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Tech-savvy audiences block Google Analytics

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Re: Tech-savvy audiences block Google Analytics

#591

Post by mdoms »

jccalhoun wrote: post #299

I am amazed at how non-techy people use the internet. I teach college and I will sometimes have students go to some web site. I am amazed at how few use adblocking and just accept all the ads and popups and overlays and crap. Even more than that, I will see them using something like google docs and google will put an overlay for some new feature and they don't click the X to close it. They just type away with that ov…

Technical literacy among young people is so depressing. I'm 36 so I grew up in the last of the non-digital native cohort - I vaguely remember life before the internet. But growing up surrounded by computers and the internet, but seeing many of my peers miss out, I was certain that the next generation would be so much more tech savvy. As full digital natives they will learn to code, understand the protocols on which their primary communications are built and just be steeped in this stuff from birth.

How naive I was. No one actually cares. It was like assuming everyone born after 1908 would fully understand how cars work.

Re: Tech-savvy audiences block Google Analytics

#593

Post by nebula8804 »

DocTomoe wrote: post #162
jeroenhd wrote: post #140

I expected these numbers to be higher. However, an even more interesting metric is the 88% block in Firefox. Firefox may not have a great market share, but based on these numbers it's market share may very well be eight times higher than your analytics report. This can change the argument of "it's only 3% of our users so we don't need to test on FF" to "it's a quarter of our user base, we should at least test it", de…

I feel this heavily depends on your goal. IMHO, this points at Firefox being used mostly by ad-averse, tech-savvy users, while the less-adverse, less-savvy users prefer Safari and/or Chrome. If your objective is to maximize ad revenue, the most obvious approach would now be to ignore Firefox completely and focus on non-FF browsers. Of course, following web standards would be the Golden Way, and more selfless actors f…

Is there a good blocking solution for Safari? From what I understand uBlock Origin cannot operate on Safari due to the way that it disallows some allows access to the underlying source of the webpage.

Also it seems like extensions on Safari require you to install them via the App Store which just seems so dumb and unintuitive compared to Chrome/Firefox.

If they fixed these two issues, I think Safari usage would be much greater. That browser is so incredibly fast and snappy especially on the new M1 macs but not having proper ad-blocking is a complete deal breaker.

Re: Tech-savvy audiences block Google Analytics

#594

Post by MomoXenosaga »

jccalhoun wrote: post #299

I am amazed at how non-techy people use the internet. I teach college and I will sometimes have students go to some web site. I am amazed at how few use adblocking and just accept all the ads and popups and overlays and crap. Even more than that, I will see them using something like google docs and google will put an overlay for some new feature and they don't click the X to close it. They just type away with that ov…

Been blocking pretty much all advertising on mobile and desktop for years and I couldn't go back. At work I see how the internet is SUPPOSED to look like and it is horrible.

Re: Tech-savvy audiences block Google Analytics

#596

Post by WorldMaker »

nebula8804 wrote: post #590
WorldMaker wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, modern streaming apps have far more accurate numbers than anything Nielsen ever cooked up sampling people, but Netflix made the precedence that they should be "secret sauce" and not shared publicly and most of the "Streaming Wars" diaspora today are following that policy/precedent. We're in something of a worst of both worlds situation where Nielsen has an increasingly small number of viewers where tradit…

I have been exploring ways to avoid sending this data to them. To start: using an instance of Pi-Hole and running all your apps will remove some tracking from them. Following this up with paying for your subscription but pirating all the shows might help remove you from the cycle completely. I understand the second point is not realistic for the majority of people but I wonder if in the future we might have an easy t…

That just gets us back to the topic way above: if we aren't giving that tracking data to TV producers, it's tough to complain when our favorite nerdy/intelligent shows get cancelled.

That's the deep weird irony that we live in a world where we could have the best possible numbers (directly tracked statistics), and yet TV Producers are still relying (for the most part) on Phone and Snail Mail Survey Results because they don't think they can trust streaming provider numbers. Pi-Holing those numbers just gives those Producers even more reason to feel that they are lies or wrong. At what point do you Pi-Hole too many telemetrics to oblivion and aren't allowed to complain when your favorite TV shows get canceled because "no one" was watching it?

Re: Tech-savvy audiences block Google Analytics

#597

Post by wintermutestwin »

nonameiguess wrote: post #241
dgudkov wrote: post #110

It amazes me that over the last 10-20 years an astonishing amount of money and intellectual capital have been invested in adtech and crypto but nothing in micropayments. Ads are evil, but it will remain a moot point until we have working micropayments. We have (and will have) ads with all their downsides exactly because we don't have micropayments, because ads basically work as a substitute to micropayments.

I feel like most on the producer side are coming at this from a totally wrong angle. A better web isn't a web in which content is monetized in a different way. Consumers don't want to pay because most content on the web is not worth paying for. Not with ads, not with micropayments, not with anything. There's the saying about five web sites consisting of screenshots of the other four, but even with news, the vast bulk…

>Micropayments can never solve that most web content is worth 0 dollars and 0 cents.

The irony is that most of the actually valuable content is user generated. A site like Reddit could be actively curating all of the great content that people give away for free and people would pay for it. Then Reddit could actually pay their content creators. And -poof- we have high quality content that is worth paying for and people getting paid to generate it - all without the scourge of ads.

Re: Tech-savvy audiences block Google Analytics

#598

Post by wintermutestwin »

kasabali wrote: post #264
cookie_monsta wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then again Netflix et al, zero ads Spotify premium, zero ads I think it's just a question of coming up with the right model. Assuming that failed examples are the rule isn't all that useful

Some Netflix originals have a lot of product placement

Product placement is a slight annoyance compared to ads. That said, I could see them becoming just as toxic.

Re: Tech-savvy audiences block Google Analytics

#599

Post by nebula8804 »

dredmorbius wrote: post #464
jccalhoun wrote: post #299

I am amazed at how non-techy people use the internet. I teach college and I will sometimes have students go to some web site. I am amazed at how few use adblocking and just accept all the ads and popups and overlays and crap. Even more than that, I will see them using something like google docs and google will put an overlay for some new feature and they don't click the X to close it. They just type away with that ov…

You all but certainly overestimate typical technological literacy. About 5% of computer users have "advanced" literacy, defined as "Some navigation across pages and applications is required to solve the problem. The use of tools (e.g. a sort function) is required to make progress towards the solution. The task may involve multiple steps and operators. The goal of the problem may have to be defined by the respondent,…

This data is incredible. I cannot believe how the most powerful/richest/most influential country in the world has these kinds of numbers. I notice that it tends to follow a standard distribution but even then, I was expecting the window to be more towards highly educated.

This is so depressing. I have been wondering for a while as to why ~40 percent of the country rarely if ever votes in elections. This might help to explain it.

This also shows that technology people are amassing an unbelievable amount of power in their knowledge of how these systems work and operate given that the masses don't know how to weld that knowledge.

Re: Tech-savvy audiences block Google Analytics

#600

Post by nebula8804 »

WorldMaker wrote: post #596
nebula8804 wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been exploring ways to avoid sending this data to them. To start: using an instance of Pi-Hole and running all your apps will remove some tracking from them. Following this up with paying for your subscription but pirating all the shows might help remove you from the cycle completely. I understand the second point is not realistic for the majority of people but I wonder if in the future we might have an easy t…

That just gets us back to the topic way above: if we aren't giving that tracking data to TV producers, it's tough to complain when our favorite nerdy/intelligent shows get cancelled. That's the deep weird irony that we live in a world where we could have the best possible numbers (directly tracked statistics), and yet TV Producers are still relying (for the most part) on Phone and Snail Mail Survey Results because th…

I guess this contributes to me watching less and less shows because I am tired of stuff being canceled midseason. It might be a self fulfilling prophecy. Less people watch these shows/appear to watch these shows, the networks stop producing it and these people don't come back to whatever the network does end up producing.

From what I am hearing, traditional forms of media are in decline because people are spending their time on Youtube/Twitch/Social media instead.

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