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Disclaimer: I didn't work on this and I'm not an expert on the topic, but... As I understand it, it's not so much measuring how often a particular ad was seen,

by Vinnl 2y ago

Disclaimer: I didn't work on this and I'm not an expert on the topic, but... As I understand it, it's not so much measuring how often a particular ad was seen, but how often the people who converted have seen a particular ad before, without anything about the people who did. Conceptually, it's similar to cutting out a coupon from a newspaper to get a discount; the store then knows that that newspaper ad led to the sale. (Though of course, in the coupon case they can also see which customers saw those ads.)

authorfly 2y ago
It's not similar to cutting out a coupon. It's placing a token with a permanent bluetooth tracker on every person that happens to use the nearby convenience store (firefox) without their knowing and having your staff pick up the tokens of those that walk into the paint shop with bluetooth connections. The coupon analogy falls down anyway - Coupons are loss-leaders designed to impact and increase future spending trends usually, and typically provide a discount others cannot access, or a discount upon a known previous price point - in other words some type of (possibly spurious) discount. Nobody leaves without a tracker, the description is vague and the direction of travel for purchasing becomes more Ad-laden. Company conversion and profit rates going up means the consumers are paying more than the otherwise would, either in price (profit) or volume. Can't you see how this can only be worse and is nothing like a coupon? Advertising is not a net 0, people who see more advertising spend more of their money. This is correlated with quality of life and happiness negatively. Furthermore, if you have libertarian tendencies, advertising makes unknown companies like startups less appealing to consumers due to primal branding psychology, and stops them challenging incumbents. It's a net negative. It's worse for the consumers. What's the primal reason you are contributing to this thread? To defend someone and their policy - or to avoid some other fear?
- Vinnl 2y ago
  My reason for contributing was that I think there's a misunderstanding if someone thinks it's targeting rather than measurement, which the comment I replied to stated. There's a separate discussion to be had about whether advertising in general is a good or bad thing, whether Mozilla should be actively fighting it, and if that would even be viable, but I'm not too interested in that at the moment.

by Vinnl 2y ago

authorfly 2y ago

It's not similar to cutting out a coupon. It's placing a token with a permanent bluetooth tracker on every person that happens to use the nearby convenience store (firefox) without their knowing and having your staff pick up the tokens of those that walk into the paint shop with bluetooth connections. The coupon analogy falls down anyway - Coupons are loss-leaders designed to impact and increase future spending trends usually, and typically provide a discount others cannot access, or a discount upon a known previous price point - in other words some type of (possibly spurious) discount. Nobody leaves without a tracker, the description is vague and the direction of travel for purchasing becomes more Ad-laden. Company conversion and profit rates going up means the consumers are paying more than the otherwise would, either in price (profit) or volume. Can't you see how this can only be worse and is nothing like a coupon? Advertising is not a net 0, people who see more advertising spend more of their money. This is correlated with quality of life and happiness negatively. Furthermore, if you have libertarian tendencies, advertising makes unknown companies like startups less appealing to consumers due to primal branding psychology, and stops them challenging incumbents. It's a net negative. It's worse for the consumers. What's the primal reason you are contributing to this thread? To defend someone and their policy - or to avoid some other fear?

Vinnl 2y ago
My reason for contributing was that I think there's a misunderstanding if someone thinks it's targeting rather than measurement, which the comment I replied to stated. There's a separate discussion to be had about whether advertising in general is a good or bad thing, whether Mozilla should be actively fighting it, and if that would even be viable, but I'm not too interested in that at the moment.