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thanks for this interesting perspective, I haven’t really thought about ads from this point of view before. However, does the desire of advertisement buyers to

thanks for this interesting perspective, I haven’t really thought about ads from this point of view before. However, does the desire of advertisement buyers to convert justify the profiling and tracking of peoples behaviors to the extent that it is happening? You don’t seem to provide any reasonable justification beyond that not only big but also small companies profit from this state of affairs. This doesn’t make the power and behavior of google any less creepy or undesirable.

awillen 7y ago
The justification is that better ads convert more, as he mentioned in his post. Making ads more efficient means a small, niche business can effectively spend money on ads that drive business. If you can't target well, then giant companies whose audiences are very broad are the only ones who can justify paying for ads. That's why TV advertising is dominated by huge companies - Budweiser/Chevy/etc. want everyone to see their ads, but John's vintage typewriter store will only spend money on ads if they can target customers in their geographic area with a very specific interest at a reasonable price. Of course, the big part of your question is "to the extent that it is happening" - there's definitely an argument to be made that they're collecting too much info, but my point is merely to say that this kind of information collection allows for the kind of granular audience targeting that is disproportionately beneficial to small, niche businesses.
- ace_of_spades 7y ago
  Yeah, thank you for your second paragraph because that‘s exactly the point where things go off the rails. We could have granular geo-location and context (i.e., keywords) based targeting to satisfy smaller customers. Did anybody specifically complain about this when that was still the state of affairs? Business is a relative project where your profit doesn‘t really depend on the absolute capabilities that you are using but your relative advantage over your competitors. If fine-grained targeting wasn‘t available then small businesses would do fine without it. So the real problem is the competition between google, facebook, amazon and others which leaves users as the products. We would probably need some like an arms control treaty to tame these behemoths and make this situation somewhat sustainable in the long run.

awillen 7y ago

The justification is that better ads convert more, as he mentioned in his post. Making ads more efficient means a small, niche business can effectively spend money on ads that drive business. If you can't target well, then giant companies whose audiences are very broad are the only ones who can justify paying for ads. That's why TV advertising is dominated by huge companies - Budweiser/Chevy/etc. want everyone to see their ads, but John's vintage typewriter store will only spend money on ads if they can target customers in their geographic area with a very specific interest at a reasonable price. Of course, the big part of your question is "to the extent that it is happening" - there's definitely an argument to be made that they're collecting too much info, but my point is merely to say that this kind of information collection allows for the kind of granular audience targeting that is disproportionately beneficial to small, niche businesses.

ace_of_spades 7y ago
Yeah, thank you for your second paragraph because that‘s exactly the point where things go off the rails. We could have granular geo-location and context (i.e., keywords) based targeting to satisfy smaller customers. Did anybody specifically complain about this when that was still the state of affairs? Business is a relative project where your profit doesn‘t really depend on the absolute capabilities that you are using but your relative advantage over your competitors. If fine-grained targeting wasn‘t available then small businesses would do fine without it. So the real problem is the competition between google, facebook, amazon and others which leaves users as the products. We would probably need some like an arms control treaty to tame these behemoths and make this situation somewhat sustainable in the long run.