Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yikes. What's the word for this? It's not exactly "hypocritical", but it is in that realm.
Nah, hypocritical is exactly the right word.
systemic is a better one
I left the ad industry because of data tracking
221–230 of 241 posts
Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking
#222At 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…
The problem of this line of thinking is that it assumes every company is just one guy in a basement who's responsible for all facets of all operations. In the real world, an editorial department doesn't get to dictate what technology gets adopted by the SEO department, or how accessibility is implemented by the software development team.
It's easy to say "well company X should really simply do [Y] to fix [morally good cause]", but in reality that ends up being non-actionable because it doesn't take into account that due to bureaucracies, some things are easier said than done.
Another thing that I think is somewhat counter-productive is criticizing a news outlet for doing things that are at odds with what they write. News outlets are not about leading world changing initiatives by example, they are about spreading information so others become conscious of issues they might otherwise not think about. I feel that saying "well I see you don't put your money where your mouth is" somewhat weakens the importance of the point being made (i.e. if it isn't being done, then it must not be that important)
Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
A friend of mine worked for Acxiom, and when they looked themselves up they found 6-7 different profiles, all fantastically wrong, some clearly mixed with information from other people. Admittedly it's a very private person that I'm talking about who deliberately obscures themselves by leaving incorrect or misspelled information when forced to give any information, and who moves, switches jobs often, has an odd name,…
> A friend of mine worked for Acxiom, and when they looked themselves up they found 6-7 different profiles, all fantastically wrong, some clearly mixed with information from other people. With my tin foil hat on tight, maybe they create shitty profiles on all their employees so they don't get freaked out and run for the hills!
That’s a tight hat, I think I own the same one.
Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking
#224At 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…
There is a difference between a news platform publishing a news article or op ed story that denounces things the host company itself might be doing and a corporate PR office issuing a statement.
Is google hypocritical for having flat earth stuff on youtube and running huge satellite imaging operation?
(Edit: I should probably have replied to the "hypocritical" comment below :))
Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking
#225At 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…
They also have the distinction of being the first page I've ever run across where temporarily enabling javascript on their domain causes the page not to load, whereas leaving it off does make it load. Makes "forbid fastcompany.com" an easy choice.
This is surprisingly common. They keep the content on the page in order to make it available for crawlers, and then use JS to hide the content until it's determined you don't have an ad-blocker, or you've accepted some draconian terms, or whatnot.
Better to leave JS off if the site works without it. :)
Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the goal then, for profit seeking advertising companies like Google and Facebook?
Easy, it just means advertising doesnt cover everything. The fact that they know so much about you is valuable in itself and they can sell access to that data, for example... to cambridge analytica. Advertising is just one of the ways in which corporations exploit information to manipulate people’s behavior.
Facebook never sold data to CA
Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking
#227Earlier 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…
> There are enough trash ads out there, there's so much malware and malfeasance in the ecosystem, that it's worthwhile for users to at best _ignore_ and at worst (for advertisers) _to block ads totally_.
Having spent as much time on the Internet as I have, I miss those optimistic early years when this wasn't yet the case, or at least, it wasn't as bad is it is now. Oh, there were junk BS ads in the early public Internet (e.g. "Shock the monkey and win a free Peter Gabriel CD!"). But, back in the late 90s and early 00s, at least some of the ads led to something interesting, entertaining, or useful, and thus were worth the click. Either that, or I was a lot more naive and trusting than I am now. Perhaps both.
Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is no demand for personal data or de-anonymization because that stuff doesn't sell. Say what?? I’ve also worked in the ad industry and deanonymized personal data is shared and sold routinely . You speak of statistics and large segments but every advertiser I’ve interacted with is either doing individual-level targeting or striving towards it.
> every advertiser I’ve interacted with is either doing individual-level targeting or striving towards it. Only if they're clueless. For example: Nike really wants a dataset of "people who buy expensive sneakers for fashion purposes". This dataset is probably hundreds of millions of anonymous people, and not personal data. If there was a way to get this dataset directly, Nike would do that in a heartbeat. Unfortunate…
There are many sites that have quite accurate PII for large fractions of the American population. Think job boards for instance. One approach that I have seen used successfully is simply buying whatever data such companies are willing to sell.
I’m not necessarily talking about demographics, but rather clickstream data, and anything categorical that you can get your hands on. You join that to your CRM and build a model to predict buyers. A really good predictive dataset for marketing purposes is simply a list of time stamps and names of visited domains. With the right feature engineering, that becomes an excellent proxy for demographic data, current buying appetite, and a whole lot more.
At the end of the day, you don’t even necessarily need to know what the data means as long as it’s predictive. And there are plenty of brokers out there who will let you test their data for free with an agreement to pay if you end up using it at scale. All of this revolves on using PII for matching.
I’m sure what you’re saying is true for some marketers, but there are billions being made on PII keyed data.
Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I setup Google Analytics event tracking to trigger on every page click. Thank you, I now feel as good as I'll ever feel about using uBO.
As someone who never uses any blockers, what's the benefit to you? I imagine you have some role in building the internet since you're on HN. As far as I'm aware, by not blocking ads I am experiencing the internet that the majority of people also experience. And I think that's how I can better understand the people I build things for. Maybe if more tech workers took off their tin-foil ad-blocking hats then the ad indu…
> I imagine you have some role in building the internet since you're on HN.
I do. I sit in a tiny corner where we just build websites without all that JS and tracking bullshit. (That's not to say that I never use JS, I just use it very sparingly.)
It's just a different philosophy. I don't need to know how many people exactly listen to my podcast. It's much more rewarding to me when I meet random people and they say "Oh you're that guy? I loved your last episode." That's 100 times more awesome than seeing a download counter increment.
Re: I left the ad industry because of data tracking
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Considering how frothy at the mouth you got over this fact being mentioned Is it a fact, or just your imagination? Does this fact come from statistics or your gut?
Did I type what you're responding to, or is it your imagination?
I misread your question so my reply was unnecessary snarky.
Black male+white female is 2nd least common coupling in USA, this at least is a fact unrelated to my opinion.
Comparison to media rates is based on Hollywood blockbusters and Netflix lineup. While the numbers for Hollywood are lower than on Netflix, black male+white female is 2nd most common coupling in Netflix originals.
P.S. I am European and child of a mixed marriage myself, so this is no 'keep America white!' effort. It's just that the idea of 'forbidden truths' 1984-style rubs me the wrong way.