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> No — if the targeting is less effective, the advertisers are not getting the same incremental value from the ads. I mean... No again. Kinda. Advertising isn'

> No — if the targeting is less effective, the advertisers are not getting the same incremental value from the ads. I mean... No again. Kinda. Advertising isn't magically gonna make money appear in the pockets of your customers. Advertising influences how people distribute their income, influencing them this way or that (at least that's the goal). If advertising becomes worse for everyone, which it did, those weights are just scaled by a fixed amount, arriving at the same end result. The only winners are those who didn't advertise at all and only competed only on value. Those may see an uptick.

dividedbyzero 5y ago
Not sure; targeted ads can work pretty well for small niche businesses, getting the same amount of conversions through untargeted ads may not be feasible. I could imagine those getting hit harder by this change than, say, Uber, so probably not quite the same end result.
- chmod775 5y ago
  I could see that. But you can still effectively target niches with contextual ads.
  - dividedbyzero 5y ago
    Definitely. Is that something you can buy right now? I was under the impression there was little to nothing substantial in between untargeted and programmatic these days
    - morelisp 5y ago
      We've been slowly refactoring our products to offer more contextual possibilities (building more aggregations by domains, keywords, etc. instead of audiences). No one is interested in buying.
      - tormeh 5y ago
        I bet this is a result of customer self-selection. This is all a hunch, but I bet a shit-ton that the advertisers who actually care about good targeting only buy from a small number of leading providers (Facebook, Google, etc.) whose stats are not going to show up on HN.
        morelisp 5y ago
        I am not involved at all in our sales department, and I have no interest in being identified, so I can't offer much more. We do have some very large customers, although we are not always a large account for them. But maybe you misunderstood - all our customers want "classical" audience targeting, to the point they're refusing contextual offerings even as GDPR regulations and technology changes make the audience-based products ever less efficient. If they want anything besides that, it's cohorts, which they don't really understand but see as a way to do targeting magically with storing cookies. If they want anything besides that, it's some BI assistance e.g. uplift models. Contextual is absolute last in line.
        tormeh 5y ago
        Sounds like a principal-agent problem. The people actually buying the ads on behalf of the customer don't care about accuracy. Just train some model, no matter how shitty, and call it "best-effort". Boxes are checked and everyone's happy.
mbesto 5y ago
> The only winners are those who didn't advertise at all and only competed only on value. I keep seeing this sentiment here on HN. What fantasy world do people live in where advertising can't exist and people can still find products/services?! It's existed for centuries, the medium just changes over time. The digital advertising world is far from perfect, but suggesting it should outright not exist because we have perfect information about goods and services is laughable.
- beagle3 5y ago
  I don’t know if there’s some objective measure of “percentage of sensory perception occupied by ads” but I guess if there were it would be about 90% lower 50 years ago - and still people found things. It’s not binary ads/no-ads, and not all are equal (e.g. product placement is often subtle and not in-your-face). It is not unthinkable that 95% of ad budget is wasted. (I am sure the majority of ad budget 50 years ago was too, even if it was just 70%)
  - pmontra 5y ago
    > 50 years ago - still people found things. Going back even more in time, we had word of mouth and domain experts to ask for advice. That works still now but it's pretty slow for somebody aiming at establishing a large scale business. Advertising money makes time run faster. I can understand why they want ads. On the other side I'm blocking all I can block and very rarely see an ad (not every month) and yet I find what I want to buy.
- chmod775 5y ago
  That's not a sentiment, it's a logical conclusion when applying basic mathematics as outlined in my comment. In the remainder of your comment you are attacking a straw man. I'll leave you to it.
  - FredPret 5y ago
    Your original comment ignores the fact that with perfect ad targeting, there will be way more niche spending in your budget since small companies can create and market tightly targeted products cheaply. You’ll be happier with this outcome. With totally untargeted advertising, the whole population will get an ad mix that reflects aggregate spending patterns. The niches will disappear. Only through massive upfront investment into a major marketing campaign will consumer spending shift to a new product. Only the blandest, most mainstream, least interesting among us will be happy with this outcome.

dividedbyzero 5y ago

Not sure; targeted ads can work pretty well for small niche businesses, getting the same amount of conversions through untargeted ads may not be feasible. I could imagine those getting hit harder by this change than, say, Uber, so probably not quite the same end result.

chmod775 5y ago
I could see that. But you can still effectively target niches with contextual ads.
- dividedbyzero 5y ago
  Definitely. Is that something you can buy right now? I was under the impression there was little to nothing substantial in between untargeted and programmatic these days
  - morelisp 5y ago
    We've been slowly refactoring our products to offer more contextual possibilities (building more aggregations by domains, keywords, etc. instead of audiences). No one is interested in buying.
    - tormeh 5y ago
      I bet this is a result of customer self-selection. This is all a hunch, but I bet a shit-ton that the advertisers who actually care about good targeting only buy from a small number of leading providers (Facebook, Google, etc.) whose stats are not going to show up on HN.
      - morelisp 5y ago
        I am not involved at all in our sales department, and I have no interest in being identified, so I can't offer much more. We do have some very large customers, although we are not always a large account for them. But maybe you misunderstood - all our customers want "classical" audience targeting, to the point they're refusing contextual offerings even as GDPR regulations and technology changes make the audience-based products ever less efficient. If they want anything besides that, it's cohorts, which they don't really understand but see as a way to do targeting magically with storing cookies. If they want anything besides that, it's some BI assistance e.g. uplift models. Contextual is absolute last in line.
        tormeh 5y ago
        Sounds like a principal-agent problem. The people actually buying the ads on behalf of the customer don't care about accuracy. Just train some model, no matter how shitty, and call it "best-effort". Boxes are checked and everyone's happy.

mbesto 5y ago

> The only winners are those who didn't advertise at all and only competed only on value. I keep seeing this sentiment here on HN. What fantasy world do people live in where advertising can't exist and people can still find products/services?! It's existed for centuries, the medium just changes over time. The digital advertising world is far from perfect, but suggesting it should outright not exist because we have perfect information about goods and services is laughable.

beagle3 5y ago
I don’t know if there’s some objective measure of “percentage of sensory perception occupied by ads” but I guess if there were it would be about 90% lower 50 years ago - and still people found things. It’s not binary ads/no-ads, and not all are equal (e.g. product placement is often subtle and not in-your-face). It is not unthinkable that 95% of ad budget is wasted. (I am sure the majority of ad budget 50 years ago was too, even if it was just 70%)
- pmontra 5y ago
  > 50 years ago - still people found things. Going back even more in time, we had word of mouth and domain experts to ask for advice. That works still now but it's pretty slow for somebody aiming at establishing a large scale business. Advertising money makes time run faster. I can understand why they want ads. On the other side I'm blocking all I can block and very rarely see an ad (not every month) and yet I find what I want to buy.
chmod775 5y ago
That's not a sentiment, it's a logical conclusion when applying basic mathematics as outlined in my comment. In the remainder of your comment you are attacking a straw man. I'll leave you to it.
- FredPret 5y ago
  Your original comment ignores the fact that with perfect ad targeting, there will be way more niche spending in your budget since small companies can create and market tightly targeted products cheaply. You’ll be happier with this outcome. With totally untargeted advertising, the whole population will get an ad mix that reflects aggregate spending patterns. The niches will disappear. Only through massive upfront investment into a major marketing campaign will consumer spending shift to a new product. Only the blandest, most mainstream, least interesting among us will be happy with this outcome.