AdBlock, anyone?
Reminds me of Kim Dotcom's project of supplying Megauploads' users with an adblocker that injects only his ads. Rumor was if you installed it, you'd get free music.
Why don't users want to see adverts they might be interested in?
31–40 of 40 posts
Re: Why don't users want to see adverts they might be interested in?
#32AdBlock, anyone?
Only reasons I do use AdBlock, Saves bandwidth, data plans are expensive out here. Also ads that expand/play music or video directly - are annoying. I don't mind plain and simple ads. AdBlock beta has an option to allow non-intrusive ads, I do keep it on. Infact it would be great if there were some sort of guidelines (adblock checklist if I may call it so) which marketers can follow and pass adblock if this option is…
That "white list" already exists and comes ON by default on Firefox's AdBlock.
Re: Why don't users want to see adverts they might be interested in?
#33My only real complaint with those ads that follow you around the internet is that they're nearly always trying to sell you something you already own. I bought one of those GoPro cameras that you mount on your surfboard a while back, and was punished with six months of nonstop ads telling me how awesome my life would be if only I'd purchase a GoPro camera. It was annoying to the point where I actually dropped down tha…
I agree that re-targeting isn't used well.
Re: Why don't users want to see adverts they might be interested in?
#34My only real complaint with those ads that follow you around the internet is that they're nearly always trying to sell you something you already own. I bought one of those GoPro cameras that you mount on your surfboard a while back, and was punished with six months of nonstop ads telling me how awesome my life would be if only I'd purchase a GoPro camera. It was annoying to the point where I actually dropped down tha…
Amazon (at least in the UK) does have the "I already own this" option - along with an "I'm not interested in this" one.
Some of their suggestions are a little odd at times - I've no idea how many different coffee machines they think I might want own - but they are mostly pretty good, and are probably the only place I've ever regularly bought recomendations from.
Re: Why don't users want to see adverts they might be interested in?
#35Personally, I'd just be happy to see adverts in the right language. Every major online advertising engine appears to assume that my geolocation equates to my preferred language. My browser passes the Accept-Language request header of en-GB, but they all ignore it and give me adverts in German or Spanish (or where ever I happen to be visiting or living) based on an IP-to-geolocation lookup. What I find interesting is…
I wonder if the issue is resource and/or delivery time based. Is the number of people affected by this negatively, less than the delivery time or other costs when trying to facilitate this?
Re: Why don't users want to see adverts they might be interested in?
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like Amazon's "you bought a SatNav, perhaps you'd be interested in these other 8 SatNavs"... Possibly the answer is that the algorithms aren't close to good enough. That "might be interested in" isn't good enough.
Another one of Amazon's which frustrated me was that after a few years of buying similar items (programming books, computer odds and ends etc) it started recommending reasonable things. Then I put in an order for two children's books for my mother (who teaches young kids), and from that moment on Amazon somehow only recommended kids books to me. It's never really recovered, however since I bought a blackberry cover a…
Amazon has an option to remove items you've purchased or looked at from their recommendation engine. I don't know exactly where it is as I don't use it very often, but with some poking around you should be able to find it.
Re: Why don't users want to see adverts they might be interested in?
#37My only real complaint with those ads that follow you around the internet is that they're nearly always trying to sell you something you already own. I bought one of those GoPro cameras that you mount on your surfboard a while back, and was punished with six months of nonstop ads telling me how awesome my life would be if only I'd purchase a GoPro camera. It was annoying to the point where I actually dropped down tha…
I like Amazon's "you bought a SatNav, perhaps you'd be interested in these other 8 SatNavs"... Possibly the answer is that the algorithms aren't close to good enough. That "might be interested in" isn't good enough.
I remember seeing Amazon's recommendations as I hit the homepage and thinking "wow, those are all exactly the sort of thing I'd want. Their recommendation system is nailing it!" On further inspection, the secret turned out to be... that all of those items had been lifted from my wishlist.
Re: Why don't users want to see adverts they might be interested in?
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another one of Amazon's which frustrated me was that after a few years of buying similar items (programming books, computer odds and ends etc) it started recommending reasonable things. Then I put in an order for two children's books for my mother (who teaches young kids), and from that moment on Amazon somehow only recommended kids books to me. It's never really recovered, however since I bought a blackberry cover a…
Amazon has an option to remove items you've purchased or looked at from their recommendation engine. I don't know exactly where it is as I don't use it very often, but with some poking around you should be able to find it.
Depending on where the recommendation is being displayed it will typically a have a "fix this recommendation" button right under the item. Then you can select that you are't interested, already own it, bought it as a gift, or simply mark it to not be used for recommendations.
The problem with this is, it seems to take ten or fifteen minutes of effort to get the system to go back to showing somewhat relevant items after purchasing a few gifts, or browsing some atypical items. Who wants to spend that kind of time pruning advertisements. It's easier to just ignore them.
Re: Why don't users want to see adverts they might be interested in?
#39Personally, I'd just be happy to see adverts in the right language. Every major online advertising engine appears to assume that my geolocation equates to my preferred language. My browser passes the Accept-Language request header of en-GB, but they all ignore it and give me adverts in German or Spanish (or where ever I happen to be visiting or living) based on an IP-to-geolocation lookup. What I find interesting is…
I wonder if the issue is resource and/or delivery time based. Is the number of people affected by this negatively, less than the delivery time or other costs when trying to facilitate this?
As you stated, I would imagine that the ad networks see people like me as a very small minority.
However, there are particularly notable exceptions. There are ~11.5 million Catalan speakers in the world, and most of them in Spain. While the majority of Catalan speakers can also speak Spanish, they are extremely defensive of their language and you will find most road signs, governmental correspondence and general communication in Catalan as well as Spanish.
Most Ad networks will shoe-horn these users into Spanish ads. I imagine some Catalonians find that practice offensive. When you compare the number of Norwegian speakers in the world (~5 million), it puts things into perspective.
In actual fact these ad networks are missing a pretty big slice of the market when you add everything up. In Europe there are huge migrations of different nationalities. In a very short time the numbers of Greeks who leave Greece for other European countries will start to sky rocket. This open migration throughout Europe means that this problem will only get worse, and the numbers of people being mistargeted will increase.
That is what I would call a market niche (or unique selling point) that is potentially up for grabs.
Re: Why don't users want to see adverts they might be interested in?
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if the issue is resource and/or delivery time based. Is the number of people affected by this negatively, less than the delivery time or other costs when trying to facilitate this?
As you stated, I would imagine that the ad networks see people like me as a very small minority. However, there are particularly notable exceptions. There are ~11.5 million Catalan speakers in the world, and most of them in Spain. While the majority of Catalan speakers can also speak Spanish, they are extremely defensive of their language and you will find most road signs, governmental correspondence and general comm…
Maybe it is on their todo lists.. Perhaps they do serve that Catalan group, though you mentioned they do in fact get shoe-horned? You'd think someone would have solved this by now if it was valuable enough to?