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The EU's war on behavioral advertising

thisisunpacked.substack.com

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Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#111

Post by AlexandrB »

spunker540 wrote: post #63
btbuildem wrote: post #46

Interesting how this is forcing these companies to objectively improve their products -- chronological feeds, friends and follows only, etc is what users have been begging for and being ignored, because advertising trash salad is more profitable. If the long-term effects end up being along the lines of the big social corps withdrawing from the EU, I see that as an enormous win for that economic zone. The presence of…

Why do you think complex algos, complex feeds, across large search space (all content instead of friends and family) turns out to be more profitable? Are ads suddenly more valuable in that context? I don’t think so. And it’s certainly much more expensive to operate than a simple chronological feed of friends and family. It comes down to time spent. People spend more time on the apps and see more ads. We can argue ove…

Addictiveness is not necessarily an indicator of utility. Drug addicts keep going back to heroin even if it's ruining their lives.

Just because I feel compelled to scroll and endless, algorithmic feed it does not mean that this is how I want to use social media or that such usage reflects the role I want it to have in my life.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#112

Post by _nalply »

dweekly wrote: post #52

I think this will evolve advertising in interesting ways. "Ads 1.0" had a viewpoint of trying to scrape every last little bit of data about a user's interests: from their email, messages, calendar, search history, friendships, and discussions. There was a mental model that you can't really know what's going to resonate with a person until you have their life under a microscope. This the "surveillance capitalism" take…

I am profoundly anti-advertisement because I believe in the pull model: if I want something I ask. So I think about 95% or more of advertisement today is annoying if not outright evil.

But your comment got me thinking. Is there a world where advertisement is, um, just simply good?

In other words, what makes advertisement bad today and how would these superapps make advertisement good?

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#113

Post by jancsika »

spunker540 wrote: post #63
btbuildem wrote: post #46

Interesting how this is forcing these companies to objectively improve their products -- chronological feeds, friends and follows only, etc is what users have been begging for and being ignored, because advertising trash salad is more profitable. If the long-term effects end up being along the lines of the big social corps withdrawing from the EU, I see that as an enormous win for that economic zone. The presence of…

Why do you think complex algos, complex feeds, across large search space (all content instead of friends and family) turns out to be more profitable? Are ads suddenly more valuable in that context? I don’t think so. And it’s certainly much more expensive to operate than a simple chronological feed of friends and family. It comes down to time spent. People spend more time on the apps and see more ads. We can argue ove…

> but no one is being forced to scroll a feed they don’t enjoy

On what do you base this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomscrolling

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#114

Post by andrepd »

spunker540 wrote: post #63
btbuildem wrote: post #46

Interesting how this is forcing these companies to objectively improve their products -- chronological feeds, friends and follows only, etc is what users have been begging for and being ignored, because advertising trash salad is more profitable. If the long-term effects end up being along the lines of the big social corps withdrawing from the EU, I see that as an enormous win for that economic zone. The presence of…

Why do you think complex algos, complex feeds, across large search space (all content instead of friends and family) turns out to be more profitable? Are ads suddenly more valuable in that context? I don’t think so. And it’s certainly much more expensive to operate than a simple chronological feed of friends and family. It comes down to time spent. People spend more time on the apps and see more ads. We can argue ove…

My, thank god people are perfect utility-optimising machines and not complex brains with a ton of psychological and neurological weaknesses and quirks :-)

If people behaved like you're saying there would be no drug addicts or gambling addicts, or even obesity or depression.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#115

Post by ta1243 »

legitster wrote: post #78
btbuildem wrote: post #46

Interesting how this is forcing these companies to objectively improve their products -- chronological feeds, friends and follows only, etc is what users have been begging for and being ignored, because advertising trash salad is more profitable. If the long-term effects end up being along the lines of the big social corps withdrawing from the EU, I see that as an enormous win for that economic zone. The presence of…

> Interesting how this is forcing these companies to objectively improve their products Is it though? Facebook only used to show me content from friends and pages I followed. Now it's a nonstop hose of garbage content that only exists to stuff the space between poorly targeted ads.

I certainly see that, but I think part of it is how rare it is for anyone to actually post on facebook nowadays.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#116

Post by Lammy »

jklinger410 wrote: post #19
JohnFen wrote: post #2

This is a wonderful start. Here's hoping it catches on outside of the EU as well!

What about this free market that everyone talks about? I don't think there are any protections around the reasonable expectation of privacy from a private industry perspective in the US. If you use the internet, or an app, you must protect yourself. I assume everyone is a capitalist, so wouldn't adding laws here somehow subsidize and therefore tarnish the market?

> What about this free market that everyone talks about?

Never existed https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-1/#ar...

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#117

Post by JohnFen »

legitster wrote: post #96
JohnFen wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If what you say here is accurate, that's all very good news. But how does that square with the fact that the online ad industry continues to be at war with people who don't want to be tracked?

> If what you say here is accurate, that's all very good news. Ummm. Except for the part where basically a few players will have a monopoly on online advertising. It's really a slow return to how TV advertising and etc worked. > continues to be at war with people who don't want to be tracked How so? There are infinitely more privacy rules and safeguards than there were a decade ago. Let alone the amount of tools like…

> Except for the part where basically a few players will have a monopoly on online advertising.

Not being in the ad industry, this seems a lateral change to me. I can see how it would be problematic to others in the industry, though.

> How so? There are infinitely more privacy rules and safeguards than there were a decade ago.

The online ad industry has poured enormous amounts of time, money, effort, and even lobbying to bypass efforts from end users to prevent being tracked. And that effort continues.

There are more privacy rules and tools than before, but that's just because of the back-and-forth nature of the battle. Sometimes privacy edges ahead, then the ad companies push the gains back or route around them, then privacy edges ahead, etc.

> Within our lifetimes, books with every person in town's name, number, and address used to be delivered to everyone's home.

I'm old enough to remember phone books. And I remember that people who didn't want to be listed, or only wanted limited information in them, had that option. Those books never had every person's information. They were, in modern parlance, opt-out (although you did have to pay a fee to be omitted, which was considered outrageous in the day, but there wasn't a way around that.)

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#118

Post by avianlyric »

legitster wrote: post #78
btbuildem wrote: post #46

Interesting how this is forcing these companies to objectively improve their products -- chronological feeds, friends and follows only, etc is what users have been begging for and being ignored, because advertising trash salad is more profitable. If the long-term effects end up being along the lines of the big social corps withdrawing from the EU, I see that as an enormous win for that economic zone. The presence of…

> Interesting how this is forcing these companies to objectively improve their products Is it though? Facebook only used to show me content from friends and pages I followed. Now it's a nonstop hose of garbage content that only exists to stuff the space between poorly targeted ads.

I’m confused, do you prefer chronological feeds from friends and family or not?

GP is saying that feeds driven by friends and family would be an improvement to their products, and new EU law will drive that behaviour by making it hard for companies like Facebook to indiscriminately force black box recommendation algorithms on people.

Isn’t that exactly what you say you want? And thus you agree with this statement

> Interesting how this is forcing these companies to objectively improve their products

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#119

Post by cm2012 »

legitster wrote: post #70

Uh... hmmm. I work in the industry and this article is very even handed but still a bit off. We don't really have have a term for "behavioral" advertising. So a lot of things are being lumped together that don't necessarily fit. For example, Facebook USED to be highly valued because of the amount of "targeting" (again, we don't use the term "behavioral") data they had. When you went to tell FB what you liked and didn…

As someone who works in advertising, this comment is wrong in many many ways.

Re: The EU's war on behavioral advertising

#120

Post by dylan604 »

legitster wrote: post #96
JohnFen wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If what you say here is accurate, that's all very good news. But how does that square with the fact that the online ad industry continues to be at war with people who don't want to be tracked?

> If what you say here is accurate, that's all very good news. Ummm. Except for the part where basically a few players will have a monopoly on online advertising. It's really a slow return to how TV advertising and etc worked. > continues to be at war with people who don't want to be tracked How so? There are infinitely more privacy rules and safeguards than there were a decade ago. Let alone the amount of tools like…

>Within our lifetimes, books with every person in town's name, number, and address used to be delivered to everyone's home.

This example is only half-hearted at best I feel. Anyone touting this as an example also leaves out it was very possible to be omitted from this book or have a name other than your legal name listed. It is absolutely not possible with online tracking. Anyone throwing out this as an example of how "not bad" their industry is can take a long walk off a short pier.

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