7 ms·

Presumably because the ads are already hyper targeted, because the site is written in Dutch! Now imagine you run an English ad for say, a local micro brewery i

by smabie 6y ago

Presumably because the ads are already hyper targeted, because the site is written in Dutch! Now imagine you run an English ad for say, a local micro brewery in LA. It's totally obvious that you don't want to waste money on people who don't drink, don't live in America, or are 12 years old. Clearly there's significant diminishing returns to how specifically you target, but it's completely ridiculous to claim that untargeted ads are even a fraction as good.

Retric 6y ago
It better for the people buying advertising is not the same thing as better for people selling advertising.
- amadeuspagel 6y ago
  Yes it is. The people selling advertising aren't stupid.
  - zeepzeep 6y ago
    The smartest people in the world are trying to get you to click on an ad. Imagine what they could do.
  - Retric 6y ago
    It’s a question of how informed buyers are as information asymmetry often works in the sellers favor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry It might not always be true in every case, but in this specific case it seems to be.
    - amadeuspagel 6y ago
      But in this case, the buyer can buy from many other sellers, where they get the information they want.
      - Retric 6y ago
        A segment of buyers may make that choice, but they don’t have to sell to every buyer. And again, the data backs up the assertion.
mfontani 6y ago
I think the implication is that using the context of the page to serve ads to users (i.e. you're reading an article on beer, so I'm serving you an ad about beers) is better than using context about the user to serve ads (i.e. you're reading an article about beers, and I'm serving you ads about that one item you've searched on Amazon last week).
- aequitas 6y ago
  > and I'm serving you ads about that one item you've searched on Amazon last week) As a side note, Amazon is not that big yet in the Netherlands so it would probably be something searched on Bol.com. The problem I'm having with ads nowadays, besides that they are indeed often out of context, is that they are far to late and outdated. Because most times advertisements for a product start to appear when I already bought said item. So for me if they do tracing in a sense I'd rather have them double down on it and provide real 'value' to me in their ads. But I still prefer no tracking at all.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 6y ago
    But they can’t predict the future so the ads will always be bad. Targeted ads would probably work best in categories of things that you buy regularly, like snacks. I’m not sure how they’d get that sort of information though.
    - fendy3002 6y ago
      Or restaurants / food chains. One for sure is to target people (esp teenagers / working age) who search for malls, parks or shopping districts.
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      > Targeted ads would probably work best in categories of things that you buy regularly, like snacks. If you show me an ad for something I already buy regularly, are you hoping it will cause me to increase my habitual amount? That doesn't really sound like an effective ad.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
learnstats2 6y ago
Are you trying to say that the 24 million Dutch-speaking people are all adults who drink?
- eru 6y ago
  Some of them are children who drink. (But they can only drink in private with eg their parents. Purchases are limited to 18+ year olds.)
  - irishsultan 6y ago
    16+ year olds for about 6 million speakers of Dutch
    - eru 6y ago
      They recently changed the law and increased minimum purchasing age to 18.
      - irishsultan 6y ago
        Not according to this site: https://www.vlaanderen.be/regels-voor-verkoop-van-alcohol https://www.vlaanderen.be/regels-voor-verkoop-van-alcohol
        eru 6y ago
        That's a Belgian site. I am going by Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_drinking_age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_drinking_age and their sources. If that's wrong, please correct the Wikipedia page.
        irishsultan 6y ago
        I was talking about Belgium (note how that site is in Dutch and the number of 6 million approx. matches the number of people speaking Dutch in Belgium, while it doesn't match the number of people speaking Dutch in the Netherlands at all).
simias 6y ago
The Nederlands are obviously tiny compared to the USA but an untargetted ad for a micro-brewery in Rotterdam is going to have a massive miss ratio. "People who speak Dutch" is in no way "hyper targeted".
- C1sc0cat 6y ago
  Exactly you have to consider Flemish speakers in Belgium and you might even have a nl-nl page and be-nl page. Flemish doesn't have it's own language code BTW
treeman79 6y ago
Often hyper targeted ads are effective but the ad manager can’t spend their budget due to small audience size. Also anti bot tactics will cut down on ads served. Sometimes manager is willing to lose efficiency for more overall exposure.
contravariant 6y ago
There's a pretty significant difference between tracking and targetting. It's pretty easy to limit an ad to a geographic area and target audience (to some degree of accuracy), you don't need to store any personal information to achieve this. However that is very different from tracking someone's identity to figure out their date of birth, nationality, and whether they drink alcohol.
brnt 6y ago
The Netherlands are small, but not that small ;) Not all New Yorkers will be lumped in a single group either, right?
levosmetalo 6y ago
If top HN comment completely misses the point on targeting and shows zero understanding what does it mean, and also considers "site is in Dutch" as "hyper targeted" what chance have an average marketer to properly set targeting goal for an ad? Average site can profit more from untargeted ads than from the wrongly targeted ads set by the "ad experts", especialy after saving the costs of hiring such "experts".
- libertine 6y ago
  Funny or not, you have to take into account HN context (ah!), where the great majority of users thinks marketing is a scam and hate advertising (here comes the downvotes...) - and they have reasons to feel like that. We've been flooded by bad professionals that give a bad rep to the craft. They can profit more because they don't need any third party tech provider that take bites out of their inventory margin, or are not being forced into bidding their inventory and they set the prices they want. It's smart on the publisher part, but they end up falling into 3rd parties because of the times they have inventory not being monetized (money lost).
  - marcosdumay 6y ago
    That's the concerning part. For centuries publications sourced ads to finance them just by themselves. But suddenly we got those worldwide ad auction houses that monopolize the market, and now nobody can source their own ads anymore, because the buyers are all on the auction houses. They shouldn't have more unsold inventory than if they got the alternative.
    - Spooky23 6y ago
      You make a good point about the marketplace dictating the market. In my hometown there is a weekly newspaper that is still going strong, that can support a half dozen employees, etc. All with direct ads for B2C and B2B local businesses and legal notices. It's interesting, as that business model would absolutely not work with an online platform, as it's a general interest publication that's highly local. There's no way for the local high-tensile fence contractor or well digger to generate ROI on Google. Ditto with the supermarket -- the weekly ad in the Sunday paper is very effective IMO, and superior to the online presentation in almost every way.
edoloughlin 6y ago
Presumably because the ads are already hyper targeted, because the site is written in Dutch! Presumably the site was also written in Dutch before they stopped tracking users?
rightbyte 6y ago
You need to take into account what Google charges for giving you the opportunity for somewhat accurately targeted ads. Clearly, it can be cheaper to just show ads for everyone if Googles fees are to high for the value Google provide.
Spooky23 6y ago
Why would it be a waste of money? If the market is such that there is an ROI for telling a global audience about your microbrewery, why not? Most of the tracking issues are IMO about making more inventory available to platforms and have little to do with advertiser needs. I'm not in the business, but I remember in the olden days, the content-centric nature of Google AdWords was the magic. In a perfect world, I'd see ads for brewpubs in my town. The reality is usually some sort of lame Amazon/Ebay/etc retarget attempt. These ads are low value and low revenue -- they are the equivalent of the Karate Dojo in a rundown stripmall.
itsoktocry 6y ago
>It's totally obvious that you don't want to waste money on people who don't drink, don't live in America, or are 12 years old. This is a problem when you're trying to advertise in the garden of the advertiser's own making (ie Facebook). Otherwise, you're not going to be advertising your microbrewery on a children's blog. >but it's completely ridiculous to claim that untargeted ads are even a fraction as good. Advertising has never been truly "untargeted". I think the onus is on the targeted marketers to produce the data that their results are orders of magnitude better.

by smabie 6y ago

Retric 6y ago

It better for the people buying advertising is not the same thing as better for people selling advertising.

amadeuspagel 6y ago
Yes it is. The people selling advertising aren't stupid.
- zeepzeep 6y ago
  The smartest people in the world are trying to get you to click on an ad. Imagine what they could do.
- Retric 6y ago
  It’s a question of how informed buyers are as information asymmetry often works in the sellers favor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry It might not always be true in every case, but in this specific case it seems to be.
  - amadeuspagel 6y ago
    But in this case, the buyer can buy from many other sellers, where they get the information they want.
    - Retric 6y ago
      A segment of buyers may make that choice, but they don’t have to sell to every buyer. And again, the data backs up the assertion.

mfontani 6y ago

I think the implication is that using the context of the page to serve ads to users (i.e. you're reading an article on beer, so I'm serving you an ad about beers) is better than using context about the user to serve ads (i.e. you're reading an article about beers, and I'm serving you ads about that one item you've searched on Amazon last week).

aequitas 6y ago
> and I'm serving you ads about that one item you've searched on Amazon last week) As a side note, Amazon is not that big yet in the Netherlands so it would probably be something searched on Bol.com. The problem I'm having with ads nowadays, besides that they are indeed often out of context, is that they are far to late and outdated. Because most times advertisements for a product start to appear when I already bought said item. So for me if they do tracing in a sense I'd rather have them double down on it and provide real 'value' to me in their ads. But I still prefer no tracking at all.
- 2muchcoffeeman 6y ago
  But they can’t predict the future so the ads will always be bad. Targeted ads would probably work best in categories of things that you buy regularly, like snacks. I’m not sure how they’d get that sort of information though.
  - fendy3002 6y ago
    Or restaurants / food chains. One for sure is to target people (esp teenagers / working age) who search for malls, parks or shopping districts.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    > Targeted ads would probably work best in categories of things that you buy regularly, like snacks. If you show me an ad for something I already buy regularly, are you hoping it will cause me to increase my habitual amount? That doesn't really sound like an effective ad.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

learnstats2 6y ago

Are you trying to say that the 24 million Dutch-speaking people are all adults who drink?

eru 6y ago
Some of them are children who drink. (But they can only drink in private with eg their parents. Purchases are limited to 18+ year olds.)
- irishsultan 6y ago
  16+ year olds for about 6 million speakers of Dutch
  - eru 6y ago
    They recently changed the law and increased minimum purchasing age to 18.
    - irishsultan 6y ago
      Not according to this site: https://www.vlaanderen.be/regels-voor-verkoop-van-alcohol https://www.vlaanderen.be/regels-voor-verkoop-van-alcohol
      - eru 6y ago
        That's a Belgian site. I am going by Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_drinking_age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_drinking_age and their sources. If that's wrong, please correct the Wikipedia page.
        irishsultan 6y ago
        I was talking about Belgium (note how that site is in Dutch and the number of 6 million approx. matches the number of people speaking Dutch in Belgium, while it doesn't match the number of people speaking Dutch in the Netherlands at all).

simias 6y ago

The Nederlands are obviously tiny compared to the USA but an untargetted ad for a micro-brewery in Rotterdam is going to have a massive miss ratio. "People who speak Dutch" is in no way "hyper targeted".

C1sc0cat 6y ago
Exactly you have to consider Flemish speakers in Belgium and you might even have a nl-nl page and be-nl page. Flemish doesn't have it's own language code BTW

treeman79 6y ago

Often hyper targeted ads are effective but the ad manager can’t spend their budget due to small audience size. Also anti bot tactics will cut down on ads served. Sometimes manager is willing to lose efficiency for more overall exposure.

contravariant 6y ago

There's a pretty significant difference between tracking and targetting. It's pretty easy to limit an ad to a geographic area and target audience (to some degree of accuracy), you don't need to store any personal information to achieve this. However that is very different from tracking someone's identity to figure out their date of birth, nationality, and whether they drink alcohol.

brnt 6y ago

The Netherlands are small, but not that small ;) Not all New Yorkers will be lumped in a single group either, right?

levosmetalo 6y ago

If top HN comment completely misses the point on targeting and shows zero understanding what does it mean, and also considers "site is in Dutch" as "hyper targeted" what chance have an average marketer to properly set targeting goal for an ad? Average site can profit more from untargeted ads than from the wrongly targeted ads set by the "ad experts", especialy after saving the costs of hiring such "experts".

libertine 6y ago
Funny or not, you have to take into account HN context (ah!), where the great majority of users thinks marketing is a scam and hate advertising (here comes the downvotes...) - and they have reasons to feel like that. We've been flooded by bad professionals that give a bad rep to the craft. They can profit more because they don't need any third party tech provider that take bites out of their inventory margin, or are not being forced into bidding their inventory and they set the prices they want. It's smart on the publisher part, but they end up falling into 3rd parties because of the times they have inventory not being monetized (money lost).
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  That's the concerning part. For centuries publications sourced ads to finance them just by themselves. But suddenly we got those worldwide ad auction houses that monopolize the market, and now nobody can source their own ads anymore, because the buyers are all on the auction houses. They shouldn't have more unsold inventory than if they got the alternative.
  - Spooky23 6y ago
    You make a good point about the marketplace dictating the market. In my hometown there is a weekly newspaper that is still going strong, that can support a half dozen employees, etc. All with direct ads for B2C and B2B local businesses and legal notices. It's interesting, as that business model would absolutely not work with an online platform, as it's a general interest publication that's highly local. There's no way for the local high-tensile fence contractor or well digger to generate ROI on Google. Ditto with the supermarket -- the weekly ad in the Sunday paper is very effective IMO, and superior to the online presentation in almost every way.

edoloughlin 6y ago

Presumably because the ads are already hyper targeted, because the site is written in Dutch! Presumably the site was also written in Dutch before they stopped tracking users?

rightbyte 6y ago

You need to take into account what Google charges for giving you the opportunity for somewhat accurately targeted ads. Clearly, it can be cheaper to just show ads for everyone if Googles fees are to high for the value Google provide.

Spooky23 6y ago

Why would it be a waste of money? If the market is such that there is an ROI for telling a global audience about your microbrewery, why not? Most of the tracking issues are IMO about making more inventory available to platforms and have little to do with advertiser needs. I'm not in the business, but I remember in the olden days, the content-centric nature of Google AdWords was the magic. In a perfect world, I'd see ads for brewpubs in my town. The reality is usually some sort of lame Amazon/Ebay/etc retarget attempt. These ads are low value and low revenue -- they are the equivalent of the Karate Dojo in a rundown stripmall.

itsoktocry 6y ago

>It's totally obvious that you don't want to waste money on people who don't drink, don't live in America, or are 12 years old. This is a problem when you're trying to advertise in the garden of the advertiser's own making (ie Facebook). Otherwise, you're not going to be advertising your microbrewery on a children's blog. >but it's completely ridiculous to claim that untargeted ads are even a fraction as good. Advertising has never been truly "untargeted". I think the onus is on the targeted marketers to produce the data that their results are orders of magnitude better.