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So that the ads are more personalized. I know this sounds weird, but if I'm going to get ads anyway, I'd like them to potentially be products I'm going to maybe

So that the ads are more personalized. I know this sounds weird, but if I'm going to get ads anyway, I'd like them to potentially be products I'm going to maybe have a use for and might make my life easier. I get the privacy implications, but asking "why would anyone agree to this" is kind of narrow-minded.

dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
Tracking aside, I prefer not to have "personalized" ads for two reasons. First, they create another bubble based on their perception of me. Second, their personalization is so poor I sometimes wonder how come advertisers believe them. And this is all assuming you actually want to see ads. I don't. It's only when I need to buy something I enter the buying mode: I disable adblockers and start doing research - this is the only small window when ads are allowed to bother me.
- ryanianian 6y ago
  If ads weren't clickbait, obnoxious, or misleading (and didn't violate your privacy) you may find yourself more open to seeing them. Even if they're not always super relevant to you and only you. Respectful advertising will always have its place whenever the buyer has a choice. It's when the companies selling those ads learn how to manipulate their audience that the 'respectful' parts of the equation get dropped and consumers start to push back. My Kindle shows me ads. I could pay to opt out, but I actually like the way it handles them. My (former) Alexa on the other hand was IN MY FACE with ads whenever I wanted to even just set a timer. That is grossly disrespectful of me as a human being, so it was shown the door.
  - HenryBemis 6y ago
    > My Kindle shows me ads I have no experience on Kindles, but on my Amazon Fire HD, I have rooted it, uninstall 50-60% of the bloatware, I have installed "NoRoot Firewall" to cut down on the unwanted comms between my tablet and Amazon, and I now have a perfectly functioning tablet for reading. Extra tip: install ReadEra and you can read the non-Kindle-app pdf, mobi, epub, etc.
afterburner 6y ago
Funny, I feel the opposite. If they're going to try to manipulate me, I want it to be shitty and ineffective, not as effective as possible.
ryanianian 6y ago
There are many ways to have relevant ads that don't track you as an individual. You may find that only 70% of the ads are relevant versus 75%, but you will not find that you've unwittingly given away your personal information for the pleasure of buying something.
bavent 6y ago
Does that actually work though? I've been buying things on Amazon for over a decade. For a while I got my groceries through them, I watch a lot of stuff on Prime Video. You would think they, of all people, know what I like. I can't think of more than a couple times where anything suggested to me was actually something I wanted. Even when I used FB, the ads were so off target from things I am interested in as to be laughable. Like, THIS is the best you can do with teams of engineers making > $200k/year throwing AI at everything? I'm not convinced that all of this tracking crap is just a way for them to market their ad business - "Look we gather all this data about people, your ads will definitely be seen by people who we know for a fact will be interested in them because of coding and algorithms and machine learning and blah blah blah."
- artificial 6y ago
  It comes down to the advertiser who is creating the audiences on the platform. "I can haz this many people?!" A terrible analogy is no programming language can save you from yourself. The current issue is the inaugural purchase mechanic, like buying a big ticket item or something that's a one off like toilet/toilet seat and now that's all you get moving forward.
- Terretta 6y ago
  Perhaps a small cohort of targeted-ad-susceptible users skew the targeting efficacy stats so far it looks like targeted ads work overall. Perhaps this cohort doesn’t overlap much with, say, New York Times readers, which might be why NYT and every other brand that tried first party non-retargeted ads saw an uptick in ROI. For most of us, perhaps these ads don’t work or are negative, while this cohort are more like Candy Crush in-app-purchase whales — for them they really really work, so they spend enough that most players think the game is “free to play” while griping about the endless in-app-upsells.
  - bavent 6y ago
    Ah so it's the "Nigerian Prince" scam, basically?
- reggieband 6y ago
pmlnr 6y ago
Long, long time ago, when last.fm radio was still a thing on it's own, I loved it: instead of pre-arranging a playlist, it kept adding the next song by searching for similar ones based on the one currently playing. It kept crawling away, sometimes into terrible direction, but more often into an area I'd like to refer to as "satellite". "Satellite" would be friends-of-friends or even friends-of-friends-of-friends in social media terms. And this is how it comes to ads: when I bought a magazine, I got a set of ads that only had a rough idea about their audience. Those edges were the ones that allowed ads to broaden my views on the world, and, therefore, ads were useful for me. This, and the financial impossibility of ever getting one - early teen in Hungary -, were the reasons why I loved Sony catalogues in the '90s. Targeted ads are the polar opposite: they want to change me, force me to buy a certain, specific product, instead of gradually opening my interest to a lot more things in the world.
- TRcontrarian 6y ago
  I feel the exact same way about sampling 'alien' ad culture. It's fun to switch on the local TV station in a new city and see what ads are being shown to people there. It's like a form of social calibration that shows what 'is available.' Same thing with reading the ads in the back of Popular Science or The Economist. I don't get that online unless I VPN+incognito, and I absolutely cannot get it on my phone, which is locked down much tighter.
Spivak 6y ago
I want personalized ads when I’m searching for product. I really don’t get the fetishization of sticking ads next to unrelated content. Like I get the whole brand mindshare aspect but that’s not exactly a small-business type of ad campaign. Like Jesus. If a company had good ad targeting I would actually pay to access it and use it as my product search. It’s remarkably difficult given the type of product you want to buy to survey the market and find different people that sell it. I’m currently going through that hell trying to find a water filter dispenser/pitcher. All of the search results are garbage. I know there is more out there than just the 17 models of cheap plastic crap from Brita/Pur but it’s an absolute slog to actually find anything.
- ryanianian 6y ago
  The Wire Cutter (NYTimes) is doing this more and more and iirc they're quite profitable in doing it. They find the "best" products and give you referral links to buy them. Sometimes your site searches will show lists of things ("looking for a jacket? see our list of the best cold-weather gear"). This isn't a dark pattern. It's not targeting you the individual, it's targeting you the person who just explicitly showed intent to buy X. It's really how buying online would ideally work in all scenarios.
- spaetzleesser 6y ago
  I remember the good, ol' days when you were on a kiteboarding site and the ads were for kiteboarding equipment and not for more toasters after I just bought one. I don't mind ads in the old style but I seriously resent the current state.
Const-me 6y ago
Interestingly, my preference is opposite. If I'm going to see ads anyway, ideally I want to see them in a language I don't speak.
tal8d 6y ago
Marketers aren't trying to match you up with products that meet some unfulfilled need you have, they are trying to get you to buy anything in the very limited window available to them. You seem to be under the impression that they'll maximize that opportunity by presenting you with something you'd find useful. There are more effective ways to sell, with an enormous amount of research dedicated to perfecting the process. Unsurprisingly, the result of such efforts - unbounded by any sense of morality, are pretty disgusting. Depression. Depressed people make the best consumers. That is what they are looking for when they're tracking your off-site activity. Do you imagine they are above trying to induce depression?

dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago

Tracking aside, I prefer not to have "personalized" ads for two reasons. First, they create another bubble based on their perception of me. Second, their personalization is so poor I sometimes wonder how come advertisers believe them. And this is all assuming you actually want to see ads. I don't. It's only when I need to buy something I enter the buying mode: I disable adblockers and start doing research - this is the only small window when ads are allowed to bother me.

ryanianian 6y ago
If ads weren't clickbait, obnoxious, or misleading (and didn't violate your privacy) you may find yourself more open to seeing them. Even if they're not always super relevant to you and only you. Respectful advertising will always have its place whenever the buyer has a choice. It's when the companies selling those ads learn how to manipulate their audience that the 'respectful' parts of the equation get dropped and consumers start to push back. My Kindle shows me ads. I could pay to opt out, but I actually like the way it handles them. My (former) Alexa on the other hand was IN MY FACE with ads whenever I wanted to even just set a timer. That is grossly disrespectful of me as a human being, so it was shown the door.
- HenryBemis 6y ago
  > My Kindle shows me ads I have no experience on Kindles, but on my Amazon Fire HD, I have rooted it, uninstall 50-60% of the bloatware, I have installed "NoRoot Firewall" to cut down on the unwanted comms between my tablet and Amazon, and I now have a perfectly functioning tablet for reading. Extra tip: install ReadEra and you can read the non-Kindle-app pdf, mobi, epub, etc.

afterburner 6y ago

Funny, I feel the opposite. If they're going to try to manipulate me, I want it to be shitty and ineffective, not as effective as possible.

ryanianian 6y ago

There are many ways to have relevant ads that don't track you as an individual. You may find that only 70% of the ads are relevant versus 75%, but you will not find that you've unwittingly given away your personal information for the pleasure of buying something.

bavent 6y ago

Does that actually work though? I've been buying things on Amazon for over a decade. For a while I got my groceries through them, I watch a lot of stuff on Prime Video. You would think they, of all people, know what I like. I can't think of more than a couple times where anything suggested to me was actually something I wanted. Even when I used FB, the ads were so off target from things I am interested in as to be laughable. Like, THIS is the best you can do with teams of engineers making > $200k/year throwing AI at everything? I'm not convinced that all of this tracking crap is just a way for them to market their ad business - "Look we gather all this data about people, your ads will definitely be seen by people who we know for a fact will be interested in them because of coding and algorithms and machine learning and blah blah blah."

artificial 6y ago
It comes down to the advertiser who is creating the audiences on the platform. "I can haz this many people?!" A terrible analogy is no programming language can save you from yourself. The current issue is the inaugural purchase mechanic, like buying a big ticket item or something that's a one off like toilet/toilet seat and now that's all you get moving forward.
Terretta 6y ago
Perhaps a small cohort of targeted-ad-susceptible users skew the targeting efficacy stats so far it looks like targeted ads work overall. Perhaps this cohort doesn’t overlap much with, say, New York Times readers, which might be why NYT and every other brand that tried first party non-retargeted ads saw an uptick in ROI. For most of us, perhaps these ads don’t work or are negative, while this cohort are more like Candy Crush in-app-purchase whales — for them they really really work, so they spend enough that most players think the game is “free to play” while griping about the endless in-app-upsells.
- bavent 6y ago
  Ah so it's the "Nigerian Prince" scam, basically?
reggieband 6y ago

pmlnr 6y ago

Long, long time ago, when last.fm radio was still a thing on it's own, I loved it: instead of pre-arranging a playlist, it kept adding the next song by searching for similar ones based on the one currently playing. It kept crawling away, sometimes into terrible direction, but more often into an area I'd like to refer to as "satellite". "Satellite" would be friends-of-friends or even friends-of-friends-of-friends in social media terms. And this is how it comes to ads: when I bought a magazine, I got a set of ads that only had a rough idea about their audience. Those edges were the ones that allowed ads to broaden my views on the world, and, therefore, ads were useful for me. This, and the financial impossibility of ever getting one - early teen in Hungary -, were the reasons why I loved Sony catalogues in the '90s. Targeted ads are the polar opposite: they want to change me, force me to buy a certain, specific product, instead of gradually opening my interest to a lot more things in the world.

TRcontrarian 6y ago
I feel the exact same way about sampling 'alien' ad culture. It's fun to switch on the local TV station in a new city and see what ads are being shown to people there. It's like a form of social calibration that shows what 'is available.' Same thing with reading the ads in the back of Popular Science or The Economist. I don't get that online unless I VPN+incognito, and I absolutely cannot get it on my phone, which is locked down much tighter.

Spivak 6y ago

I want personalized ads when I’m searching for product. I really don’t get the fetishization of sticking ads next to unrelated content. Like I get the whole brand mindshare aspect but that’s not exactly a small-business type of ad campaign. Like Jesus. If a company had good ad targeting I would actually pay to access it and use it as my product search. It’s remarkably difficult given the type of product you want to buy to survey the market and find different people that sell it. I’m currently going through that hell trying to find a water filter dispenser/pitcher. All of the search results are garbage. I know there is more out there than just the 17 models of cheap plastic crap from Brita/Pur but it’s an absolute slog to actually find anything.

ryanianian 6y ago
The Wire Cutter (NYTimes) is doing this more and more and iirc they're quite profitable in doing it. They find the "best" products and give you referral links to buy them. Sometimes your site searches will show lists of things ("looking for a jacket? see our list of the best cold-weather gear"). This isn't a dark pattern. It's not targeting you the individual, it's targeting you the person who just explicitly showed intent to buy X. It's really how buying online would ideally work in all scenarios.
spaetzleesser 6y ago
I remember the good, ol' days when you were on a kiteboarding site and the ads were for kiteboarding equipment and not for more toasters after I just bought one. I don't mind ads in the old style but I seriously resent the current state.

Const-me 6y ago

Interestingly, my preference is opposite. If I'm going to see ads anyway, ideally I want to see them in a language I don't speak.

tal8d 6y ago

Marketers aren't trying to match you up with products that meet some unfulfilled need you have, they are trying to get you to buy anything in the very limited window available to them. You seem to be under the impression that they'll maximize that opportunity by presenting you with something you'd find useful. There are more effective ways to sell, with an enormous amount of research dedicated to perfecting the process. Unsurprisingly, the result of such efforts - unbounded by any sense of morality, are pretty disgusting. Depression. Depressed people make the best consumers. That is what they are looking for when they're tracking your off-site activity. Do you imagine they are above trying to induce depression?