3 ms·

I never understood the anger for Ad companies tracking you. Web content costs money to create and host. The alternatives are: -Most content being paid -Ads

I never understood the anger for Ad companies tracking you. Web content costs money to create and host. The alternatives are: -Most content being paid -Ads we really don't want to see. Without some sort of user tracking, ads would just be random -Wealthy people will be subsidizing lots of content for political gain (a method of getting funding) -Many smaller companies get pushed out in favor of large corps and much more difficult for a startup to survive. Pretty much all of these have happened to some degree in the last 5 years and with the opposition to ads/many people installing ad blocking software, it's only going to get worse.

olliej 7y ago
The ads aren’t usefully targeted? In the early days of AdWords the ads weren’t based on tracking but on page content (much more useful IMO). Nowadays there is this bizarre belief that somehow knowing everyone’s intimate details means your random context-free ad will result in someone buying something. The problem with the gratuitous tracking is that people cannot opt out of it. I don’t have a FB account, I don’t go to Facebook.com, yet I know Facebook has a profile built up because of those abusive like buttons. Similarly if I go to an online store, and buy something, there is an additional invisible tax I am being charged: the ads on the store pages feed multiple ad networks my personal info. Despite me literally paying them money.
- wstuartcl 7y ago
  Some things to note, attribution and identity also allow for things like ad suppression or blanketing. If you have already bought the product or made indications you are not interested and will not be converted it is very common practice to suppress you from seeing those specific ads. Its also common to blanket you with relevant ads given shown interest in a product or service. Maybe it is fine to consider it a tax, another way to look at it is you are being paid on content and access on various sites (including sites where you make a purchase at a price that is fair for the product AND this information) for your information. Either way, if you want to jump ship from that arrangement -- it should be just as protected that accessing that content is now a violation of TOS or a liability to you that can be resolved with (at the site owners prerogative) hard costs to you for that content or service.
  - olliej 7y ago
    My response is that (And this is a common refrain) adtech companies seem to assume everyone is a collector in waiting. One time I needed to buy a new washer+dryer. I did so, but I continued to get aggressively targeted washer/dryer ads for months, maybe a year. Similar for furniture. I am not a closet deck chair collector, but adtech decided I was.
    - wstuartcl 7y ago
      And for that "pain" you retained access to the content/functionality on those sites that presented those ads. It is super common to suppress users that have seen a certain amount of blanket without interaction) as well so if you were receiving those ads for months it is most likely a poorly performing media team. Arn't those ads that you will never click on but happen to be related to your browsing context better than the ads you drive by every morning on the street? Take all those sites you visit over a month, remove the ones you pay for directly from the list. Those remaining ones are the sites that will not be there without either ad support or direct charge.
      - olliej 7y ago
        For the first paragraph: I'm not saying no to ads, I'm saying know to wanton abuse of my privacy to provide mistargeted ads when the whole point of that abuse is to provide correctly targeted ads. 2nd paragraph: those ads leverage their context, better than modern "targeted" ads. An ad for a tech product showing up on a tech site is more applicable than a dishwasher. Likewise an ad for a dishwasher on a homeware review site is better than an ad for a computer. The targeting is not providing anything useful. Final paragraph: you are making the argument that the abuse of privacy is critical to the ad ecosystem, to the extent that in the absence of tracking then the entire ecosystem collapses. This is demonstrably false: when AdWords started it wasn't built on tracking and other such abuses of the end user, it was based on the context of the page the ad is embedded in. The problem we've got to now, is that the ad networks started pushing "targeted" ads over non targeted to the extent that they have managed to convince everyone that the tracking abuse is necessary.
- themacguffinman 7y ago
  > on page content (much more useful IMO) In your opinion? On what grounds can you make this claim, as if there didn't exist a multi-billion dollar industry focused on maximizing ad-targeting usefulness, as if ad companies haven't tried context-based targeting and just decided to do something else that apparently makes them less money by being less useful. Do you have any serious evidence that "knowing everyone’s intimate details means your random context-free ad will result in someone buying something" is a bizarre belief instead of a fact that a capitalist market has settled on? Edited for clarity
mostindeededly 7y ago
Part of it is due to the fact that advertising has worked just fine without tracking for literally hundreds of years in a variety of different media. As to your points, though, paid content is great. If people won't pay for it, they probably don't actually want or need it. I don't want to see any ads. No ad is relevant to me, so all ads, even supposedly targeted ads are random. In 30 years of using the web, I have literally never once intentionally clicked on an ad. So better tracking for ads gets me nothing and loses me a lot. Wealthy people already subsidize lots of content for political gain, so nothing is changed by having it be targeted ad supported or not. Most small companies cannot use the legitimate ad networks because they don't have enough volume. So this is a non-issue.
- lostmymind66 7y ago
  "Part of it is due to the fact that advertising has worked just fine without tracking for literally hundreds of years in a variety of different media." Magazines, radio, and television are all tracked in different ways. When were ads not tracking users? On stone tablets? "Wealthy people already subsidize lots of content for political gain, so nothing is changed by having it be targeted ad supported or not." They do, but it would be a much smaller percentage if the content creators had a way to monetize it. "Most small companies cannot use the legitimate ad networks because they don't have enough volume. So this is a non-issue." How is it a 'non-issue'? Many startups, especially here on HN, rely on advertising as a business model.
- themacguffinman 7y ago
  A sharp stone on a stick has also worked just fine as a weapon for literally thousands of years in a variety of locations. That doesn't mean it makes any sense to use it today. This is just a bad argument. Ads provide a lot of exposure instead of just eliciting a direct response. Better tracking for ads benefits content publishers and service providers, many of which users enjoy. You don't have to click on an ad for ads to have value.
jxdxbx 7y ago
Well, ad-tracking is a little different than "targeting," but a lot of data collection exists theoretically so that ads can be targeted more effectively, which then theoretically supports free services. But, there's little evidence that targeted ads are more effective than normal ads based on rough guesses (e.g., The Verge is largely read by tech-savvy young and middle-aged men and you don't need tracking to figure that out). Their marginal increase in effectiveness is probably outweighed by the cost of administering them, not to mention to social cost of privacy erosion. The sooner the tech industry stops pretending that ad targeting is anything other than a scam to trick advertisers, the better.
- wstuartcl 7y ago
  Targeted ads (assuming the target is relevant and tested as performant) does 100% of the time offer better outcomes for a given ad spend (many times by large factors against general populations). I am not sure where you get the impression that there is little to no value in targeting ads.
alkonaut 7y ago
Yup, I’m really angry that I’m being tracked in a way I don’t exactly understand or monitor. So I’m basically in on every attempt to kill the online ad industry even if it kills 99% of the “free” content I read and enjoy. I no longer think a convenient micro transaction system will come along to disrupt the status quo, I now think it can only rise from the ashes of the 2000-2020 web. I also realize that in this process, at least for a transition period, we will kill a lot more small players than big ones, and quite possibly create a web where google, Facebook et.al. are the only ones to profit. Again, don’t care.

olliej 7y ago

The ads aren’t usefully targeted? In the early days of AdWords the ads weren’t based on tracking but on page content (much more useful IMO). Nowadays there is this bizarre belief that somehow knowing everyone’s intimate details means your random context-free ad will result in someone buying something. The problem with the gratuitous tracking is that people cannot opt out of it. I don’t have a FB account, I don’t go to Facebook.com, yet I know Facebook has a profile built up because of those abusive like buttons. Similarly if I go to an online store, and buy something, there is an additional invisible tax I am being charged: the ads on the store pages feed multiple ad networks my personal info. Despite me literally paying them money.

wstuartcl 7y ago
Some things to note, attribution and identity also allow for things like ad suppression or blanketing. If you have already bought the product or made indications you are not interested and will not be converted it is very common practice to suppress you from seeing those specific ads. Its also common to blanket you with relevant ads given shown interest in a product or service. Maybe it is fine to consider it a tax, another way to look at it is you are being paid on content and access on various sites (including sites where you make a purchase at a price that is fair for the product AND this information) for your information. Either way, if you want to jump ship from that arrangement -- it should be just as protected that accessing that content is now a violation of TOS or a liability to you that can be resolved with (at the site owners prerogative) hard costs to you for that content or service.
- olliej 7y ago
  My response is that (And this is a common refrain) adtech companies seem to assume everyone is a collector in waiting. One time I needed to buy a new washer+dryer. I did so, but I continued to get aggressively targeted washer/dryer ads for months, maybe a year. Similar for furniture. I am not a closet deck chair collector, but adtech decided I was.
  - wstuartcl 7y ago
    And for that "pain" you retained access to the content/functionality on those sites that presented those ads. It is super common to suppress users that have seen a certain amount of blanket without interaction) as well so if you were receiving those ads for months it is most likely a poorly performing media team. Arn't those ads that you will never click on but happen to be related to your browsing context better than the ads you drive by every morning on the street? Take all those sites you visit over a month, remove the ones you pay for directly from the list. Those remaining ones are the sites that will not be there without either ad support or direct charge.
    - olliej 7y ago
      For the first paragraph: I'm not saying no to ads, I'm saying know to wanton abuse of my privacy to provide mistargeted ads when the whole point of that abuse is to provide correctly targeted ads. 2nd paragraph: those ads leverage their context, better than modern "targeted" ads. An ad for a tech product showing up on a tech site is more applicable than a dishwasher. Likewise an ad for a dishwasher on a homeware review site is better than an ad for a computer. The targeting is not providing anything useful. Final paragraph: you are making the argument that the abuse of privacy is critical to the ad ecosystem, to the extent that in the absence of tracking then the entire ecosystem collapses. This is demonstrably false: when AdWords started it wasn't built on tracking and other such abuses of the end user, it was based on the context of the page the ad is embedded in. The problem we've got to now, is that the ad networks started pushing "targeted" ads over non targeted to the extent that they have managed to convince everyone that the tracking abuse is necessary.
themacguffinman 7y ago
> on page content (much more useful IMO) In your opinion? On what grounds can you make this claim, as if there didn't exist a multi-billion dollar industry focused on maximizing ad-targeting usefulness, as if ad companies haven't tried context-based targeting and just decided to do something else that apparently makes them less money by being less useful. Do you have any serious evidence that "knowing everyone’s intimate details means your random context-free ad will result in someone buying something" is a bizarre belief instead of a fact that a capitalist market has settled on? Edited for clarity

mostindeededly 7y ago

Part of it is due to the fact that advertising has worked just fine without tracking for literally hundreds of years in a variety of different media. As to your points, though, paid content is great. If people won't pay for it, they probably don't actually want or need it. I don't want to see any ads. No ad is relevant to me, so all ads, even supposedly targeted ads are random. In 30 years of using the web, I have literally never once intentionally clicked on an ad. So better tracking for ads gets me nothing and loses me a lot. Wealthy people already subsidize lots of content for political gain, so nothing is changed by having it be targeted ad supported or not. Most small companies cannot use the legitimate ad networks because they don't have enough volume. So this is a non-issue.

lostmymind66 7y ago
"Part of it is due to the fact that advertising has worked just fine without tracking for literally hundreds of years in a variety of different media." Magazines, radio, and television are all tracked in different ways. When were ads not tracking users? On stone tablets? "Wealthy people already subsidize lots of content for political gain, so nothing is changed by having it be targeted ad supported or not." They do, but it would be a much smaller percentage if the content creators had a way to monetize it. "Most small companies cannot use the legitimate ad networks because they don't have enough volume. So this is a non-issue." How is it a 'non-issue'? Many startups, especially here on HN, rely on advertising as a business model.
themacguffinman 7y ago
A sharp stone on a stick has also worked just fine as a weapon for literally thousands of years in a variety of locations. That doesn't mean it makes any sense to use it today. This is just a bad argument. Ads provide a lot of exposure instead of just eliciting a direct response. Better tracking for ads benefits content publishers and service providers, many of which users enjoy. You don't have to click on an ad for ads to have value.

jxdxbx 7y ago

Well, ad-tracking is a little different than "targeting," but a lot of data collection exists theoretically so that ads can be targeted more effectively, which then theoretically supports free services. But, there's little evidence that targeted ads are more effective than normal ads based on rough guesses (e.g., The Verge is largely read by tech-savvy young and middle-aged men and you don't need tracking to figure that out). Their marginal increase in effectiveness is probably outweighed by the cost of administering them, not to mention to social cost of privacy erosion. The sooner the tech industry stops pretending that ad targeting is anything other than a scam to trick advertisers, the better.

wstuartcl 7y ago
Targeted ads (assuming the target is relevant and tested as performant) does 100% of the time offer better outcomes for a given ad spend (many times by large factors against general populations). I am not sure where you get the impression that there is little to no value in targeting ads.

alkonaut 7y ago

Yup, I’m really angry that I’m being tracked in a way I don’t exactly understand or monitor. So I’m basically in on every attempt to kill the online ad industry even if it kills 99% of the “free” content I read and enjoy. I no longer think a convenient micro transaction system will come along to disrupt the status quo, I now think it can only rise from the ashes of the 2000-2020 web. I also realize that in this process, at least for a transition period, we will kill a lot more small players than big ones, and quite possibly create a web where google, Facebook et.al. are the only ones to profit. Again, don’t care.