Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 632 posts

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

#431

Post by corford »

air7 wrote: post #366

I dislike being tracked as much as the next guy, but I often wonder what "our" ideal end-game goal is? By "our" I mean the typical HN crowd that understands both the technological and the economical implications of this. If we want top-grade products to remain available without a direct monetary transaction (i.e "free"), it seems we must give something that the product providers can turn into monetary value indirectl…

Perhaps the answer is a lot of these services are less vital and desired as their MAU figures lead everyone to believe.

If someone really wants or needs something, they'll find a way to pay for it (directly or indirectly) if access cannot be had any other way. Everything else is "nice to have" until the cost or friction gets a little higher than zero.

The fact that people are increasingly unwilling to "pay for" things like FB seems to suggest these services are not actually _that_ vital despite their high usage figures.

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

#432

Post by edmundsauto »

bquest2 wrote: post #342
lwb wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FB revenue is going to be up in Q3, not down, would bet $10k on that. Why?

Because they are still serving an ad in that spot, just one that costs the advertiser more as the now have to bid in a larger pool. FB actually ends up profiting pretty well from this change (at the cost of losing some of the small business advertising that was priced out)

Targeting larger pools should reduce per impression costs, because FB has more options for where and when to place your ad. Smaller groups have fewer opportunities, so if you want to show your ad to them specifically, you have to pay more.

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

#433

Post by asdff »

elorant wrote: post #354
fairity wrote: post #347

> Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook “may even be in a stronger position” following the iOS changes if it means more businesses start to make sales directly within Facebook’s apps instead of sending users to a web address. Does anyone know what he's referring to in this quote? There isn't a way for advertisers to move their purchase flow onto Facebook's app is there?

Probably Facebook Marketplace

Do legitimate companies actually put products on there? Whenever I check that its like craigslist but with more spam and likely stolen products. craigslist seems to have much better moderation.

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

#434

Post by lizard »

air7 wrote: post #366

I dislike being tracked as much as the next guy, but I often wonder what "our" ideal end-game goal is? By "our" I mean the typical HN crowd that understands both the technological and the economical implications of this. If we want top-grade products to remain available without a direct monetary transaction (i.e "free"), it seems we must give something that the product providers can turn into monetary value indirectl…

For me, there are 2 things:

1. I want more honesty and transparency in products and services. I'm tired of being sold something to "Connect with friends and the world around you" that are actually just a front to collect as much information about me as possible to for advertisers.

I'm not even opposed to targeted ads, but at this point have to assume that if a product is capable of collecting ever bit of data it can and selling it, it will. Even privacy policies and user agreements are meaningless because they all contain text of the effect that the provider can change the terms at any time.

I just want companies to be honest about what they are actually doing and what the cost to me really is.

2. I want ads to back the hell off.

I don't mean they need to go away entirely. There are times when I _want_ to learn about different products and find new things to solve problems I have.

But I'm tired of them them pushing to get as in my face as possible, of them beating me over the head with problems I don't have, and of them trying to manipulate me into giving them money instead of helping me find things that will actually help me.

It's as if product discovery isn't profitable; like companies are afraid to be honest about their products. So instead of making better products, they entire market just makes different colored cheap boxes with nothing inside and uses ads to manipulate as many people into buying them before they figure it out.

I block ads guilt free because at this point I honestly don't feel like I can trust any company that participates in this racket.

Personally though, I'm might just be willing to give up on products that depend on ad revenue. While I admit I do use some services based on ad-tech, I'm pretty quick to leave any site that complains about my ad-blocker and don't really feel like I'm missing anything. I could probably be convinced to leave most these other services behind if they started making a worse experience of it.

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

#435

Post by smachiz »

probably_wrong wrote: post #417
smachiz wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this isn't right - because FB can no longer tell you as much information about the ad they're about to display, they're going to collect less money for it. They can't correlate that ad to an action, which means they can't make you a happy chart that says the ROI is there. So you're going to pay less for it. This isn't going to harm small businesses no matter what FB says.

That's one possibility. I'd like to offer a second one: that Facebook will charge the same amount and we are going to pay it. It's not like there are that many successful Facebook clones around.

Except that's not how the ads work. They're all being bid in real time, by both people using FB tools (small biz) and 3rd parties.

Whoever submits the highest bid wins that ad impression. Less information will mean people bid less, and the targeted ad prices will revert to their less targeted peers from a price perspective.

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

#436

Post by ako »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #50
ako wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sense of entitlement that you can get stuff for free without having to pay for it in some way. You use facebook for free, it seems to provide you some value, why do you think you are entitled to get this for free?

We pay for internet access. When I first used the web in 1993, the internet fee was covered by the tuition I paid, as only universities, government and a relatively small number of corporations were connected. Later, ISPs were formed and we began paying for home access. The "entitlement" we pay for, IMO, is access to a network free from surveillance and advertising, or at least one where we can navigate around that.…

How much of that money for internet access goes to facebook? How are they supposed to develop and maintain their website from zero money they get from you paying for internet access? How are you going to put all your content online if they don't invest in developing and maintaining their services?

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

#437

Post by distances »

joreilly wrote: post #406
jimkleiber wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post inspires me to look at it from a real-world analogy. If I imagine that online ads are the same as offline ads, I start to think about what offline ad tracking would look like. I imagine cameras being on the streets to watch me walk down the street, following me to different stores to see what I buy, with whom I meet, and other activities to inform which billboards/street advertisements should exist. I think…

Performing the same though-exercise, I find myself with a different conclusion; I despise physical advertising. I hate driving down the high-way and seeing a massive billboard for who-even-cares interrupting the fields and forests. I don't want to have products pushed at me while walking around downtown. São Paulo removed all billboards/branding/advertising with their Clean City Law [0] in 2007 and the difference bef…

I agree totally. There's not that much physical world advertising in my part of Europe (e.g. almost no road side banners at all), but I still despise how we've sold bus stops and metro walls to the highest bidder. Public space should be advertisement-free as you can't opt out of it.

Private spaces like inside shopping malls is fine for me.

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

#438

Post by jimkleiber »

joreilly wrote: post #406
jimkleiber wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post inspires me to look at it from a real-world analogy. If I imagine that online ads are the same as offline ads, I start to think about what offline ad tracking would look like. I imagine cameras being on the streets to watch me walk down the street, following me to different stores to see what I buy, with whom I meet, and other activities to inform which billboards/street advertisements should exist. I think…

Performing the same though-exercise, I find myself with a different conclusion; I despise physical advertising. I hate driving down the high-way and seeing a massive billboard for who-even-cares interrupting the fields and forests. I don't want to have products pushed at me while walking around downtown. São Paulo removed all billboards/branding/advertising with their Clean City Law [0] in 2007 and the difference bef…

> São Paulo removed all billboards/branding/advertising with their Clean City Law [0] in 2007 and the difference before and after is massive. It immediately looked so much more clean and beautiful...

Reminds me of how one day, I think in SF, I was trying to go around without reading things and just realized there are so many things shouting at me with words, especially billboards and other forms of public advertising. I would love to even have a city here in the US experiment with something like this.

> I would gladly raise my taxes to eradicate public advertising permanently

I would, too, especially as a consumer, and yet, as a producer, I wonder how annoyed I would be without ads. Maybe there's a balance, and I believe needs to be have more consumer voice, and less producer voice.

> Naturally, how this could be implemented is far beyond me, as are the economics behind advertising, so I suppose I'm doing little more than wistful thinking.

Lol, me too. I guess it comes down to how much does advertising actually work and if advertising disappeared, what downstream impacts would it have on the economy (and would those be "bad")?

I think part of the reason I'd like to go into public office is to run these experiments and also I feel sad that more public offices don't seem to run that many experiments :-)

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

#439

Post by SquishyPanda23 »

air7 wrote: post #366

I dislike being tracked as much as the next guy, but I often wonder what "our" ideal end-game goal is? By "our" I mean the typical HN crowd that understands both the technological and the economical implications of this. If we want top-grade products to remain available without a direct monetary transaction (i.e "free"), it seems we must give something that the product providers can turn into monetary value indirectl…

I think the answer is going to be a form of micropayments.

The system we have now is micropayments. Personal data has economic value and we pay with that.

The engineering problem is to figure out how to make the payment system less indirect so that companies can't rent seek by extracting more data (payments) for the same service.

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

#440

Post by milofeynman »

air7 wrote: post #366

I dislike being tracked as much as the next guy, but I often wonder what "our" ideal end-game goal is? By "our" I mean the typical HN crowd that understands both the technological and the economical implications of this. If we want top-grade products to remain available without a direct monetary transaction (i.e "free"), it seems we must give something that the product providers can turn into monetary value indirectl…

My end game would be knowing who has my data and being able to say no to 3rd parties getting my data.

Fine, Facebook knows which hobbies I'm looking at on Instagram and has incredible ads and suggested posts. Ok that's fine. But random 3rd party I don't know getting that data... No thanks.

Post reply on HN