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Even a 1% success rate is considered phenomenal in the advertising world, and as annoying as the ads became, it is true that tracking and targeting increased th
by Millennium 14y ago
Even a 1% success rate is considered phenomenal in the advertising world, and as annoying as the ads became, it is true that tracking and targeting increased the value of ad impressions significantly when they were first introduced. The same is true of annoyances: popups, audio, and such: they simply worked.
But the people are speaking out. They don't want to be tracked by marketers, and they have been putting considerable effort into blocking the tracking efforts. Some estimates claim that as many as half the browsers on the Web now have some form of ad-blocking installed, and while the actual numbers probably aren't THAT high, it's not unreasonable to think that maybe one-quarter, or even one-third, of people may be blocking ads because of the annoying and tracking behaviors that advertisers have come to rely on.
When one takes this into consideration, surely it must be the case that annoying and tracking are now hurting advertising revenue far more than they help. It is, perhaps, time for advertisers to buck that trend: a return to the mass-marketing model that built media empires as recently as fifteen years ago. Or perhaps it is time to turn to a new kind of targeting: rather than going after individual users, target the sites themselves, directing advertisements to users based on the common interests that drive them to the places they go.
Imagine an advertiser that used such a model or something like it, and in return, pledged not to track or annoy the people who see its ads: a sort of "DuckDuckGo of advertising." Would you whitelist that advertiser in your ad-blocker? I would, and I doubt that I'm alone. I don't block ads just to stick it to the advertising agencies; I block them to make the Web usable and safe. Many people do. I wonder if a business model could be built on those people. Maybe even one that, on account of its wider viewer base, could eclipse the current tracking/annoyance models.
- rgbrgb 14y agoThe unfortunate truth is that tracking and individual targeting improves CTR. Advertisers pay for clicks. Until someone comes up with a more profitable metric, they're not going to stop tracking.
- Millennium 14y agoCertainly those behaviors improve CTR, but they do so at the cost of a shrinking viewer base: drastically shrinking, in fact, and it's about to shrink even more. Is the current point in the market still at a point where the improvement in CTR outweighs the decrease in audience?
- rgbrgb 14y agoIf you can put numbers to that argument, then advertisers will stop tracking tomorrow. There's nothing malicious going on, just business.
- untog 14y agothe cost of a shrinking viewer base: drastically shrinking, in fact, and it's about to shrink even more. Are you sure? The vast majority of users are entirely ignorant of tracking, and don't care much even when they do know of it.
- tomjen3 14y agoNot really. Facebook knows more about me than the STASI did about most of its citizens. Yet the best ads they can show me are for dating sites -- something I am not that interested in, and certainly wouldn't pay for -- and totally ignore all my likes. If marketeers had a single brain cell then the ads on my facebook page would be covered in geeky offers, interesting books, computer hardware, etc. It is the same with Google. A couple of weeks after I signed the papers for my new appartment I got a ton of ads for the same (crappy) appartment site -- even though I didn't need two appartments, I needed cheap paint and a moving van. I am considering taking a weekend or so and writing a piece of software that can do it better than the current crop of marketeers, because they are as useless as Dilberts boss.
- throwaway1460 14y agoAdblock Plus optionally (and by default) permits some ‘non-intrusive’ ads. https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads