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> Adtech companies don't want users to have an easy opt-out. They didn't want P3P. They didn't want DNT. They will not want this new spec, unless the spec is so

> Adtech companies don't want users to have an easy opt-out. They didn't want P3P. They didn't want DNT. They will not want this new spec, unless the spec is so bad that most users will agree by accident. Reminder that Internet advertising has a lot of actors with competing interests, and it is not usually the "adtech companies" who don't want users to have an easy-opt out, but publishers and to a lesser extent the advertisers. Many "adtech companies" would love to have clearer legal signals and simpler, industry-wide justification to collect less data. Publishers have been very good at foisting all user frustration off on vague "adtech" (or alternately, adtech companies have been effective at reputation laundering for publishers/advertisers) but they're the ones that want to collect, share, and sell the data to be able to raise their rates.

Ensorceled 5y ago
This is fundamentally misunderstanding how internet advertising works: advertises will pay higher CPM for precise targeting and attribution publishers want the best CPM they can get adtech uses as many tricks as possible to get as much information as possible about a user so they can maximize the CPM the advertiser will pay Publishers just end up doing what ever their adtech partners tell them will give them the best CPM.
- morelisp 5y ago
  Haha, no. You're falling for the trick, or maybe you're just 10 years behind. Publishers (and retailers, and anyone with a dataset) seek out adtech partner companies, to justify high CPMs and to sell their audience data. Adtech companies are market-makers, it's been years since the data they can get independently of supply-side partners was worth shit. The publisher is the one with the cookie warning and consent forms! The publisher is the one who wants you to log in with a stable ID! The publisher is the one with a model of you regardless of your ad or tracker blocker settings! The adtech companies will sell you downstream for sure, but the publishers are the ones deploying as many tricks as possible to gather data. And yeah, adtech companies will advise them about how to effectively gather data. That's a lot less about "tricks" and more about how to build salable taxonomies instead of data lakes full of garbage. To the extent it's about tricks, it's more often the adtech companies having to patiently but firmly explain, no, you can't just hardcode a single consent state for all visitors and send that to us in lieu of a real CMP. (A purely theoretical example, of course...)
  - Ensorceled 5y ago
    > Publishers (and retailers, and anyone with a dataset) seek out adtech partner companies, to justify high CPMs and to sell their audience data. Adtech companies are market-makers, it's been years since the data they can get independently of supply-side partners was worth shit. You're correct, for large publishers ... I guess we could almost say they are adtech companies now.
    - mindslight 5y ago
      IMO it's easier to just call them "surveillance companies" and be done with it. Regardless of whether they're collecting, storing, or processing surveillance data, they're all in the same business as Equifax, Google, Lexis-Nexis, and NSA.
      - morelisp 5y ago
        I don't think it's useful for analysis or activism to group Equifax, Google, the NSA, the New York Times, Humble Bundle, Twitter, Airbnb, Walgreens, etc. under a single term. The flattening of this mess down into "adtech" is how most of them have avoided scrutiny, and relabeling that "surveillance" doesn't make the relationships between them any clearer.
        mindslight 5y ago
        Like all paradigms, it makes some things clearer and other things less clear. This one helps me keep my head straight about easy to ignore aspects of my relationship with the ones that would otherwise appear as being tamer, especially for instance Google. The ones that seem out of place on your list are because their main business is something other than surveillance. Saying that Walgreens "patronizes the surveillance industry" does make more sense than labeling the whole company as doing that one thing. Although labeling the marketing group requesting all the trackers be added to their website as the "surveillance department" makes sense. I think "surveillance" is a much better term than "ad" because the latter seems like just some harmless annoyance in line with American business values, whereas the former more accurately captures that the systems these companies are building are offenses against freedom and humanity.

Ensorceled 5y ago

This is fundamentally misunderstanding how internet advertising works: advertises will pay higher CPM for precise targeting and attribution publishers want the best CPM they can get adtech uses as many tricks as possible to get as much information as possible about a user so they can maximize the CPM the advertiser will pay Publishers just end up doing what ever their adtech partners tell them will give them the best CPM.

morelisp 5y ago
Haha, no. You're falling for the trick, or maybe you're just 10 years behind. Publishers (and retailers, and anyone with a dataset) seek out adtech partner companies, to justify high CPMs and to sell their audience data. Adtech companies are market-makers, it's been years since the data they can get independently of supply-side partners was worth shit. The publisher is the one with the cookie warning and consent forms! The publisher is the one who wants you to log in with a stable ID! The publisher is the one with a model of you regardless of your ad or tracker blocker settings! The adtech companies will sell you downstream for sure, but the publishers are the ones deploying as many tricks as possible to gather data. And yeah, adtech companies will advise them about how to effectively gather data. That's a lot less about "tricks" and more about how to build salable taxonomies instead of data lakes full of garbage. To the extent it's about tricks, it's more often the adtech companies having to patiently but firmly explain, no, you can't just hardcode a single consent state for all visitors and send that to us in lieu of a real CMP. (A purely theoretical example, of course...)
- Ensorceled 5y ago
  > Publishers (and retailers, and anyone with a dataset) seek out adtech partner companies, to justify high CPMs and to sell their audience data. Adtech companies are market-makers, it's been years since the data they can get independently of supply-side partners was worth shit. You're correct, for large publishers ... I guess we could almost say they are adtech companies now.
  - mindslight 5y ago
    IMO it's easier to just call them "surveillance companies" and be done with it. Regardless of whether they're collecting, storing, or processing surveillance data, they're all in the same business as Equifax, Google, Lexis-Nexis, and NSA.
    - morelisp 5y ago
      I don't think it's useful for analysis or activism to group Equifax, Google, the NSA, the New York Times, Humble Bundle, Twitter, Airbnb, Walgreens, etc. under a single term. The flattening of this mess down into "adtech" is how most of them have avoided scrutiny, and relabeling that "surveillance" doesn't make the relationships between them any clearer.
      - mindslight 5y ago
        Like all paradigms, it makes some things clearer and other things less clear. This one helps me keep my head straight about easy to ignore aspects of my relationship with the ones that would otherwise appear as being tamer, especially for instance Google. The ones that seem out of place on your list are because their main business is something other than surveillance. Saying that Walgreens "patronizes the surveillance industry" does make more sense than labeling the whole company as doing that one thing. Although labeling the marketing group requesting all the trackers be added to their website as the "surveillance department" makes sense. I think "surveillance" is a much better term than "ad" because the latter seems like just some harmless annoyance in line with American business values, whereas the former more accurately captures that the systems these companies are building are offenses against freedom and humanity.