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After GDPR, The New York Times cut off ad exchanges and kept growing ad revenue

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Re: After GDPR, The New York Times cut off ad exchanges and kept growing ad revenue

#141

Post by RandallBrown »

Sharlin wrote: post #99
codq wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps there's some kind of Baader-Meinhof phenomena going on here. When a targeted ad is creepily accurate and on point, people flip and think that the machines have figured us out. But the ads that are irrelevant just fly by us without a hit. The one-out-of-a-hundred ads that get it right, likely due to an ad targeter's lucky strike, are the ones that get under our skin, and the only ones we really notice.

But do people generally think that targeted ads are especially accurate? If anything, I’d think people are bothered by all that privacy invasion and still getting completely irrelevant ads!

My Facebook/Instagram are stunningly on point. I've even bought a few things from them.

Re: After GDPR, The New York Times cut off ad exchanges and kept growing ad revenue

#142

Post by taurath »

duxup wrote: post #130
MarkMc wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be absolutely astounded if targeted ads did not provide significant long-term advantage to a big player like Google. How can it be that having intimate knowledge of someone would not allow you to sell them more stuff? John has a 10th wedding anniversary coming up. Mary is single and goes to the gym every day. Steve just got a promotion and likes the BMW 3 series. Michael is overweight but has just gone on a d…

It does make sense the way you describe it. But the ads I see are way off target. Hell Google's news ... AI or whatever they're doing has been absolutely convinced I'm a Nebraska Cornhuskers fan, probabbly because my team plays them and I google something about them once in a while.... but in the past even when I told Google directly "I don't want to see stories about Nebraska Cornhuskers" ... after a while it again…

I can’t help but think the only thing most people buying ads go for is demographics (age gender race income) rather than more personal interest targeting, since that’s been the primary driver of TV ads for the past many decades. Interest targeting seems like it doesn’t work, or if it does the interest based ad buys are few and far between.

Re: After GDPR, The New York Times cut off ad exchanges and kept growing ad revenue

#143

Post by kiallmacinnes »

Scoundreller wrote: post #131
rusk wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience of targeted advertising is Amazon trying to sell me things I’ve already bought ...

Or, sometimes in my experience, something I was selling . I browsed retailers to copy the specs into my ad.

In fairness, this is an understandable mistake for any automated system to make, even more so when compared to Amazon thinking everything is a consumable I repurchase every month.

Hint to Amazon: not everything is a consumable ;)

Re: After GDPR, The New York Times cut off ad exchanges and kept growing ad revenue

#144

Post by piquadrat »

duxup wrote: post #130
MarkMc wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be absolutely astounded if targeted ads did not provide significant long-term advantage to a big player like Google. How can it be that having intimate knowledge of someone would not allow you to sell them more stuff? John has a 10th wedding anniversary coming up. Mary is single and goes to the gym every day. Steve just got a promotion and likes the BMW 3 series. Michael is overweight but has just gone on a d…

It does make sense the way you describe it. But the ads I see are way off target. Hell Google's news ... AI or whatever they're doing has been absolutely convinced I'm a Nebraska Cornhuskers fan, probabbly because my team plays them and I google something about them once in a while.... but in the past even when I told Google directly "I don't want to see stories about Nebraska Cornhuskers" ... after a while it again…

Google News for the longest time kept showing me updates for the Fremantle Dockers, an Australian football team (I'm Swiss, and never set foot on Australian soil). I wonder why...

Re: After GDPR, The New York Times cut off ad exchanges and kept growing ad revenue

#145

Post by wlesieutre »

detaro wrote: post #63
wlesieutre wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Customers who bought this television also bought: 1) different television 2) another television 3) alternate listing of the same television and 4x the price because it's controlled by some idiot algorithm 4) more television 5) yet another television Suuuuure they did

One possible explanation I've heard (of which I have no idea if it is true) for both this and ads showing after you've made a big purchase is that people actually are somewhat more likely to buy an appliance close to another purchase of one, since they only buy them a) after several years, if the previous one has broken or is outdated, or b) shortly after they bought another one, which they returned for some reason.

Pretty sad state of affairs if that's the case, you'd think Amazon would do something to exclude repeat purchases after a return. But it's been this way for years.

As it stands, 99% of their product recommendations are saying "I assume what we just sold you was a total piece of shit and you'll probably need another one after you return it. Here are some options!"

Re: After GDPR, The New York Times cut off ad exchanges and kept growing ad revenue

#147

Post by tboyd47 »

manigandham wrote: post #64

I work in adtech. This has nothing to do with how effective targeting is, and a single site does not reflect the entire industry when they're all competing for the same pool of ad dollars. There is a massive drop in EU programmatic advertising because of GDPR. Most EU advertisers now buy a few large campaigns with coarse targeting instead, and sites with the biggest reach like NYT will get more money but there's less…

I didn't downvote you, but I worked in adtech a couple of years back, and observed the opposite. We saw direct-sold contracts overtake DFP income almost immediately after the team started looking for them. It was a mid-size company (about 1,000 employees).

My reasoning on why this is is that networks like DoubleClick don't care or know any of the qualities that raise the value of a particular publication in the advertiser's mind. All you are to them is a blank square above or below the fold on a domain with X monthly uniques.

Do you have a source for your claim that there's "less money in the overall market"?

Re: After GDPR, The New York Times cut off ad exchanges and kept growing ad revenue

#148

Post by duxup »

taurath wrote: post #142
duxup wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does make sense the way you describe it. But the ads I see are way off target. Hell Google's news ... AI or whatever they're doing has been absolutely convinced I'm a Nebraska Cornhuskers fan, probabbly because my team plays them and I google something about them once in a while.... but in the past even when I told Google directly "I don't want to see stories about Nebraska Cornhuskers" ... after a while it again…

I can’t help but think the only thing most people buying ads go for is demographics (age gender race income) rather than more personal interest targeting, since that’s been the primary driver of TV ads for the past many decades. Interest targeting seems like it doesn’t work, or if it does the interest based ad buys are few and far between.

That's an interesting point. I wonder if ultra granularity ... isn't really the current state...

At one point it was sure that I was female (am not, have never been) too.... to their credit they figured it out after a year or so, but man the ads. But that was at least a limited run of confusion.

Re: After GDPR, The New York Times cut off ad exchanges and kept growing ad revenue

#150

Post by duxup »

piquadrat wrote: post #144
duxup wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does make sense the way you describe it. But the ads I see are way off target. Hell Google's news ... AI or whatever they're doing has been absolutely convinced I'm a Nebraska Cornhuskers fan, probabbly because my team plays them and I google something about them once in a while.... but in the past even when I told Google directly "I don't want to see stories about Nebraska Cornhuskers" ... after a while it again…

Google News for the longest time kept showing me updates for the Fremantle Dockers, an Australian football team (I'm Swiss, and never set foot on Australian soil). I wonder why...

Yeah I've gotten some ultra disconnected bits too.

I'm really curious how those happen.

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