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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

#281

Post by tyre »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #37
rgavuliak wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sites are recording the sales, but in order to optimize advertising you would want to know which of the advertising channels (google/fb/etc.) is the most efficient or even which campaign (or creative) on a given channel works best. What facebook tracking did is connect a given marketing campaign that a user saw to the purchase they've made. Without allowing FB to track you on a vendor's site you don't get that in…

Ah yes so the e-commerce site knows purchasers come fro FB but FB doesn’t know the purchase was successful so can’t how the ad to more similar people.

Couldn’t Facebook include a parameter in the url that ties back to the click? Then the destination site just calls back to Facebook with that unique event id.

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

#283

Post by sp332 »

gruez wrote: post #275
sp332 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. All those other sites voluntarily send your data to Facebook. Edit: although they do track your physical location in real time through the app. That's more direct spying.

>Edit: although they do track your physical location in real time through the app. That's more direct spying. But for that to happen you need to explicitly gave consent?

Isn't it pre-installed on a lot of phones? https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2019/03/27/preinstalled-and... and the paper mentioned is this PDF https://haystack.mobi/papers/preinstalledAndroidSW_preprint....

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

#284

Post by ClumsyPilot »

rchaud wrote: post #235
alkonaut wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If sites can’t fund their content with ads based information I’m willing to give up, then they can beg me for money, or charge for the content, or beg me to look at ads or whatever. But I want that transaction to be transparent and deliberate. And I don’t care if 90% of content online just disappears because we click the privacy button. Then it was never a viable business model to begin with.

> Then it was never a viable business model to begin with. I think there's much more evidence to the contrary than there is for your position. Facebook is absurdly, staggeringly profitable. Uber and WeWork by comparison are the BS business models, needing to break local laws and requiring nation-state levels of VC backing and still nowhere near profitability.

>"Facebook is absurdly, staggeringly profitable."

Because it is stealing - the transactions were not voluntary and informed. most users are only now catching on to what they've been robbed of.

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

#285

Post by phreeza »

JohnFen wrote: post #193
phreeza wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least theoretically, you could have the whole logic deciding which ad to show you running locally on your device, without the need to send any private data to Facebook?

That just makes your device the spy. Sure, it's an increase in the amount of privacy, but it's not actual privacy.

How is it different from your browser history being stored locally?

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

#286

Post by LorenPechtel »

villasv wrote: post #265
janpot wrote: post #165

Often I hear the argument, people saying "I prefer ads that are relevant for me over random ads". But the result of the tracking is not only that you get "relevant" ads, it's that your timelines and your feeds and your news gets tweaked in ways that makes you engage with ads as much as possible. Not only do you get manipulated in buying stuff you didn't ask for (ads in general). You're also getting spoonfed content t…

> I prefer ads that are relevant for me over random ads I froze up the first time someone said this to me. Of course I prefer random ads, cause this way they're less likely to push the right buttons on my vulnerable monkey-ass brain. Do people think tailored ads are good for them instead of consumerism triggers? Messed up worldview.

Random ads are effectively noise. Targeted ads occasionally are of value. If there's going to be an ad, better it be a targeted one.

I also have no problem with companies tracking for the purpose of seeing which ads work.

I do *not* like the retargeting ads--if I didn't buy the item there's a reason! Either I didn't want it or I'm waiting for a better price, neither of which you're going to solve unless you're telling me about a sale on an item.

And the biggie is how intrusive they get. I'd like to see a system where the browser sends an acceptable-ad policy, a site can either comply or refuse to serve the page.

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

#287

Post by danbruc »

intev wrote: post #89
danbruc wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not getting it for free, I am already paying for it with my share of the ad budget included in all the products I buy. And I am not asking for anything to be for free, just allow me to pay for it.

This is such convoluted reasoning and you keep mentioning it. For example I could say: "I don't want to pay the road toll, I pay for it with the gas tax I pay" or "I don't want to pay for Disneyland, I pay for it with all the things I buy inside". Technically Disney could make entrance free and charge ridiculous rates for everything inside but I'm certain that makes theme parks significantly less viable as a business…

What is convoluted about that? I buy a product, some fraction of the profit goes into the marketing budget, some fraction of the marketing budget goes to Facebook. How am I not paying for using Facebook? Where does their revenue come from if not from me?

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

#288

Post by cerved »

yawaworht1978 wrote: post #12

Even with all the tracking, the generated ads still suck, showing things already purchased. This reminds me of the overhyped lead generation tools out there, they do not work as expected. Someone's financial interest is the root cause here, someone is making good money with ads. The ones who sell ads? For sure. The ones who buy adds? Not many success stories out there.

Retargeting typically has very favorable CPC (cost per click) and other "ROI" metrics that marketing managers use to determine the success of their advertising campaigns.

This may conceivably be because having previously visited a website is a stronger indicator of interest than say, male 18-30 making $XYZ/yr.

It may also be purely coincidental and garbage. You were going to buy anyway/you already bought it.

The truth most often lies somewhere in-between.

The statistic rigor of the people purchasing these ads is not always the highest. The companies offering these solutions typically have very little reason to not sell as many ads as possible, as long as the metrics look good.

In the end consumers are blasted with stalking ads that they don't want and the entire industry is shooting itself in the foot

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

#289

Post by dntrkv »

yawaworht1978 wrote: post #12

Even with all the tracking, the generated ads still suck, showing things already purchased. This reminds me of the overhyped lead generation tools out there, they do not work as expected. Someone's financial interest is the root cause here, someone is making good money with ads. The ones who sell ads? For sure. The ones who buy adds? Not many success stories out there.

> Not many success stories out there.

Where are you getting your information? There are entire businesses built solely on top of FB/Insta/etc ads. I went 15+ years on the internet without buying anything from an ad, and then in the last 5, I've made at least 5 conscious, purchases from Insta ads. They've become really good in recent years.

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

#290

Post by cerved »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #37
rgavuliak wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sites are recording the sales, but in order to optimize advertising you would want to know which of the advertising channels (google/fb/etc.) is the most efficient or even which campaign (or creative) on a given channel works best. What facebook tracking did is connect a given marketing campaign that a user saw to the purchase they've made. Without allowing FB to track you on a vendor's site you don't get that in…

Ah yes so the e-commerce site knows purchasers come fro FB but FB doesn’t know the purchase was successful so can’t how the ad to more similar people.

No they are referring to the fact that click throughs are not necessarily the only relevant metric for evaluating the success of your ads.

It's not technically challenging to track users if they click on your ads

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