11 ms·

Adtech is built on a privacy fault line

127 points by iamacyborg 3y ago

JohnFen 3y ago
> Without major changes to its operating model, each day the targeted advertising infrastructure is inching closer to collapse. Boy, I sure hope so. Adtech is a horrible, abusive industry that deserves to be buried and forgotten.
- mrweasel 3y ago
  I feel like it was bound to happen. There has been a huge momentum behind the online ad industry for almost 20 years. The results are questionable, but we've just kept moving forward. It's a lot like the dotcom boom in some sense, there's now a huge number of people working in advertising who honestly knows very little about advertising. They know a lot about ad-spend, how to click around in Adwords, SEO and putting trackers on websites, but not running a successful advertising campaign. They've almost broke the internet with their shit, certain categories are now completely gone from some search engines, replaced by ads, poorly written blogs and SEO junk. On LinkedIn I follow a few of these people, people I know from working in e-commerce years ago. They have no glue about what's happening. They see the thing they've worked on for 15 years fall apart, but won't accept any of the blame. They blame Apple, the EU, anyone but themselves. They don't see any of the damage that they caused. The internet and it's users is something to extract value from, not something that holds any value on it's own in their minds. It's time that the online ad business get a reset. Ads will still be important, but the way they are managed and implemented needs to be adjusted.
  - speed_spread 3y ago
    Adtech will not collapse because it is too useful as a surveillance tool. State actors will subsidize the ad industry as much as needed to ensure that the user activity data stays collected by the private sector in countries outside their realm of network control.
    - imchillyb 3y ago
      In countries /inside/ their realm of network control as well. Governments purchasing 3rd party collected data isn't illegal whereas the government obtaining the collected data themselves would be illegal.
      - BlueTemplar 3y ago
        How does PRISM factor into this ? (You know, due to which the GAFAMs are effectively, though still theoretically banned in the EU since 2015, because it makes the US a rogue state ?)
  - smoldesu 3y ago
    > The internet and it's users is something to extract value from, not something that holds any value on it's own in their minds. When in the 21st century hasn't this been true? The internet is a commodity you pay for from an ISP. They control your traffic and log it to whatever extent they desire. Site operators choose to allow or deny visitors based on arbitrary things; membership, adblock, browser choice, etc. If you don't provide enough value to the site operator (or alternatively, cost too much to host) then advertisement becomes inevitable. Even your browser was monetized and weaponized since Microsoft realized they could pack-in web clients. Now everyone is being abused by some corporate benefactor. The online ad business is a reflection of how every first world government has let FAANG roll all over them and consequentially exploit their citizens. The only way we "reset" the ad industry is by bullwhipping Big Tech until they recognize your freedom as a computer owner.
  - iamacyborg 3y ago
    >there's now a huge number of people working in advertising who honestly knows very little about advertising. They know a lot about ad-spend, how to click around in Adwords, SEO and putting trackers on websites, but not running a successful advertising campaign. You’ve just described most of the marketing folks I’ve worked with for the last decade.
blacksmith_tb 3y ago
I wonder if shutting off the firehose means that the adtech companies will try to eke out a living riffing off all the old data they managed to acquire about all of us up to now, so we'll get even less relevant spam, tied to what we were shopping for years ago. Someone needs to build a GPT adblocker that just recognizes "this seems to be trying to sell you something, hiding now..."
- jamiequint 3y ago
  What do you think pays for the free and open internet? Or are you just well off enough that you don't have to care?
  - pc86 3y ago
    The internet isn't free if you have to give up your privacy for invasive ads and tracking in order to read a recipe on a blog.
  - pithou 3y ago
    [dead]
  - ifdefdebug 3y ago
    I pay a whopping 80 euro per month for my free and open internet to our ISP, one fiber and two mobile devices.
    - nceqs3 3y ago
      Straw-man. The grandparent is pointing out that services like Google, Instagram and YouTube would be behind paywalls without ads. There is no free internet without ads.
      - sethammons 3y ago
        > There is no free internet without ads. of course there is. Because there was. It existed. Eventually we got banner ads. It just got worse after that. People ran their own servers, so did companies. They paid to have their own content online for whatever reason they wished. And often you would get cut off, "so and so's website can only serve 200 requests a day, come back tomorrow." My server runs ad free for no other reason than I want it there with some of my content. Ads enabled a bigger internet and "content creators" who work full time growing the internet. The internet was just fine without these professional content creators.
classified 3y ago
> Ad value is not intrinsically tied to the extraction of personal data. It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
dspillett 3y ago
Adtech isn't even that successful as far as I can see. While I block a lot of internet stalkers via PiHole at home and so forth I'm sure a lot about me and my activity gets through to the data hoarders. So then why has a lot of my recent advertising on Facebook in recent days been for feminine health products? For example: why would I, a middle-aged, long single (with no particular plans to change that state), child-less man, be interesting in a device that claims to help reduce period cramps? Most of the other advertising I see ATM is wall-to-wall Temu. Even if I would ever have ordered something from them I likely won't now as they've successfully got in my nerves. The only advertising that has worked on me in recent memory is a sponsored segment in a podcast (an event relevant to the subject matter of that podcast that I may book into), and getting that advert in front of me didn't involve tracking my movements wherever I go online & in the real world.
- m463 3y ago
  The ads you see aren't for you. Companies selling devices to reduce cramps bid to get to your eyeball because you (poorly) fit some demographic they want to reach. The companies you are interested in - well, they already reach your wallet just fine without banner ads. What gets me is what happens when you try to get a hotel, a plane ticket, a rental car, an emergency plumber, a tow truck or a ride somewhere.
- jklinger410 3y ago
  > Adtech isn't even that successful as far as I can see. And then > While I block a lot of internet stalkers via PiHole at home People who don't buy things after clicking on ads, who block all the ads they see, who are completely immune and hate ads, are not really qualified to talk about whether they work or not. Not only is this pure anecdote, and the billions spent on advertising every year as a glaring counterpoint to your comment, but you are obviously biased against the concept. This whole site is rabidly anti-advertising. Like we should all still be using terminal BBS and VIM because they are "better." These posts are so tiring.
  - IggleSniggle 3y ago
    > Like we should all still be using terminal BBS and VIM because they are "better." Well, to be fair...tabs ARE objectively better than spaces for tabulating a coherent hierarchy. ...and terminal BBS and vim are better.
jamiequint 3y ago
> Ad value is not intrinsically tied to the extraction of personal data Ad value may not be tied to the extraction of personal data, but it's unambiguously tied to the use of it. Obviously more targeted ads perform better.
- johnnyworker 3y ago
  Yes, but existing ads perform infinitely better than ads that don't exist. Hence "fault line". Maybe the ground just below the volcano is very fertile, but in long run, you don't want to live there. > Without major changes to its operating model, each day the targeted advertising infrastructure is inching closer to collapse. Those who build and maintain the adtech metropolis now face a decision: shore up defenses around their strategic interests with slight tweaks and creative legal theories, buying themselves as much time as possible, or rebuild before the crash.
- minsc_and_boo 3y ago
  As long as there are imperfect markets, there is demand from sellers for advertising to do targeting. If the goal is to remove advertising, then it may be better to set up mechanisms for consumers to share information with sellers, rather than play whack-a-mole with adtech.
  - convolvatron 3y ago
    are you suggesting I should..publish my preferences so companies can decide if they want to pitch to me? or that I should just show up ready to hear whatever they have to say? really confused here.
    - minsc_and_boo 3y ago
      More along the lines of giving you control to allow brands you trust to know more about you. Imperfect markets exist because of the unbalance of information, which is why adtech with its information is in demand. This is already happening with Whole Foods / Amazon, REI, and other loyalty programs.
leptons 3y ago
I worked at an Adtech company for a short while. It was the most toxic place I've ever worked. Beyond how they treated their employees, they were giddy with excitement about making a deal with a large hotel chain that gave them access to smart tvs so they could listen in and "capture data" from people staying at the hotel. When I realized what kind of people were running the place I quickly found another job. I had no doubt they would have used information gathered about me to try to control me as an employee, so I left before they could try.
- Given_47 3y ago
  That’s wild. I wonder if those people were just so immersed that they never actually took a step back and considered the larger picture? Cuz anecdotally ik some advertisers that don’t consider themselves “advertisers” but rather their ads as a piece of art and then expressing their creativity. Honestly not sure if I would feel better if it was some heuristic blocking a true realization of their actions or just classifying them as evil lol
  - ikekkdcjkfke 3y ago
    It's the same vibe as wallstreet bloodsuckers 2007 making money off people getting thrown out of their homes
- latchkey 3y ago
  Same. One time my boss (the head of engineering) got so pissed at his cousin, that he hired through nepotism, that he punched a filing cabinet. It was a wild sight.
- secondcoming 3y ago
  I've worked at an Adtech company. It was great. The people were fantastic and diverse. The actual 'tech' part of Adtech is actually really interesting and also challenging.
  - leptons 3y ago
    >I've worked at an Adtech company. It was great. The people were fantastic and diverse. Thanks for sharing your anecdote, but the same "fantastic and diverse" people you worked with could still be doing morally and ethically questionable things to get their paychecks. >The actual 'tech' part of Adtech is actually really interesting and also challenging. Atomic bombs are also "interesting and challenging" to make, that doesn't mean that using them is a good thing.
mumblemumble 3y ago
Does personally targeted advertising even add that much value over contextual advertising? I occasionally click on AdWords ads, or look up a company I see on an ad in the subway station, or follow up on Internet ads that I know are contextually targeted. But I generally have no idea how AdSense ads came to me. Amusingly, since I started making an effort to improve my Spanish last year, my partner's started getting a lot of ads in a language she doesn't speak inserted into her English-language podcast episodes.
- sethammons 3y ago
  20 years ago, marketing classes taught you that you don't get to know all your ad impressions that will expose you to your potential customer. However, they did studies and people needed to see a logo some six times before it stood out. When online marketing blew up, marketers were lured in by the belief that they were getting all those previously untrackable impressions. They still aren't, but there is a big segment they can now track. At that point, I feel it became an optimization problem where they cant escape the local optimum. They can't even imagine not having the not-entirely-valid data. FWIW, I feel that non targeted ads make so much more sense. If I'm reading a tech blog, I actually may want ads from a tech service. I don't need my wife's browsing habits to show me dresses.
  - skydhash 3y ago
    The whole blu-ray.com website is pretty much ads. But I don't mind and I often visit the site to see what movies has been released and read the review to see if it's worth watching (production wise). Goodreads also is ads, because the description is written to appeal to you. I don't want to see blu-ray ads when I'm shopping for clothes, and I don't want to see books ads when I'm buying electronic gears (unless the book is about the gears). So yeah, ads can be targeted. It's just that companies now feel entitled to your attention 24/7 that the whole adtech spac is what it is now.
- RandallBrown 3y ago
  My instagram and Facebook ads are almost entirely outdoor gear, golf equipment, and things for new parents. Considering I spend most weekends hiking/backpacking, I golf somewhat regularly with my friends, and I'm expecting a baby in a few months, it's pretty accurate. I have bought several things from these ads in the past and will probably continue to do so.
Barraketh 3y ago
There seems to be a really strong disdain on HN for AdTech in general, which I think is misguided, and comes fundamentally from a "web consumer" mentality. I think that it would be valuable to reframe the question from the producers point of view: 1) I am a niche small business - how do I let people know that I exist? 2) I run a website and would like to monetize it - how can I get paid for the content that I produce? The ad-tech solution is actually quite elegant in theory - if you can show ads only to the people to whom they are relevant, then, as a small business you can let people know you exist without blowing your ad budget, and, as a content producer, the more valuable an ad-view is, the more you can charge for it. The current movement to avoid tracking is an extremely powerful centralizing force. The large platforms know a lot about you already - Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, etc. So, in a way, "we're not going to let AdTech track users" = "we're going to make only ads on large platforms effective", which means that both content producers and advertisers will prefer them, and then people ask "where did the old internet go"? The AdTech system isn't ideal, but it would be great if the people who criticize it came up with something other than "fuck the small businesses and content producers".
- rebeccaskinner 3y ago
  > 1) I am a niche small business - how do I let people know that I exist? 2) I run a website and would like to monetize it - how can I get paid for the content that I produce? The thing is, this isn’t my problem. The fact that someone wants to market their business doesn’t entitle them to my attention.
  - brandall10 3y ago
    If you're not paying for a product in which you see the ad, it is your problem though, no? What's in the ad space is immaterial, just that is how the product is monetized.
    - amelius 3y ago
      The freaking ad is making me pay twice. Once with my attention, and then again with my money if I buy the product (since the advertising cost is incorporated into the price).
tomjen3 3y ago
Adtech is a fraud. I am using Brave and IOS than they do a really good job of blocking Facebook trackers. However Facebook knows where I went to school and some of my interests - because I told it. It would not be hard to extrapolate ads that might be interesting for a person who has graduated with a CS degree 10+ years ago (cool gadgets anyone? AI services?) but the ads I see are attrocious. It can only make any sense if Facebook isn't even trying, which only makes sense if they don't want anybody to know how little value they add. Its the same with Googles topics - if you want to show me ads for things that might be relevant for me, then _let me choose those_. But it is almost as if the thought can't even cross their minds.
- nobadcrypto 3y ago
  This exists. You can choose what ads you want to see on Google.
johndhi 3y ago
I'd believe this article if it were written by Google or an adtech company... But this is iapp, a professional org for privacy professionals. Their understanding of the industry is more limited than we realized.
polalavik 3y ago
I’m working on starting an ad-not-so-tech business. Fixed number of ad slots per month, fixed price per slot, and advertised on a network of high traffic blogs (also fixed with an upper bound in terms of # of blogs allowed on the network). No tracking besides impressions served and maybe # of clicks. The blogs split a pool of half the revenue. I think it could be a win-win for the network and the business if executed right. Trying to focus on specific domains: web, ML/AI and hardware/electronics engineering only. I’m currently looking for blogs to join the company which is the difficult part. The next difficult part will be reaching out to companies.
- codetrotter 3y ago
  > I’m currently looking for blogs to join the company which is the difficult part. Are low-traffic blogs welcome to join? Or are you mainly looking for blogs with big readership? Also, are other kinds of sites welcome to join? For example PeerTube instances? (Server similar to YouTube but open source, self hosted and uses peer to peer tech to stream videos.)
  - polalavik 3y ago
    Happy to work with low traffic blogs and any sort of website or service where ads can be displayed. Especially if there is growth potential. Open to chat if interested - feel free to email: hardwareteams at gmail
    - codetrotter 3y ago
      Sent you an email :)
- secondcoming 3y ago
  How is this different from a PMP?
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
"Some claim that the death of targeted advertising is equivalent to the death of the ad-supported internet. This is a fallacy. Ad value is not intrinsically tied to the extraction of personal data." IAPP is not HN. The organisation predates this forum. It is not comprised of consumer privacy activists or anyone with "disdain for AdTech". Quite the opposite. It's focused on corporate compliance. People outside of HN are quite capable of seeing through bogus arguments put forth by so-called "tech" companies and their service providers. The later a group that sees licentious, surreptitous data collection as a "business model".
drivebyhooting 3y ago
Not trying to be snarky. Where can a software engineer with adtech (big data, ML, distributed systems) experience go and still earn $600K+ total comp? Liquid, mind you.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
leon_theremin 3y ago
Users have been noticing Google's ads are based on thoughts they had and without any chance of correlation to whatever Google's AI could infer from previous interaction. Same for Twitter, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, TikTok. Big Tech's algorithms have long been tapping into illegal surveillance of an unprecedented kind - besides the cliques of insiders who misuse this for stalking and harassment of children, human rights defenders, activists, minorities and everyone else. Don't expect them to be honest about their surveillance.

127 points by iamacyborg 3y ago

> Without major changes to its operating model, each day the targeted advertising infrastructure is inching closer to collapse. Boy, I sure hope so. Adtech is a horrible, abusive industry that deserves to be buried and forgotten.

mrweasel 3y ago
I feel like it was bound to happen. There has been a huge momentum behind the online ad industry for almost 20 years. The results are questionable, but we've just kept moving forward. It's a lot like the dotcom boom in some sense, there's now a huge number of people working in advertising who honestly knows very little about advertising. They know a lot about ad-spend, how to click around in Adwords, SEO and putting trackers on websites, but not running a successful advertising campaign. They've almost broke the internet with their shit, certain categories are now completely gone from some search engines, replaced by ads, poorly written blogs and SEO junk. On LinkedIn I follow a few of these people, people I know from working in e-commerce years ago. They have no glue about what's happening. They see the thing they've worked on for 15 years fall apart, but won't accept any of the blame. They blame Apple, the EU, anyone but themselves. They don't see any of the damage that they caused. The internet and it's users is something to extract value from, not something that holds any value on it's own in their minds. It's time that the online ad business get a reset. Ads will still be important, but the way they are managed and implemented needs to be adjusted.
- speed_spread 3y ago
  Adtech will not collapse because it is too useful as a surveillance tool. State actors will subsidize the ad industry as much as needed to ensure that the user activity data stays collected by the private sector in countries outside their realm of network control.
  - imchillyb 3y ago
    In countries /inside/ their realm of network control as well. Governments purchasing 3rd party collected data isn't illegal whereas the government obtaining the collected data themselves would be illegal.
    - BlueTemplar 3y ago
      How does PRISM factor into this ? (You know, due to which the GAFAMs are effectively, though still theoretically banned in the EU since 2015, because it makes the US a rogue state ?)
- smoldesu 3y ago
  > The internet and it's users is something to extract value from, not something that holds any value on it's own in their minds. When in the 21st century hasn't this been true? The internet is a commodity you pay for from an ISP. They control your traffic and log it to whatever extent they desire. Site operators choose to allow or deny visitors based on arbitrary things; membership, adblock, browser choice, etc. If you don't provide enough value to the site operator (or alternatively, cost too much to host) then advertisement becomes inevitable. Even your browser was monetized and weaponized since Microsoft realized they could pack-in web clients. Now everyone is being abused by some corporate benefactor. The online ad business is a reflection of how every first world government has let FAANG roll all over them and consequentially exploit their citizens. The only way we "reset" the ad industry is by bullwhipping Big Tech until they recognize your freedom as a computer owner.
- iamacyborg 3y ago
  >there's now a huge number of people working in advertising who honestly knows very little about advertising. They know a lot about ad-spend, how to click around in Adwords, SEO and putting trackers on websites, but not running a successful advertising campaign. You’ve just described most of the marketing folks I’ve worked with for the last decade.

blacksmith_tb 3y ago

I wonder if shutting off the firehose means that the adtech companies will try to eke out a living riffing off all the old data they managed to acquire about all of us up to now, so we'll get even less relevant spam, tied to what we were shopping for years ago. Someone needs to build a GPT adblocker that just recognizes "this seems to be trying to sell you something, hiding now..."

jamiequint 3y ago
What do you think pays for the free and open internet? Or are you just well off enough that you don't have to care?
- pc86 3y ago
  The internet isn't free if you have to give up your privacy for invasive ads and tracking in order to read a recipe on a blog.
- pithou 3y ago
  [dead]
- ifdefdebug 3y ago
  I pay a whopping 80 euro per month for my free and open internet to our ISP, one fiber and two mobile devices.
  - nceqs3 3y ago
    Straw-man. The grandparent is pointing out that services like Google, Instagram and YouTube would be behind paywalls without ads. There is no free internet without ads.
    - sethammons 3y ago
      > There is no free internet without ads. of course there is. Because there was. It existed. Eventually we got banner ads. It just got worse after that. People ran their own servers, so did companies. They paid to have their own content online for whatever reason they wished. And often you would get cut off, "so and so's website can only serve 200 requests a day, come back tomorrow." My server runs ad free for no other reason than I want it there with some of my content. Ads enabled a bigger internet and "content creators" who work full time growing the internet. The internet was just fine without these professional content creators.

classified 3y ago

> Ad value is not intrinsically tied to the extraction of personal data. It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

dspillett 3y ago

Adtech isn't even that successful as far as I can see. While I block a lot of internet stalkers via PiHole at home and so forth I'm sure a lot about me and my activity gets through to the data hoarders. So then why has a lot of my recent advertising on Facebook in recent days been for feminine health products? For example: why would I, a middle-aged, long single (with no particular plans to change that state), child-less man, be interesting in a device that claims to help reduce period cramps? Most of the other advertising I see ATM is wall-to-wall Temu. Even if I would ever have ordered something from them I likely won't now as they've successfully got in my nerves. The only advertising that has worked on me in recent memory is a sponsored segment in a podcast (an event relevant to the subject matter of that podcast that I may book into), and getting that advert in front of me didn't involve tracking my movements wherever I go online & in the real world.

m463 3y ago
The ads you see aren't for you. Companies selling devices to reduce cramps bid to get to your eyeball because you (poorly) fit some demographic they want to reach. The companies you are interested in - well, they already reach your wallet just fine without banner ads. What gets me is what happens when you try to get a hotel, a plane ticket, a rental car, an emergency plumber, a tow truck or a ride somewhere.
jklinger410 3y ago
> Adtech isn't even that successful as far as I can see. And then > While I block a lot of internet stalkers via PiHole at home People who don't buy things after clicking on ads, who block all the ads they see, who are completely immune and hate ads, are not really qualified to talk about whether they work or not. Not only is this pure anecdote, and the billions spent on advertising every year as a glaring counterpoint to your comment, but you are obviously biased against the concept. This whole site is rabidly anti-advertising. Like we should all still be using terminal BBS and VIM because they are "better." These posts are so tiring.
- IggleSniggle 3y ago
  > Like we should all still be using terminal BBS and VIM because they are "better." Well, to be fair...tabs ARE objectively better than spaces for tabulating a coherent hierarchy. ...and terminal BBS and vim are better.

jamiequint 3y ago

> Ad value is not intrinsically tied to the extraction of personal data Ad value may not be tied to the extraction of personal data, but it's unambiguously tied to the use of it. Obviously more targeted ads perform better.

johnnyworker 3y ago
Yes, but existing ads perform infinitely better than ads that don't exist. Hence "fault line". Maybe the ground just below the volcano is very fertile, but in long run, you don't want to live there. > Without major changes to its operating model, each day the targeted advertising infrastructure is inching closer to collapse. Those who build and maintain the adtech metropolis now face a decision: shore up defenses around their strategic interests with slight tweaks and creative legal theories, buying themselves as much time as possible, or rebuild before the crash.
minsc_and_boo 3y ago
As long as there are imperfect markets, there is demand from sellers for advertising to do targeting. If the goal is to remove advertising, then it may be better to set up mechanisms for consumers to share information with sellers, rather than play whack-a-mole with adtech.
- convolvatron 3y ago
  are you suggesting I should..publish my preferences so companies can decide if they want to pitch to me? or that I should just show up ready to hear whatever they have to say? really confused here.
  - minsc_and_boo 3y ago
    More along the lines of giving you control to allow brands you trust to know more about you. Imperfect markets exist because of the unbalance of information, which is why adtech with its information is in demand. This is already happening with Whole Foods / Amazon, REI, and other loyalty programs.

leptons 3y ago

I worked at an Adtech company for a short while. It was the most toxic place I've ever worked. Beyond how they treated their employees, they were giddy with excitement about making a deal with a large hotel chain that gave them access to smart tvs so they could listen in and "capture data" from people staying at the hotel. When I realized what kind of people were running the place I quickly found another job. I had no doubt they would have used information gathered about me to try to control me as an employee, so I left before they could try.

Given_47 3y ago
That’s wild. I wonder if those people were just so immersed that they never actually took a step back and considered the larger picture? Cuz anecdotally ik some advertisers that don’t consider themselves “advertisers” but rather their ads as a piece of art and then expressing their creativity. Honestly not sure if I would feel better if it was some heuristic blocking a true realization of their actions or just classifying them as evil lol
- ikekkdcjkfke 3y ago
  It's the same vibe as wallstreet bloodsuckers 2007 making money off people getting thrown out of their homes
latchkey 3y ago
Same. One time my boss (the head of engineering) got so pissed at his cousin, that he hired through nepotism, that he punched a filing cabinet. It was a wild sight.
secondcoming 3y ago
I've worked at an Adtech company. It was great. The people were fantastic and diverse. The actual 'tech' part of Adtech is actually really interesting and also challenging.
- leptons 3y ago
  >I've worked at an Adtech company. It was great. The people were fantastic and diverse. Thanks for sharing your anecdote, but the same "fantastic and diverse" people you worked with could still be doing morally and ethically questionable things to get their paychecks. >The actual 'tech' part of Adtech is actually really interesting and also challenging. Atomic bombs are also "interesting and challenging" to make, that doesn't mean that using them is a good thing.

mumblemumble 3y ago

Does personally targeted advertising even add that much value over contextual advertising? I occasionally click on AdWords ads, or look up a company I see on an ad in the subway station, or follow up on Internet ads that I know are contextually targeted. But I generally have no idea how AdSense ads came to me. Amusingly, since I started making an effort to improve my Spanish last year, my partner's started getting a lot of ads in a language she doesn't speak inserted into her English-language podcast episodes.

sethammons 3y ago
20 years ago, marketing classes taught you that you don't get to know all your ad impressions that will expose you to your potential customer. However, they did studies and people needed to see a logo some six times before it stood out. When online marketing blew up, marketers were lured in by the belief that they were getting all those previously untrackable impressions. They still aren't, but there is a big segment they can now track. At that point, I feel it became an optimization problem where they cant escape the local optimum. They can't even imagine not having the not-entirely-valid data. FWIW, I feel that non targeted ads make so much more sense. If I'm reading a tech blog, I actually may want ads from a tech service. I don't need my wife's browsing habits to show me dresses.
- skydhash 3y ago
  The whole blu-ray.com website is pretty much ads. But I don't mind and I often visit the site to see what movies has been released and read the review to see if it's worth watching (production wise). Goodreads also is ads, because the description is written to appeal to you. I don't want to see blu-ray ads when I'm shopping for clothes, and I don't want to see books ads when I'm buying electronic gears (unless the book is about the gears). So yeah, ads can be targeted. It's just that companies now feel entitled to your attention 24/7 that the whole adtech spac is what it is now.
RandallBrown 3y ago
My instagram and Facebook ads are almost entirely outdoor gear, golf equipment, and things for new parents. Considering I spend most weekends hiking/backpacking, I golf somewhat regularly with my friends, and I'm expecting a baby in a few months, it's pretty accurate. I have bought several things from these ads in the past and will probably continue to do so.

Barraketh 3y ago

There seems to be a really strong disdain on HN for AdTech in general, which I think is misguided, and comes fundamentally from a "web consumer" mentality. I think that it would be valuable to reframe the question from the producers point of view: 1) I am a niche small business - how do I let people know that I exist? 2) I run a website and would like to monetize it - how can I get paid for the content that I produce? The ad-tech solution is actually quite elegant in theory - if you can show ads only to the people to whom they are relevant, then, as a small business you can let people know you exist without blowing your ad budget, and, as a content producer, the more valuable an ad-view is, the more you can charge for it. The current movement to avoid tracking is an extremely powerful centralizing force. The large platforms know a lot about you already - Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, etc. So, in a way, "we're not going to let AdTech track users" = "we're going to make only ads on large platforms effective", which means that both content producers and advertisers will prefer them, and then people ask "where did the old internet go"? The AdTech system isn't ideal, but it would be great if the people who criticize it came up with something other than "fuck the small businesses and content producers".

rebeccaskinner 3y ago
> 1) I am a niche small business - how do I let people know that I exist? 2) I run a website and would like to monetize it - how can I get paid for the content that I produce? The thing is, this isn’t my problem. The fact that someone wants to market their business doesn’t entitle them to my attention.
- brandall10 3y ago
  If you're not paying for a product in which you see the ad, it is your problem though, no? What's in the ad space is immaterial, just that is how the product is monetized.
  - amelius 3y ago
    The freaking ad is making me pay twice. Once with my attention, and then again with my money if I buy the product (since the advertising cost is incorporated into the price).

tomjen3 3y ago

Adtech is a fraud. I am using Brave and IOS than they do a really good job of blocking Facebook trackers. However Facebook knows where I went to school and some of my interests - because I told it. It would not be hard to extrapolate ads that might be interesting for a person who has graduated with a CS degree 10+ years ago (cool gadgets anyone? AI services?) but the ads I see are attrocious. It can only make any sense if Facebook isn't even trying, which only makes sense if they don't want anybody to know how little value they add. Its the same with Googles topics - if you want to show me ads for things that might be relevant for me, then _let me choose those_. But it is almost as if the thought can't even cross their minds.

nobadcrypto 3y ago
This exists. You can choose what ads you want to see on Google.

johndhi 3y ago

I'd believe this article if it were written by Google or an adtech company... But this is iapp, a professional org for privacy professionals. Their understanding of the industry is more limited than we realized.

polalavik 3y ago

I’m working on starting an ad-not-so-tech business. Fixed number of ad slots per month, fixed price per slot, and advertised on a network of high traffic blogs (also fixed with an upper bound in terms of # of blogs allowed on the network). No tracking besides impressions served and maybe # of clicks. The blogs split a pool of half the revenue. I think it could be a win-win for the network and the business if executed right. Trying to focus on specific domains: web, ML/AI and hardware/electronics engineering only. I’m currently looking for blogs to join the company which is the difficult part. The next difficult part will be reaching out to companies.

codetrotter 3y ago
> I’m currently looking for blogs to join the company which is the difficult part. Are low-traffic blogs welcome to join? Or are you mainly looking for blogs with big readership? Also, are other kinds of sites welcome to join? For example PeerTube instances? (Server similar to YouTube but open source, self hosted and uses peer to peer tech to stream videos.)
- polalavik 3y ago
  Happy to work with low traffic blogs and any sort of website or service where ads can be displayed. Especially if there is growth potential. Open to chat if interested - feel free to email: hardwareteams at gmail
  - codetrotter 3y ago
    Sent you an email :)
secondcoming 3y ago
How is this different from a PMP?

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

"Some claim that the death of targeted advertising is equivalent to the death of the ad-supported internet. This is a fallacy. Ad value is not intrinsically tied to the extraction of personal data." IAPP is not HN. The organisation predates this forum. It is not comprised of consumer privacy activists or anyone with "disdain for AdTech". Quite the opposite. It's focused on corporate compliance. People outside of HN are quite capable of seeing through bogus arguments put forth by so-called "tech" companies and their service providers. The later a group that sees licentious, surreptitous data collection as a "business model".

drivebyhooting 3y ago

Not trying to be snarky. Where can a software engineer with adtech (big data, ML, distributed systems) experience go and still earn $600K+ total comp? Liquid, mind you.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

leon_theremin 3y ago

Users have been noticing Google's ads are based on thoughts they had and without any chance of correlation to whatever Google's AI could infer from previous interaction. Same for Twitter, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, TikTok. Big Tech's algorithms have long been tapping into illegal surveillance of an unprecedented kind - besides the cliques of insiders who misuse this for stalking and harassment of children, human rights defenders, activists, minorities and everyone else. Don't expect them to be honest about their surveillance.