201–210 of 343 posts
Has anyone here actually had a meaningful increase in users and revenue by using targeted-ad services, that they couldn't achieve by more organic methods (e.g. posting on places like Reddit, word of mouth)?
Sometimes I wonder if the entire ads racket isn't a case of the emperor with no clothes. Has anyone here actually had a meaningful increase in users and revenue by using targeted-ad services, that they couldn't achieve by more organic methods (e.g. posting on places like Reddit, word of mouth)?
Rather, the goal is to lock everyone else out from even possibly doing so.
For example: AdWords isn't about reaching new audiences, it's about staking a claim on an audience in perpetuity (as long as your budget allows). This is completely apparent from the pricing model.
Google's brilliance is that via the ubiquity of their search platform, they have effectively managed to leverage a property tax on attentional real estate. If you don't pay, someone else will move in and hopefully develop the attentional property further, raising the value Google can charge you for it until you're priced out and someone else comes along to hold onto it.
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When you load Panopticlick, you'll notice it takes a minute or so to fingerprint you. That's a pretty long time and a lot of CPU. Re/Targeted ads require the decision to be made in milliseconds, including network transit time. They just don't have the time to fingerprint you on every request. They could do it once, but then they are back to the problem of having to set a cookie to keep track of you after that.
Thanks, that actually explains a lot!
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At an Apple all-hands around 2005, an employee asked Steve why they made the iPod, and he said "because we love music." And the answer was so simple and so earnest, that you just knew it was true. Apple, for better or for worse, makes products based on what its executives personally want to use. That's not the only consideration, but it's unusually salient compared to other companies. My guess is that Apple works to…
Apple under Steve Jobs 2005 and Apple under Tim Cook now are different beasts. Steve would go crazy at the executives releasing all the buggy/unpolished products Apple released recently. Imagine the Macbook keyboard or the Touchbar being released under Steve. iPod was a great product. But time has changed, and I would be cautious in extrapolating that experience to Apple today. I can't imagine Apple executives saying…
Sometimes I wonder if the entire ads racket isn't a case of the emperor with no clothes. Has anyone here actually had a meaningful increase in users and revenue by using targeted-ad services, that they couldn't achieve by more organic methods (e.g. posting on places like Reddit, word of mouth)?
Behavioral data using 3rd parties like Neustar / Lotame have more dubious results, but still rake in billions each year from ad buyers that fastidiously track their ROI.
Most online display works to reinforce messaging in other forms of media, or win over new audiences with sheer volume.
Sometimes I wonder if the entire ads racket isn't a case of the emperor with no clothes. Has anyone here actually had a meaningful increase in users and revenue by using targeted-ad services, that they couldn't achieve by more organic methods (e.g. posting on places like Reddit, word of mouth)?
Then again, with the influencers/celebrity culture, the landscape of digital advertising has changed. Hence, Instagram supposedly leads when it comes to organic conversions. Good news here is, those who don't want such ads can stay away from the platform (or) that influencer. Bad news is, it is resulting in creating hoards of gullible, programmable masses with little effort, who can be exploited for various nefarious activities which can have an effect even outside of those platforms.
As someone who worked in ad tech for half a decade, I fail to understand the fuss about cookie based targeting. We're speaking of databases mapping data to random numbers stored in a file that can easily be deleted. The real issue is ad targeting by a handful of large companies that have personally identifiable information. It's not like cookie based targeting is very effective either. It's very difficult to get cook…
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Apple will let whatever browsers want to run on iOS. Chrome is, in fact, on there. They just won't let them using any rendering engine but WebKit—and this restriction long predates Google's current level of draconian dominance in that sphere. I don't believe the tracking settings are tied to the rendering engine, so I would be surprised if Chrome on iOS has settings that different to Chrome on macOS in that regard.
The rendering engine also includes the entire network infrastructure. I can't think of how I would plug my own network infrastructure into WKWebView on iOS, which means I can't block any built-in tracking prevention.
Sometimes I wonder if the entire ads racket isn't a case of the emperor with no clothes. Has anyone here actually had a meaningful increase in users and revenue by using targeted-ad services, that they couldn't achieve by more organic methods (e.g. posting on places like Reddit, word of mouth)?
There's an entire cottage industry of marketers (especially affiliate marketers) who make a lot of money through targeted ads. Unlike big brands, they can't afford to throw money at branded campaigns; they have to see results. If they continue to patronize ads, it means that they are getting conversions.