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> 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 tie

> 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.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      > giving you control to allow brands you trust to know more about you. I'd be thrilled with this, as long as I can choose zero brands, and companies will refrain from collecting data about me.
      - minsc_and_boo 3y ago
        They'd be paying you directly for your information through incentives.
  - skydhash 3y ago
    AKA consumer surveys. Telemetry in software is never worth it in my opinion. The only part that is useful is crash detection and logging. But if the goal is to decide what is important or no, the data just become self reinforcing. You have all those feature request boards and items with multiple votes on it and the company never act on them (Looking at you, Spotify), so what is the usefulness on the telemetry then?
mrweasel 3y ago
> Obviously more targeted ads perform better. Do we honestly know if that's true in any meaningful way? It also depends on what you mean by targeted. If it's advertising power tools to someone who's clearly searching things related to DIY, sure, make sense. If we mean: "Push this product to men between 30 and 40, who works in construction and have 2 kids" then I'd love to see an A/B test that suggested that a broader campaign isn't cheaper and equally effective. You're cutting of a lot of potential customers when you're targeting is to narrow and I don't think that's accounted for in general.
- mumblemumble 3y ago
  We probably don't. Empirically demonstrating the effectiveness of an advertising campaign is notoriously difficult and expensive and few people in the adtech industry have any interest in paying for that kind of research. See, for example: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/1963405.1963431 https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/1963405.1963431 There was a point in an episode of the podcast You're Wrong About where one of the hosts made a comment about how much you can learn about people just by observing what kinds of things we don't require evidence to believe. I think that the effectiveness of tracking-based advertising might be one of those things. It seems to be tied to an assumption that, where data is concerned, bigger is always better. Ironically, statisticians and philosophers of science have already known that this isn't actually true for about a century now.
  - jklinger410 3y ago
    Why do you assume that the statisticians and analysts who work in the adtech sphere are incompetent? That they know the whole thing is a big lie, and contextual ads definitely work better, but they are either stupid or corrupt and forcing this concept down everyone's throats?
    - mumblemumble 3y ago
      I don't. But I know from experience as someone who gets paid to do statistics that you work with the constraints that are set by your employer, and the person who gets to have the job is the person who's willing to do the job.
yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
> Obviously more targeted ads perform better. If that's true at all, it depends on the targeting. Consider the classic "I bought a toilet seat, so now Amazon gives me loads of suggestions to buy more of them". I remain convinced that lots of ads are poorly or incorrectly targeted with the results that the additional information didn't actually help them and may have even hurt them.
- jklinger410 3y ago
  > I remain convinced that lots of ads are poorly or incorrectly targeted with the results that the additional information didn't actually help them and may have even hurt them. There are certainly poorly targeted ads. Not sure what that has to do with the technology, though.
  - pasc1878 3y ago
    That is purely the technology doing that bad targeting - humans arn"t saying that as you bought a toilet seat you want to see more adverts for more of them.
    - jklinger410 3y ago
      No, there are a lot of bad and lazy marketers that set up bad targeting. Some ad tech may be responsible for the bad targeting, depending on your vendor. But there is also ad tech that has scary capabilities that rarely misses.
      - pasc1878 3y ago
        SO the tech can and does block adverts for toulet seats if you have just bought one?

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.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > giving you control to allow brands you trust to know more about you. I'd be thrilled with this, as long as I can choose zero brands, and companies will refrain from collecting data about me.
    - minsc_and_boo 3y ago
      They'd be paying you directly for your information through incentives.
- skydhash 3y ago
  AKA consumer surveys. Telemetry in software is never worth it in my opinion. The only part that is useful is crash detection and logging. But if the goal is to decide what is important or no, the data just become self reinforcing. You have all those feature request boards and items with multiple votes on it and the company never act on them (Looking at you, Spotify), so what is the usefulness on the telemetry then?

mrweasel 3y ago

> Obviously more targeted ads perform better. Do we honestly know if that's true in any meaningful way? It also depends on what you mean by targeted. If it's advertising power tools to someone who's clearly searching things related to DIY, sure, make sense. If we mean: "Push this product to men between 30 and 40, who works in construction and have 2 kids" then I'd love to see an A/B test that suggested that a broader campaign isn't cheaper and equally effective. You're cutting of a lot of potential customers when you're targeting is to narrow and I don't think that's accounted for in general.

mumblemumble 3y ago
We probably don't. Empirically demonstrating the effectiveness of an advertising campaign is notoriously difficult and expensive and few people in the adtech industry have any interest in paying for that kind of research. See, for example: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/1963405.1963431 https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/1963405.1963431 There was a point in an episode of the podcast You're Wrong About where one of the hosts made a comment about how much you can learn about people just by observing what kinds of things we don't require evidence to believe. I think that the effectiveness of tracking-based advertising might be one of those things. It seems to be tied to an assumption that, where data is concerned, bigger is always better. Ironically, statisticians and philosophers of science have already known that this isn't actually true for about a century now.
- jklinger410 3y ago
  Why do you assume that the statisticians and analysts who work in the adtech sphere are incompetent? That they know the whole thing is a big lie, and contextual ads definitely work better, but they are either stupid or corrupt and forcing this concept down everyone's throats?
  - mumblemumble 3y ago
    I don't. But I know from experience as someone who gets paid to do statistics that you work with the constraints that are set by your employer, and the person who gets to have the job is the person who's willing to do the job.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago

> Obviously more targeted ads perform better. If that's true at all, it depends on the targeting. Consider the classic "I bought a toilet seat, so now Amazon gives me loads of suggestions to buy more of them". I remain convinced that lots of ads are poorly or incorrectly targeted with the results that the additional information didn't actually help them and may have even hurt them.

jklinger410 3y ago
> I remain convinced that lots of ads are poorly or incorrectly targeted with the results that the additional information didn't actually help them and may have even hurt them. There are certainly poorly targeted ads. Not sure what that has to do with the technology, though.
- pasc1878 3y ago
  That is purely the technology doing that bad targeting - humans arn"t saying that as you bought a toilet seat you want to see more adverts for more of them.
  - jklinger410 3y ago
    No, there are a lot of bad and lazy marketers that set up bad targeting. Some ad tech may be responsible for the bad targeting, depending on your vendor. But there is also ad tech that has scary capabilities that rarely misses.
    - pasc1878 3y ago
      SO the tech can and does block adverts for toulet seats if you have just bought one?