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Trackers

jacquesmattheij.com

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Re: Trackers

#191

Post by btilly »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #15

Believe it or not, some stores sympathise with you. They might actually be run by people like you, people who read your story. They still want to know how you proceed round the store, because that helps them optimise shelf layout, identify hard-to-find items, and so on. So yes, they might use the standard in-store CCTV to observe your journeys, and when they figure that you and people like you always have difficulty…

You are missing some basic facts about how marketing works. Let's start here to demonstrate.

...when they figure that you and people like you always have difficulty finding the eggs (seriously - why is it always so hard to find the eggs?), they'll move the eggs somewhere more prominent, so they can sell more eggs and you can buy what you came to buy.

You think that stores are in business to sell you eggs, and are slightly puzzled that eggs aren't easy to find. But you confidently continue proceed despite direct evidence that stores don't act like you think they should.

The answer to your question is that stores are in business to sell you as much as they can, and the eggs are just there to get you to see everything they have to offer. If they made it easy to buy eggs then your life would become easier and they make less money.

Stores know this because they hire consultants who tell them what to do. And the ones who refused, made less money then got out-competed or bought out by the ones who followed the advice. Now they all know to bury eggs, and the big ones make each store's layout different so that they can maximize how much consumers wander.

You know what else those consultants told them? Candy bars are high profit items, but nobody is going into your stores to buy junk food. Those are impulse buys. So put them right where everyone is forced to stand and wait for the cash register to make it as hard as possible to avoid the impulse.

Look down the cereal aisle. They put cereals with healthy branding at eye level for moms, and the obviously exciting cereals at eye level for kids. Note that branding and reality are unrelated. Take a look at the serving size and sugar per serving on all the boxes. No matter what the branding, most of the cereals work out to be about the same.

It goes on and on. Marketers have fine-tuned their art to a science. No matter where you look, they have mastered details you wouldn't have thought of. And while they aim to hit your emotional buttons, they do NOT fundamentally aim to please YOU. You're not the client. The store is their client, and your being unable to stop opening your wallet is the product that the store is buying.

Re: Trackers

#192

Post by theshadowmonkey »

jacquesm wrote: post #182
theshadowmonkey wrote: post #181

What you probably missed is if I am a big enough retailer, I can pay off your bouncers to still follow you from a distance and still show up on your newspaper on one side since I have more than you and can pay off your bouncers to work for me while they still pretend they are protecting you. Just an example: https://adblockplus.org/about

No, that's in there (near the end).

Cool. But, do you think a paid model for consuming content would work given the number of content sources and the frequency with which a user visits a single source? Don't content creators depend on some form of revenue and trackers are used to optimize the revenue.

Re: Trackers

#193

Post by jacquesm »

theshadowmonkey wrote: post #192
jacquesm wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's in there (near the end).

Cool. But, do you think a paid model for consuming content would work given the number of content sources and the frequency with which a user visits a single source? Don't content creators depend on some form of revenue and trackers are used to optimize the revenue.

I don't think advertising and tracking need to go hand-in-hand the way they do right now.

Re: Trackers

#194

Post by joshmanders »

jacquesm wrote: post #188
joshmanders wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved your post and I understand it, but your argument right now is pure anecdotal. I haven't ran a site in the last 5 years that had an advertisement on it. But I have ran sites in the past that served over 400,000 unique visitors a day, and the only way I could afford to continue delivering the content that those visitors came for was to either require them to pay for it, or…

Ah, but you are conflating ads and trackers, which is exactly the root of the problem. I'd be more than happy to view the ads, I might even click on them. But I point blank refuse to be profiled/tracked/long term cookied/finger printed and served a side of malware to boot. That is the problem here.

But people fight the trackers by installing adblockers, because lets face it, the biggest offenders are ad companies. And all ad blockers are in whitelist mode by default, and nobody cares enough to turn it to blacklist mode, as a result the guys who display tasteful, unintrusive, non tracking ads, get caught in the crossfire, and the go to argument by these people is "It's my right to block anything I want." but in another breath they're complaining because a company decided that if you block their ads, they're blocking you.

Re: Trackers

#195

Post by jacquesm »

joshmanders wrote: post #194
jacquesm wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, but you are conflating ads and trackers, which is exactly the root of the problem. I'd be more than happy to view the ads, I might even click on them. But I point blank refuse to be profiled/tracked/long term cookied/finger printed and served a side of malware to boot. That is the problem here.

But people fight the trackers by installing adblockers, because lets face it, the biggest offenders are ad companies. And all ad blockers are in whitelist mode by default, and nobody cares enough to turn it to blacklist mode, as a result the guys who display tasteful, unintrusive, non tracking ads, get caught in the crossfire, and the go to argument by these people is "It's my right to block anything I want." but in…

Yes, but I think it is a step (or rather several steps) too far to blame the users here. The advertising industry decided to take what it could so here we are today. Web properties have had ample time and opportunity to dial up the heat on the agencies and the ad-tech companies to stop this all from happening but the money was just too good.

So now the unintrusive, non tracking ads (the good guys, if you wish) will be lumped in with the rest, because they are a very small fraction of the total and people that have finally had enough of all this can't be bothered to be precise enough about how hard they slam the door.

And I'm not complaining about companies that block me because I run an ad blocker, I couldn't care less, their loss, not mine, there is enough content out there that you couldn't consume it in several lifetimes if you wanted to.

Re: Trackers

#196

Post by jacquesm »

robbiemitchell wrote: post #156
jacquesm wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is true. But: (1) the number of parties that only use site specific trackers is relatively small to the number of parties that use networks, (2) even those parties usually carry facebook/google and other embedded resources, effectively still leaking your data and (3) in the end, you can't be sure that they don't combine that data on the backside with data procured elsewhere.

I'm not sure whether we're talking about the same thing, but plenty of the web is people running sites tracking analytics on sites that have nothing to do with ads. Of those, Google Analytics would be the most common, and yes, Google is in the ads business. But there are numerous services that provide analytics and have no part in tracking you elsewhere. Is Mailchimp involved in cookie trading? Segment? Intercom? Mix…

Well, the 'you can't be sure' in practice translates into 'everybody does it' but I'd rather leave enough room for those that do not engage in these practices. Absolutes simply don't cut it.

And the 'value they provide' is never provided to the users, always to their clients at the expense of those users.

Re: Trackers

#197

Post by jacquesm »

spobin wrote: post #157
jacquesm wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To them you're an anonymous hashed id. You wish.

I've worked very closely with tracking companies. They are very strict about not storing any unhashed identifyable information such as email adddress, postcode etc.

Some are good, some are in compliance with the law and some are not. It's a mixed bag, and then of course there is the small detail that 'the law' is not the same from one place to another and that plenty of companies use this to their advantage.

Re: Trackers

#198

Post by inaccessible »

spobin wrote: post #157
jacquesm wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To them you're an anonymous hashed id. You wish.

I've worked very closely with tracking companies. They are very strict about not storing any unhashed identifyable information such as email adddress, postcode etc.

Have you ever seen hotjar, inspectlet, mouseflow and many other service? I mean check out the demo page on the inspectlet site, type in your email address, check the recording and tell me they don't store it in plain text.

Re: Trackers

#199

Post by BobTheCoder »

gorhill wrote: post #95
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #15

Believe it or not, some stores sympathise with you. They might actually be run by people like you, people who read your story. They still want to know how you proceed round the store, because that helps them optimise shelf layout, identify hard-to-find items, and so on. So yes, they might use the standard in-store CCTV to observe your journeys, and when they figure that you and people like you always have difficulty…

> it is irresponsible, populist and ultimately self-defeating for uBlock and chums to block self-hosted Piwik First, a precision: EasyPrivacy blocks Piwik. uBlock Origin enables EasyPrivacy by default. If you think it's wrong for Piwik to be blocked, bring the issue to EasyPrivacy maintainers. Now, why is it "irresponsible" for Piwik to be blocked? Some of us just do not like to have all our movements scrutinized, ev…

I think the 'ethical' choice is some kind of a middle ground approach. It's true if everyone blocked all tracking and analytics the web could not exist as the largely free service that it does today. Websites also would struggle to improve their quality without the analytical data.

That's why I think the orbital strike option of block everything all the time is ultimately selfish. I think individuals should make some attempt to block ads/tracking that they think is itself immoral but not block what they consider fine.

For example, I don't block ads in google search results since they are unobtrusive and clearly marked as ads.

Re: Trackers

#200

Post by shostack »

jacquesm wrote: post #189
shostack wrote: post #184

Disclaimer: I do digital media and online marketing for a living. I used to help lead the paid search group at a top search agency and had a real birds-eye view of where things were moving in that role. Everything is moving towards audiences. While keywords and search queries are signals that highlight intent, ultimately the audience piece is what the advertiser cares about--that's just one component of it. This is w…

Ads and tracking going hand-in-hand is the problem. If the advertising industry had not embraced tracking I think that the backlash against advertising would not be as strong as it is. It should be possible to receive an advert without also giving up a huge chunk of privacy.

That's one stance, but do you think it results in a more relevant experience for most people (emphasis on "most) viewing ads when they see products that are more likely to interest them (because of audience data or retargeting data) vs. a generic ad?

And from an advertiser standpoint, if the targeted approach is vastly more profitable than the untargeted approach of how things worked in the early Mad Men days (and it most definitely is), I have to say I can't really blame them for taking that path.

I'd be curious if there are any companies out there who position themselves as "ethical advertisers" and do what you outlined in terms of advertising without the privacy tradeoff. I'd also be curious how they might fare against competitors who don't take that stance. Again, people are voting with their wallets, and right now they are saying that they are ok giving up their data in exchange for free content, and that they'll continue buying things from companies who leverage said data to communicate with them.

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