics like visits, clicks or sales. I’m saying the research pretty conclusively shows that despite that created positive lift in intermediate metrics, it does not translate to positive ROI, or a weaker version is that it may create positive ROI but on average marketing campaigns even from the country’s biggest marketers would need to be 10x-1000x larger than they are to even be able to distinguish such wildly incompatible outcomes as +100% ROI vs -50% ROI, to the point that for most companies buying digital ads, they literally have no idea if they are making money or losing money by doing so.
      - cocochanel 8y ago

kenneth 8y ago

I bought a pair of shoes off of a Facebook ad that I absolutely love. I was expecting them to suck because they came through an ad but was pleasantly surprised. Vessi shoes. Fully waterproof shoe (I've literally walked into a pool with them) but breathable with a nano-fabric that has holes too small for water molecules but big enough for air/steam. (Supposedly, though H2O sounds like a pretty small molecule so I'm not sure if there's more to it than just size, perhaps viscousness.)

metafunctor 8y ago

When I go to a popular website right now, with ad blocking disabled, I see, above the fold: * One huge video ad for a home decoration magazine (I could not care less) * One animating ad for car loans (no interesting in that) * One animating flash ad for payday loans (actively hate these) * One static banner ad for a gas grill (no interest, just got a new one last summer) These do not seem to be particularly tailored to me, and definitely are not tailored to the content I've chosen to view. They're on the main page of the site. This is why I use ad blockers. Browsing the web without one is agonizing. Also the reason I don't really watch TV anymore, the ads put me off. Maybe I'm in the minority, but it sure seems to me like this minority is growing.

542458 8y ago
Your ad blocker probably blocks the tracking as well, no? So turning it off for one page just shows the default non-tracked ads.
- metafunctor 8y ago
  Fair point, I haven't browsed the web without an ad blocker for years. Hopefully, ad networks don't have much of a profile on me. I'd like to keep it that way. I feel that keeping a permanent profile on my interests without my consent is wrong, and I take measures against anyone easily building such a profile on me. Wouldn't a good compromise be to deliver ads that are relevant to the content I'm viewing, instead of ads tailored to my profile? Search ads, for example, are quite fine in my book, as long as they match my immediate search history instead of a personal profile secretly built over a long time.
  - geocar 8y ago
    > Hopefully, ad networks don't have much of a profile on me. You can find out: http://bluekai.com/registry http://bluekai.com/registry has a tool that shows you what data BlueKai/Oracle have on you (or any of their third-party branded and unbranded data suppliers). > I'd like to keep it that way. I feel that keeping a permanent profile on my interests without my consent is wrong, and I take measures against anyone easily building such a profile on me. That's why we have (and should have) the GDPR. These cookie countermeasures are annoying for application developers... > Wouldn't a good compromise be to deliver ads that are relevant to the content I'm viewing Yes. These are context-sensitive ads and they're by-far the most common.

DataWorker 8y ago

Some people like to get urinated on and even pay a lot of money for it. It’s abnormal and a bit disturbing to others but I wouldn’t want to make it illegal if that’s what you want to seek out. But I don’t want pee on my face or the faces of those I love.

jasonhansel 8y ago

That puts you in a small (17%) minority: https://www.emarketer.com/content/do-people-actually-want-personalized-ads https://www.emarketer.com/content/do-people-actually-want-pe...