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What I don't understand is with all of this tracking, ML profiling... Why don't I get ads that are relevant to me at all? I'm very active all across the interne

What I don't understand is with all of this tracking, ML profiling... Why don't I get ads that are relevant to me at all? I'm very active all across the internet, proactively rate ads as "not relevant to me", would actually be interested in learning about products that I might like. Have disposable income... Yet nothing, just a sea of hot garbage ads that might as well be noise. I can't recall ever seeing something relevant enough to click on. I think the effectiveness of all of this stuff is way overrated. I have money, I will spend it, but with all the tech in the world the industry still can't put a relevant ad in front of me.

balls187 8y ago
Maybe you're not any companies target audience?
- malvosenior 8y ago
  That's doubtful as I don't live some kind of hermit like existence and regularly buy many products.
  - evanweaver 8y ago
    Maybe you should start; it would be a good A/B test.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - moreGlorpsEqual 8y ago
    The truth is, not all companies advertise. Many companies know that advertising won't shift sales, for what they'd be willing to invest in campaigns. The companies you love probably don't need ads. Meanwhile, the ads that you want to see are the least effective. They fail to persuade you to become a new customer, because you're already won over. The most effective ads change your mind. They turn you from an enemy to a friend. No one expends effort advertising to existing customers. Why preach to the choir?
slothario 8y ago
Keep in mind if you're the company that can make ads 10% more effective than everyone else, then you're going to be extremely successful. Even if that means going from "horrible" to "less horrible." Maybe you got an ad for a BMW and you'd never buy a BMW because you're frugal. But maybe it's showing those ads to everyone within your income band, which is several times more effective than showing them to every random site visitor.
tomjen3 8y ago
I am mostly in the same situation (except Facebook has _maybe_ found me something I would be interested in buying), for all their information, for all their smart people, etc, they have 1 product... My guess is that it is because most ads suck, because a) 90% of all products are crap, and b) good products don't need that many ads. If somebody comes up with a better whatever, I will probably hear about it, but most new products are not revolutionary enough for that, but they are also not revolutionary enough for me to be interested in them as an ad.
- malvosenior 8y ago
  The thing that gets me is I have a bunch of hobbies that I enjoy but don't really have time to dive super deep into. They aren't anything weird and there are many companies servicing their markets. I'm sure I have very little awareness of a bunch of things I'd like to buy for these. If I was being shown ads for products around my hobbies I would: 1. Definitely discover companies and products I wasn't aware of. 2. Buy stuff I probably didn't need but would be tempted into owning.
anonxx 8y ago
Hi there, I'm an engineer who works at [INSERT FANG] creating models of user behavior and systems that use those models to drive [INSERT METRIC]. The key here is to further define "a sufficiently high degree of accuracy." Sufficiently high degree of accuracy to... do what? Predictions from these models are typically only sufficient to move [INSERT METRIC] in the aggregate, there is no need to be more accurate than that. For your case: most of these models are noisy and operate over sparse data. That means any individual prediction can be arbitrarily bad, even to the point of complete randomness. The models only need to be marginally more accurate in aggregate than the a priori average prediction for each item without conditioning on any user features. Your intuition is correct. "Computer algorithms ... can now infer ... your moods, your political beliefs, your sexual orientation and your health" in the context of this article is hyperbole. For instance, to predict moods you need to source ground truth variables. Users don't normally give this information out for free. Even in the case the user updated their status with "My current mood is x" there is bias you have to account for that is likely prohibitive to the task. People self censor their emotions on the internet. This means sourcing the data in some other way, maybe through a questionnaire. Either way you won't have nearly as much data and the resulting model will likely be much noisier. Modeling the other user features mentioned have similar pitfalls.
m463 8y ago
That's simply because YOU are not the CUSTOMER for ads. The thing about advertisers of dreck is that they don't mind paying to annoy one million uninterested people to get one new customer.
Gatsky 8y ago
Yeah, the classic example is serving me with ads for the thing I just bought (which won’t need replacing for >10 years). But then advertising is in general very wasteful. Slightly improving efficiency is something people will pay for it seems. It’s been said in other comments, but a lot of advertising is for products which are useless or unpalatable or unhealthy. Just look at how much alcoholic drinks and soda drinks advertise. Maybe we should tax advertising revenue.

balls187 8y ago

Maybe you're not any companies target audience?

malvosenior 8y ago
That's doubtful as I don't live some kind of hermit like existence and regularly buy many products.
- evanweaver 8y ago
  Maybe you should start; it would be a good A/B test.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- moreGlorpsEqual 8y ago
  The truth is, not all companies advertise. Many companies know that advertising won't shift sales, for what they'd be willing to invest in campaigns. The companies you love probably don't need ads. Meanwhile, the ads that you want to see are the least effective. They fail to persuade you to become a new customer, because you're already won over. The most effective ads change your mind. They turn you from an enemy to a friend. No one expends effort advertising to existing customers. Why preach to the choir?

slothario 8y ago

Keep in mind if you're the company that can make ads 10% more effective than everyone else, then you're going to be extremely successful. Even if that means going from "horrible" to "less horrible." Maybe you got an ad for a BMW and you'd never buy a BMW because you're frugal. But maybe it's showing those ads to everyone within your income band, which is several times more effective than showing them to every random site visitor.

tomjen3 8y ago

I am mostly in the same situation (except Facebook has _maybe_ found me something I would be interested in buying), for all their information, for all their smart people, etc, they have 1 product... My guess is that it is because most ads suck, because a) 90% of all products are crap, and b) good products don't need that many ads. If somebody comes up with a better whatever, I will probably hear about it, but most new products are not revolutionary enough for that, but they are also not revolutionary enough for me to be interested in them as an ad.

malvosenior 8y ago
The thing that gets me is I have a bunch of hobbies that I enjoy but don't really have time to dive super deep into. They aren't anything weird and there are many companies servicing their markets. I'm sure I have very little awareness of a bunch of things I'd like to buy for these. If I was being shown ads for products around my hobbies I would: 1. Definitely discover companies and products I wasn't aware of. 2. Buy stuff I probably didn't need but would be tempted into owning.

anonxx 8y ago

Hi there, I'm an engineer who works at [INSERT FANG] creating models of user behavior and systems that use those models to drive [INSERT METRIC]. The key here is to further define "a sufficiently high degree of accuracy." Sufficiently high degree of accuracy to... do what? Predictions from these models are typically only sufficient to move [INSERT METRIC] in the aggregate, there is no need to be more accurate than that. For your case: most of these models are noisy and operate over sparse data. That means any individual prediction can be arbitrarily bad, even to the point of complete randomness. The models only need to be marginally more accurate in aggregate than the a priori average prediction for each item without conditioning on any user features. Your intuition is correct. "Computer algorithms ... can now infer ... your moods, your political beliefs, your sexual orientation and your health" in the context of this article is hyperbole. For instance, to predict moods you need to source ground truth variables. Users don't normally give this information out for free. Even in the case the user updated their status with "My current mood is x" there is bias you have to account for that is likely prohibitive to the task. People self censor their emotions on the internet. This means sourcing the data in some other way, maybe through a questionnaire. Either way you won't have nearly as much data and the resulting model will likely be much noisier. Modeling the other user features mentioned have similar pitfalls.

m463 8y ago

That's simply because YOU are not the CUSTOMER for ads. The thing about advertisers of dreck is that they don't mind paying to annoy one million uninterested people to get one new customer.

Gatsky 8y ago

Yeah, the classic example is serving me with ads for the thing I just bought (which won’t need replacing for >10 years). But then advertising is in general very wasteful. Slightly improving efficiency is something people will pay for it seems. It’s been said in other comments, but a lot of advertising is for products which are useless or unpalatable or unhealthy. Just look at how much alcoholic drinks and soda drinks advertise. Maybe we should tax advertising revenue.