One caveat about removing trackers is it opens up for the ability for easily exploitable fraud from botnet users.
Ask HN: How would you build a trackerless ad network?
11–16 of 16 posts
Re: Ask HN: How would you build a trackerless ad network?
#12One caveat about removing trackers is it opens up for the ability for easily exploitable fraud from botnet users.
That is true. They drive up prices on Google Ad prices. But I feel its a symptom more than the problem. Because these ad networks have a per-click payout system, they have to track each and every click. One way to fix this would be to have a constant pay rate regardless of clicks. Something like $X/week or $Y/month, where X&Y can be decided on heuristics I explained in other comment.
Re: Ask HN: How would you build a trackerless ad network?
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
But advertisers want to target their advertisements to specific demographics. How can you target the user (identify the user's demographic, to select which ad to show) if you can only collect limited information based on the load of the static image? Ultimately you would end up with a model where advertisers target based on website, rather than user demographic.
Good question. Maybe target using some kind of heuristics? We can figure out who is loading our imgs: ip addresses, requesting browser details, load time, approximate location (city, state, country), what website is the user visiting (can figure out what they are interested it) etc. We can build anonymous profiles of users. Ofcourse, the bigger the network, more precise the heuristics..
Right. So you've just arrived back at the status quo of tracking!
How do you define "anonymous?" Even if you have a policy not to store "personal details" like real name, you are still tracking some set of attributes of each user (ip address, headers, latency, etc). Together, a set of these attributes is likely sufficient to uniquely identify the user the set belongs to.
So now you're back to the original problem.
Re: Ask HN: How would you build a trackerless ad network?
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good question. Maybe target using some kind of heuristics? We can figure out who is loading our imgs: ip addresses, requesting browser details, load time, approximate location (city, state, country), what website is the user visiting (can figure out what they are interested it) etc. We can build anonymous profiles of users. Ofcourse, the bigger the network, more precise the heuristics..
Right. So you've just arrived back at the status quo of tracking! How do you define "anonymous?" Even if you have a policy not to store "personal details" like real name, you are still tracking some set of attributes of each user (ip address, headers, latency, etc). Together, a set of these attributes is likely sufficient to uniquely identify the user the set belongs to. So now you're back to the original problem.
Dang it! Back to square one. So it seems its a double edged sword. Personally I feel this is a good compromise. What would you rather have, something like this? Or something like Google Ads that follow you throughout the internet with help of super cookies and javascript, merge everything they know about your behaviours from their other services, and serve ultra specific creepy ads?
Re: Ask HN: How would you build a trackerless ad network?
#15If I would make a trackingless ad network I would make it interrest based instead so what you get is relevant to the website you visit and not based on datamining of individuals.
Re: Ask HN: How would you build a trackerless ad network?
#16If I would make a trackingless ad network I would make it interrest based instead so what you get is relevant to the website you visit and not based on datamining of individuals.
That makes sense. So we can, instead of mining anonymous data about users (like my other comment), can mine the webpage the ad is going to be displayed on. This would make it interest based. Thanks for your input!