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GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

blogs.harvard.edu

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Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#71

Post by lajhsdfkl »

vilmosi wrote: post #62
lajhsdfkl wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Bunch of strawmen here. Learn the definition of the words you are using before using them. The only thing this statement shows is you are arguing in bad faith, have no interest in attempting to gain new perspective and simply want to shut my argument down since it doesn't agree with your priors. >If you only count the number of redheads, you are in the clear. If you follow them around, find out where else they go, w…

I'm a bit baffled how you think that recording personal information of people you see from your porch, without even telling them what or why are you doing it, is anything but unethical.

If you are so baffled by it you can explain in simple terms why it's unethical?

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#72

Post by jamiequint »

enraged_camel wrote: post #54
dbbk wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is your position that website owners should have no visiblity at all on their visitors, and no way of knowing how many people are using it?

Website owners can have visibility on their visitors if those visitors explicitly consent to it. Not sure what is so difficult to understand about this.

So if I don't think that Walmart should be able to record me with security cameras while I'm in the store I should have the right to demand that they ask me to sign a waiver before entering the store? Shouldn't it be Walmart's right to do what they want on their property, and my right to decide not to visit Walmart if I don't agree with that. Isn't the converse an infringement of Walmart's rights?

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#73

Post by FooBarWidget »

wpietri wrote: post #61
Animats wrote: post #14

From one of the references in the article: The Google consent interface greets site visitors with a request to use data to tailor advertising, with equally prominent “no” and “yes” buttons. If a reader declines to be tracked, he or she sees a notice saying the ads will be less relevant and asking to “agree” or go back to the previous page.

Which is certainly fine with me. I'm always amused that the notion that I will regret not having "relevant" ads. Where "relevant" means more likely to get me to buy things I was not intending to buy. Ads make sense to me in the age of information scarcity. But now if I need a thing, searching always turns up what I want. If I need to figure out what kind of thing to buy, I can read review at places like The Wirecutte…

Isn't what you're saying in your first paragraph just strawmanning the definition of "relevant"? If you do not want to buy anything no matter what they show you then those ads are by definition not relevant. If they make you want to buy then the ads are by definition relevant. They aren't brainwashing you, at the end of the day the one in control of the credit card is still you.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#75

Post by jamiequint »

fardo wrote: post #49
lajhsdfkl wrote: post #3

>Since tracking people took off in the late ’00s, adtech has grown to become a four-dimensional shell game played by hundreds (or, if you include martech, thousands) of companies, none of which can see the whole mess, or can control the fraud, malware and other forms of bad acting that thrive in the midst of it. Fraud? Malware? What does this have to do with adtech? >And that’s on top of the main problem: tracking pe…

>Fraud? Malware? What does this have to do with adtech? A lot, actually. There are many vectors in which adtech and fraud/malware intermingle: > XSS Attacks: When your website loads HTML into a page without encoding it first, someone can insert HTML script tags that your browser will parse successfully, allowing arbitrary Javascript to execute in your browser. Malicious actors will then usually redirect you to furthe…

> XSS Attacks

Not true with safeframes

The latter two can happen on the internet in general, third-party advertising is in no way a unique delivery vector.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#76

Post by icebraining »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #68

> tracking people without their knowledge, approval or a court order is just flat-out wrong. Requiring them to check an "I agree to be tracked" checkbox and signing an agreement (which has just happened to me yesterday in an EU country in accordance to GDPR) before they can use a product/service is hardly much better. This reminds me of the Android app permission system which requires you to allow an app to do everyt…

Requiring them to check an "I agree to be tracked" checkbox and signing an agreement (which has just happened to me yesterday in an EU country in accordance to GDPR) before they can use a product/service is hardly much better.

That's specifically not allowed under the GDPR. Either the information is needed to provide the service (and needed means actually needed, not "my business model depends on it"), in which case they don't need to ask, or the use of the service can't depend on that consent.

(By the way, even if the information is needed, they still need consent to use it in other ways, and the same applies)

See the ICO guidelines on the issue: "If you make consent a precondition of a service, it is unlikely to be the most appropriate lawful basis."

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-da...

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#77

Post by natural219 »

One other fundamental shift that information technology makes to advertising is that digital tools, reviews, and marketplaces somewhat undermine some primary functions of advertising. I no longer care about brand or advertising information when buying commodity products on Amazon; I simply sort by # of reviews * avg score, read a sample of reviews at each star level, and I already have a general picture of the product's quality and consumer satisfaction.

The parts of advertising meant to demonstrate "Hey, we're a quality company that can afford this prestigious advertising slot, therefore the reliability of our products is assured" has been eaten by frictionless digital review platforms. Of course, advertising and branding serve other purposes as well, and will always be some part of the purchasing decision. But social software and AI will likely continue getting better at matching consumers with products over time.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#79

Post by jasonlotito »

nikanj wrote: post #8
shawn wrote: post #2

And that’s on top of the main problem: tracking people without their knowledge, approval or a court order is just flat-out wrong. The fact that it can be done is no excuse. Nor is the monstrous sum of money made by it. I use Piwik ( https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo ) and track visitors without their knowledge or consent, because I need analytics. Piwik is also configured to respect the "Do not track" header, so o…

Why do you need analytics, aside from ads and ad-tech?

Security, such as analyzing how quickly a form is filled out, or whether the person is coming from a location that is known to be home to a lot of fraud, and other such checks, for example.

Using that data as well to improve learning so we do a better job of detecting fraud and not flagging legitimate customers appropriately.

Also, using analytics to determine if a user is having issues on the site. For example, are users having a difficult time filling out forms, or becoming confused, and being able to provide help in an appropriate manner.

These are just two things I immediately thought of. Security, and customer support. I'm sure there are many other users of analytics aside from ads and ad-tech.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#80

Post by bArray »

solomatov wrote: post #30

One surprising side effect of this might be that the hordes of machine learners and data scientists who used to work for adtech might go to healthcare/bioinformatics where we might get new breakthroughs.

Two "might" occurrences means it's unlikely. The chances are these people will be swallowed by whatever the most profitable industry is at the time.

My guess would be similar learning systems that aren't subject to GDPR, such as government, external to EU (US), the ludicrous information of things (smart sensors, cloud, etc) where information doesn't leave the user's control, AI driven products, etc.

Then you'll have quite a few who will just continue regardless, sometimes it's easier to apologize (and pay a small fine) than it is to ask for permission.

Don't get me wrong, I would love for all of these people to end up in the (Scientific) health industry. (It's worth mentioning Scientific, as there is a lot of useless crap that uses some form of learning and offers no real gain - would be disappointing to see them all end up applying deep learning to homeopathy for example.)

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