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Data points that Facebook uses to target ads

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Data points that Facebook uses to target ads

#101

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

cricalix wrote: post #55
nsxwolf wrote: post #54

I like when they show me ads for the expensive thing I already bought, as if I'm going to buy it again. Had they predicted I wanted to buy that thing, and shown me ads for things like it first, that might have been useful.

That happens all across the 'net though, not just on Facebook. Happens to me with Amazon all the time - they have records of me eyeing something up, I buy it a day later, and 2 days later they're still pestering me around the 'net with ads about that thing.

FWIW, this is a co-ordination problem. There are many ad-networks that know your cookie was interested in this, however there is no singular (or multiple) way to let all of the ad-networks know that you have purchased this product, hence you get loads of ads for the same product even though you have already purchased it.

Re: Data points that Facebook uses to target ads

#102

Post by kaybe »

jonathankoren wrote: post #49

Like everyone, we get a quite a bit of junk mail at our house. Some of it comes to "current resident", others target us by name. Broadly speaking it breaks into two groups. Things that are either geotargeted. (In my neighborhood, that would include ads such as "Why don't you lease a car through Uber and pay for it by driving!") and those that are more personally targeted (think credit card offers). Today we got an in…

Germany has a law which allows you to adblock your mailbox. If you put a sticker on sayin 'no advertisements', you can sue any company that puts material without your name on it in.

Re: Data points that Facebook uses to target ads

#103

Post by s_kilk »

erikb wrote: post #61

"perfectly targeted ads"? Never had that experience. Even if I summarize all the analytics solutions out there, like ads, Facebook stream, Youtube, Amazon, Netflix. What they usually do is they figure out what I did in recent history or in general and present me more of that. I don't know about other people, but that's absolutely not what I want. That's boring, or maybe even unnecessary. Like, if I just bought a book…

My favourite example of this madness was back in my Eve Online days, where, for years on end, I would be bombarded day-and-night with ads for Eve Online. SIGN UP NOW, JOIN THE ACTION, all the usual bullshit, despite me having an Eve account for years.

What the hell do they want out of me at that point? I already pay for an account, and if I want a second account then I already know where to get one, from the same place I got the first one: eveonline.com

Jesus, the whole thing was farcical, for all their tracking and profiling.

Re: Data points that Facebook uses to target ads

#104

Post by wvrvwwwe »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #92
wvrvwwwe wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What we need is not a "I know what you did and here is more of that" suggestion engine I really agree on this. The Youtube homepage exemplifies it for me. It recommends only content the same as or very similar to what I've watched before, and only the most popular of that. I've watched a ton of conference talks, programming tutorials, etc. yet those never show up. It's mostly junk with clickbait titles from big cha…

"I do like Youtube's recommendation algorithm for the side bar suggestions" You do? It does ok if I'm watching something technical or some reviews. It's laughably bad at music and wider interest content such as a documentary. If you hit a music track, 50% of the recommendations are the same damn track in degrading levels of quality, 30% the same band. The 10% that's left for other artists are normally a really bad co…

I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but I only seek out full albums. I've found that YT does pretty well for classic rock, metal, and electronica, and ok for older Jazz and classical music.

I tried it out just now for an album I like. I get about 25% unrelated junk or stuff I've already watched, but the rest are also full albums that seem like fairly solid recommendations based on the album at hand (Jan Jelinek's "Loop Finding Jazz Records").

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hIgBEXuQD8

Re: Data points that Facebook uses to target ads

#105

Post by wvrvwwwe »

funkyy wrote: post #89
wvrvwwwe wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What we need is not a "I know what you did and here is more of that" suggestion engine I really agree on this. The Youtube homepage exemplifies it for me. It recommends only content the same as or very similar to what I've watched before, and only the most popular of that. I've watched a ton of conference talks, programming tutorials, etc. yet those never show up. It's mostly junk with clickbait titles from big cha…

>And YT does have a page for improving homepage recommendations, which granted I haven't tried yet. Never hear of it. Can you share a link to it or a name of it?

This is what I was thinking of:

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6342839?hl=en

I didn't look closely at it the first time, but now that I have, it's not that useful.

Re: Data points that Facebook uses to target ads

#107

Post by cel1ne »

erikb wrote: post #61

"perfectly targeted ads"? Never had that experience. Even if I summarize all the analytics solutions out there, like ads, Facebook stream, Youtube, Amazon, Netflix. What they usually do is they figure out what I did in recent history or in general and present me more of that. I don't know about other people, but that's absolutely not what I want. That's boring, or maybe even unnecessary. Like, if I just bought a book…

I wish they would think about targeting me with ads weekly.

Part of the reason ads annoy me is that I'm just not purchasing stuff every day. (Who does?)

If I got the ads I'm supposedly interested in once a week, that might be more useful.

Re: Data points that Facebook uses to target ads

#108

Post by anexprogrammer »

wvrvwwwe wrote: post #104
anexprogrammer wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I do like Youtube's recommendation algorithm for the side bar suggestions" You do? It does ok if I'm watching something technical or some reviews. It's laughably bad at music and wider interest content such as a documentary. If you hit a music track, 50% of the recommendations are the same damn track in degrading levels of quality, 30% the same band. The 10% that's left for other artists are normally a really bad co…

I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but I only seek out full albums. I've found that YT does pretty well for classic rock, metal, and electronica, and ok for older Jazz and classical music. I tried it out just now for an album I like. I get about 25% unrelated junk or stuff I've already watched, but the rest are also full albums that seem like fairly solid recommendations based on the album at hand (Jan…

Interesting. I very rarely search whole albums on YT but often rock and metal.

Start with a random metal track in mind an I find I get a band mix suggestion, a nordic folk metal mix, 11 more tracks from the same band, 3 tracks I listened to very recently, 4 connected other artists and "5 CREEPIEST Old Found Footages - Recommended for you" as a perfect example of the crap being injected recently. They must notice I've never once clicked one.

I do clear cookies and history periodically, so perhaps not having a multiple year history counts against.

Re: Data points that Facebook uses to target ads

#109

Post by elorant »

erikb wrote: post #61

"perfectly targeted ads"? Never had that experience. Even if I summarize all the analytics solutions out there, like ads, Facebook stream, Youtube, Amazon, Netflix. What they usually do is they figure out what I did in recent history or in general and present me more of that. I don't know about other people, but that's absolutely not what I want. That's boring, or maybe even unnecessary. Like, if I just bought a book…

What we need is an opt-in ad platform. For example I like reading sci-fi books and usually peruse Amazon’s catalogs to find new ones. But Amazon’s recommendation engine doesn’t seem to work that well, it’s just too broad. Other than that my options to find interesting reads are either niche sites/blogs which I rarely have the time to bother looking or friends’ recommendations. Wouldn’t it be nice if publishers could contact me with tailored to my needs recommendations based on genre, books I liked and what not. I wouldn’t mind been bombarded with ads if they’re related to my hobbies, not some random search I did on Google two weeks ago. It seems that the whole ad industry got so comfy with profiling that they never bothered moving forward trying new things.

Re: Data points that Facebook uses to target ads

#110

Post by chinathrow »

"While you’re logged onto Facebook, for instance, the network can see virtually every other website you visit. Even when you’re logged off, Facebook knows much of your browsing: It’s alerted every time you load a page with a “Like” or “share” button, or an advertisement sourced from its Atlas network."

If you want to enable sharing of your content on FB and other platforms easily but you do not want to support the tracking madness, you might want to use Shariff. It's setup to not send any tracking information to FB etc unless the user wants to share something.

https://github.com/heiseonline/shariff

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