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The below section resonates: lately YouTube has figured out I am in my mid-twenties and considering for the first time how best to save money for a secure/stabl

The below section resonates: lately YouTube has figured out I am in my mid-twenties and considering for the first time how best to save money for a secure/stable future. The number of ADs I see now not so subtly implying that I can expect to “lose big” or “rent forever” if I don’t subscribe to QuestTrade/WealthSimple/… It’s just frustrating to know that someone put time and thought into making me and a million other folks in my “demographic bucket” feel anxious and worried. I’m not sure how best to address this sort of thing and I suppose I can buy my way out of most internet ads if I want to so I acknowledge we all play a part in this market. But some types of advertisements need to be highly regulated I would include Gambling, Pharmaceuticals, Alcohol on that list. But a broader class of non-luxury goods which are being advertised via a very negative framing of the consumers current situation are a social externality. They contribute to real health problems in the population and in my view that is reason enough to examine regulation. > A marketer I know has a mantra, that successful sales are all about dissatisfaction - making people aware just how their situation sucks, and then offering a way to relieve the pain.

Zanfa 2y ago
> The below section resonates: lately YouTube has figured out I am in my mid-twenties and considering for the first time how best to save money for a secure/stable future. This is funny since YouTube especially has never been able to figure out my demographics. To this day it keeps showing me ads for female hygiene products, cleaning supplies, quick fashion brands or scam ads in Russian, a language I don't speak. None of this has ever been relevant to me in any way whatsoever. They should just go back to showing exclusively contextual ads, they'd have better odds of hitting a topic I might actually be even remotely in the target market for.
- bitmasher9 2y ago
  You’re in a minority. As long as YouTube is mostly right the vast majority of the time, running identity based ads is significantly more profitable than running context based ads. Years and years ago I worked at a company selling context based web ads, and our numbers were significantly lower than identity based ads. There were a few companies willing to pay good money for certain context based ads, that we got good money from, but most went to identity based because CTR was much higher. There were also some holdout webpages that only served context based ads for privacy concerns, but largely it was a dying niche in the larger online advertising space because of key metrics like Click Through Rate.
washadjeffmad 2y ago
Sounds like you (shouldn't) need a more advanced threat model.
Const-me 2y ago
> not sure how best to address this sort of thing I use two browser addons, uBlock origin and SponsorBlock.
- dorgo 2y ago
  SponsorBlock needs an AI-version. Currently it relies on users.
- Vilian 2y ago
  firefox mobile support extensions and revanced on android
vdnkh 2y ago
This is incredibly petty of me but why do people keep spelling "ads" as "ADs" lately? It's an abbreviation not an initialism
- DamnInteresting 2y ago
  It could be a backronym for Asshole Design. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backronym https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backronym
- chefandy 2y ago
  Phone autocorrect usually is the culprit for those types of typos for me. I imagine this crowd would be more likely than many to have that common abbreviation for Active Domains trained into their input methods.
fwn 2y ago
> ... some types of advertisements need to be highly regulated ... I truly detest advertising and have been avoiding it with a passion for about 20 years through adblocking, aggressive unsubscribing, etc. But regulating advertising is only a quick fix to a much more dangerous problem of user disempowerment. For tech-savvy people, most ads can be blocked, that is, until you insist on using proprietary software to access social media platforms or stream movies or stuff like that. DRM is the ultimate enemy here. While the regulation of advertising is very quick, it is also quickly abolished if decision makers change. Regulation around user choice and user empowerment along with media literacy is a much more sustainable and more robust solution than regulation of specific ad types, places, messages or genres. (I'm thinking of the policy templates for regulating alcoholic beverages or sugary products in the EU.) We see the fragility of the content-wise regulatory approach in parts of the US where online gambling has been legalized. I cannot find the article now, but this policy change led to an absurd amount of advertising, to which consumers were extremely vulnerable. Advertising would not have been such an effective shortcut into the brains of so many consumers if those consumers had had the freedom, tools and education to easily decide what kind of advertising they want to be exposed to (and what kind of accompanying tracking they find tolerable).

Zanfa 2y ago

> The below section resonates: lately YouTube has figured out I am in my mid-twenties and considering for the first time how best to save money for a secure/stable future. This is funny since YouTube especially has never been able to figure out my demographics. To this day it keeps showing me ads for female hygiene products, cleaning supplies, quick fashion brands or scam ads in Russian, a language I don't speak. None of this has ever been relevant to me in any way whatsoever. They should just go back to showing exclusively contextual ads, they'd have better odds of hitting a topic I might actually be even remotely in the target market for.

bitmasher9 2y ago
You’re in a minority. As long as YouTube is mostly right the vast majority of the time, running identity based ads is significantly more profitable than running context based ads. Years and years ago I worked at a company selling context based web ads, and our numbers were significantly lower than identity based ads. There were a few companies willing to pay good money for certain context based ads, that we got good money from, but most went to identity based because CTR was much higher. There were also some holdout webpages that only served context based ads for privacy concerns, but largely it was a dying niche in the larger online advertising space because of key metrics like Click Through Rate.

washadjeffmad 2y ago

Sounds like you (shouldn't) need a more advanced threat model.

Const-me 2y ago

> not sure how best to address this sort of thing I use two browser addons, uBlock origin and SponsorBlock.

dorgo 2y ago
SponsorBlock needs an AI-version. Currently it relies on users.
Vilian 2y ago
firefox mobile support extensions and revanced on android

vdnkh 2y ago

This is incredibly petty of me but why do people keep spelling "ads" as "ADs" lately? It's an abbreviation not an initialism

DamnInteresting 2y ago
It could be a backronym for Asshole Design. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backronym https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backronym
chefandy 2y ago
Phone autocorrect usually is the culprit for those types of typos for me. I imagine this crowd would be more likely than many to have that common abbreviation for Active Domains trained into their input methods.

fwn 2y ago

> ... some types of advertisements need to be highly regulated ... I truly detest advertising and have been avoiding it with a passion for about 20 years through adblocking, aggressive unsubscribing, etc. But regulating advertising is only a quick fix to a much more dangerous problem of user disempowerment. For tech-savvy people, most ads can be blocked, that is, until you insist on using proprietary software to access social media platforms or stream movies or stuff like that. DRM is the ultimate enemy here. While the regulation of advertising is very quick, it is also quickly abolished if decision makers change. Regulation around user choice and user empowerment along with media literacy is a much more sustainable and more robust solution than regulation of specific ad types, places, messages or genres. (I'm thinking of the policy templates for regulating alcoholic beverages or sugary products in the EU.) We see the fragility of the content-wise regulatory approach in parts of the US where online gambling has been legalized. I cannot find the article now, but this policy change led to an absurd amount of advertising, to which consumers were extremely vulnerable. Advertising would not have been such an effective shortcut into the brains of so many consumers if those consumers had had the freedom, tools and education to easily decide what kind of advertising they want to be exposed to (and what kind of accompanying tracking they find tolerable).