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GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

blogs.harvard.edu

181–190 of 454 posts

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Customer focus groups. Literally paying customers to spend time with staff to learn their habits and thoughts about the advertising. The big brands have the funds and expertise to directly gather enough data to come up with strong predictors of behavior.

Focus groups are always made with the consent of the participants, though. You can still use tracking cookies if you also get consent.

You use the word "though", but I don't see how your argument doesn't integrate with mine. Can you tell me what I am missing?

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adtech is a joke. Even targeted ads are so irrelevant to the point where I don't think most people can tell if they're random or not. Except when the creepiness kicks in, because they show you ads for this one thing you googled a week ago. Google can't get it right. Their ads suck, and their Youtube suggestions aren't much better. Amazon can't get suggestions right in their own store. The whole ad industry is a joke.…

I honestly think this is very, very user dependent. Mainly because if Google's ad tech wasn't working, they wouldn't be making so much money.... You, I, and everyone else on this site don't represent the average user. Personally whenever I Google something out of curiosity as a one-off thing (e.g. "lyrics to Rasputin by Boney M" or "0-60 of a Golf GTI") I switch to in-cognito, just because I've noticed that Google is…

> I switch to in-cognito, just because I've noticed that Google isn't currently tracking stuff like that by IP. This way I don't get recommended Boney M videos in YouTube or adverts for cars I don't actually have an interest in elsewhere.

If you go through all that trouble, why don't you simply turn off personalized ads? https://adssettings.google.com/

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as you don't target EU customers, you're fine.

Do you have any references/citations for this? Would help me out! I'm trying to put together a one-pager for my team.

When the regulation does not apply

Your company is service provider based outside the EU. It provides services to customers outside the EU. Its clients can use its services when they travel to other countries, including within the EU. Provided your company doesn't specifically target its services at individuals in the EU, it is not subject to the rules of the GDPR.

https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/refo...

IANAL etc

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keeping a reliable counter of meaningful interactions is hard without personal data to correlate unique users.

Ok, so it’s hard. Nobody is entitled to that being easy in the way that they are to privacy.

What privacy? Knowing that user dhsidhujdjdowhdyyehheis is using my website is not an infringement on your privacy!

Why do you think you can control what I do with data you send to me? Don't send me data I'd you don't want me to have it.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: What are the odds of someone offical even noticing that you are in violation of GDPR? It's not like they'll enforce GDPR and collect $7.89 in fines from small businesses.

A good question. But that’s not how these things work. The law has to be self enforced or it’s useless - since as you say, how will small to medium businesses ever be caught violating? Megacorps comply because of mega fines. Small business comply because their owners or future buyers are a larger Corp who fears that their sub-subsidiary might be in violation, causing a future mega fine. So small businesses who care a…

GDPR has the concept of backups and their expiration windows covered.

I'll pick an example from my work. Data can be deleted from the active set, at which point it takes extra effort to retrieve it. (If you can't SELECT it anymore from the warm slaves, it's gone.) But as long as you can make a point-in-time-recovery from your backups, the data is still present in the inactive set. Using the inactive set requires, by definition, extra effort.

So you need to state that fact in the data protection/retention policy, AND put reasonable technical enforcement mechanisms ("controls") in place to ensure that backups are expired and fully deleted after a given retention period. The older your unexpired backups get, the less valuable they should become.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#187
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's about preserving rights of individuals. I'm not sticking up for all the big data perverts, but what about an individuals right to speak freely and disclose information they have observed/recorded? The 'right to be forgotten' seems at odds with everyone else's right to remember and disclose occurances.

That is not the case. The "right to be forgotten" is not absolute. There are lawful bases for processing under which the right to be forgotten does not apply. Go read GDPR article 17.3, it's easy to read. A few things for which the right to forgotten does not apply: - exercising the right of freedom of expression and information - for compliance with a legal obligation (e.g. keeping records for tax reporting) - for p…

Yes! The fud keeps increasing every time another gdpr related post pops up here.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#188

Completely oblivious and ignorant here: If a company has no official office in Europe, how does this affect them? All advertisement and business focus is say only in the US, is it business as usual? What if an EU citizen decides to sign up? Are US companies forced to deny customers not par of say an IP block (half assed method I know, but just speaking in general)?

You're right, if a EU resident decides to visit your website and you're tracking them (Google Analytics etc) you have to comply with GDPR when handling his/her data. The IP block has a logic to it because the law applies to people in the EU rather than EU citizens.

Really? I was under the impression that it applies to EU residents, regardless of where they are accessing the website from.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#189

Oddly, I think the article underestimates the size of the change coming. I think one side affect of the surge of IT into advertising, is that it has become easier to measure exactly how well advertising works. By and large, it doesn't, very well. I am reminded of this, from Paul Graham, about his time at Yahoo: http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html "...The reason Yahoo didn't care about a technique that extracted the…

> I'm pretty sure that, the more we learn about how well advertising works, the less money people will be willing to pay for it.

That sounds like a statement from someone not very familiar with advertising.

Minimally it's contrary to the agency model & its incentives. A lot spend (the majority?) goes through that model, and it's not likely to change any time soon. And if anything GDPR, will increase it.

That said, even as measurement & attribution improves, the reality is that the effect will be shift to spend around. The better an advertiser can identify waste, they better they can redeploy that spend. Because that improves the ROI, the less it hurts the margin, and the more it makes sense for them to spend.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#190
I'll play the devil's advocate and say that I'm actually disappointed by this development. A very long time ago when AdSense was young I was thrilled by the idea that instead of being bombarded by stupid ads designed to cater to morons people (including myself) will be getting relevant ads - ideally, ads about stuff that I am actually willing to buy right now. Kinda like legilimency. Too bad that this will be impossible for a long time to come now.
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