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EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

reuters.com

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Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#151

Post by dillondoyle »

afdgadfgadfh wrote: post #86
dillondoyle wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this a lot but I find that it can't be true on the whole for many many. We buy ads for political clients. On FB I could get a positive immediate roi for donations. Scaling huge is hard (i got one client to over $1 million last cycle for context). Admittedly but you could go a lot bigger if you look at ROI down the line with email donations. And we're not alone. I don't think the many many direct to consumer bra…

Where is the control for the experiment? What is the ROI on non-targeted ads?

There are a lot of ways to do it.

For us we make a donation page. The only links that go there are from FB ads. We also use different refcodes for different ad groups AND the FB pixel passing in purchase value which is really good at optimizing FB's delivery to highest ROAS

FB is very very very good at this

I feel like people who question it or like don't understand basic attribution should do some more research before denigrating

There are other non-direct measurement, FB for instance allows you to upload offline purchases. Definitely not as clean especially if you're hitting across different channels. But a basic A/B holdout test is pretty good in that case too.

Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#152

Post by lizardmancan »

melomal wrote: post #77
DaedPsyker wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could it just be that online advertising is simply oversold? I don't know about others but I'd click an ad maybe once every 6 months at best. Maybe there is logic behind constant feed although on a number of occasions I actively avoid products for bombarding me (looking at you grammerly).

From a marketing pro's perspective you assume that because you have data - reach, impressions, est. click-through rates etc - that you can find a 'quick win' aka get rich rich quick. So inevitably you try it, then you get some 'tips', then you read a marketing guru's success story, then you start getting ads for ebooks all of which have the best strategy and you really feel that you have no choice but to go for it. I…

maybe thats it? consider all gambling gambling and move it under gambling laws? I know, it sounds nuts. But it is certainly possible to make an advertisement service that doesn't involve gambling. You just pay for sales.

I mean, currently i have no idea what im buying until i do. The agencies talk about CPC and CPM but I just want sales. They sell me black boxes that are just like scratch cards. It feels like gambling? How is it not?

Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#153

Post by lizardmancan »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #126
yulaow wrote: post #5

At this point honestly I just wish for a general ban on tracking ads of any kind. Just give me good old contextual ads and remove some MBs of js, with the only purpose of tracking me, from most websites of the internet.

Just disable Javascript. If people did this en masse, even for one day, the adtech companies would start to panic. Castles made of sand.

that extension that silently clicks every add was funny. Why was it not allowed? Seems anti-competitive to me.

Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#154

Post by pryelluw »

GradientAssent wrote: post #46
pryelluw wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about they find alternate revenue channels? Like every other business in the world?

Sounds like a great opportunity for you to enter the market and capture one of these alternative revenue channels with your ad-free search engine.

I think all the great minds at google have a better chance than I do. Plus you were the one saying how unfair it would be for them to not invade people’s privacy in order to cash in. My point is that if they can’t operate without violating our human rights then they shouldn’t operate.

Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#155

Post by jka »

GradientAssent wrote: post #38
jka wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads could be placed into a search engine, and user agents could choose to request relevant ads based on the page they are viewing (the context) and/or the current user's profile (if the user opts-in to their profile being included). Advertisers would compete within that search engine to have the most relevant and accurate product and service offerings to match demand, and would pay the search engine provider for the…

And when effectively no users opt in to advertising, how does the search engine stay in business? It does actually cost money to operate a good search engine.

It's a good question. I'd flip it around a bit and say that if you're a search engine that:

- Hosts commercial advertising content (not the entire web; only product and service offerings)

- Charges for hosting

- Has a highly qualified audience that genuinely wants to receive relevant advertising (based on requests being user-initiated, not software-initiated)

- Claims credit for revenue generated as a result of providing relevant advertising

... then you're likely to be able to cover the costs of developing and maintaining the system.

Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#156

Post by beaconstudios »

KDJohnBrown wrote: post #148
beaconstudios wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hey I'm no fan of naked neoliberalism either, but I promise you an EU facebook would suck just as much and in the same ways as US facebook. Profit motives still exist for huge corporations in Europe. every tool has its use, but protectionism is not the way to solve big tech's bad incentives.

Why is protectionism bad? Why is it better to allow trade imbalances which sucks your nation’s financial and intellectual wealth to others with nothing in return?

I don't think any given tool is universally bad. Protectionism just doesn't help in this case.

Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#157

Post by fakedang »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #116
8fingerlouie wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not like the current tracking adds are super efficient always. I searched for a new washing machine, found one I liked, bought it, and spent the next 3 months looking at washing machine adds.

With a lot more AI the smart people at Google, Amazon and Facebook may find out one day that there are products you buy rarely versus products you buy repeatedly. Like washing machines vs potato chips. It makes sense to show ads for potato chips but with washing machines you should stop after purchase. I much preferred the time when kiteboarding sites had static kiteboarding ads instead of the current situation where…

> I much preferred the time when kiteboarding sites had static kiteboarding ads instead of the current situation where ads are totally out of context.

Or out of nowhere. I get ads for real estate in Chicago - except that I live across the Atlantic. Or ladies products every time after my fiancee used my phone.

Not to mention how most ads are just plain bad. I don't mind actually watching good ads - I was hooked onto buying the Asus Zenbook Pro Duo for a while because of its ad (although later I learnt that the product was shit). The Honda Day/Night ad is another one that comes to mind.

Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#158

Post by ChrisIsTaken »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #116
8fingerlouie wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not like the current tracking adds are super efficient always. I searched for a new washing machine, found one I liked, bought it, and spent the next 3 months looking at washing machine adds.

With a lot more AI the smart people at Google, Amazon and Facebook may find out one day that there are products you buy rarely versus products you buy repeatedly. Like washing machines vs potato chips. It makes sense to show ads for potato chips but with washing machines you should stop after purchase. I much preferred the time when kiteboarding sites had static kiteboarding ads instead of the current situation where…

Not an AI problem. This happens when small businesses outsource their adsense campaign to one of the many completely incompetent fly by night SEO shops, or to their grandson who's "good at computers".

Half of Google's income is derived from businesses pissing their marketing budget up a wall with incorrectly targeted ads. But it's still more effective than newspapers.

Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#159

Post by Nasrudith »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #120
Nasrudith wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay then how do you prove the government hasn't stolen my Mazda? They are even more powerful than corporations. Inverting the burden of proof is listed as a logical fallacy for a reason. It is never appropriate.

Not only is it appropriate, there are already cases where this is done. Wikipedia documents some: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_onus

There are only three countries listed there - Pakistan, Canada and the UK. That is a bit of an indication that it is a major fringe excepetions. The UK's libel laws are so infamous that many nations specifically refuse to enforce them - not a point in favor. Canada has largely scoured out the bits they inherited by thr courts and what is left is dubiously constitutional.

The income accounting in the UK and Pakistan are the closest thing to legitimate and even then self evidently regarded as extreme by their limited adoption.

Re: EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

#160

Post by Nasrudith »

KDJohnBrown wrote: post #134
beaconstudios wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ah yes, protectionism.

If you want to see the outcome of a lack of protectionism, look no further than the devastation of the steel, automobile and other manufacturing industries in the ‘70s and ‘80s which effectively wiped out the middle class.

Steel and automobiles had the same root cause - management complacency. Not from a failure to race to the bottom as often suggested. Instead from their failure to invest in improving tools and processes. Edward Deming offered his statistical improvement techniques domestically first and they passed on them. Japan didn't.
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