I commented on a different article earlier which was all fear mongering. This, on the other hand, is exactly correct. This article is fantastic and spot on.
AdTech Sucks
91–100 of 158 posts
Re: AdTech Sucks
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only you know how you set up your ads. Did you use the right keyword targeting? Location settings? Is your ad copy relevant to what you're actually selling or even to your website? Does your website have clear CTAs and copy? What is considered your conversion goal? Are you advertising in a popular market? Have you tried optimized with A/B testing for any of the above?
Retargeting + content keyword + location targeting. That is, people that have visited my site in the past(with separate ad groups to test "expanded audiences"), currently visiting another site with the target keywords, from a targeted location. And ads are generic branding and go to the homepage. Conversion goal: simply clicking anything at all.
Is your goal brand awareness or actual conversions (i.e. selling something or form fills)? It sounds like you're trying to do both.
Re: AdTech Sucks
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Author here. Would you be ok with your health insurer buying your pizza purchase frequency from a data broker?
Whats the actual issue ? They might increase my premium if i I buy too much pizza ? then it may be possible they might decrease my premium if I don't buy pizza that much.
Do you really want every decision you make to be available to everyone you interact with, and then used to judge you? You're that confident in the dirty details of your life?
Re: AdTech Sucks
#94"""The systemic issue occurs because marketers and AdTech companies unreflectively increase surveillance and data collection in the hopes of increasing media attribution. Even the most trivial data point, the most granular site visit or location data, stored on a person-by-person basis, could conceivably be used to demonstrate that a customer may have come into contact with one of your campaigns.""" I'm genuinely int…
I also worked in Ad Tech - outside of a major tech area, it was the biggest, fastest growing tech employer around. The pay was only average for the area, but the company clearly had money and was experiencing rapid growth which is always exciting. As you mention, massive data sets, tens of billions of HTTP requests per day, etc, are simply not challenges you get outside of FAANG, so there was a lot of interesting wor…
It's not often one can claim to have saved the company tens of thousands of dollars in operating costs each month just by tweaking a few AWS settings.
I definitely miss being able to work on such a large volume of data but at least I don't have to worry about PagerDuty anymore.
Re: AdTech Sucks
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could not agree more. The pull approach of ad would be great. - much less CO2 production - much less chance of malware / virus spreading - much higher accuracy - the web would be usable again without ad filters
How would this reduce CO2 production?
Going to takes some stabs into the dark:
Less people pulling ads = less demand on ad servers = less energy consumption?
Less people pulling ads = less people consuming crappy products = less products being manufactured in poluty factories?
Re: AdTech Sucks
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll give you a better example - I'm an English speaking guy consuming regular US content. I travel quite often and when I'm in non-english speaking places like Thailand, I see ads on Youtube(mobile) purely in Thai language. I use Google products extensively and Google most definitely knows I don't speak Thai. I mean it's almost ridiculous the number of Thai ads I've seen on Youtube. For a company that sophisticated…
This is exactly my experience. Go to Thailand, see ads in Thai. Go to France, see ads in French. Go to Indonesia, see ads in Indonesian. Google has paid thousands of engineers billions of dollars over 20 years and somehow they have failed on this very simple optimisation!
The advertisers you see have specified location but not language.
Re: AdTech Sucks
#97Is there a "pull" rather push aspect to advertisement? Sort of a trade-show equivalent of digital advertisement? Issues with pushing ads down my throat are as follows: 1. I don't want to buy another Sony XM3 headphones. I just fucking bought them and I am seeing more ads of the same thing. 2. Even if I saw ads for relevant accessories, say, I bought an iPhone and I am seeing ads for phone cases; I don't want to see t…
One thing you might want to think about: What role do the businesses that benefit from advertising revenue play. You're looking at advertising from the perspective of advertisers pushing themselves into your life, but have you asked yourself how they got that billboard onto the football stadium, that video in front of your favorite show, that page in your newspaper (whether digital or print). > Fuck advertisement. It…
> One thing you might want to think about: What role do the businesses that benefit from advertising revenue play. You're looking at advertising from the perspective of advertisers pushing themselves into your life, but have you asked yourself how they got that billboard onto the football stadium, that video in front of your favorite show, that page in your newspaper (whether digital or print).
That money comes out of the pocket of customers. Without advertising, products would be cheaper because their producers would not have to spend money on adverts.
> Advertisement is literally as old as civilization.
So? That doesn't make it any less despicable.
Re: AdTech Sucks
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Author here. Would you be ok with your health insurer buying your pizza purchase frequency from a data broker?
Whats the actual issue ? They might increase my premium if i I buy too much pizza ? then it may be possible they might decrease my premium if I don't buy pizza that much.
It's none of their fucking business. That's the problem.
Re: AdTech Sucks
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whats the actual issue ? They might increase my premium if i I buy too much pizza ? then it may be possible they might decrease my premium if I don't buy pizza that much.
Do you really want every decision you make to be available to everyone you interact with, and then used to judge you? You're that confident in the dirty details of your life?
Keep in mind "dirty details" is a matter of perspective. Details that aren't dirty can become dirty depending upon who is wielding power.
Re: AdTech Sucks
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
It used to be that when you looked at kiteboarding forums or blogs you would see kiteboarding or travel ads. No tracking of individuals needed. I think that’s what you are talking about. Now you see ads for blenders because you bought one or looked at one last week. Ads are not context sensitive anymore. I would have no problem if HN made some money with advertising for dev tools. It makes sense. Personalized ads are…
They are still context sensitive, just the retargeting guy is bidding higher so that is what is showing.
I don’t know much about ads but that’s something I have noticed. When online ads started they are actually sometimes useful to me because of context. Now they are totally useless to me. They are just noise.