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> 2. Makes the rest of the internet worse (e.g. people show MORE ads because they are less effective because they show me boats and I hate boats) Back in the o

> 2. Makes the rest of the internet worse (e.g. people show MORE ads because they are less effective because they show me boats and I hate boats) Back in the olden days, if you read a boat magazine, you’ll see ads for boat stuff. This was always fun for me — if I’m ready a motorcycle racing magazine, I’ll see ads for cool things that I had no idea existed and that would be useful to me. With “targeted” ads, it becomes an echo chamber — I see ads that are “tailored” for my alleged current interests, but nothing that helped me discover new things that I could become interested in. What’s wrong with context-based ads? If I’m reading about Thailand travel, then the publisher should sell ads related to SE Asia travel. Why am “I” being customized to rather than ads being relevant to the content? If you want to reach boat enthusiasts, then advertise on content related to boats (or perhaps water sports, etc.) You then don’t need to track “me,” but instead you can track “boat content. That takes the personal data out of it. This keeps me from being followed around the web trying to sell me a vacuum cleaner I already bought.

literalAardvark 1y ago
This is the part that I'm most confused about. How can it possibly be useful to try to sell me another fridge? Sure, it might be useful to try to sell me another burger, or another nicotine gum, but something went very wrong in the data processing if I'm being resold on lifetime goods. And it happens way too often.
- hiq 1y ago
  > This is the part that I'm most confused about. How can it possibly be useful to try to sell me another fridge? I've seen this kind of comments several times over the years, and I've always thought that this might actually be the optimal strategy, because I'm not convinced the alternatives work better. You'd have to see the numbers over samples bigger than n=1. Let's say I just bought a bridge, and that's the only thing you know about me. What ads should you serve me? Maybe fridge accessories would make sense (I'm not sure that's a thing). But fridges themselves might be relevant as well, more so than some other random product: 1. I might be able to return the fridge I just bought, if I see another one I might prefer. 2. What's the life expectancy of such an appliance? I guess it either breaks quickly (manufacturing flaw) or not (hopefully it can last more than 5 years). In the first case, I'm back in the market right after my purchase. I'm also guessing that the margin on such an appliance might be higher than on burgers and nicotine gums, such that you can afford lower conversion rates.
  - literalAardvark 1y ago
    The life expectancy of large appliances is 10-20 bloody years. Who returns fridges? It's a tremendous pain in the ass to do. But you're right, it's possible. Logically I think I'd choose to show myself other new home related ads, or other long term appliances that are probably not bought yet or nearing end of life just like the fridge.
- ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago
  Goods aren't lifetime any more. Planned obsolesce is a business model.
  - literalAardvark 1y ago
    If you get decent stuff they last quite long. But you do have to optimise for that, instead of Bluetooth connectivity.
miki123211 1y ago
> What’s wrong with context-based ads? What ad is relevant to a Taylor Swift song? A news article about a shooting (a naive algorithm will say "guns")? A Youtube video explaining the Fourier series? What about a TV Show review... that is watched by people around the world, and where the show in question is on different platforms in different countries? Does displaying Hulu ads to readers in countries without Hulu access make sense? Non-personalized advertising favors big brands, because most content isn't contextual, and only brands with extremely broad appeal advertise on such content. This is why so much TV advertising is cars, banks, medications, detergent, shaving cream and so on.
- briandear 1y ago
  > What ad is relevant to a Taylor Swift song? How did radio handle this for 90+ years? > This is why so much TV advertising is cars, banks, medications… No, that’s because national TV advertising is super expensive. > Does displaying Hulu ads to readers in countries without Hulu access make sense? Yeah, perhaps it’ll generate interest in Hulu expanding to that country. You’d be reaching an audience that are ostensibly TV enthusiasts, so it’s a perfect idea for Hulu to gauge and develop interest among audiences that matter. > A YouTube video explaining the Fourier series? I don’t know: what kinds of products, services, or events might be interesting for someone who was interested in the Fourier series? This isn’t a hard problem at all. Advertising worked in the 1950s just fine. There is zero reason for a company to have my personal buying and interest habits in their database. It doesn’t benefit me. Is the advertising landscape better in 2025 than it was in 1964? Not at all. Here’s a prime example: my friend is an author, he reads blogs and websites on all matter of topics, but somehow if he’s researching a character, he’ll be followed around the web forever advertising products he’ll never buy. In the real world, if I go into a perfume shop one time and buy something, that doesn’t mean I’m a perfume enthusiast — so all of those CPM ads from the perfume companies: completely wasted. Just because I view, visit, or even buy something, that doesn’t mean I’m interested. Am I in a feminine products affinity group because I occasionally have purchased those products for my wife? Why not have everyone give a DNA sample to Google so they can tailor advertising based on my genetics? Where does it stop, and to what levels of absurdity shall it reach before we push back — both as consumers and well as tech people building all of this shit? Want to sell boats? Advertise in boat content. Want to sell subscriptions to your “innovative accounting platform,” the advertise in accounting or business related content. Again, this isn’t hard. I don’t want “personalized” advertising because the internet doesn’t know me or what I’m interested in at a particular moment. The data on me is very noisy, my interests frequently are fleeting or change, and my “buying habits” are very much contextual and situational. Not to mention I don’t want Google and potentially governments to know what I’m interested in — it’s literally none of their business. Privacy is a human right and we should be pushing for that. If that makes it harder to monetize Taylor Swift — tough shit. Not my problem. And I don’t think Taylor Swift cares either way.
imiric 1y ago
Agreed. The only advertising I stand is one I personally seek out. To me the pinnacle of this were product catalogs. I want to buy a computer, so I subscribe to "Computer Shopper Monthly", and get a magazine with nothing but computer ads. Those were always fun to browse, since I was interested in the product in the first place. E-commerce started as a digital implementation of product catalogs, but as companies got greedier, that just wasn't enough. The key culprit is that user data is used not just for advertising products that the user might be interested in _today_. But to create a profile of their interests so that companies can predict what they might be interested in at any point in the future, which can then be used to design more effective advertising campaigns tailored to the type of products they're most susceptible to be manipulated into buying. Furthermore, this profile is also generally useful to anyone who wishes to psychologically manipulate a group of people into thinking or acting a certain way. Since advertising is a branch of propaganda, governments and political agencies are particularly interested in this use case. It's pretty obvious that the current global sociopolitical instability is largely a product of this type of manipulation. So considering that both governments and companies have an interest in user data, this genie is never going back in the bottle. The best we can hope for is for the exploitation to be contained via regulation by governments that haven't been fully corrupted yet.

literalAardvark 1y ago

This is the part that I'm most confused about. How can it possibly be useful to try to sell me another fridge? Sure, it might be useful to try to sell me another burger, or another nicotine gum, but something went very wrong in the data processing if I'm being resold on lifetime goods. And it happens way too often.

hiq 1y ago
> This is the part that I'm most confused about. How can it possibly be useful to try to sell me another fridge? I've seen this kind of comments several times over the years, and I've always thought that this might actually be the optimal strategy, because I'm not convinced the alternatives work better. You'd have to see the numbers over samples bigger than n=1. Let's say I just bought a bridge, and that's the only thing you know about me. What ads should you serve me? Maybe fridge accessories would make sense (I'm not sure that's a thing). But fridges themselves might be relevant as well, more so than some other random product: 1. I might be able to return the fridge I just bought, if I see another one I might prefer. 2. What's the life expectancy of such an appliance? I guess it either breaks quickly (manufacturing flaw) or not (hopefully it can last more than 5 years). In the first case, I'm back in the market right after my purchase. I'm also guessing that the margin on such an appliance might be higher than on burgers and nicotine gums, such that you can afford lower conversion rates.
- literalAardvark 1y ago
  The life expectancy of large appliances is 10-20 bloody years. Who returns fridges? It's a tremendous pain in the ass to do. But you're right, it's possible. Logically I think I'd choose to show myself other new home related ads, or other long term appliances that are probably not bought yet or nearing end of life just like the fridge.
ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago
Goods aren't lifetime any more. Planned obsolesce is a business model.
- literalAardvark 1y ago
  If you get decent stuff they last quite long. But you do have to optimise for that, instead of Bluetooth connectivity.

miki123211 1y ago

> What’s wrong with context-based ads? What ad is relevant to a Taylor Swift song? A news article about a shooting (a naive algorithm will say "guns")? A Youtube video explaining the Fourier series? What about a TV Show review... that is watched by people around the world, and where the show in question is on different platforms in different countries? Does displaying Hulu ads to readers in countries without Hulu access make sense? Non-personalized advertising favors big brands, because most content isn't contextual, and only brands with extremely broad appeal advertise on such content. This is why so much TV advertising is cars, banks, medications, detergent, shaving cream and so on.

briandear 1y ago
> What ad is relevant to a Taylor Swift song? How did radio handle this for 90+ years? > This is why so much TV advertising is cars, banks, medications… No, that’s because national TV advertising is super expensive. > Does displaying Hulu ads to readers in countries without Hulu access make sense? Yeah, perhaps it’ll generate interest in Hulu expanding to that country. You’d be reaching an audience that are ostensibly TV enthusiasts, so it’s a perfect idea for Hulu to gauge and develop interest among audiences that matter. > A YouTube video explaining the Fourier series? I don’t know: what kinds of products, services, or events might be interesting for someone who was interested in the Fourier series? This isn’t a hard problem at all. Advertising worked in the 1950s just fine. There is zero reason for a company to have my personal buying and interest habits in their database. It doesn’t benefit me. Is the advertising landscape better in 2025 than it was in 1964? Not at all. Here’s a prime example: my friend is an author, he reads blogs and websites on all matter of topics, but somehow if he’s researching a character, he’ll be followed around the web forever advertising products he’ll never buy. In the real world, if I go into a perfume shop one time and buy something, that doesn’t mean I’m a perfume enthusiast — so all of those CPM ads from the perfume companies: completely wasted. Just because I view, visit, or even buy something, that doesn’t mean I’m interested. Am I in a feminine products affinity group because I occasionally have purchased those products for my wife? Why not have everyone give a DNA sample to Google so they can tailor advertising based on my genetics? Where does it stop, and to what levels of absurdity shall it reach before we push back — both as consumers and well as tech people building all of this shit? Want to sell boats? Advertise in boat content. Want to sell subscriptions to your “innovative accounting platform,” the advertise in accounting or business related content. Again, this isn’t hard. I don’t want “personalized” advertising because the internet doesn’t know me or what I’m interested in at a particular moment. The data on me is very noisy, my interests frequently are fleeting or change, and my “buying habits” are very much contextual and situational. Not to mention I don’t want Google and potentially governments to know what I’m interested in — it’s literally none of their business. Privacy is a human right and we should be pushing for that. If that makes it harder to monetize Taylor Swift — tough shit. Not my problem. And I don’t think Taylor Swift cares either way.

imiric 1y ago

Agreed. The only advertising I stand is one I personally seek out. To me the pinnacle of this were product catalogs. I want to buy a computer, so I subscribe to "Computer Shopper Monthly", and get a magazine with nothing but computer ads. Those were always fun to browse, since I was interested in the product in the first place. E-commerce started as a digital implementation of product catalogs, but as companies got greedier, that just wasn't enough. The key culprit is that user data is used not just for advertising products that the user might be interested in _today_. But to create a profile of their interests so that companies can predict what they might be interested in at any point in the future, which can then be used to design more effective advertising campaigns tailored to the type of products they're most susceptible to be manipulated into buying. Furthermore, this profile is also generally useful to anyone who wishes to psychologically manipulate a group of people into thinking or acting a certain way. Since advertising is a branch of propaganda, governments and political agencies are particularly interested in this use case. It's pretty obvious that the current global sociopolitical instability is largely a product of this type of manipulation. So considering that both governments and companies have an interest in user data, this genie is never going back in the bottle. The best we can hope for is for the exploitation to be contained via regulation by governments that haven't been fully corrupted yet.