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Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

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Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#31

Post by MereInterest »

charcircuit wrote: post #27
danbruc wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is ridiculous. If I am trying to advertise an Elixer IDE, then I don't want my advertisements shown to any random person on the internet. The majority of users on the internet are not even developers. I want to be able to advertise to a consumer segment which consists of people who are interested in Elixir. "Surveillance" is essential to internet advertising. This is ridiculous. And it is your problem. Why shoul…

Because I don't want to waste the time of people who aren't interested in my ad in seeing my ad. It's a waste of money for me. The ad network will not be able to make money from having them click the ad. The user's time will be wasted because they are not interested in what I am selling. It's a lose lose lose situation. I want to create more win win win situations where everyone benefits. Tracking and profiling is ne…

And the downsides of that tracking/profiling fall entirely on the person being surveilled.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#32

Post by eingaeKaiy8ujie »

charcircuit wrote: post #21
eingaeKaiy8ujie wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why not? Because it's a privacy risk. Such information can be used to identify me and used against me.

>Such information can be used to identify me Good. We can make things more efficient. >used against me How could someone for example knowing you like Elixer use that knowledge against you? It's not a big deal.

Such data can be combined with other bits of information to uniquely identify me on the web. And there may be other facts about me and my online activity that I don't want third parties to associate with my identity.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#33

Post by justinclift »

charcircuit wrote: post #21
eingaeKaiy8ujie wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why not? Because it's a privacy risk. Such information can be used to identify me and used against me.

>Such information can be used to identify me Good. We can make things more efficient. >used against me How could someone for example knowing you like Elixer use that knowledge against you? It's not a big deal.

k, so how about if instead of "Elixer" it was specific religious topics? Or other things that have legal measures for/against them in various parts of the world.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#34

Post by the_other »

charcircuit wrote: post #27
danbruc wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is ridiculous. If I am trying to advertise an Elixer IDE, then I don't want my advertisements shown to any random person on the internet. The majority of users on the internet are not even developers. I want to be able to advertise to a consumer segment which consists of people who are interested in Elixir. "Surveillance" is essential to internet advertising. This is ridiculous. And it is your problem. Why shoul…

Because I don't want to waste the time of people who aren't interested in my ad in seeing my ad. It's a waste of money for me. The ad network will not be able to make money from having them click the ad. The user's time will be wasted because they are not interested in what I am selling. It's a lose lose lose situation. I want to create more win win win situations where everyone benefits. Tracking and profiling is ne…

You could target the same people by buying ad space in like-minded “venues”. There’s a gaping hole in the market for good “content-linked” advertising, searching, aggregation and so on. Link to content, not people. Work with customers who’re already self selecting, rather than following people around all the time.

As a side-line, this’d probably cut back on a lot of click-bait trash articles. It, likely, would help bring the signal-boise level of the internet at large back to something more useful.

Well, I can dream, anyway..

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#35

Post by rotebeete »

charcircuit wrote: post #8
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #4

Do we have a good proposed legal definition of surveillance-based advertising?

The report defines it as >In this context, we use the term ‘surveillance-based advertising’ as a blanket >term for digital advertising that is targeted at individuals or consumer >segments, usually through tracking and profiling based on personal data. This is ridiculous. If I am trying to advertise an Elixer IDE, then I don't want my advertisements shown to any random person on the internet. The majority of users on…

> The majority of users on the internet are not even developers.

Then just advertise on sites that usually have developers?!

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#36

Post by danbruc »

charcircuit wrote: post #27
danbruc wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is ridiculous. If I am trying to advertise an Elixer IDE, then I don't want my advertisements shown to any random person on the internet. The majority of users on the internet are not even developers. I want to be able to advertise to a consumer segment which consists of people who are interested in Elixir. "Surveillance" is essential to internet advertising. This is ridiculous. And it is your problem. Why shoul…

Because I don't want to waste the time of people who aren't interested in my ad in seeing my ad. It's a waste of money for me. The ad network will not be able to make money from having them click the ad. The user's time will be wasted because they are not interested in what I am selling. It's a lose lose lose situation. I want to create more win win win situations where everyone benefits. Tracking and profiling is ne…

Because I don't want to waste the time of people who aren't interested in my ad in seeing my ad.

Than don't run ads. Essentially nobody is interested in seeing ads, targeted or not.

It's a waste of money for me. The ad network will not be able to make money from having them click the ad.

I don't give a fuck how much money it costs you or if the ad network goes bankrupt, why should I?

The user's time will be wasted because they are not interested in what I am selling.

As I said, then don't run ads if you actually care about wasting user time. Even if you have a conversion rate of 10 % you are still wasting time for the other 90 %.

It's a lose lose lose situation.

I would consider it a win if all ad companies go bankrupt and I never have to see an ad again.

I want to create more win win win situations where everyone benefits. Tracking and profiling is needed to increase the rate that this happens.

This is not win win win, this is win win win LOSE - a few users get a product they want, you get some sales, the ad network gets your ad budget, and everyone else gets nothing but being tracked and profiled.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#37

Post by ncallaway »

charcircuit wrote: post #8
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #4

Do we have a good proposed legal definition of surveillance-based advertising?

The report defines it as >In this context, we use the term ‘surveillance-based advertising’ as a blanket >term for digital advertising that is targeted at individuals or consumer >segments, usually through tracking and profiling based on personal data. This is ridiculous. If I am trying to advertise an Elixer IDE, then I don't want my advertisements shown to any random person on the internet. The majority of users on…

> I want to be able to advertise to a consumer segment which consists of people who are interested in Elixir

And, as the person being advertised to, I absolutely want you not to be able to do that. Why do your desires trump mine?

Surveillance is not essential to internet advertising. Because it’s not essential for advertising. Newspaper ads didn’t come with such invasive models, nor did radio adverts, or even TV ads.

If advertisers on the internet can’t figure out how to make a surveillance free advertising model work, then I’d much prefer those businesses to die.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#38

Post by uniqueuid »

Instead of arguing what current business models that would break, I think we should take a step back and ask:

What legal and moral basis warrants "surveillance-based advertising"?

The premise of GDPR in the EU has been that "surveillance-based advertising" needs to be balanced with user rights.

If we come to the conclusion that this balance cannot be achieved (e.g. because users are not savvy enough to safeguard their rights, because data sticks around forever, because data can be sold etc.), then it's a straightforward step to prohibit tracking entirely.

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#39

Post by lallysingh »

charcircuit wrote: post #8
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #4

Do we have a good proposed legal definition of surveillance-based advertising?

The report defines it as >In this context, we use the term ‘surveillance-based advertising’ as a blanket >term for digital advertising that is targeted at individuals or consumer >segments, usually through tracking and profiling based on personal data. This is ridiculous. If I am trying to advertise an Elixer IDE, then I don't want my advertisements shown to any random person on the internet. The majority of users on…

No it's not. It's the same situation that's existed in advertising for decades already. Want to advertise your automotive parts? Advertise in Popular Mechanics. Some fancy clothing? Advertise in Vogue.

Now, you just advertise in appropriate blogs.

If there are no appropriate publications for important topics, hey! Guess what! They have their business model back!

Re: Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising

#40

Post by indigochill »

charcircuit wrote: post #17
indigochill wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I am trying to advertise an Elixer IDE, then I don't want my advertisements shown to any random person on the internet. The definition in the report is poor. Yes, you always need to advertise to a segment. No, you don't have to spy on users to do it. How? Make a website about something and select advertisements that are relevant to the sort of people who are probably interested in the topic of the website. ReadT…

>No, you don't have to spy on users to do it. Assuming you are running an ad network you kind of have to in order to prevent ad fraud. Also by reducing that data you know about someone's interests is the knowledge that they have visited a site at least you will not be able to pick as good of an ad compared to if you had more data.

What's the fraud scenario? Page owners presenting fraudulent visitor/click-through numbers to advertisers?

In that scenario, it seems like advertisers would pick up on that pretty quickly when they realize the conversion rate on that supposed traffic is terrible and doesn't warrant the inflated price. In the case they're using an ad network, the network could ban the page owner from their network if they see this pattern from them. Since page owners are materially benefiting from the network, proof of identity should be (probably is? I don't work in the space) applied between the page owner and network to prevent repeat fraud via identity laundering.

> you will not be able to pick as good of an ad compared to if you had more data.

In theory I lean towards agreeing. I was arguing for tech-powered hyper-personalized ads back when I was studying advertising 2008-2012 (and did a bit of "stealth marketing" in that period where I built relationships with bloggers to share our product before the term "influencer" had hit the mainstream vocabulary).

In practice, advertisers do not personalize ads. Facebook has become pretty good about selecting ads that map to my interests thanks to the reach of their spy network, but the ads themselves still aren't personalized at all (they take my interests into account, but not my spending history to realize that I don't have the budget for what they're trying to sell me) and my conversion to a sale because of them is still very, very low.

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