3 ms·

> The block might appeal to users, but is potentially worrying to publishers This is idiotic because tracking is GOOD FOR GOOGLE and BAD FOR PUBLISHERS. If the

> The block might appeal to users, but is potentially worrying to publishers This is idiotic because tracking is GOOD FOR GOOGLE and BAD FOR PUBLISHERS. If the saying in advertising is that half of your budget is wasted, why the hell would publishers want to tell advertisers which half?

jefftk 7y ago
Advertisers aren't going to pay more than the traffic is worth. If 1/2 of your advertising is going to people who would never be interested in the product and you can cut that group out you're willing to pay approximately 2x as much. If all users were equally of interest to all advertisers this wouldn't matter, but that's very much not the case. Imagine you're a publisher, and your audience can be divided as 50% coffee drinkers and 50% tea drinkers. Without tracking, you have advertisers each paying you $X to run site-wide ads, while with tracking you can get closer to $2X because the coffee sellers target only the coffee drinkers and the same with tea. (Disclosure: I work for Google on ads, speaking for myself)
- earthboundkid 7y ago
  That logic would work great if Google were the publisher. Unfortunately, there are a lot of companies that think they are “publishers” but are actually meaningless now that Google is effectively a publisher, except that they don’t pay for content. Those companies—newspaper, magazines, basically anything middlebrow but not for rich people—are all getting cut out because why would you pay to staff Runners World or Car & Driver when you know who runs (because they post pictures of themselves running) and who wants a car (because they search for it)? So, yes, in the end, the ad market has a certain size, independent of the advertising companies in it, but now the link between that market and actual writers making actual content people want is broken and everything is turning to shit.

jefftk 7y ago

Advertisers aren't going to pay more than the traffic is worth. If 1/2 of your advertising is going to people who would never be interested in the product and you can cut that group out you're willing to pay approximately 2x as much. If all users were equally of interest to all advertisers this wouldn't matter, but that's very much not the case. Imagine you're a publisher, and your audience can be divided as 50% coffee drinkers and 50% tea drinkers. Without tracking, you have advertisers each paying you $X to run site-wide ads, while with tracking you can get closer to $2X because the coffee sellers target only the coffee drinkers and the same with tea. (Disclosure: I work for Google on ads, speaking for myself)

earthboundkid 7y ago
That logic would work great if Google were the publisher. Unfortunately, there are a lot of companies that think they are “publishers” but are actually meaningless now that Google is effectively a publisher, except that they don’t pay for content. Those companies—newspaper, magazines, basically anything middlebrow but not for rich people—are all getting cut out because why would you pay to staff Runners World or Car & Driver when you know who runs (because they post pictures of themselves running) and who wants a car (because they search for it)? So, yes, in the end, the ad market has a certain size, independent of the advertising companies in it, but now the link between that market and actual writers making actual content people want is broken and everything is turning to shit.