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I'm a suspect because I worked in digital media in a media agency some time ago, and let me tell you that this is quite a broad request. Why? Let's start by as

I'm a suspect because I worked in digital media in a media agency some time ago, and let me tell you that this is quite a broad request. Why? Let's start by asking: what is targeted advertising? Is it based on interests? Behavior? Demographic? Psychographic? Contextual? Placement? Geolocation? Search queries? The list goes on. Even if they want to narrow it down to collected data from users, this still has a lot of broad aspects to it. What about what Kantar and GFK, and many other market research companies do, where they track people who consent to be tracked and share their opinions and behavior, to generate statistical inferences? Because that's one of the ways you target on TV for example. So, I understand where they are coming from, but this is such a broad request that's naive. A company that sells vegan supplements that places advertising in the POS (Point of Sale) is targeted advertising - why should we ban something that has the consent of everyone involved? Or the solution is to randomize ad placement? The amount of wastage and the play field would destroy anyone who tried to compete with companies who could afford mass media platforms with budgets in the orders of millions+.

jka 7y ago
What is targeted advertising needed for?
- dx034 7y ago
  To get information to those that are interested in it. While some dislike any kind of advertisment, many (me included) don't mind having ads, as long as they're not too intrusive and actually useful.
  - jka 7y ago
    There are other ways that users can fulfill their information needs which don't require targeted advertising. You mention you don't mind ads; would you also prefer to be subject to targeted advertising rather than to have software running on your own device which displays equally-relevant reference material without sharing your personal data?
  - dfxm12 7y ago
    But, you can't have targeted ads without some database out there tracking everything you do. A database that is ostensibly used to get information to you that you might find interesting, but in reality has been used for much worse, according to the article: proliferation of hateful and false content on social media & political manipulation, among others. This data is also an valuable target for ID thieves. The ads themselves aren't the problem here, nor is it really what's being discussed.
    - libertine 7y ago
      You had targeted advertising before the internet, it's simply less targeted and less granular, with more wastage. A quick example: if you wanted to reach health care works, or more precisely doctors, you'd advertising on magazines for health care professionals. Most of which were subscribed (name, birthday, profession, address, etc) - so you had already some data for some targeting. > in reality has been used for much worse, according to the article: proliferation of hateful and false content on social media & political manipulation, among others. This is where advertising is getting mixed with propaganda - those are very different things and the only cross section is that they are messages that use text, audio, images, video - in others words - they are distributed with audiovisual media. They have different legal obligations (depending on the country). What is lacking is regulation and fines for abuse of propaganda. The problem is that the sheer volume of content being produced is hard to regulate.
  - zepto 7y ago
    “Interested” is Orwellian doublespeak. What advertisers care about is who is susceptible or vulnerable to persuasion.
- eyeinthepyramid 7y ago
  Perhaps to inform people about the goods and services that you offer that they might be interested in buying?
  - ativzzz 7y ago
    Is this not what a search engine is for? When I want a good or service I'm interested in buying, I can search it, do my research, and/or find a place to buy it. I only want advertising when I explicitly opt into it. Otherwise, I never want to see an ad.
    - libertine 7y ago
      Do not forget that you represent a small minority of tech literate people. There's plenty of people that don't know how to properly use a search engine, hell there's plenty who don't know what a search engine is. Plus, search engines have a role in the consumer decision journey, but don't fulfill all the roles. Just to add up, with SEM (paid ads + SEO) search results have a big chance of being biased nowadays, and you should always take that into consideration.
      - ativzzz 7y ago
        > Do not forget that you represent a small minority of tech literate people. You're right haha, plus I'm more of a minimalist so I just want to have less stuff in general.
- libertine 7y ago
  Targeted advertising allows you to deliver specific messages to specific audiences, and by specific audiences I mean a narrow cluster of people that has the potential to have an interest in your brand. This allows you - the brand - to reduce wastage. And in theory, it should reduce Ad Fatigue in the audience. Wastage because every time you miss a potential audience member, or you reach a wrong person, you paid to deliver a message that won't be heard/read/seen. If you think about it, this adds up - even with targeted advertising. Ad Fatigue comes from you being shown advertising you have no interested in (why are you seeing bunions cream if you don't have bunions), or you see too many times the same ad you start to notice it for the wrong reasons (imagine you see a re targeted ad from amazon for a product you bought 3 weeks ago, and for 3 weeks you're seeing daily the same product being recommended to you). In theory, everyone should win with targeted ads, in reality, it's being abused and it's saturating consumers. Not only abused by brands, but also by a consumer behavior/culture that aims to spend more. You can argue that one fuels the other, well, I'm not so sure about that, because cultural shifts are too big to be the agenda of anyone. In my opinion, they feed on each other.
- 1123581321 7y ago
  Ideally, advertising is a way for the seller (or teacher/advocate/government) to pay some of the buyer’s/researcher’s search costs. Targeted advertising lets the advertiser pay for part of more expensive searches. One of the problems with Google and Facebook is that they are businesses whose core product should be driving search costs very low, so they compromise their product so that their advertising remains valuable to close the gap.
stoev 7y ago
I think it’s well defined in the article - the author means behavioural advertising that has to do with targeting any information specific to the user (whether we consider that personal or not). The proposed alternative is contextual advertising which puts the targeting emphasis entirely on the context in which the ad is shown, not on the person seeing the ad. The idea is that if it is executed correctly, contextual targeting will lead to the same person anyway, just without sacrificing his or her privacy.
- libertine 7y ago
  I understand completely your argument, and the article argument - I've used plenty of contextual advertising, and it's better than what we call ROS (Run Of Site), but it's worst than targeting based on interests. But let me give you a inside view: there's been a war from major media groups to try to take down Facebook and Google (let's see what they come up with for Amazon). This solution for them is the best solution for news websites, that since 2013 have seen their advertising budgets being siphoned to Google and Facebook. All because they cannot compete with their level of data granularity - and trust me they tried! Hell some tried to build their own data systems to have more refined targeting. I can even tell you one of the solutions on the table was to force Google and Facebook to share their data with media groups. So this "white knight in shinning armor" article, despite showing valid arguments, is most definitely biased, because it's in their best interest that contextual advertising prevails and interest/behavioral falls. For years their agenda is to get back media investment from the big boys. So bare this in mind when you read these articles.
  - stoev 7y ago
    Sure, it is in the author’s employer best interest for the industry to switch to contextual advertising. But it is also in the best interest of the end user. So why is that a bad thing? I also don’t believe that behavioural advertising is better by definition. Even the article mentions some research to prove the contrary. I’ve seen it from first-hand experience as well. Which, of course, is anecdotal. But what is not is the fact that the world’s largest and most profitable advertising product, Google Search, is completely reliant on contextual rather than behavioural targeting. The fact that publishers so far have not been able to do something about FB’s and Google’s duopoly doesn’t necessarily mean they will never be able to. Or at least I certainly hope that it doesn’t.
SifJar 7y ago
> A company that sells vegan supplements that places advertising in the POS (Point of Sale) is targeted advertising - why should we ban something that has the consent of everyone involved? Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but is the consumer also consenting?
- libertine 7y ago
  Unless they have no other choice to buy from, they enter the shop by their own terms and can leave any time. Unless you're trying to say that the consumer didn't consent to have messages being displayed around him, and this is just once again too broad... the solution would be any media (or for the sake of simplicity, any surface) would need to be plain white with no text. Walls, shelves, windows, clothing of staff, even products on display.
  - SifJar 7y ago
    I think when entering a store, it is reasonable to assume that there will be messages about the products carried in the store. I think it is much less reasonable to assume that there will be messages about products not carried in the store that "may" be relevant to customers there. Seems like quite a leap to me to suggest that consent to see the later type of message is implied by mere presence in the store; maybe this is exactly the point you are making, but I think by extension any advertisement seen anywhere is "consented" to by nature of being in the place (physical or virtual) where the advertisement is? On a side note, this seems more like "contextual advertising" rather than "targeted advertising"?
    - libertine 7y ago
      Sorry, but I missed your reply. Usually POS Advertising is indeed for products within the store, you just give an incentive to have your product being supported with visual display. Sometimes on those displays you have product lines ups, or products soon to be released - so those don't necessarily have to be available in store. I'm sure you've seen "Coming Soon"/"Pre-Order" signs. Advertising being displayed only needs the consentment of the owners of the media, and to follow all the legal terms of the country where it's being displayed. Because it's a message, and you only read/acknowledge a message if you want to, that's why consent on the on the part of the consumer for display doesn't seem right. >his seems more like "contextual advertising" rather than "targeted advertising" This is a matter of semantics, because for me contextual placement is a form of targeting. You target by context, and that was the premise of my first reply - they're quite broad terms to be generalized.
Allower 7y ago
BAN IT ALL. You and your kind are a scourge upon the earth.

jka 7y ago

What is targeted advertising needed for?

dx034 7y ago
To get information to those that are interested in it. While some dislike any kind of advertisment, many (me included) don't mind having ads, as long as they're not too intrusive and actually useful.
- jka 7y ago
  There are other ways that users can fulfill their information needs which don't require targeted advertising. You mention you don't mind ads; would you also prefer to be subject to targeted advertising rather than to have software running on your own device which displays equally-relevant reference material without sharing your personal data?
- dfxm12 7y ago
  But, you can't have targeted ads without some database out there tracking everything you do. A database that is ostensibly used to get information to you that you might find interesting, but in reality has been used for much worse, according to the article: proliferation of hateful and false content on social media & political manipulation, among others. This data is also an valuable target for ID thieves. The ads themselves aren't the problem here, nor is it really what's being discussed.
  - libertine 7y ago
    You had targeted advertising before the internet, it's simply less targeted and less granular, with more wastage. A quick example: if you wanted to reach health care works, or more precisely doctors, you'd advertising on magazines for health care professionals. Most of which were subscribed (name, birthday, profession, address, etc) - so you had already some data for some targeting. > in reality has been used for much worse, according to the article: proliferation of hateful and false content on social media & political manipulation, among others. This is where advertising is getting mixed with propaganda - those are very different things and the only cross section is that they are messages that use text, audio, images, video - in others words - they are distributed with audiovisual media. They have different legal obligations (depending on the country). What is lacking is regulation and fines for abuse of propaganda. The problem is that the sheer volume of content being produced is hard to regulate.
- zepto 7y ago
  “Interested” is Orwellian doublespeak. What advertisers care about is who is susceptible or vulnerable to persuasion.
eyeinthepyramid 7y ago
Perhaps to inform people about the goods and services that you offer that they might be interested in buying?
- ativzzz 7y ago
  Is this not what a search engine is for? When I want a good or service I'm interested in buying, I can search it, do my research, and/or find a place to buy it. I only want advertising when I explicitly opt into it. Otherwise, I never want to see an ad.
  - libertine 7y ago
    Do not forget that you represent a small minority of tech literate people. There's plenty of people that don't know how to properly use a search engine, hell there's plenty who don't know what a search engine is. Plus, search engines have a role in the consumer decision journey, but don't fulfill all the roles. Just to add up, with SEM (paid ads + SEO) search results have a big chance of being biased nowadays, and you should always take that into consideration.
    - ativzzz 7y ago
      > Do not forget that you represent a small minority of tech literate people. You're right haha, plus I'm more of a minimalist so I just want to have less stuff in general.
libertine 7y ago
Targeted advertising allows you to deliver specific messages to specific audiences, and by specific audiences I mean a narrow cluster of people that has the potential to have an interest in your brand. This allows you - the brand - to reduce wastage. And in theory, it should reduce Ad Fatigue in the audience. Wastage because every time you miss a potential audience member, or you reach a wrong person, you paid to deliver a message that won't be heard/read/seen. If you think about it, this adds up - even with targeted advertising. Ad Fatigue comes from you being shown advertising you have no interested in (why are you seeing bunions cream if you don't have bunions), or you see too many times the same ad you start to notice it for the wrong reasons (imagine you see a re targeted ad from amazon for a product you bought 3 weeks ago, and for 3 weeks you're seeing daily the same product being recommended to you). In theory, everyone should win with targeted ads, in reality, it's being abused and it's saturating consumers. Not only abused by brands, but also by a consumer behavior/culture that aims to spend more. You can argue that one fuels the other, well, I'm not so sure about that, because cultural shifts are too big to be the agenda of anyone. In my opinion, they feed on each other.
1123581321 7y ago
Ideally, advertising is a way for the seller (or teacher/advocate/government) to pay some of the buyer’s/researcher’s search costs. Targeted advertising lets the advertiser pay for part of more expensive searches. One of the problems with Google and Facebook is that they are businesses whose core product should be driving search costs very low, so they compromise their product so that their advertising remains valuable to close the gap.

stoev 7y ago

I think it’s well defined in the article - the author means behavioural advertising that has to do with targeting any information specific to the user (whether we consider that personal or not). The proposed alternative is contextual advertising which puts the targeting emphasis entirely on the context in which the ad is shown, not on the person seeing the ad. The idea is that if it is executed correctly, contextual targeting will lead to the same person anyway, just without sacrificing his or her privacy.

libertine 7y ago
I understand completely your argument, and the article argument - I've used plenty of contextual advertising, and it's better than what we call ROS (Run Of Site), but it's worst than targeting based on interests. But let me give you a inside view: there's been a war from major media groups to try to take down Facebook and Google (let's see what they come up with for Amazon). This solution for them is the best solution for news websites, that since 2013 have seen their advertising budgets being siphoned to Google and Facebook. All because they cannot compete with their level of data granularity - and trust me they tried! Hell some tried to build their own data systems to have more refined targeting. I can even tell you one of the solutions on the table was to force Google and Facebook to share their data with media groups. So this "white knight in shinning armor" article, despite showing valid arguments, is most definitely biased, because it's in their best interest that contextual advertising prevails and interest/behavioral falls. For years their agenda is to get back media investment from the big boys. So bare this in mind when you read these articles.
- stoev 7y ago
  Sure, it is in the author’s employer best interest for the industry to switch to contextual advertising. But it is also in the best interest of the end user. So why is that a bad thing? I also don’t believe that behavioural advertising is better by definition. Even the article mentions some research to prove the contrary. I’ve seen it from first-hand experience as well. Which, of course, is anecdotal. But what is not is the fact that the world’s largest and most profitable advertising product, Google Search, is completely reliant on contextual rather than behavioural targeting. The fact that publishers so far have not been able to do something about FB’s and Google’s duopoly doesn’t necessarily mean they will never be able to. Or at least I certainly hope that it doesn’t.

SifJar 7y ago

> A company that sells vegan supplements that places advertising in the POS (Point of Sale) is targeted advertising - why should we ban something that has the consent of everyone involved? Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but is the consumer also consenting?

libertine 7y ago
Unless they have no other choice to buy from, they enter the shop by their own terms and can leave any time. Unless you're trying to say that the consumer didn't consent to have messages being displayed around him, and this is just once again too broad... the solution would be any media (or for the sake of simplicity, any surface) would need to be plain white with no text. Walls, shelves, windows, clothing of staff, even products on display.
- SifJar 7y ago
  I think when entering a store, it is reasonable to assume that there will be messages about the products carried in the store. I think it is much less reasonable to assume that there will be messages about products not carried in the store that "may" be relevant to customers there. Seems like quite a leap to me to suggest that consent to see the later type of message is implied by mere presence in the store; maybe this is exactly the point you are making, but I think by extension any advertisement seen anywhere is "consented" to by nature of being in the place (physical or virtual) where the advertisement is? On a side note, this seems more like "contextual advertising" rather than "targeted advertising"?
  - libertine 7y ago
    Sorry, but I missed your reply. Usually POS Advertising is indeed for products within the store, you just give an incentive to have your product being supported with visual display. Sometimes on those displays you have product lines ups, or products soon to be released - so those don't necessarily have to be available in store. I'm sure you've seen "Coming Soon"/"Pre-Order" signs. Advertising being displayed only needs the consentment of the owners of the media, and to follow all the legal terms of the country where it's being displayed. Because it's a message, and you only read/acknowledge a message if you want to, that's why consent on the on the part of the consumer for display doesn't seem right. >his seems more like "contextual advertising" rather than "targeted advertising" This is a matter of semantics, because for me contextual placement is a form of targeting. You target by context, and that was the premise of my first reply - they're quite broad terms to be generalized.

Allower 7y ago

BAN IT ALL. You and your kind are a scourge upon the earth.