5 ms·

This shouldn't even be a devil's advocate point of view. Targeted advertisements have been just about the greatest value-add in the world of business in maybe t

This shouldn't even be a devil's advocate point of view. Targeted advertisements have been just about the greatest value-add in the world of business in maybe the last twenty years. Imagine if you couldnt target advertisements. Imagine the waste. European baby formula manufacturers advertising to middle aged single men in Wyoming shouldn't happen, and it's because targeted advertising that we prevent that waste. We are all better off for it.

austinjp 7y ago
Can't tell if sarcastic.... squints How about this: everyone already knows what they need and where to get it. That really reduces the infernal waste of advertising completely.
- Jagat 7y ago
  >> everyone already knows what they need and where to get it. You're overestimating people ability to know what they want, and moreso where to get it.
  - erentz 7y ago
    If they didn’t know they wanted it before an advertisement played on their psychology to make them feel they needed it, then they didn’t really want it. And if they did know they wanted before the advertisement, then they’d go look for it at a store, online or otherwise, or in a catalogue, or so on.
- avalys 7y ago
  No one really needs anything except oxygen, food and water. Everything else is a want. Sometimes people invent things that others want, but that others don't know about yet. That's what advertising is for.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    Why can't they target the ad to content instead of to people?
  - amelius 7y ago
    Wouldn't it be better for the planet if people didn't want stuff they didn't even know about?
karatestomp 7y ago
That didn’t happen a ton before the Internet anyway, because even if you can’t profile individuals you can profile a readership accurately enough not to make a mistake that bad very frequently. That just requires having a decent guess of who’s reading something and where it’s distributed, not tracking every individual reader. Ditto billboards and such. Don’t advertise your European product on a highway sign in Wyoming and you solve the geography problem. Post your for-sale ad for a tractor in the ag paper you see at your local feed shop. Doesn’t take tracking anyone to do that.
- missedthecue 7y ago
  Targeted advertisements on highway billboards didn't exist in 1990 and they don't exist today. However, on the internet, there is no controlling who sees or clicks on your advert without targeting controls, hence why said targeting controls are a godsend and should be protected.
  - karatestomp 7y ago
    Right, individual targeting before the Internet was basically limited to mail. But a billboard is still targeted to a population! There are different ads on billboard in Times Square versus a rural stretch of Nevada interstate for a reason. You can control which sites you’re paying to run your ad on the Internet, just like anywhere else. The idea that internet advertising must be wholly indiscriminate without spying on and targeting individuals is absurd.
amelius 7y ago
> Imagine if you couldnt target advertisements. Imagine the waste. Following your argument, the world 30 years ago (when we didn't have targeted ads) would have been a terrible place. Perhaps you should explain why it wasn't. To me it only means that advertising in itself is not really advantageous, except if everybody else is doing it. It's like a prisoners' dilemma for companies and we are all paying the price in the form of more expensive products, but also in the form of more consumerism.
- repsilat 7y ago
  Advertising was targeted then. TV ads were bought by geography, channel and timeslot. Newspaper ads targeted people who read newspapers, radio ads targeted people by channel and time of day, billboards by geography etc etc. All of those things made the world a better place, as did the targetability of common-sense regulations around advertising to children during their regularly scheduled TV-watching timeslots.
  - amelius 7y ago
    I'm aware of that, but we're talking about personalized ads based on internet tracking. I think most would agree that there is a huge difference with the type of advertising you are talking about. In fact, I think many people here including me would think that the advertising model of 30 years ago was okay/acceptable compared to what it is now. Regarding children needing protection against any kind of ads, that's a good point, but dropping targeted ads does not mean we would need to drop targetability of regulations as you put it.
jlbnjmn 7y ago
Unfortunately, targeted ads have been around far longer than the internet. The direct mail industry was booming for decades. That said, it's ENTIRELY possible to target ads based on intent or interest without tracking individual users. If a European baby formula company wants to sell more product they could buy ads that show up when someone searches for baby formula {intent} or run ads on childbirth YouTube channels {interest}. If a middle aged man from Wyoming sees those ads, he would have been mis-targeted regardless.

austinjp 7y ago

Can't tell if sarcastic.... squints How about this: everyone already knows what they need and where to get it. That really reduces the infernal waste of advertising completely.

Jagat 7y ago
>> everyone already knows what they need and where to get it. You're overestimating people ability to know what they want, and moreso where to get it.
- erentz 7y ago
  If they didn’t know they wanted it before an advertisement played on their psychology to make them feel they needed it, then they didn’t really want it. And if they did know they wanted before the advertisement, then they’d go look for it at a store, online or otherwise, or in a catalogue, or so on.
avalys 7y ago
No one really needs anything except oxygen, food and water. Everything else is a want. Sometimes people invent things that others want, but that others don't know about yet. That's what advertising is for.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Why can't they target the ad to content instead of to people?
- amelius 7y ago
  Wouldn't it be better for the planet if people didn't want stuff they didn't even know about?

karatestomp 7y ago

That didn’t happen a ton before the Internet anyway, because even if you can’t profile individuals you can profile a readership accurately enough not to make a mistake that bad very frequently. That just requires having a decent guess of who’s reading something and where it’s distributed, not tracking every individual reader. Ditto billboards and such. Don’t advertise your European product on a highway sign in Wyoming and you solve the geography problem. Post your for-sale ad for a tractor in the ag paper you see at your local feed shop. Doesn’t take tracking anyone to do that.

missedthecue 7y ago
Targeted advertisements on highway billboards didn't exist in 1990 and they don't exist today. However, on the internet, there is no controlling who sees or clicks on your advert without targeting controls, hence why said targeting controls are a godsend and should be protected.
- karatestomp 7y ago
  Right, individual targeting before the Internet was basically limited to mail. But a billboard is still targeted to a population! There are different ads on billboard in Times Square versus a rural stretch of Nevada interstate for a reason. You can control which sites you’re paying to run your ad on the Internet, just like anywhere else. The idea that internet advertising must be wholly indiscriminate without spying on and targeting individuals is absurd.

amelius 7y ago

> Imagine if you couldnt target advertisements. Imagine the waste. Following your argument, the world 30 years ago (when we didn't have targeted ads) would have been a terrible place. Perhaps you should explain why it wasn't. To me it only means that advertising in itself is not really advantageous, except if everybody else is doing it. It's like a prisoners' dilemma for companies and we are all paying the price in the form of more expensive products, but also in the form of more consumerism.

repsilat 7y ago
Advertising was targeted then. TV ads were bought by geography, channel and timeslot. Newspaper ads targeted people who read newspapers, radio ads targeted people by channel and time of day, billboards by geography etc etc. All of those things made the world a better place, as did the targetability of common-sense regulations around advertising to children during their regularly scheduled TV-watching timeslots.
- amelius 7y ago
  I'm aware of that, but we're talking about personalized ads based on internet tracking. I think most would agree that there is a huge difference with the type of advertising you are talking about. In fact, I think many people here including me would think that the advertising model of 30 years ago was okay/acceptable compared to what it is now. Regarding children needing protection against any kind of ads, that's a good point, but dropping targeted ads does not mean we would need to drop targetability of regulations as you put it.

jlbnjmn 7y ago

Unfortunately, targeted ads have been around far longer than the internet. The direct mail industry was booming for decades. That said, it's ENTIRELY possible to target ads based on intent or interest without tracking individual users. If a European baby formula company wants to sell more product they could buy ads that show up when someone searches for baby formula {intent} or run ads on childbirth YouTube channels {interest}. If a middle aged man from Wyoming sees those ads, he would have been mis-targeted regardless.