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What I dislike most about YouTube is how awful it is at showing appropriate ads - regardless of how often I indicate that I don't want see a particular ad somet

What I dislike most about YouTube is how awful it is at showing appropriate ads - regardless of how often I indicate that I don't want see a particular ad something similar comes along. The actual mechanism for recommending content seems pretty good - but the ad recommendations I get are crazy.

dylan604 4y ago
>The actual mechanism for recommending content seems pretty good - but the ad recommendations I get are crazy Seems the right way to do it from YT's perspective. By recommending things you will like, you are much more likely to keep watching. But the ads are not for you. They are for their actual customers. Your input on that is much less valuable than meeting impression counts for their customers.
tomjen3 4y ago
For me that’s a general problem. Facebook is trying to get me to buy a new car, at 2-3 times what I am willing to spend on a car (I can practically see the marketing department scream but you make good money, but of course that doesn’t mean I will spend them on overpriced vehicles). The joke is that I just bought a car some months ago, so they missed it and missed it. I don’t know whom you scream at to show me things worth their cost. Instead of showing me things I might want they just force you to watch more ads for terrible things. I don’t know if you tried to tell them your interests, but it seems like they just ignore them.
- arethuza 4y ago
  I've certainly been vigorously telling them what I'm not interested in - which is pretty much every ad they've shown me. It could be an effort to get me to sign up for YouTube premium.... at the expense of whoever is paying for the ads.
- HPsquared 4y ago
  They are probably also picking up on the car shopping/research you likely did before your recent car purchase. Classic problem of ad targeting: they don't know when to stop (i.e. they don't actually know that you have ended your search and already bought the thing)
candiddevmike 4y ago
Every ad I get on YouTube is for TikTok. And then I go on HN and read about TikTok being an existential threat to Google.
RajT88 4y ago
I get crazy ads too. But the ads I get seem to be created by crazy people, to target people who aren't crazy but which they'd like to turn crazy. I get the sense I am the demographic they are targeting. No accident.
sidewndr46 4y ago
On the demand side it's an auction. Google has advertising slots and companies want to buy them. The issue is, once you visit a business website or physical location that has a high profit margin you're now captured 100% by them. Companies that sell jewelry for example have huge markups and thus huge advertising budgets. They basically just buy up all your ad impressions. It's even worse with FB ads. The majority of what I see is an obvious fraud, outright illegal, or a scam of some kind.
- rchaud 4y ago
  > The majority of what I see is an obvious fraud, outright illegal, or a scam of some kind. The great disruption of automated bid-match advertising platforms was finding a market for all the ads that would have run afoul of television, newspaper and radio standards.
  - sidewndr46 4y ago
    Yeah I guess that would make sense. I thought the same standards applied to Facebook advertising. I think the FTC sets them. Am I wrong in that thinking?
    - rchaud 4y ago
      The FTC can only investigate if they receive a tip-off. Most niche online ads that aren't standards-compliant don't run for very long, and can be hard to trace. FB's ad management system is also largely automated, and frequently rejects ads, before accepting a version of it that hasn't been modified. It would be hard to create an evidentiary paper trail proving that FB accepted ads that didn't comply with standards.
rchaud 4y ago
You can't show what you don't have. Every ad I see on Youtube shorts is the same scammy "Government of Canada will give you a refund if you do this" type of garbage. I'm sure they'd love to have Breitling or Nike pay for an ad spot, but those brands aren't going to be interested.
misterprime 4y ago
I think it's the advertisers that assess user profiles and bid on who they want to show the ads to. YouTube would only be responsible for choosing from the collection of advertisers that select you. YouTube would want to maximize the bid price as well as the likelihood of success so that the advertisers will continue to get value from their ad-spend, right? If you don't have many advertisers choosing profiles like yours, YouTube's algorithm won't play much of a role in selecting what ads you see. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

dylan604 4y ago

>The actual mechanism for recommending content seems pretty good - but the ad recommendations I get are crazy Seems the right way to do it from YT's perspective. By recommending things you will like, you are much more likely to keep watching. But the ads are not for you. They are for their actual customers. Your input on that is much less valuable than meeting impression counts for their customers.

tomjen3 4y ago

For me that’s a general problem. Facebook is trying to get me to buy a new car, at 2-3 times what I am willing to spend on a car (I can practically see the marketing department scream but you make good money, but of course that doesn’t mean I will spend them on overpriced vehicles). The joke is that I just bought a car some months ago, so they missed it and missed it. I don’t know whom you scream at to show me things worth their cost. Instead of showing me things I might want they just force you to watch more ads for terrible things. I don’t know if you tried to tell them your interests, but it seems like they just ignore them.

arethuza 4y ago
I've certainly been vigorously telling them what I'm not interested in - which is pretty much every ad they've shown me. It could be an effort to get me to sign up for YouTube premium.... at the expense of whoever is paying for the ads.
HPsquared 4y ago
They are probably also picking up on the car shopping/research you likely did before your recent car purchase. Classic problem of ad targeting: they don't know when to stop (i.e. they don't actually know that you have ended your search and already bought the thing)

candiddevmike 4y ago

Every ad I get on YouTube is for TikTok. And then I go on HN and read about TikTok being an existential threat to Google.

RajT88 4y ago

I get crazy ads too. But the ads I get seem to be created by crazy people, to target people who aren't crazy but which they'd like to turn crazy. I get the sense I am the demographic they are targeting. No accident.

sidewndr46 4y ago

On the demand side it's an auction. Google has advertising slots and companies want to buy them. The issue is, once you visit a business website or physical location that has a high profit margin you're now captured 100% by them. Companies that sell jewelry for example have huge markups and thus huge advertising budgets. They basically just buy up all your ad impressions. It's even worse with FB ads. The majority of what I see is an obvious fraud, outright illegal, or a scam of some kind.

rchaud 4y ago
> The majority of what I see is an obvious fraud, outright illegal, or a scam of some kind. The great disruption of automated bid-match advertising platforms was finding a market for all the ads that would have run afoul of television, newspaper and radio standards.
- sidewndr46 4y ago
  Yeah I guess that would make sense. I thought the same standards applied to Facebook advertising. I think the FTC sets them. Am I wrong in that thinking?
  - rchaud 4y ago
    The FTC can only investigate if they receive a tip-off. Most niche online ads that aren't standards-compliant don't run for very long, and can be hard to trace. FB's ad management system is also largely automated, and frequently rejects ads, before accepting a version of it that hasn't been modified. It would be hard to create an evidentiary paper trail proving that FB accepted ads that didn't comply with standards.

rchaud 4y ago

You can't show what you don't have. Every ad I see on Youtube shorts is the same scammy "Government of Canada will give you a refund if you do this" type of garbage. I'm sure they'd love to have Breitling or Nike pay for an ad spot, but those brands aren't going to be interested.

misterprime 4y ago

I think it's the advertisers that assess user profiles and bid on who they want to show the ads to. YouTube would only be responsible for choosing from the collection of advertisers that select you. YouTube would want to maximize the bid price as well as the likelihood of success so that the advertisers will continue to get value from their ad-spend, right? If you don't have many advertisers choosing profiles like yours, YouTube's algorithm won't play much of a role in selecting what ads you see. Please correct me if I'm wrong.