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ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage

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Re: ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage

#51

Post by hermitcrab »

MengerSponge wrote: post #39
jandhdhshhh wrote: post #32

Speaking as a consumer, I’ve always found ad targeting to be way off for Google, YouTube or even facebook. The few times I got ads I ChatGPT it was also off. It’s kinda ironic that with all that AI, they choose not to use any of that intelligence to target ads better. It makes you wonder what all those engineers are working on if not the main revenue driver.

I understand why it's hard, but it's very funny to get ads for a product I've bought for weeks/months after completing the purchase. I looked for rain boots, and I bought a pair of rain boots. Getting ads for rain boots now isn't going to drive any purchasing, right? Meta or Alphabet get paid still, so the advertisers are getting hosed.

Advertisers getting hosed is pretty much standard with digital ads. Platforms and agencies tell you how amazing their adtech is, but various forms of fraud and dodgy practises seem to be rampant.

Re: ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage

#52

Post by nitwit005 »

Zambyte wrote: post #25
zenethian wrote: post #17

It’s wild to me that people click ads.

Advertisements don't need to be clicked to work. Billboards clearly work for reasons other than being clicked.

If you asked me to name the companies on the billboards that line the highway I commute on, I couldn't do it.

I don't think any single form of advertising is effective on the whole population.

Re: ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage

#53

Post by snailmailman »

Is there any ad targeting that is good?

The main place I see ads is YouTube on iOS. I used to have ad targeting turned off, but I’ve since opted into all of googles tracking and ad-targeting, in attempt to curate the ads I see and improve them.

I’ve had all the Google tracking and ad-targeting turned on for close to a year now. Google still can’t even target me ads that are in English. I can’t read Chinese or Turkish or Spanish but I still get ads in those languages. Most of the ads are still scams or questionably legal products. And nearly all advertisements are blatantly targeted toward the wrong demographics. I get both “you can buy this multi million dollar hotel” and “you can use food stamps at our store”. I sometimes see advertisements for local politicians (same state), which might be targeted, but I just as frequently see ads for politicians I cannot possibly vote for. (opposite side of the country)

Re: ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage

#54

Post by hermitcrab »

demibabs wrote: post #43
nikole9696 wrote: post #12

I have no idea why anyone would click on any ad anywhere other than by accident, not knowing if the link might take them to some malware site these days.

Sometimes (I especially notice this on the App Store, but sometimes Google), companies bid on their own name. So you'll search something like "Discord" and the first result will be an ad for Discord, and then below is the organic results which has them first anyways.

I have bid in Google Adwords on my own product name. If you don't, then a competitor else might, and then they will appear above you in search. It isn't nice, but that is the way it is.

Re: ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage

#55

Post by necovek »

ryandvm wrote: post #15
Insanity wrote: post #2

Ads are part of the enshitification of ChatGPT. In the short-term it might offer them some kind of lifeline and I'm sure in their next investor call they'll highlight their revenue from Ads. But if their competitors (including open-weight models) can offer similar quality and ease of use, Ads is just another reason _not_ to use them.

Ads are responsible for the enshitification of everything. Literally everything. - Why is online news just partisan rage-baiting? Ads - Why is real journalism dying? Ads - Why are your web search results less helpful? Ads - Why are recipes 2,000 words long? Ads - Why is social media engineered for scroll-maxxing? - Why is your car/TV/refrigerator spamming you? - Why are pharmaceuticals so expensive? - Why is your pop…

Ads, in general, have one main purpose: to make the public, and especially your prospective customers, aware of your product and how it fits and solves problems for them.

By their nature, they should be a positive.

However, media in general (from classical like newspapers, magazines, radio and TV to more modern like news sites and streaming platforms) has been leveraging sound psychological research to influence people to start holding views the editorial policy wants them to. And translated to ads, to them wanting and paying for things they do not need and have not originally even wanted. Back when Windows 95 came out, there was an urban legend how people waited in lines in front of stores to buy it even if they did not have a computer — I never cared enough to check if this was true, but even back then it was acknowledged how you could influence people to simply spend money where it does not bring them any value.

Tech industry had a large problem to enter the market and sustain itself on what was largely volunteer, non-profit environment of the early Internet and web days. The dot-com boom was over (and crashed), people were starting to build real products, but sustaining them was hard. And enter ad-tech, with profiling and targeting enriching the already existing psychological research about how you get people to spend when they don't really have a need or problem to address.

So I believe you are complaining more about the state of media today — I was actually hoping guerilla journalism through personal blogs gets us the real thing back, but oh boy was I wrong :) — than ads or ad-tech directly.

Re: ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage

#56

Post by hermitcrab »

cmiles8 wrote: post #33
billyp-rva wrote: post #6

> ChatGPT recommends bidding somewhere around by £2 per click, but I bid between £0.15 and £0.07 and was still able to get traffic. However 0.46% is a shockingly low conversion rate. I'm not an ad guru by any means, but isn't it expected that you will get junk clicks with a bid like that? Seems like a you-get-what-you-pay-for scenario.

Well I think your experiment more shows that while Open AI is trying to position this as a viable marketing platform, in reality folks with marketing dollars do spend aren’t buying what they’re selling so you’re able to win at pricing far below where they really want/need the market to be.

The cost of clicks tends to rise over time with advertising platforms (Google 'the law of shitty clickthrus'). This effect is very noticeable with Google Adwords, for example. So it makes sense to get in early with a new platform and try and get some traffic, before the big corporates push the prices up.

Re: ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage

#57

Post by WarmWash »

necovek wrote: post #36
WarmWash wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for socialising the entire internet age, giving poor people in 3rd world slums the same access to the same platforms as the richest 0.001%. No one likes to acknowledge this, but there is an alternate timeline where only the rich kid in school has a Google account, reddit account, meta account, and almost all content is still produced by massive media conglomerates. Ads suck and everyone hates them, but don't l…

Before Google, before Reddit, before Facebook, people all over the world, rich and poor, run their own sites and their own forums, allowing them to chat with people throughout the world. Here in Serbia, even in the worst of times (sanctions, NATO bombing in 1999), people with internet access could participate in local and global fora, newsgroups etc. It was expensive to get a computer and internet access, but people…

The cultural internet blip of the 90's/early 00's is never coming back. Its not a framework for a free open internet, it's an anomaly that was born from a convergence of factors that was short lived before the masses showed up. A wonderful thing to be a part of, no question I get warm fuzzies thinking about it now, but I recognize what it was. It's akin to dreaming of that time you caught Coldplay play a small london pub in 1998, and then thinking it would be so great if Coldplay could just play small pubs again. Not happening.

Re: ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage

#58

Post by hermitcrab »

Zambyte wrote: post #25
zenethian wrote: post #17

It’s wild to me that people click ads.

Advertisements don't need to be clicked to work. Billboards clearly work for reasons other than being clicked.

Do they though? It is often very hard to know with ads. My experience is that most people spending money on ads have no idea if they are getting any sort of return. Are there any studies that show billboard ads work?

BTW That why money off vouchers are so common with ads. Because this is an actual way you can check if the ad is working. Although there are confounding factors - maybe they were going to buy from you before they saw the voucher?

Re: ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage

#60

Post by WarmWash »

Maken wrote: post #41
WarmWash wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for socialising the entire internet age, giving poor people in 3rd world slums the same access to the same platforms as the richest 0.001%. No one likes to acknowledge this, but there is an alternate timeline where only the rich kid in school has a Google account, reddit account, meta account, and almost all content is still produced by massive media conglomerates. Ads suck and everyone hates them, but don't l…

Ads didn't give us Wikipedia. The vast majority of blogs and forums were not for profit. Specialised media outlets were always subscription-based. Large amounts of valuable information like research papers, technical documentation and curated databases were paywalled. The content that ad-based websites brought was mostly clickbait designed around serving these ads.

An yet here we are, on a giant advertisement.
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