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They understand that you are part of the cohort that doesn't want to be monetized. Which is the reason they don't change it for you, because the efforts require

by dakna 7y ago

They understand that you are part of the cohort that doesn't want to be monetized. Which is the reason they don't change it for you, because the efforts required to remove this cohort from tracking and still serve useful search results are a lot higher than what they think people would pay for. But let's surprise them. I personally would be willing to pay up to 10k per decade of my remaining life expectancy to opt out completely. Upfront payment, right now. A package deal including Amazon would be even better, maybe for 50% more? I think at one point people need to put a price point to their privacy, otherwise nothing changes. The market has no incentive for this change right now. And yes, that would mean that privacy is a luxury for people who can afford it, which is not what I would like to see, especially since I remember the times when you had privacy by default when going online. But I can't imagine how it can become a fundamental right under the current market conditions.

thu2111 7y ago
That's nowhere near enough. Sorry. You do want to see ads, you just don't realise it. Google did actually run this experiment. They aren't stupid and lots of people say they'd rather pay money directly rather than see ads. Because of Google's place in the ecosystem they can actually implement that. So they did. It eventually became Google Contributor and never really launched properly. The early version of Contributor was a lot more pure than what eventually launched. It let you set a budget and compete against yourself in the ad auction, so publishers were getting the same amount of money for their content as before. I tried it out when I worked there. You could set a fake budget and Google would pay for you to see empty boxes or pictures from your own photo albums instead of ads. A few things became apparent. One is Google doesn't serve all or even most of the ads on the internet. So I still saw a lot of ads. This made the experience feel pretty pointless. Another is that this model is completely infeasible. The internet economy is huge. Just a week or so of browsing rapidly blew my test budget of a few hundred dollars. To see no ads on the internet served by Google I would have needed to pay a large multiple of what I paid monthly for TV, mobile and Internet connectivity. You say you'd be willing to pay $10k per decade? Forget it. If you're a heavy internet user that'd buy you less than a month, not a decade. Finally, this didn't opt you out of search ads. That's because Google has strong experimental evidence that ads on search are good for users. One of the longest running A/B tests the firm ever did was selecting 1% of users and disabling search ads for them. What they found was a long term trend where those users simply used Google less than normal. Without ads the results were less useful so they did the obvious and searched less. Why would Google let you pay to make their product less useful for you?
- dakna 7y ago
  Good points, actually very interesting, especially the budget part. But I wasn't talking about just the ads, I was talking about the tracking to optimize those ads. I don't care about the ads. Show me ads, I ignore them anyway. I just don't want to be tracked to build out my personality profile for the rest of my life, because I don't know who will get access to that data and what it might be used for. Show ads based on my search term, not based on my browser, email and location history. They will have the same effect as the optimized ones: none. Just keep in mind, the cohort I was talking about, was the one that will not be monetized. It is the cohort that still sees ads, but will never convert. So I'm not sure why I would buy my own ad space for an amount of money that is based on the usual conversion rate, when my conversion or click rate for my sample of n=1 is zero all the time. My profile correlates to zero spending, it is not worth the average ad price. Google Contributor kind of proves my point about the efforts required being too costly. It was easier to inject a person as a buyer for their own profile into the merchandising system, than to rework all the tracking tools and the analytics that runs on it to stop tracking that specific person. So yes, my $10k is still not enough. > Why would Google let you pay to make their product less useful for you? Because I value privacy as a principle more than a slightly less useful product, and I would pay for it. But apparently I can't afford it.
  - thu2111 7y ago
    Many ads are brand ads. You don't have to click for the advertiser to get what they want, just see their ad at all. Even for click-based ads, well, most people claim they never click on ads. But, they're wrong. Again, Google has lots of data on this. You will never be allowed to opt out of ads if you aren't paying your way, because lots of people would do it and that would render the internet economically unviable (of course no such ad network would survive for more than 5 minutes). It was easier to inject a person as a buyer for their own profile into the merchandising system, than to rework all the tracking tools and the analytics that runs on it to stop tracking that specific person. No, they did it that way because otherwise it'd have reduced publisher earnings who would then have gone to other ad networks with no Contributor programme. How do you set the price of not seeing an ad otherwise? The price of seeing it is set by auction. It had nothing to do with tracking which can be disabled by anyone here: https://support.google.com/ads/answer/2662922?hl=en-GB https://support.google.com/ads/answer/2662922?hl=en-GB and here https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout Tracking isn't actually the big hammer people imagine it is. That's a fiction invented by journalists. It helps a bit but only really basic stuff like "show German people ads in German" or remarketing (show people ads for products they were looking at buying very recently). That's why it's OK to opt out. You become worth a bit less and you'll see more irritating ads as a result, but very few use this option. Because I value privacy as a principle more than a slightly less useful product, and I would pay for it. But apparently I can't afford it. Go disable ad tracking then. The options have been there for many years.

by dakna 7y ago

thu2111 7y ago

That's nowhere near enough. Sorry. You do want to see ads, you just don't realise it. Google did actually run this experiment. They aren't stupid and lots of people say they'd rather pay money directly rather than see ads. Because of Google's place in the ecosystem they can actually implement that. So they did. It eventually became Google Contributor and never really launched properly. The early version of Contributor was a lot more pure than what eventually launched. It let you set a budget and compete against yourself in the ad auction, so publishers were getting the same amount of money for their content as before. I tried it out when I worked there. You could set a fake budget and Google would pay for you to see empty boxes or pictures from your own photo albums instead of ads. A few things became apparent. One is Google doesn't serve all or even most of the ads on the internet. So I still saw a lot of ads. This made the experience feel pretty pointless. Another is that this model is completely infeasible. The internet economy is huge. Just a week or so of browsing rapidly blew my test budget of a few hundred dollars. To see no ads on the internet served by Google I would have needed to pay a large multiple of what I paid monthly for TV, mobile and Internet connectivity. You say you'd be willing to pay $10k per decade? Forget it. If you're a heavy internet user that'd buy you less than a month, not a decade. Finally, this didn't opt you out of search ads. That's because Google has strong experimental evidence that ads on search are good for users. One of the longest running A/B tests the firm ever did was selecting 1% of users and disabling search ads for them. What they found was a long term trend where those users simply used Google less than normal. Without ads the results were less useful so they did the obvious and searched less. Why would Google let you pay to make their product less useful for you?

dakna 7y ago
Good points, actually very interesting, especially the budget part. But I wasn't talking about just the ads, I was talking about the tracking to optimize those ads. I don't care about the ads. Show me ads, I ignore them anyway. I just don't want to be tracked to build out my personality profile for the rest of my life, because I don't know who will get access to that data and what it might be used for. Show ads based on my search term, not based on my browser, email and location history. They will have the same effect as the optimized ones: none. Just keep in mind, the cohort I was talking about, was the one that will not be monetized. It is the cohort that still sees ads, but will never convert. So I'm not sure why I would buy my own ad space for an amount of money that is based on the usual conversion rate, when my conversion or click rate for my sample of n=1 is zero all the time. My profile correlates to zero spending, it is not worth the average ad price. Google Contributor kind of proves my point about the efforts required being too costly. It was easier to inject a person as a buyer for their own profile into the merchandising system, than to rework all the tracking tools and the analytics that runs on it to stop tracking that specific person. So yes, my $10k is still not enough. > Why would Google let you pay to make their product less useful for you? Because I value privacy as a principle more than a slightly less useful product, and I would pay for it. But apparently I can't afford it.
- thu2111 7y ago
  Many ads are brand ads. You don't have to click for the advertiser to get what they want, just see their ad at all. Even for click-based ads, well, most people claim they never click on ads. But, they're wrong. Again, Google has lots of data on this. You will never be allowed to opt out of ads if you aren't paying your way, because lots of people would do it and that would render the internet economically unviable (of course no such ad network would survive for more than 5 minutes). It was easier to inject a person as a buyer for their own profile into the merchandising system, than to rework all the tracking tools and the analytics that runs on it to stop tracking that specific person. No, they did it that way because otherwise it'd have reduced publisher earnings who would then have gone to other ad networks with no Contributor programme. How do you set the price of not seeing an ad otherwise? The price of seeing it is set by auction. It had nothing to do with tracking which can be disabled by anyone here: https://support.google.com/ads/answer/2662922?hl=en-GB https://support.google.com/ads/answer/2662922?hl=en-GB and here https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout Tracking isn't actually the big hammer people imagine it is. That's a fiction invented by journalists. It helps a bit but only really basic stuff like "show German people ads in German" or remarketing (show people ads for products they were looking at buying very recently). That's why it's OK to opt out. You become worth a bit less and you'll see more irritating ads as a result, but very few use this option. Because I value privacy as a principle more than a slightly less useful product, and I would pay for it. But apparently I can't afford it. Go disable ad tracking then. The options have been there for many years.