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GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

blogs.harvard.edu

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Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#331

Post by nl »

madeofpalk wrote: post #112
rossdavidh wrote: post #59

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…

> By and large, it doesn't, very well. I know Twitter isn't known for being the best at advertising, but it was made exceptionally clear to me that online advertising is a massive bunch of lies when I did my GDPR Twitter data export and it included me in a bunch of incorrect, non-sensical and contradictory ad targeting groups. Twitter claims I: * Own a cat, dog and other animal (I don't) * Have between $100k- $999k l…

I've never looked at the Google export, but you can see what topics they think you are interested in here: https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated?hl=en

Twitter is just entirely incompetent at everything, so no surprise they get their advertising product wrong too.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#332

Post by vertexFarm »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #238
fnord123 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully some find their way into rocketry research to help further commoditise space travel.

I'm trying to. It's not simple, if you're not in the US or Germany :<.

Germany, eh? Interesting. What kind of companies in that field are in Germany?

I wish I knew more about this subject.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#333

Post by vertexFarm »

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…

I wonder if there will ever be a suit in which that cookie banner ("Got it!" ugh) is found not to apply because users basically agree to it simply by seeing it. You have their stupid cookie by the time you can read that message. That doesn't seem like an agreement to me, but I'm not even slightly a lawyer.

The whole strategy seems to be in bad faith. I wish more sites would react by minimizing usage of cookies instead of just adopting that dumb overlay.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#334

Post by drewmol »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #141
drewmol wrote: 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…

Thanks for the direction. I've read the GDPR a few times but it is (intentionally) non-specific on many implementation details. As I alluded to in comment, 17.3(a) seems like it would work as a global excemption in practice. I'm not familiar with how court rulings that provide legal precedent have impact or are respected across the diversity of legal systems across the EU. By May 25th 2020, after a multitude of GDPR related cases and verdicts, the answer may be more clearly defined. (Or increasingly nuanced with even greater uncertainty ;-)

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#335

Post by vertexFarm »

tzakrajs wrote: post #95

Tracking cookies gave the ability for small advertisers to understand their customers and their other consumption in ways that only the largest marketers could. The author thinks big brands are everything and can't see how letting smaller players sell to customers could help the economy. He uses an arbitrary standard of privacy to argue on the behalf of the largest household brands. I think he's missing the forest fo…

The GDPR is about a lot more than cookies. I think you're going to have a hard time arguing that current massive internet advertising surveillance and analysis industry is friendly towards small business.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#336

Post by hsljekskfh »

manigandham wrote: post #286

It won't do much. It'll definitely get rid of some low-value companies but that's about it. People think that adtech has some incredible insights but 99% of data is terrible. If you check your profile at any major site, you'll quickly find that you're probably in several conflicting segments that have nothing to do with you. Context is still king for any marketer who knows what they're doing, but unfortunately the in…

i am hopeful for the idea that shifting from ads to paid services will reduce clickbait. right now may be seen as the yellow journalism moment of the internet.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#337

Post by manigandham »

FridgeSeal wrote: post #328
manigandham wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are not that many actual hard data science experts in adtech. Much of it is smoke and mirrors with every vendor claiming "AI" even if it's just some excel tweaking. The industry can't even agree on standard metrics or run a campaign without 20% discrepancies. Also you can definitely apply ML techniques to data without PII, it's just harder, which actually makes the job more in-demand for high-quality talent.

As someone who has just left the advertising industry, and was doing data stuff, the real issue is that a lot of companies have a lot of data but almost none of it has any actual useful information content in it. It’s a bit of a hard concept to explain to explain to people because they go “but there’s a hundred something columns, and hundreds of millions of rows!”, you can have all the data you want, but if it’s all…

Yes, agreed. Lots of useless data out there that doesn't really have significant signals. Also a lot of it is duplicated with everyone getting the same logs, so I find it hard to believe that any single company magically derived a big advantage over another.

Not to mention, no amount of AI powered results can beat a slick sales team. $1M spent on quality salesperson is much higher ROI than $1M on fancy AI engineering when it comes to relationship-powered media spend.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#338

Post by hannasanarion »

madeofpalk wrote: post #112
rossdavidh wrote: post #59

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…

> By and large, it doesn't, very well. I know Twitter isn't known for being the best at advertising, but it was made exceptionally clear to me that online advertising is a massive bunch of lies when I did my GDPR Twitter data export and it included me in a bunch of incorrect, non-sensical and contradictory ad targeting groups. Twitter claims I: * Own a cat, dog and other animal (I don't) * Have between $100k- $999k l…

Those are just arbitrary names given to clusters of users. If your behavior and responsiveness is similar to others in the group, why should the advertiser care if the label isn't literally true?

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#339

Post by losteric »

jamiequint wrote: post #312
losteric wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDPR has exemptions for security. Your free to track information for the purposes of blocking vulnerability bots, but only the minimum data required for that purpose... and your visitor's data cannot be used for other applications without their consent. > 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 a…

> “they can't record what you're looking at and reuse that information for targeted advertising without consent” What law prevents them from doing this?

The actual Walmart? Nothing. The previous poster used Walmart's security cameras as a strawman argument against GDPR, which I expanded on.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#340

Post by hannasanarion »

vor1111 wrote: post #310
fanf2 wrote: post #211

> perhaps a $trillion or more has been spent on adtech, and not one brand known to the world has been made by it Google.

The author is referring to brands that typically pay for ads, not provide them.

That makes even less sense. Really, ZERO brands have found customers from web marketing? Not even Audible, or Harry's, or all those mattress brands, that weird tongue brush all over YouTube in 2012? No success stories at all?
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