4 ms·

I think it's a little ironic people are so concerned about this kind of thing because so much of what annoys us about advertising is ads that are not relevant t

by jp555 6y ago

I think it's a little ironic people are so concerned about this kind of thing because so much of what annoys us about advertising is ads that are not relevant to us - due to the limits of targeting. Ads that are extremely relevant are not even considered adverting to us in the moment. Wont better targeting provide more of this sense and a perception of fewer ads overall?

criddell 6y ago
I find targeted ads extremely creepy. It's like I'm being stalked. I now turn off personalized ads wherever I can. Any politician that talks about regulating what data can be collected and how it can be used will probably get my vote. I want to see my browsing data protected as well as my video rental data.
tetraca 6y ago
I don't want to be sold products. I don't care how "relevant" it is to the particular subset of people I most resemble. I want precisely the information I asked for, and no more. Every bit of information extraneous to that, is another piece of garbage I have to wade through to figure out whatever I actually wanted to know or do. The most frustrating ads are ones that don't make themselves clear that they're trying to sell me something until the end and waste my time, when I have zero intention or desire of ever buying something to solve a particular problem. Or the websites that write content that is almost useful, just to get as many eyeballs on its ads as possible. Ads are the slurry of microplastic on the sea of information, of benefit only to whoever dumped them in the first place. And if I'm enjoying a fictional work, I certainly don't want to be interrupted with another person hocking another piece of junk, or worse, integrating the ads into the story and having Gandalf trying to sell me on Pepsi.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  > I want precisely the information I asked for, and no more. Are you willing to pay for access to that information? Because ultimately whoever is providing content wants to be compensated for their time. I agree with your sentiment, but there is also a pragmatism here. (FWIW I am willing to pay for, ad free content and don't believe tracking/ profiling should be part of advertising or even legal without consent.
  - tetraca 6y ago
    I'm essentially in the same boat as you -- I'm willing to pay for content as I do for my books, or support free sources of information as I might for Wikipedia. The siren song of the advertiser is hard to fight though, even if many people are willing to pay the price for a quality product. The Faustian bargain that I presume leads to this mess: Any ad-free informational product could probably reach a wider audience and thus pump up revenue, if they traded some of their up front cost in exchange for a few modest ad slots or selling a little customer information here or there (To some degree paid users would put up with these things even without any subsidy to their subscription whatsoever, so it could also be directly pocketed).
rbecker 6y ago
Until a company starts using this same data to screen prospective employees for unionization risk, or uses purchasing history to identify and filter vegans from slaughterhouse jobs, so there's less risk of those animal cruelty videos getting out. Or show you higher prices online if they determine you're willing to spend more [1]. Or... Or are they doing that already? How would you know? [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323777204578189391813881534 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323777204578189...
- jp555 6y ago
  User data must be kept secret to be valuable. Facebook only makes money if it keeps user data mostly secret from advertisers.
  - klmadfejno 6y ago
    That's because Facebook sells ad space. There are companies that don't do this, and are happy to sell your information. Like, say, the California DMV...
    - jp555 6y ago
      Is the California DMV a private company?
      - klmadfejno 6y ago
        Obviously not, but the point was snide humor. Do you really not believe there are private companies which sell personal data?
        jp555 6y ago
        Sure, CC companies have been doing it since the 1950s. But only aggregate data has any value. Advertisers care a lot more about finding a large group of potential buyers than individuals. Something like the more data you have the less detail you know, because noise expands faster than signal.
klmadfejno 6y ago
> Wont better targeting provide more of this sense and a perception of fewer ads overall? No. If you're say, a video game lover, you're still a potential customer for a number of things you don't really care about. Ads don't target things you like, they target things you might be convinced to buy. If you want to find interesting, relevant ads, you'd be better off having no targeting, and finding domain relevant ads. E.g. video game ads on video game sites, rather than ads for the toaster you bought on amazon 3 months ago or women's underwear because your spouse made a quick search on your phone.
- jp555 6y ago
  You're describing examples of the problems of poor targeting.
  - AlexandrB 6y ago
    I like plants. But I don't get ads for plants, instead I get ads for stupid plant-related gizmos. Why? Because the plant "market" is not online, and is much less lucrative than the gizmo market. There's no amount of tracking that can fix mismatches between commercial and human interests. Or to put it another way: the best things in life are free, ad space is not.
  - klmadfejno 6y ago
    What I'm describing is the best targeting that a massive dedication of the top engineering talent in the planet is capable of. Perhaps if we gave them even more personal information, like a list of all my purchases, they would know not to sell me the toaster I already bought. That doesn't mean there's a market for "good" ads that could reach me instead. Previously I used video games as an example. Let's choose something more mundane. If I have a pet cat, I still don't want to read ads about cat food. I don't want ads about litter. I don't want ads about stupid cat toys. Or pet cameras. Or pet photos. Or pet grooming services. Or more cats. I don't want your fucking ads at all. Your targeting isn't wrong, but that doesn't make it pleasant. Everyone needs toilet paper. I don't want toilet paper ads. And then on top of all that, cat product companies get outbid by some sketchy financial company trying to get me to refinance a mortgage because the margin on that is way higher.
wzdd 6y ago
> so much of what annoys us about advertising is ads that are not relevant to us What makes you think this? That's not what annoys me about advertising.
- Loughla 6y ago
  And I've literally never seen that as an argument, outside of chuckles from friends who have their advertising personalization turned off. Complaints about ads, as I can tell it, are: they're everywhere all the time on everything and in the way of content a lot of the time.
ydlr 6y ago
If I complain about poorly targeted ads, it's because I am shocked that the targeting can be so useless even with the disgusting level of surveillance. It is not an invitation for even more intrusive spying. It is an invitation to give up and leave me alone.
ClikeX 6y ago
I've never heard anyone complain about how irrelevent their ads were. Only complaints about the rampant amount of ads.
Nursie 6y ago
No. I want no ads, at all. Ads and advertisers insinuate themselves into every goddamn situation, they destroy trust in human communications by introducing a profit motive f*cking everywhere, and they degrade every experience they're part of. No tracking, no ads, go away.
- danielscrubs 6y ago
  Was searching for accuracy in modern sleep trackers and smartwatches. Couldn’t find anything except a youtuber from Vienna which had an amazing confusion matrix to show in a video. All the articles I found where basically:”buy buy buy! Look at the features! Oh heres the affiliate link...” I remember having a Polar heart monitor that said that my table had 67 beats per minute... best of class, so many features! So I concur, ads are ruining everything.
reportgunner 6y ago
> so much of what annoys us about advertising is ads that are not relevant to us What ? How do you even decide what is relevant for you and what is not yourself ? I never think about ads being relevant or not, they are always annoying. My attention is not unlimited and I certainly don't like others profiting from it. edit: Well I guess we could agree that if I get ads and I'm in category "I want 0 ads" it is indeed a case of poor targeting.

by jp555 6y ago

criddell 6y ago

I find targeted ads extremely creepy. It's like I'm being stalked. I now turn off personalized ads wherever I can. Any politician that talks about regulating what data can be collected and how it can be used will probably get my vote. I want to see my browsing data protected as well as my video rental data.

tetraca 6y ago

I don't want to be sold products. I don't care how "relevant" it is to the particular subset of people I most resemble. I want precisely the information I asked for, and no more. Every bit of information extraneous to that, is another piece of garbage I have to wade through to figure out whatever I actually wanted to know or do. The most frustrating ads are ones that don't make themselves clear that they're trying to sell me something until the end and waste my time, when I have zero intention or desire of ever buying something to solve a particular problem. Or the websites that write content that is almost useful, just to get as many eyeballs on its ads as possible. Ads are the slurry of microplastic on the sea of information, of benefit only to whoever dumped them in the first place. And if I'm enjoying a fictional work, I certainly don't want to be interrupted with another person hocking another piece of junk, or worse, integrating the ads into the story and having Gandalf trying to sell me on Pepsi.

ogre_codes 6y ago
> I want precisely the information I asked for, and no more. Are you willing to pay for access to that information? Because ultimately whoever is providing content wants to be compensated for their time. I agree with your sentiment, but there is also a pragmatism here. (FWIW I am willing to pay for, ad free content and don't believe tracking/ profiling should be part of advertising or even legal without consent.
- tetraca 6y ago
  I'm essentially in the same boat as you -- I'm willing to pay for content as I do for my books, or support free sources of information as I might for Wikipedia. The siren song of the advertiser is hard to fight though, even if many people are willing to pay the price for a quality product. The Faustian bargain that I presume leads to this mess: Any ad-free informational product could probably reach a wider audience and thus pump up revenue, if they traded some of their up front cost in exchange for a few modest ad slots or selling a little customer information here or there (To some degree paid users would put up with these things even without any subsidy to their subscription whatsoever, so it could also be directly pocketed).

rbecker 6y ago

Until a company starts using this same data to screen prospective employees for unionization risk, or uses purchasing history to identify and filter vegans from slaughterhouse jobs, so there's less risk of those animal cruelty videos getting out. Or show you higher prices online if they determine you're willing to spend more [1]. Or... Or are they doing that already? How would you know? [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323777204578189391813881534 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323777204578189...

jp555 6y ago
User data must be kept secret to be valuable. Facebook only makes money if it keeps user data mostly secret from advertisers.
- klmadfejno 6y ago
  That's because Facebook sells ad space. There are companies that don't do this, and are happy to sell your information. Like, say, the California DMV...
  - jp555 6y ago
    Is the California DMV a private company?
    - klmadfejno 6y ago
      Obviously not, but the point was snide humor. Do you really not believe there are private companies which sell personal data?
      - jp555 6y ago
        Sure, CC companies have been doing it since the 1950s. But only aggregate data has any value. Advertisers care a lot more about finding a large group of potential buyers than individuals. Something like the more data you have the less detail you know, because noise expands faster than signal.

klmadfejno 6y ago

> Wont better targeting provide more of this sense and a perception of fewer ads overall? No. If you're say, a video game lover, you're still a potential customer for a number of things you don't really care about. Ads don't target things you like, they target things you might be convinced to buy. If you want to find interesting, relevant ads, you'd be better off having no targeting, and finding domain relevant ads. E.g. video game ads on video game sites, rather than ads for the toaster you bought on amazon 3 months ago or women's underwear because your spouse made a quick search on your phone.

jp555 6y ago
You're describing examples of the problems of poor targeting.
- AlexandrB 6y ago
  I like plants. But I don't get ads for plants, instead I get ads for stupid plant-related gizmos. Why? Because the plant "market" is not online, and is much less lucrative than the gizmo market. There's no amount of tracking that can fix mismatches between commercial and human interests. Or to put it another way: the best things in life are free, ad space is not.
- klmadfejno 6y ago
  What I'm describing is the best targeting that a massive dedication of the top engineering talent in the planet is capable of. Perhaps if we gave them even more personal information, like a list of all my purchases, they would know not to sell me the toaster I already bought. That doesn't mean there's a market for "good" ads that could reach me instead. Previously I used video games as an example. Let's choose something more mundane. If I have a pet cat, I still don't want to read ads about cat food. I don't want ads about litter. I don't want ads about stupid cat toys. Or pet cameras. Or pet photos. Or pet grooming services. Or more cats. I don't want your fucking ads at all. Your targeting isn't wrong, but that doesn't make it pleasant. Everyone needs toilet paper. I don't want toilet paper ads. And then on top of all that, cat product companies get outbid by some sketchy financial company trying to get me to refinance a mortgage because the margin on that is way higher.

wzdd 6y ago

> so much of what annoys us about advertising is ads that are not relevant to us What makes you think this? That's not what annoys me about advertising.

Loughla 6y ago
And I've literally never seen that as an argument, outside of chuckles from friends who have their advertising personalization turned off. Complaints about ads, as I can tell it, are: they're everywhere all the time on everything and in the way of content a lot of the time.

ydlr 6y ago

If I complain about poorly targeted ads, it's because I am shocked that the targeting can be so useless even with the disgusting level of surveillance. It is not an invitation for even more intrusive spying. It is an invitation to give up and leave me alone.

ClikeX 6y ago

I've never heard anyone complain about how irrelevent their ads were. Only complaints about the rampant amount of ads.

Nursie 6y ago

No. I want no ads, at all. Ads and advertisers insinuate themselves into every goddamn situation, they destroy trust in human communications by introducing a profit motive f*cking everywhere, and they degrade every experience they're part of. No tracking, no ads, go away.

danielscrubs 6y ago
Was searching for accuracy in modern sleep trackers and smartwatches. Couldn’t find anything except a youtuber from Vienna which had an amazing confusion matrix to show in a video. All the articles I found where basically:”buy buy buy! Look at the features! Oh heres the affiliate link...” I remember having a Polar heart monitor that said that my table had 67 beats per minute... best of class, so many features! So I concur, ads are ruining everything.

reportgunner 6y ago

> so much of what annoys us about advertising is ads that are not relevant to us What ? How do you even decide what is relevant for you and what is not yourself ? I never think about ads being relevant or not, they are always annoying. My attention is not unlimited and I certainly don't like others profiting from it. edit: Well I guess we could agree that if I get ads and I'm in category "I want 0 ads" it is indeed a case of poor targeting.