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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

#251

Post by imglorp »

mariusor wrote: post #73

For the past year I've had this ritual of clicking on every advertising tile as soon as it appears and mark it as irrelevant and that I don't want to see any more from that company. Currently this happens for a couple of days at the start of some months. So far I feel like this strategy has worked fine, 90% of the time I don't get served any unwanted content and I can view a decent timeline.

Is this really about wanted vs unwanted ads?

How about tracking, aggregation, selling and reselling your data, and abandoned privacy therefrom? Malware? Bandwidth from downloading all the non-content? Burning cpu's to run the teraquads of javascript?

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

#252

Post by Ashanmaril »

atulvi wrote: post #95

I wonder why 25% opted in. Even for accidental touches, that's way too much. Loving this. Almost makes me want to move to an iPhone.

My guess is that even more than accidental mistouches would just be how many users are used to blindly accepting things because it's the only way to not get harassed with pop-ups. They might automatically assume that if they don't accept now, they'll get prompted again every time they open the app.

I imagine a pop-up like this would auto-register for a lot of people the same as "accept the terms of service to continue"

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

#253

Post by rchaud »

nobody0 wrote: post #119

Why a webpage needs to know more than what I click? If you put legitimate ads that are relevant to the media that I am consuming per se, I guess I can bear with that.

Replace 'web page' with "real-time customer intelligence platform' and you'll have your answer.

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

#254

Post by Retric »

derefr wrote: post #237
Retric wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many companies are prohibited from doing stuff that they would profit from. I am sure soda companies would love to be able to add heroin to their products etc. However, maximizing random companies profits isn’t societies only concern.

My point wasn't so much about maximizing profits; it was more that these free-service companies might not even be tenable (at least at their current scales, or anything like them) with the drastically lower profit-margins of traditional ad impressions. The GP comment said: > Nothing is preventing those ads from supporting free services. And my thought is, a zero-or-negative profit margin might very well be. It costs…

Tracking doesn’t actually add that much to how much they can sell advertising for. As to traditional advertising companies it’s simply a question of competence, you may as well ask why they don’t sell vacuum cleaners.

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

#255

Post by masswerk »

renewiltord wrote: post #247
masswerk wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I studied media theory and publishing, but well before the Web became the all-decisive factor. Meaning, I have some idea about those things and have still an interest in them. (Also, I actually programmed ad embedding mechanisms for ad networks, but quit this field, when things became too invasive and ads too aggressive and I couldn't justify this any longer. – At this time, tracking was commonly done for…

* There is a pervasive belief on HN that marketing teams are making easy errors, i.e. there is low hanging fruit * Consultancies that improve marketing campaign efficacy make lots of money * HN users are making small fractions of that money and constantly complaining about it * Any HN user capable of picking this low hanging fruit could do this for two years and retire for life * They are not * Conclusion: Either the…

Maybe, there's a biased view in ad business and some of the perceived benefits and effects are rather tautological? (This is why we have studies.)

You could also conclude from your remarks that there is a pervasive idea around ad teams that former generations (in the times of media analysis) were just delivering complete failures. However, this model had delivered for more than a century. How could this model perform with todays instruments and data?

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

#256

Post by a-dub »

_Understated_ wrote: post #43

> [Disruptive Digita] is also looking into technology that would let Facebook deliver personalized ads based on targeting data stored on the user’s device, meaning Facebook wouldn’t need to access it. Anyone know how this would work? My spidey-sense is tingling here at the thought of apps scanning data on my phone!

probably just like google's federated learning of cohorts thing.

they still cluster you, but instead of collecting your browsing activity from partner websites, they do it locally using browser history that doesn't leave your device, and the net effect is that you have an equivalent of a browser cookie or additional http request header that doesn't identify you, but does identify your cluster memberships.

some people are still not ok with this, i'm on the fence.

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

#257

Post by redleggedfrog »

melomal wrote: post #44
danbruc wrote: post #3

That sense of entitlement makes me sick. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise we would have to spend way too much on ads. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise my small business can not survive. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise we can not understand who our customers are. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise we can not identify new customers. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise we can not evaluate the e…

I love the personal entitlement people have when using free email, free social media, free search engines and everything else to the point they are offended if they try to make ends meet by making profit. Do you think Y Combinator investments don't use tracking? You would get laughed out of a room if you said you track nothing and have a solid product. A phone call to ask about your product is tracking because it all…

You have it entirely backwards. The advertisers on things like facebook should be paying the users for using the site and getting their ads in front of them. facebook is not even worth $1 a month to most people, that's why the won't charge for it, and shows it's actual value to the end user. The real benefit of facebook is to the companies trying to shill their wares on facebook.

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

#258

Post by renewiltord »

tomelders wrote: post #19

Advertising used to be a creative industry. Online advertising has pretty much destroyed that. Perhaps anti-tracking measures will put the focus back on quality in advertising.

Advertising is a super creative industry. One time we targeted people who worked at a particular (large) company in a certain capacity with ads that were specific. This is just standard Account Based Marketing, but we had great conversion rates and one of them was like "I saw your guys' product advertised to me between Words with Friends turns like 'This is how [our company] can help [his company] with [problem we anticipated they'd have]' and I was like woah this is cool, is it kinda creepy? I don't know. But it's cool!".

That needed some pretty clever set up from the marketing folks, company-specific graphics and stuff, and the pipeline to be per company. It was cool, man.

I mean, yeah, sure, lots of you guys would be like "OMG I would hate your company for that" etc. etc., but it turns out that's not how directors at big firms think.

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

#259

Post by giantrobot »

orangepanda wrote: post #51
danbruc wrote: post #3

That sense of entitlement makes me sick. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise we would have to spend way too much on ads. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise my small business can not survive. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise we can not understand who our customers are. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise we can not identify new customers. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise we can not evaluate the e…

While I dont mind some tracking and telemetry, platforms have abused that trust and track everything they can now. I'm all for going scorched earth policy. Similar to how if an app sends just one spam notification, it's an uninstall and a 2 star rating.

> platforms have abused that trust and track everything they can now

The frog boiling that got me to block tracking and advertising in every way available to me was the era of the advertising hyperlink (late 2000s). An article would have what looked like hyperlinks to other stories or sources but were really just links to ads for products that matched that keyword.

If your cursor even hinted at hovering over them they would generate a popup with some obnoxious ad with a "close button" so small it was virtually impossible to click it without going to the advertiser site. Such sites would almost invariably spit out pop-unders, resize browser windows, and try to install browser toolbars.

When that style of ad got popular I started blocking domains in my hosts file and using GreaseMonkey scripts to block ads. I haven't stopped in the decade and a half since then. I don't oppose advertising nor do I necessarily oppose tracking since at the very least I can't hide from a server's access logs. I do oppose the absolute bottom feeding of AdTech companies.

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