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The Internet Made Me Sad Today

raganwald.posterous.com

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Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today

#91

Post by defen »

lkozma wrote: post #88
patio11 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a comment, not a debate. I'm not trying to crush raganwald's constructive and collect many finger snaps from the judges. I'm just trying to explain how Internet advertising works for a community which a) viscerally despises advertising, b) often dreams of working for an advertising company, and c) even if they don't work directly for the ad company will have their careers determined in large part by their abilit…

Patrick, your argument is flawless, but you've become a bit of a robot. There must be some reason why they don't put Marlboro ads in a lung cancer clinic or a Ballantine's ad in an alcohol rehab center. Surely they would be perfect choices for the well-defined audience that frequents those places and they would make perfect sense economically, more than whatever else they put on those walls. Someone might even come a…

He's describing the behavior of a massive real-time international marketplace that's (wild-ass guess) 99% under algorithmic control. I don't see how you could avoid sounding like a robot if you wanted to accurately describe its high-level behavior.

Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today

#92

Post by potatolicious »

crusso wrote: post #83
tlogan wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great overview of how ads work, but the rant is still valid. As the end, the environment around us will end up to be very similar to one described in the movie Idiocracy.

Yeah, but the blame the article's author espouses is misplaced. It's not Google's fault that people want to play games any more than it's the sun's fault that it's shining outside of my window on days when I need to get real work done. As usual it's easier to blame icons and officials in situations where really it's the consumers that drive these corporate decisions with their everyday decisions. Granted, Google is s…

I don't think the blame is misplaced - raganwald addresses your point in the post, that "whatever people click on is obviously right", and that it's a cop-out.

Yeah, a lot of people will choose a Big Mac over a salad, and a lot of people will scarf down fried chicken before a sandwich - that doesn't make their choices optimal, either for themselves or for society at large.

You're also discounting the enormous effect policy has. We've gone from a nation of chain-smokers to one where I don't have to walk through clouds of smoke to get from A to B, and this has largely been driven not by some phenomenal and accidental change in social norms, but by a concerted effort of government and individuals.

So it's not so much blaming Google, as to say that with Google's money, intelligence, and influence that we can be putting this "remnant inventory" to socially higher causes, rather than try to collect a pittance on it by hawking scams and get-rich-quick schemes.

Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today

#93

Post by blake8086 »

raganwald wrote: post #77
blake8086 wrote: post #66

This is a common theme I see, often with respect to Zynga. People want things. Some people want things that other people think they shouldn't want (games, drugs, sex, whatever). Some people get mad (or in this case, sad) when someone provides a thing they think people shouldn't want to people who want it.

Or to put it in a word, they have “morals.” And when they talk about it, they are ”moralizing.”

Do people who disagree with you lack morals? Or are their morals wrong?

Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today

#94

Post by fleitz »

lkozma wrote: post #88
patio11 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a comment, not a debate. I'm not trying to crush raganwald's constructive and collect many finger snaps from the judges. I'm just trying to explain how Internet advertising works for a community which a) viscerally despises advertising, b) often dreams of working for an advertising company, and c) even if they don't work directly for the ad company will have their careers determined in large part by their abilit…

Patrick, your argument is flawless, but you've become a bit of a robot. There must be some reason why they don't put Marlboro ads in a lung cancer clinic or a Ballantine's ad in an alcohol rehab center. Surely they would be perfect choices for the well-defined audience that frequents those places and they would make perfect sense economically, more than whatever else they put on those walls. Someone might even come a…

The reason there are no marlboro ads in lung cancer clinics is because it would generate massively bad PR, other than that it's a phenomenal idea.

Especially for former smokers who now no longer have any risk factors from smoking. A lung cancer diagnosis is a perfect "smoke 'em if ya gotta em" moment.

Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today

#95

Post by rickmb »

Advertising makes me sad. I don't care about how good or bad algorithms are and how well the ads match the context or my personal interests.

If any company tries to sell me something via advertisements, I walk away. It's anti-communication that assumes I'm an idiot.

Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today

#96

Post by zmmmmm »

Directing this as a criticism of Google (or other advertisers) is a little bit misplaced; the site designer has a lot of control over where ads appear and how they look. Nobody but physorg.com decided that a good place for an ad was right in the middle of their content like that, and they chose the colors, size and style to match as well.

Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today

#97

Post by bhousel »

patio11 wrote: post #71
bhousel wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remnant inventory is also virtually synonymous with Google... really, how? ...which a multinational advertising company which occasionally produces industrial biproducts of advertising... what? ...which generate non-trivial amounts of value for almost every human alive. wat? Do you really believe this?

really, how? Advertising is not traditionally sold on a self-service basis. It is traditionally sold via Big Enterprise Sales processes, caricatured above as "steak dinners between advertising sales and ad buyers at big brands." This is enormously big business: ever bus ad, every TV ad, most newspaper ads, etc that you've ever seen was sold this way. Google is the alternative model for advertising, and (as such) is o…

...Google is primarily an advertising company which makes excellent use of technology, not a technology company which makes good use of advertising.

I absolutely agree with that, and don't really see anything controversial in that statement.

I also think that Google has created more value for more people than probably any other company in history.

If they are in fact an advertising company (which we agree) then the value they have created has been extracted from more people than probably any other company in history.

Advertisers don't create value out of nothing, the value comes from distracting people and devaluing their browsing experience. Even traditional "big enterprise steak dinners" advertising companies have worked this way, selling 30 second TV spots and filling your mailbox with junk. Google is able to extract a lot more value than ever before only because the Internet contains so many users and so much content that they can do it in such tiny units that it pretty much goes unnoticed. (Until it passes someone's personal threshold for annoyance, and they write a blog post about it.)

My personal (selfish) opinion is that it is sad, and that the overabundance of advertising on the Internet has made it a worse-off place for me. My browsing is inefficient, and my search results are less relevant, and my time is ill spent (either scrolling past things I don't want to see, or waiting for pages to load, or actively installing ad blocking software). Yes, I know I'm being selfish. Still, I do see it as a necessary evil, and I don't see how things could be any other way.

Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today

#98

Post by fleitz »

potatolicious wrote: post #92
crusso wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but the blame the article's author espouses is misplaced. It's not Google's fault that people want to play games any more than it's the sun's fault that it's shining outside of my window on days when I need to get real work done. As usual it's easier to blame icons and officials in situations where really it's the consumers that drive these corporate decisions with their everyday decisions. Granted, Google is s…

I don't think the blame is misplaced - raganwald addresses your point in the post, that "whatever people click on is obviously right", and that it's a cop-out. Yeah, a lot of people will choose a Big Mac over a salad, and a lot of people will scarf down fried chicken before a sandwich - that doesn't make their choices optimal, either for themselves or for society at large. You're also discounting the enormous effect…

Yes, government policy has a huge effect, for one it created the nation of chain smokers.

What Google does is monetize the products of our school system, the school system produces mindless consumers incapable of producing on their own. Google connects these dependents of the state to the people who can produce the goods they need to live.

If you want to change what Google promotes simply transform the school system into an education system predicated upon critical and independent thought. By transforming the school system you'll have solved a whole host of social problems, the least of which will be ads hawking get rich quick schemes.

Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today

#99

Post by elliottcarlson »

For me, this site shows an ad about wine - which makes sense since I work for a company that deals in epicurean goods, with our primary product on our site being wine. Based on my browsing habits, it is an appropriate ad to show to me, from a user analysis point of view. Does it suck that it's not related to the article - perhaps - but that's not what will make the most money. Just because you are reading a single article pertaining to dinosaurs, doesn't mean you have a history of being interested in dinosaurs.

The play games ad could be remnant inventory as others pointed out, it could be based on your usage analysis (do you play a lot of games? or share a computer with someone who does?), or lack there of if you have circumvented ways that Google can snoop on/analyze you.

Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today

#100

Post by ThomPete »

patio11 wrote: post #39

You're looking at remnant inventory. Inventory (advertiser speak for "a page view plus a slot available on that page which we could sell an ad against") are a lot like cuts of meat. Some are worth a lot of money. Some are not, and end up getting sold to be turned into fertilizer or paste to infect cows with all matter of diseases. Things that tend to make inventory worth more money: 1) Better matching algorithms. Thi…

I don't think anyone disagree with the mechanics Patrick.

It's more whether it's tricking people to click rather than informing them.

Same way I felt tricked when I gave dustin curtis a kudos (vote up on his site) because he triggers it on roll over rather than a click.

I seem to remember you doing something along those lines on that teacher site. and personally I don't mind these things, it's after all just bits and bytes, but I can't help feeling there is a hidden agenda in your post.

Surely you can see that the aim of the site is not reflected in the way they try to make their money.

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