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AdTech Sucks

lockwood.dev

131–140 of 158 posts

Re: AdTech Sucks

#131

AdTech is wonderful, from a technical perspective. The standards are rich while the ecosystem is rife with opportunity. If you are a developer in AdTech, you will NEVER hear about interaction, or see contract, with most of the companies listed...other than a handful (maybe FB, maybe Yahoo, maybe Instagram). I've worked for Experian (the US Company) and talking about them in the AdTech space is the same as talking abo…

Author here. The companies listed are by no means meant to be an exhaustive list, just illustrative examples. As long as Experian buys and sells consumer data (and in the Australian market, mosaic segments are often used and widely known) they'll be relevant to the point. I could rattle off a good two dozen names of AdTech companies, or companies making AdTech plays as a minor element of their business (like gosh dang adobe lol) and not even scratch the surface of the industry.

Re: AdTech Sucks

#132

Is there a "pull" rather push aspect to advertisement? Sort of a trade-show equivalent of digital advertisement? Issues with pushing ads down my throat are as follows: 1. I don't want to buy another Sony XM3 headphones. I just fucking bought them and I am seeing more ads of the same thing. 2. Even if I saw ads for relevant accessories, say, I bought an iPhone and I am seeing ads for phone cases; I don't want to see t…

Wasn't this the idea behind Froogle?

Re: AdTech Sucks

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK GDPR makes a slight difference because it requires opt in for data sharing. But I'd argue it is very hard, if not possible, to know if a company has shared your data. The damage of regulations like this may be greater than the benefit. We will see how the weak European innovation will take these changes. I say weak innovation bc VC money is not flowing there as it does in US.

the lack of VC culture doesn't indicate a lack of innovation, because the VC industry is just one form of financing businesses, very regionally limited to countries that have huge homogenous consumer markets and operate on scale. Innovation in countries like Germany is traditionally distributed. And the idea that GDPR is damaging to innovation is really just a fiction at best and deregulation agitprop at worst. Europ…

I find it very hard to decouple VC from innovation, if its the case that this 1% area has most the VC is true, isn't most of the world's innovation coming from it too?

Europe hasn't been creating as much as the US before GDPR, I would think it gets worse after it.

I am pretty sure some other reason for the decline will pop up, if not the alright denial you displayed.

Re: AdTech Sucks

#135
post #58

Is there a "pull" rather push aspect to advertisement? Sort of a trade-show equivalent of digital advertisement? Issues with pushing ads down my throat are as follows: 1. I don't want to buy another Sony XM3 headphones. I just fucking bought them and I am seeing more ads of the same thing. 2. Even if I saw ads for relevant accessories, say, I bought an iPhone and I am seeing ads for phone cases; I don't want to see t…

It used to be that when you looked at kiteboarding forums or blogs you would see kiteboarding or travel ads. No tracking of individuals needed. I think that’s what you are talking about. Now you see ads for blenders because you bought one or looked at one last week. Ads are not context sensitive anymore. I would have no problem if HN made some money with advertising for dev tools. It makes sense. Personalized ads are…

On the plus side, this means that a website operator of a low-profit topic can still earn a living.

When I was blogging a decade ago I would write almost exclusively about finance because it paid the best. With this system, I could write about other topics and still capture some of that finance-context revenue.

Re: AdTech Sucks

#136

AdTech is wonderful, from a technical perspective. The standards are rich while the ecosystem is rife with opportunity. If you are a developer in AdTech, you will NEVER hear about interaction, or see contract, with most of the companies listed...other than a handful (maybe FB, maybe Yahoo, maybe Instagram). I've worked for Experian (the US Company) and talking about them in the AdTech space is the same as talking abo…

I worked at a startup in the intersection of social media and advertising, and the tech was indeed quite interesting. I built the core of a system that ended up storing hundreds of millions of records, with 24/7 data ingestion of tens of thousands of records per second. This was scale that I had never worked with before, and I learned a lot.

At the point in time I joined that company, I was explicitly looking for a job with interesting technical challenges. However, over the course of a couple of years, the tech mattered less and less, and the human component mattered more and more. I quit the job to get out of the industry.

I'm still not sure how to feel about my tenure there. I grew as an engineer and team lead, but I question if I made the world a little worse by helping companies improve their targeting abilities in social media.

Re: AdTech Sucks

#137

AdTech is wonderful, from a technical perspective. The standards are rich while the ecosystem is rife with opportunity. If you are a developer in AdTech, you will NEVER hear about interaction, or see contract, with most of the companies listed...other than a handful (maybe FB, maybe Yahoo, maybe Instagram). I've worked for Experian (the US Company) and talking about them in the AdTech space is the same as talking abo…

Fun, pays well, empowers the powerful, amplifies our biases, harms our society, makes life worse for the general populace

Re: AdTech Sucks

#138

Is there a "pull" rather push aspect to advertisement? Sort of a trade-show equivalent of digital advertisement? Issues with pushing ads down my throat are as follows: 1. I don't want to buy another Sony XM3 headphones. I just fucking bought them and I am seeing more ads of the same thing. 2. Even if I saw ads for relevant accessories, say, I bought an iPhone and I am seeing ads for phone cases; I don't want to see t…

There's a DFW area startup I once interviewed for called iuzeit (not affiliated) that is trying to solve some of the problems of consumer items and reviews. I am unaware of whether they could solve your pressure cooker conundrum, but I know they intend to increase the breadth of the type of items they cover.

Re: AdTech Sucks

#139
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One thing you might want to think about: What role do the businesses that benefit from advertising revenue play. You're looking at advertising from the perspective of advertisers pushing themselves into your life, but have you asked yourself how they got that billboard onto the football stadium, that video in front of your favorite show, that page in your newspaper (whether digital or print). That money comes out o…

> Without advertising, products would be cheaper because their producers would not have to spend money on adverts. At the beginning the money comes from the product owner, who without any visibility will not have (as many) costumers

If people need a product, they will find it. If they want to know about more products they might find useful, they will inform themselves — hopefully using a neutral source whose interests are aligned with theirs. Not from an advertiser which is interested in making them buy whatever garbage their customer wants to sell. Which does not educate and inform customers, enabling to make good decisions, but to manipulate them.

Re: AdTech Sucks

#140

Is there a "pull" rather push aspect to advertisement? Sort of a trade-show equivalent of digital advertisement? Issues with pushing ads down my throat are as follows: 1. I don't want to buy another Sony XM3 headphones. I just fucking bought them and I am seeing more ads of the same thing. 2. Even if I saw ads for relevant accessories, say, I bought an iPhone and I am seeing ads for phone cases; I don't want to see t…

It sounds like you are describing a shopping mall to me.
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