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I totally agree about the YouTube advertising. YouTube literally has hundreds of hours of my video history to work with, yet the vast majority of the ads I see

I totally agree about the YouTube advertising. YouTube literally has hundreds of hours of my video history to work with, yet the vast majority of the ads I see are completely unrelated to my interests. What's the point of all the tracking if they can't even show me relevant ads on YouTube of all places? Podcast ads tend to be much more relevant, and I can even recall purchases I've made due to them. AFAIK my podcast player isn't tracking me or using targeted ads.

lapnitnelav 5y ago
That's because the companies winning bidds on your 'views' are targeting you because of your apparent persona, i.e middle aged man/woman in tech -aka middle class ++ with disposable income, rather than what you are interested in. On top of that, plenty of marketers are absolutely clueless about how to go about their strategy, mostly because unlike previous generations (in online ads), they don't grok the underlying tech at all.
- kingsuper20 5y ago
  They might was well simply tie it to the program content then. For instance, if I watch a Scott Kilmer video, it'll typically have an Autozone ad. If that's all there is to it, I expect there's a lot of needless work being done under the covers.
  - blt 5y ago
    If you turn off personalized ads, that's basically what you'll see. Although for me, it's a 50/50 split between topic-related and ads that appear to target a generic male audience, which is a very good guess for some topics.
  - lapnitnelav 5y ago
    No, actually you can do both (and more). Advertising is throwing darts at the board with your eyes closed, whenever it lands somewhere on the board and nets you point is good enough for most. Typical conversion rates are under the 1% threshold so you accept that a lot of your spend is not efficient but when it is, you make your money back and some, if you are any good at it.
Riseed 5y ago
> AFAIK my podcast player isn't tracking me or using targeted ads. Some podcasts use "dynamic ad insertion", where the ads are inserted when you download the podcast rather than when the podcast file is created and uploaded. [0] Discovered my podcasts were tracking me when I traveled and then heard ads for an out-of-state regional chain after I returned home, clearly because I had downloaded the episodes while traveling. Overcast added privacy & tracking info, to show whether each podcast uses dynamic ad insertion or (possibly) tracks IP etc. [1]. [0] https://themarkup.org/ask-the-markup/2020/10/08/podcast-privacy-tracking-listener-data https://themarkup.org/ask-the-markup/2020/10/08/podcast-priv... [1] https://9to5mac.com/2020/09/03/podcast-privacy-alerts/ https://9to5mac.com/2020/09/03/podcast-privacy-alerts/

lapnitnelav 5y ago

That's because the companies winning bidds on your 'views' are targeting you because of your apparent persona, i.e middle aged man/woman in tech -aka middle class ++ with disposable income, rather than what you are interested in. On top of that, plenty of marketers are absolutely clueless about how to go about their strategy, mostly because unlike previous generations (in online ads), they don't grok the underlying tech at all.

kingsuper20 5y ago
They might was well simply tie it to the program content then. For instance, if I watch a Scott Kilmer video, it'll typically have an Autozone ad. If that's all there is to it, I expect there's a lot of needless work being done under the covers.
- blt 5y ago
  If you turn off personalized ads, that's basically what you'll see. Although for me, it's a 50/50 split between topic-related and ads that appear to target a generic male audience, which is a very good guess for some topics.
- lapnitnelav 5y ago
  No, actually you can do both (and more). Advertising is throwing darts at the board with your eyes closed, whenever it lands somewhere on the board and nets you point is good enough for most. Typical conversion rates are under the 1% threshold so you accept that a lot of your spend is not efficient but when it is, you make your money back and some, if you are any good at it.

Riseed 5y ago

> AFAIK my podcast player isn't tracking me or using targeted ads. Some podcasts use "dynamic ad insertion", where the ads are inserted when you download the podcast rather than when the podcast file is created and uploaded. [0] Discovered my podcasts were tracking me when I traveled and then heard ads for an out-of-state regional chain after I returned home, clearly because I had downloaded the episodes while traveling. Overcast added privacy & tracking info, to show whether each podcast uses dynamic ad insertion or (possibly) tracks IP etc. [1]. [0] https://themarkup.org/ask-the-markup/2020/10/08/podcast-privacy-tracking-listener-data https://themarkup.org/ask-the-markup/2020/10/08/podcast-priv... [1] https://9to5mac.com/2020/09/03/podcast-privacy-alerts/ https://9to5mac.com/2020/09/03/podcast-privacy-alerts/