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Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

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Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#171

Post by saint_abroad »

masswerk wrote: post #143
aviraldg wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as ad supported free services start shutting down because of ad blocking and lowered clickthrough rates on ads because of targeting being blocked, most people will probably start changing their minds. (The alternative being maintaining 10-20+ paid subscriptions.) For now, all this change means is that users who are opted-in to tracking are subsidising those who aren't.

How about tracking back to content related advertising rather than tracking based advertising? All related studies are showing that the latter isn't working anyway. And, as these metrics (and ethics) suggest, it has been an illegitimate invasion, right from the beginning. The fancy "conversion rate" dashboards are just not worth it. Bonus: Maybe this will be an opportunity for content providers to reset the decline o…

Indeed, maybe it's about time advertisers got back to sponsoring quality content their target audience enjoys, rather than direct marketing through the back door on the lowest common denominator.

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#172

Post by JohnFen »

8ytecoder wrote: post #129
aviraldg wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as ad supported free services start shutting down because of ad blocking and lowered clickthrough rates on ads because of targeting being blocked, most people will probably start changing their minds. (The alternative being maintaining 10-20+ paid subscriptions.) For now, all this change means is that users who are opted-in to tracking are subsidising those who aren't.

You seem to think it’s a bad thing. I’d argue “Free” products destroy innovation. It’s extremely hard to beat gmail or Facebook without massive VC funding.

Yes, and just to underline your use of quote marks there, those "free" products aren't even remotely free. You're just paying with a different currency, and -- in my view -- it's absurdly expensive.

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#173

Post by hedora »

derefr wrote: post #134
makecheck wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not destroying the whole concept of ads, it is only pushing back against awful variants. It is definitely possible to have “nice” ads, like simple text or images, with no creepy or CPU-draining elements in them. Nothing is preventing those ads from supporting free services.

However, the reason companies looking to place ads, will choose modern-adtech-platform-X (Google, Facebook, etc.) over traditional advertising medium Y (billboards, TV, etc.) is that the former promises to be more targeted (using the ad”tech”) than the latter, such that there’s higher value-per-click or value-per-impression. Without that promise, there’s no reason to favor advertising on these platforms over other pl…

> Without that promise, there’s no reason to favor advertising on these platforms over other platforms.

Precisely. Instead, there will (again) be reason to favor advertising on high quality content.

Redistribution of income away from ad platforms and content spam mills to original journalism and high-quality entertainment would be an unambiguous win for society.

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#174

Post by mertd »

fouric wrote: post #149
cm2012 wrote: post #116

I own an advertising agency. I've tracked ios impressions % over time on all of our remarketing campaigns (as a proxy), its down about 30% from peak and stabilized. Not a huge deal. LOL at this below: "Seufert estimated that in the first full quarter users see the prompt, the iOS changes could cut Facebook’s revenue by 7% if roughly 20% of users agree to be tracked. If just 10% of users grant Facebook tracking permis…

iOS impressions down 30% from peak is "not a huge deal"? This is very counterintuitive to me, as iOS both holds the majority share of the US market, and 30% seems like a very high number. Can you explain?

Maybe peak is Christmas?

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#175

Post by eropple »

blackbear_ wrote: post #8
_f9cu wrote: post #6

I don't think they need tracking anymore. IF a model is trained with historical data, that would be good enough to track without actually tracking.

> In predictive analytics and machine learning, concept drift means that the statistical properties of the target variable, which the model is trying to predict, change over time in unforeseen ways. This causes problems because the predictions become less accurate as time passes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_drift

This is true, but...meh? OK? Perhaps there are places where inefficiencies are not a bad thing, and perhaps advertising is one of them.

Perhaps, even, we should require people to think and empathize and communicate rather than feed a pile of unvariegated data into a black box and do what it tells us to.

I'm shockingly OK with having to make a connection with people to try to sell them something, and to have that be an upper limit on a company's reach.

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#176

Post by alkonaut »

derefr wrote: post #134
makecheck wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not destroying the whole concept of ads, it is only pushing back against awful variants. It is definitely possible to have “nice” ads, like simple text or images, with no creepy or CPU-draining elements in them. Nothing is preventing those ads from supporting free services.

However, the reason companies looking to place ads, will choose modern-adtech-platform-X (Google, Facebook, etc.) over traditional advertising medium Y (billboards, TV, etc.) is that the former promises to be more targeted (using the ad”tech”) than the latter, such that there’s higher value-per-click or value-per-impression. Without that promise, there’s no reason to favor advertising on these platforms over other pl…

Yes! So money will flow back to magazine ads, billboards, radio, tv, and other media that has seen money flow away the last decades. Because their untargeted ad model is now not much worse.

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#177

Post by tedd4u »

literallyaduck wrote: post #92

If Facebook and its child companies blocked users who opted out, users would eventually opt in, they could even do it in rolling waves to prevent a mass exodus. Facebook and Google would likely be able to beat Apple and both depend on Ad revenue.

Apple says that’s not acceptable. See 3.2.2(vi) here:

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#178

Post by nicoburns »

derefr wrote: post #134
makecheck wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not destroying the whole concept of ads, it is only pushing back against awful variants. It is definitely possible to have “nice” ads, like simple text or images, with no creepy or CPU-draining elements in them. Nothing is preventing those ads from supporting free services.

However, the reason companies looking to place ads, will choose modern-adtech-platform-X (Google, Facebook, etc.) over traditional advertising medium Y (billboards, TV, etc.) is that the former promises to be more targeted (using the ad”tech”) than the latter, such that there’s higher value-per-click or value-per-impression. Without that promise, there’s no reason to favor advertising on these platforms over other pl…

Consider how much profit a company like facebook makes. Ad value could take drop a lot and they'd still be a viable company. They's lose, but from a societal perspective I'd argue that probably a positive.

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#179

Post by Guest19023892 »

zarkov99 wrote: post #93
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe don't use Facebook at all? And block any and all Facebook DNS queries with a PiHole.

Can you actually use PiHole to serve DNS for your Android? I was able to direct my Linux systems to my PiHole but my Android phone seemed to not care a wit about my internal DNS.

I setup a Pi-hole yesterday with two Android phones (manually setting the DNS on each device at the moment until I'm sure there are no issues and I want to set it at the router level for all devices on the network). Both phones worked as expected. One is a Pixel 4a with Chrome as the browser and I didn't experience any issues or have to do anything special during setup.

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#180

Post by JohnFen »

pier25 wrote: post #75
qwerty456127 wrote: post #66

How in the world can this be considered reasonable for them to track you across other apps and sites? This like if the local grocery store owner would install hidden cameras to spy on me at home and at work and in the car and one day somebody forced them to ask if I'm sure that's what I want them to do. This all makes me start feeling like I might finally want an iPhone...

> This all makes me start feeling like I might finally want an iPhone... Or maybe don't use Facebook on Android?

Facebook isn't the only threat, by a longshot.
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