3 ms·
We've been slowly refactoring our products to offer more contextual possibilities (building more aggregations by domains, keywords, etc. instead of audiences).
by 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 agoI 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 agoI 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 agoSounds 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.