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>> Overall advertising budgets are not dominated by the effectiveness of advertising, but by adversarial spending by their competitors I would like to know how

>> Overall advertising budgets are not dominated by the effectiveness of advertising, but by adversarial spending by their competitors I would like to know how this conclusion was reached. By that logic, the advertising industry would not really need individual targeting at all

panta 6y ago
Individual ad targeting is needed only as soon as someone does it. It is not “needed” per se.
- bluesign 6y ago
  For sure there are some advertisers, they would not be able to advertise if there is no individual targeting. Problem is for one of those honest businesses, there are 10 dishonest ones abusing the individual targeting.
  - panta 6y ago
    If it is targeted without explicit direct consent of the targeted individual, it is not honest, at least from my personal point of view. If it was for me, targeted advertising would illegal.
kibwen 6y ago
> By that logic, the advertising industry would not really need individual targeting at all You're right, they don't. But the point is not to argue that ad relevancy itself is bad. In a vacuum, improved ad relevancy is good! However, the improved relevancy of individually-targeted advertisements is not offset by the social detriment of user tracking. To use an example, on a Facebook group for gamers, it would be fine and dandy for Facebook to establish a market where PC hardware and video game companies bid to show ads to users browsing the group page. Note that this doesn't have to involve advertisers receiving any identifiable data about who the ad was shown to, and nor does it have to involve Facebook tracking your behavior online in order to show ads based on other sites you've visited, e.g. gaming communities on Reddit. The targeting is as simple as "show the game ads to the people in the game group"; it's extremely coarse demographic-based targeting that doesn't require any sort of persistent user profiling. It's no more of a privacy issue than back in the old-timey days when a company would buy an ad in an enthusiast magazine.
- imheretolearn 6y ago
  >> But the point is not to argue that ad relevancy itself is bad. In a vacuum, improved ad relevancy is good! However, the improved relevancy of individually-targeted advertisements is not offset by the social detriment of user tracking Agreed, this is where the incentives of the users are misaligned with the incentives of the ad tracking companies. But users don't have a choice, hence individual ad tracking.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  > However, the improved relevancy of individually-targeted advertisements is not offset by the social detriment of user tracking. Spot on. How good or relevant adverts doesn't matter if the way the information is collected is by unethical. If you went to a store and while you were shopping, an employee attached a tracking device to your car, it would clearly be a violation of your rights and you'd be rightly pissed. The equivalent of this happens all the time with software on your phone. Yet here we have people defending Facebook and Google for trying to protect their spy-monopoly.
prostoalex 6y ago
This would just return to 2000-esque state of affairs, where the ad model was based on selling page views, clicks or actions. That model favors small publishers (as niche advertisers flock to niche publications) and disadvantages large generic publishers (social networks, email clients, portals).
- somedude895 6y ago
  > That model favors small publishers (as niche advertisers flock to niche publications) and disadvantages large generic publishers (social networks, email clients, portals). I agree. Advertisers would have to go back to contextual targeting, identifying websites that are likely to appeal the target audience, rather than simply buying the audience programmatically on Google's ad network
  - liaukovv 6y ago
    Which in turn would create an incentive to actually create websites attracting different audiences?
- AlphaSite 6y ago
  I’m not entirely convinced this is true, but equally if it is I see it as an absolute win.
dylan604 6y ago
Have you ever spent time around advertising people? This is exactly how they talk to each other. An agency shooting a commercial for a hospital in Houston, TX shot in Amsterdam because the director wanted to. Another agency person bragged to a person in another agency about how much they spent. It's a game to these people. Once you become a brand, it is less about advertising a product/lifestyle as much as it is to keep the name prevelant in people's mind.

panta 6y ago

Individual ad targeting is needed only as soon as someone does it. It is not “needed” per se.

bluesign 6y ago
For sure there are some advertisers, they would not be able to advertise if there is no individual targeting. Problem is for one of those honest businesses, there are 10 dishonest ones abusing the individual targeting.
- panta 6y ago
  If it is targeted without explicit direct consent of the targeted individual, it is not honest, at least from my personal point of view. If it was for me, targeted advertising would illegal.

kibwen 6y ago

> By that logic, the advertising industry would not really need individual targeting at all You're right, they don't. But the point is not to argue that ad relevancy itself is bad. In a vacuum, improved ad relevancy is good! However, the improved relevancy of individually-targeted advertisements is not offset by the social detriment of user tracking. To use an example, on a Facebook group for gamers, it would be fine and dandy for Facebook to establish a market where PC hardware and video game companies bid to show ads to users browsing the group page. Note that this doesn't have to involve advertisers receiving any identifiable data about who the ad was shown to, and nor does it have to involve Facebook tracking your behavior online in order to show ads based on other sites you've visited, e.g. gaming communities on Reddit. The targeting is as simple as "show the game ads to the people in the game group"; it's extremely coarse demographic-based targeting that doesn't require any sort of persistent user profiling. It's no more of a privacy issue than back in the old-timey days when a company would buy an ad in an enthusiast magazine.

imheretolearn 6y ago
>> But the point is not to argue that ad relevancy itself is bad. In a vacuum, improved ad relevancy is good! However, the improved relevancy of individually-targeted advertisements is not offset by the social detriment of user tracking Agreed, this is where the incentives of the users are misaligned with the incentives of the ad tracking companies. But users don't have a choice, hence individual ad tracking.
ogre_codes 6y ago
> However, the improved relevancy of individually-targeted advertisements is not offset by the social detriment of user tracking. Spot on. How good or relevant adverts doesn't matter if the way the information is collected is by unethical. If you went to a store and while you were shopping, an employee attached a tracking device to your car, it would clearly be a violation of your rights and you'd be rightly pissed. The equivalent of this happens all the time with software on your phone. Yet here we have people defending Facebook and Google for trying to protect their spy-monopoly.

prostoalex 6y ago

This would just return to 2000-esque state of affairs, where the ad model was based on selling page views, clicks or actions. That model favors small publishers (as niche advertisers flock to niche publications) and disadvantages large generic publishers (social networks, email clients, portals).

somedude895 6y ago
> That model favors small publishers (as niche advertisers flock to niche publications) and disadvantages large generic publishers (social networks, email clients, portals). I agree. Advertisers would have to go back to contextual targeting, identifying websites that are likely to appeal the target audience, rather than simply buying the audience programmatically on Google's ad network
- liaukovv 6y ago
  Which in turn would create an incentive to actually create websites attracting different audiences?
AlphaSite 6y ago
I’m not entirely convinced this is true, but equally if it is I see it as an absolute win.

dylan604 6y ago

Have you ever spent time around advertising people? This is exactly how they talk to each other. An agency shooting a commercial for a hospital in Houston, TX shot in Amsterdam because the director wanted to. Another agency person bragged to a person in another agency about how much they spent. It's a game to these people. Once you become a brand, it is less about advertising a product/lifestyle as much as it is to keep the name prevelant in people's mind.