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I left the ad industry because of data tracking

fastcompany.com

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Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#211

Post by hmhrex »

taormina wrote: post #166
hmhrex wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been trying to do a monthly report on the RH blog, but I'm behind by a couple months. I've actually been thinking more about how to get more info about this. If you have any specific questions, I can try and answer them for you or bring them back to the others.

I'm building a reading game and I want to run simple ethical ads for fantasy novels and live play RPG podcasts and the ilk on the homepage of my app at a later point. I'm at the point in building where I'm initially building my audience and need to advertise that my game exists to the world. Where else can I buy an ethical ad to find my potential players? My best idea so far has been to purchase an advertisement on s…

Podcasts are a great place to advertise! No tracking available there.

I would suggest looking at communities and websites that are targeting fantasy novels and Tabletop RPGs. You're headed in the right direction.

Unfortunately that solution doesn't exist yet.

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#212

Post by kasey_junk »

Jackim wrote: post #133
username444 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook puts a lot of time and effort into obfuscation of course code. They generate random classes and IDs and interweave containers (divs, spans, custom HTML elements) on each page load so that software can't tell what is content and what is an ad. It's actually a really neat trick.

It is definitely impressive. But it's something that I think could be defeated pretty easily with a pretty simple machine learning model. Could be a fun project!

Note that your adversary has a huge ML capability and approaching nation state resources. Careful with the terms easily & simple.

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#213

Post by tguedes »

SPGWhistler wrote: post #124

This is fear mongering. I work in the ad industry as well - and I can promise you - 99% of the companies in the ad industry are NOT leading the way when it comes to tracking you and your data. They are incompetent and can barely do their jobs. Just take a look at any display advertising for belly fat ads and you know for sure they aren't targeting you. The 1% however (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Facebook) ARE t…

I would provide links for several of the claims you make because they just seem not true. You have a very biased perspective, of course you're going to blame the giant platforms if you work in the ad industry.

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#214

Post by oarsinsync »

jorams wrote: post #167

At some point companies like Fast Company have to accept that they are a significant part of the problem, and just writing articles about it is not enough. This page contains a ridiculous number of trackers. The site pulls in content from the following 3rd-party domains: s.skimresources.com, sb.scorecardresearch.com, secure-cdn.mplxtms.com, z.moatads.com, ml314.com, secure-us.imrworldwide.com, www.googletagservices.c…

This point was made recently about the NY Times having an editorial about advertising / tracking being invasive, while also having advertising / tracking on their own page.

The justification / defence given was that you want separation between editorial and business decisions. If the two are aligned, the freedom of the editorial team to write what they want will diminish, and the business will ultimately dictate what gets written.

If it feels a bit pessimistic, I agree, but pessimistically, I also feel like it's just realistic.

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#215

Post by [deleted] »

jimbob45 wrote: post #194
rrrx3 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in Ad Tech. This is on target. The user was lumped into a poorly-constructed lookalike audience because of some stretched interest similarities. What you're experiencing is the confluence of two distinct issues: 1. The CTRs on digital advertising are dropping YoY. People DO NOT click on ads, even if they are saliently targeted. There are enough trash ads out there, there's so much malware and malfeasance in th…

It sounds like what you're saying is that online ads are becoming less and less effective due to customers getting trained to ignore/block ads. However, companies are responding by attempting to improve their ad targeting instead of facing the reality that online ads aren't effective anymore. What will happen in five years when advertisers have to face the reality through numbers that online ads don't work anymore?

[deleted]

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#216

Post by newsoul2019 »

adrianmonk wrote: post #207
jccalhoun wrote: post #40

What are they doing with all this data tracking because it sure isn't giving me relevant ads. In addition to the often noted situation where you buy something online and then get ads for that thing you already bought, I routinely see totally irrelevant ads and recommendations. I've been on Facebook since around 2003. I've had an Amazon account for even longer. Their ads and recommendations for me are terrible. Two re…

It seems like a fundamentally difficult problem to know when you've already bought something. Obviously, it's solvable in simple cases, like when you browse and buy from the same vendor. But in other cases, it's not, like if you browse around multiple places and buy from one, or if you look around online and buy in person. Basically, the information that you're interested in buying is going to spread around to certai…

Amazon knows. Google knows too, if your Amazon emails went to your Gmail account. Your credit card company has a good idea of who you bought from, but not what.

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#217

Post by criddell »

username444 wrote: post #115
Jackim wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have uBlock origin and I still occasionally see ads in Facebook feeds.

Facebook puts a lot of time and effort into obfuscation of course code. They generate random classes and IDs and interweave containers (divs, spans, custom HTML elements) on each page load so that software can't tell what is content and what is an ad. It's actually a really neat trick.

I'd love to see some regulation around this. Ads should be clearly and unambiguously identified as such in a machine-readable way.

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#218

Post by jodrellblank »

rrrx3 wrote: post #192
username444 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook isn't targeting you. The advetisers are. Facebook's real sin is a garbage UI meant to confuse advertisers into spending money on audiences that don't align with the advertiser. Google is much, much worse with this. The bid system means that the Christian Asians didn't do a good targeting job, and nobody else found you valuable enough to bid on, so the Christian Asians won the bid. You got served a penny ad b…

I work in Ad Tech. This is on target. The user was lumped into a poorly-constructed lookalike audience because of some stretched interest similarities. What you're experiencing is the confluence of two distinct issues: 1. The CTRs on digital advertising are dropping YoY. People DO NOT click on ads, even if they are saliently targeted. There are enough trash ads out there, there's so much malware and malfeasance in th…

I work in Ad Tech. This is on target. [..] People DO NOT click on ads

Was there ever a serious belief that people clicked on ads willingly and intentionally?

I mean a real serious "people want to click ads", and not a "of course people click on ads which are relevant and helpful - as all adverts always are, nudge nudge wink wink"?

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#219

Post by lioeters »

PretzelFisch wrote: post #200
jimbob45 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like what you're saying is that online ads are becoming less and less effective due to customers getting trained to ignore/block ads. However, companies are responding by attempting to improve their ad targeting instead of facing the reality that online ads aren't effective anymore. What will happen in five years when advertisers have to face the reality through numbers that online ads don't work anymore?

I think you will see the online ad-bubble pop, and probably then next recession because of it.

That's how I see it too.

The other day I came across a headline where Facebook announced that they removed 3 billion fake accounts. It made me wonder whether advertisers were paying to show ads to those accounts.

My view is that the bubble is bursting from the side of the advertisers realizing the in/effectiveness of ads; and from the side of the "advertisees", people generally becoming aware that ads are a security/privacy issue, and ignoring or blocking them altogether.

Relative to the amount of data tracking (theft of privacy) that goes on, most ads are shockingly irrelevant. It's about time the bubble popped.

Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking

#220

Post by user17843 »

kasey_junk wrote: post #39
user17843 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing makes me think this. But since officially everything is pseudonymous, how would it be possible to have a website dedicated to showing the data someone has about me? Privacy International did a piece on this kind of ad-tech data survaillance and they were saying "Here is the shocking details what an ad-company knew about me when I asked them to share everything with me in line with GDPR" Then I emailed Privacy…

I helped implement the GDPR data request flow at a company with segment data. Some of the big challenges of the system was a) convincing requesters that we couldn’t look them up by name and b) teaching them how to find the things we could look them up by (cookie Id or apple/android advertiser Id). It was one of the ugly ironies of the system that we had to build a name collection capability when we didn’t want it.

thats quite ironic!
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