4 ms·

Why couldn't facebook instead facilitate that same small model railway business advertising on the railway group pages, and non-facebook pages about model railw

by mgreg 6y ago

Why couldn't facebook instead facilitate that same small model railway business advertising on the railway group pages, and non-facebook pages about model railways? Why not just tie the ads to the content of the page visited? With targeting you're correct that facebook (and others) can instead follow the user around the internet and show them (perhaps) relevant ads on sites that may be cheaper to advertise on (e.g. some crappy link-bait / SEO built site) which may be more effective than an ad otherwise shown on _that_ click-bait site but perhaps less effective than a railway ad shown on a railway related website. Facebook can transfer revenue from the higher quality site on railway topics to lower quality sites that may just be click-bait and capture nearly all that difference for themselves. Bottom line is you de-fund high quality sites (railway hobbyist sites in this example) and encourage surveilling individuals for only facebook's benefit.

kapp_in_life 6y ago
> Why couldn't facebook instead facilitate that same small model railway business advertising on the railway group pages, and non-facebook pages about model railways? Why not just tie the ads to the content of the page visited? Because google adsense has already effectively captured that market.
- mgreg 6y ago
  This is a bit of a red herring but I'll reply anyway. Agreed that adsense serves ads to 'open web' properties already. However they do this with user tracking, just like facebook already does. The suggestion above is to instead use contextual ad targeting. Secondly - adsnese has no access to facebook's walled garden hence facebook could exclusively served contextually relevant ads on its own highly trafficked sites free from competition. Thirdly - what's wrong with competition? facebook has the scale, relationships with publishers and advertisers, and technology. They could, if they wanted to, take a page from Apple and compete on the concept of privacy if their brand wasn't so tarnished by their insistence that they surveil their users. Back to the core point - facebook and others facilitate transfer revenue from high quality sites (railway hobbyist sites in this example) and encourage surveilling individuals for only facebook's benefit.
  - addicted 6y ago
    Google Adsense didn’t always used to do with user tracking. Adsenses original business model, heck, Google’s original business model, had nothing to do with user tracking. In fact, it was possible to share links with people (at least locally) by simply telling someone to search for a specific keyword and look halfway down the results on the 2nd page. It’s kind of amazing to me that it’s now become ingrained that advertising must involve user tracking when even 15 years ago companies like Google did almost no tracking at all.
  - jefftk 6y ago
    >* adsense serves ads to 'open web' properties already. However they do this with user tracking, just like facebook already does.* nit: AdSense does both contextual and personalized advertising. It launched as contextual only, and that is still part of what it's doing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_AdSense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_AdSense (Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
ethbr0 6y ago
> Why not just tie the ads to the content of the page visited? Because then page-owners would have more power, instead of being relegated to the bulk commodities that Facebook and Google user-tracking systems are designed to limit them to.
hakfoo 6y ago
That's a fascinating point-- but I wonder if the counterpoint also holds. Right now, you can theoretically make a page with arbitrary "real" content and populate it with reasonably lucrative ads, stuffed based on external profiles and tracking. This seems to be the model for non-premium news media in particular-- because you can't really expect to have super-relevant ads on stories about car crashes and vaccination schedules, they lean in heavily to stuffing the site with externally-targeted ads and begging for tracking cookies. If the ads were solely tied to page content, what sort of site design would we end up seeing to woo the highest yielding ads? I can imagine four line news articles floating amid a 500kb sea of mesothelioma and life insurance copy to reach for the priciest ads.

by mgreg 6y ago

kapp_in_life 6y ago

> Why couldn't facebook instead facilitate that same small model railway business advertising on the railway group pages, and non-facebook pages about model railways? Why not just tie the ads to the content of the page visited? Because google adsense has already effectively captured that market.

mgreg 6y ago
This is a bit of a red herring but I'll reply anyway. Agreed that adsense serves ads to 'open web' properties already. However they do this with user tracking, just like facebook already does. The suggestion above is to instead use contextual ad targeting. Secondly - adsnese has no access to facebook's walled garden hence facebook could exclusively served contextually relevant ads on its own highly trafficked sites free from competition. Thirdly - what's wrong with competition? facebook has the scale, relationships with publishers and advertisers, and technology. They could, if they wanted to, take a page from Apple and compete on the concept of privacy if their brand wasn't so tarnished by their insistence that they surveil their users. Back to the core point - facebook and others facilitate transfer revenue from high quality sites (railway hobbyist sites in this example) and encourage surveilling individuals for only facebook's benefit.
- addicted 6y ago
  Google Adsense didn’t always used to do with user tracking. Adsenses original business model, heck, Google’s original business model, had nothing to do with user tracking. In fact, it was possible to share links with people (at least locally) by simply telling someone to search for a specific keyword and look halfway down the results on the 2nd page. It’s kind of amazing to me that it’s now become ingrained that advertising must involve user tracking when even 15 years ago companies like Google did almost no tracking at all.
- jefftk 6y ago
  >* adsense serves ads to 'open web' properties already. However they do this with user tracking, just like facebook already does.* nit: AdSense does both contextual and personalized advertising. It launched as contextual only, and that is still part of what it's doing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_AdSense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_AdSense (Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

ethbr0 6y ago

> Why not just tie the ads to the content of the page visited? Because then page-owners would have more power, instead of being relegated to the bulk commodities that Facebook and Google user-tracking systems are designed to limit them to.

hakfoo 6y ago

That's a fascinating point-- but I wonder if the counterpoint also holds. Right now, you can theoretically make a page with arbitrary "real" content and populate it with reasonably lucrative ads, stuffed based on external profiles and tracking. This seems to be the model for non-premium news media in particular-- because you can't really expect to have super-relevant ads on stories about car crashes and vaccination schedules, they lean in heavily to stuffing the site with externally-targeted ads and begging for tracking cookies. If the ads were solely tied to page content, what sort of site design would we end up seeing to woo the highest yielding ads? I can imagine four line news articles floating amid a 500kb sea of mesothelioma and life insurance copy to reach for the priciest ads.