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AdTech Sucks

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Re: AdTech Sucks

#101

Post by bad-joke »

xixixao wrote: post #61
spectramax wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What role do the businesses that benefit from advertising revenue play" - They want to lure you into buying their products, at times by any means possible. Back in the day when advertisement was word of mouth and perhaps newspaper ads, the playing field included opinions of the people - it fostered increased quality of products because you wouldn't recommend a shit quality product to your friend. In modern society,…

You're still focusing on advertisers (I didn't make this clear enough). Think about the people owning the football stadium, the tv channel, the newspaper (they're likely advertisers themselves, but let's pretend for a moment they aren't).

Without advertising, these people would be forced to implement a profitable monetization strategy, or they would fail. That's how capitalism and the free market is supposed to work.

If you're worried about the well-being of these people or believe their service is a public good that should exist regardless of profitability on the market, you should allocate public funding for them.

Re: AdTech Sucks

#102

Post by matz1 »

jdcro wrote: post #93
matz1 wrote: post #84

Earlier 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?

Ideally yes, provided everyone else decision is also available to me. Do I have dirt ? Of course. I would be okay if everyone else dirt is exposed too.

True that people can use information to judge me, but it can be both positive and negative.

Right now, having "dirt" is not without its trade off and inconvenient, you have to make effort to conceal it, hide it.

Re: AdTech Sucks

#103

Post by jrockway »

spectramax wrote: post #27

Is 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…

> 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.

To be a devil's advocate, doesn't that mean that advertisers should get MORE of your personal data, so they know every product you own and won't suggest you buy something you already have?

Whenever you see a bad ad, it means whatever privacy precautions you're taking are working. The advertiser would love to not spend money advertising their thingie to someone that already has it. But you didn't let them. That sounds like a success to me.

Re: AdTech Sucks

#104

Post by yorwba »

maxxxxx wrote: post #58
spectramax wrote: post #27

Is 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…

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…

HN does have a section for job ads [1], which are exempt from the usual voting mechanism and don't stay on the front page for long. I think that's a good compromise.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs

Re: AdTech Sucks

#105

Post by stevesearer »

spectramax wrote: post #27

Is 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…

My site Office Snapshots (https://officesnapshots.com) might be of interest to you.

We publish office design projects and the advertising is based on the content which usually ends up being office furniture, products, and services. We also sell and host our own advertising to make sure they are high quality and that they load quickly.

Your digital trade show note is interesting too as we work with furniture manufacturers who can have a digital presence on the site to highlight their products.

Here is a popular phone booth company's page for reference: https://officesnapshots.com/brands/framery/

Re: AdTech Sucks

#106

Post by [deleted] »

bunderbunder wrote: post #21

> I’d love for data to be seen as a liability - something audited and discarded often to minimise risk. Perhaps it's just the industries I've worked in, which tend to be highly regulated, but I have such a hard time seeing why this idea isn't more intuitive to people. Every single scrap of sensitive information you have laying around is something that has the potential to fuel a very expensive, possibly even existent…

[deleted]

Re: AdTech Sucks

#107

Post by cameronbrown »

DailyHN wrote: post #67
bduerst wrote: post #57

Earlier 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.

If they've visited before, why will they come again without a reason? Your ad has to actually convince them to do something beyond read the same thing twice.

Re: AdTech Sucks

#108

Post by lancesells »

jrockway wrote: post #103
spectramax wrote: post #27

Is 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…

> 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. To be a devil's advocate, doesn't that mean that advertisers should get MORE of your personal data, so they know every product you own and won't suggest you buy something you already have? Whenever you see a bad ad, it means whatever privacy precautions you're taking are working. The advertiser…

That's kind of true but that's only because adtech is siloed. Let's say you're identified by Facebook as having an interest in the Sony headphones. User clicks an ad and heads over to Amazon to purchase. The purchase is made and Amazon knows the conversion happened but Facebook does not.

Facebook does purchase credit card usage information but it's not nearly as perfect as having a conversion pixel on the site.

Future laws should really focus on cross-site / app tracking and the legality of purchasing third-party data.

Re: AdTech Sucks

#109

Post by bunderbunder »

diogofranco wrote: post #87
bunderbunder wrote: post #21

> I’d love for data to be seen as a liability - something audited and discarded often to minimise risk. Perhaps it's just the industries I've worked in, which tend to be highly regulated, but I have such a hard time seeing why this idea isn't more intuitive to people. Every single scrap of sensitive information you have laying around is something that has the potential to fuel a very expensive, possibly even existent…

Surely there are many reasons to not hoard everything, but I find this argument strange. If you're in a business that is making bad decisions due to wrong analysis of data, it seems like there should be more nuanced and pertinent ways to tackle this then just throwing it out, which also prevents good analysis.

Well, some of the issue there is that it's really hard to get a good analysis out of bad or unsuitable data. Garbage in, garbage out.

Generally it's better to put the horse in front of the cart: Figure out what kinds of questions you want to be answering, and then design a way to collect the data you need to answer those questions.

This isn't far off from the lesson that medical science somewhat recently had to learn the hard way, about how just dragnet collecting heaps data and then figuring out what to do with it after the fact will yield far more incorrect conclusions than correct ones.

Re: AdTech Sucks

#110

Post by bunderbunder »

DailyHN wrote: post #64
55555 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize the prices you pay per click or impression are set by a market, right? The crux of the problem is that other people are just better at advertising than you are. There's a lot of fraud but I'm tired of people on HN who are terrible at advertising saying that "ads don't work." It's like saying "code doesn't work". It's just nonsense. What is your website/landing page URL and what did your ad say?

Maybe more focus should be on the fraud instead of the people who are wondering if ads are worth pursuing because of having to set aside a part of their budget to that fraud. And considering the pervasiveness of tracking, why isn't the fraud better tracked?

> why isn't the fraud better tracked?

Because the people who are best-positioned to do something about click fraud also make heaps of money off of click fraud.

For example, browser extensions like AdNauseam that randomly "click" on ad links are maybe meant to be a middle finger aimed at the ad networks, but, realistically, if you, the person doing the advertising, are paying for clicks, then the main effect of such extensions is to transfer money from your pocket to the ad network's.

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