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We're testing new ad formats in Search and expanding our Direct Offers pilot

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Re: We're testing new ad formats in Search and expanding our Direct Offers pilot

#141

Post by prepend »

reaperducer wrote: post #137
nelblu wrote: post #15

> We’re introducing more helpful ads in AI Mode I always chuckle when ad companies say that. I have never seen a helpful ad in google search, but well I have been using adblockers forever so I would not know.I am honestly curious though, for those who don't use adblockers - what percentage of ads that you see are actually helpful?

I have never seen a helpful ad in google search That's a good thing. I don't mind ads, as I understand that without money, web sites go away. But I'm very careful about being tracked. That, I don't think is cool. It's not unusual for me to see ads for companies hundreds or even thousands of miles away, and often selling things for which I do not possess the correct body parts. I consider that affirmation that I am mo…

I mind ads and don’t think sites would go away. They’d just be less profitable.

I mind ads because they crowd out less profitable margins and result in worse products. Imagine how nice and useful Google could be if they optimized for search instead of ads.

Re: We're testing new ad formats in Search and expanding our Direct Offers pilot

#142

Post by baldai »

jackdoe wrote: post #139

Get the last ounce of milk from the dying cow. The well is beyond poisoned. Almost anything I search for is returning AI generated vomit. I have not used google in weeks. On youtube I use Unhook and only look at /feed/subscriptions, when I search I use before:2022. And am actually downloading what I find interesting, before google starts deleting because of the flood of vomit. Hard disks can not be manufactured fast…

I share your feelings.

Re: We're testing new ad formats in Search and expanding our Direct Offers pilot

#144

Post by hansmayer »

sedawkgrep wrote: post #62
nelblu wrote: post #15

> We’re introducing more helpful ads in AI Mode I always chuckle when ad companies say that. I have never seen a helpful ad in google search, but well I have been using adblockers forever so I would not know.I am honestly curious though, for those who don't use adblockers - what percentage of ads that you see are actually helpful?

Since when have we considered ads something helpful? Their purpose isn’t to be helpful. They're there to sell you something, and nothing more. Any semblance of helpfulness is misinterpretation and merely coincidental.

Oh, they don't mean helpful to you. What they mean is, helpful to their revenue.

Re: We're testing new ad formats in Search and expanding our Direct Offers pilot

#146

Post by bayindirh »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #126
bayindirh wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's already being trained on "public" (ethical or otherwise) data. So, it already has ingested that kind of "optimization" during pre-training and training. I don't think you can fine-tune your way out of it.

People still think these things are smart. That if their word generator eats enough of the Internet, it will somehow give them the real information that's otherwise hidden. Or perhaps a better word; filter the bullshit. To filter bullshit it would first have to understand bullshit, and it doesn't. That's why an LLM will tell you the solution to a problem that doesn't work, and argue with you when you correct it.

This is what bothers me a lot. For the people who doesn't know how it's made or want to believe, it's a miracle.

For me, it's a resource wasting text generator. I'll not lie, I don't use OpenAI, Mistral or Anthropic's models, even for coding. I prefer to read my API docs and cry once.

I used Gemini, five or six times in total. Twice I asked a couple of very specific things, and it unearthed them. Since they were not products, but information, that was helpful. Twice, it has given wrong information. When I "told" it, there was another way, it said "of course there are two ways", etc. Tasteless and time wasting.

I don't like using an LLM all day long, or offload my thinking to them. It's the ultimate self-poisoning incident.

And as you say, these algorithms can't know right/wrong/logical/bullshit, etc. They just spew out text.

Re: We're testing new ad formats in Search and expanding our Direct Offers pilot

#149

Post by ravenstine »

dotancohen wrote: post #131
mattlondon wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I typically block ads as well, but more recently I changed some setting in the default Android newsfeed thing and some ads started to show through amongst the news items. The ads there are usually fairly innocuous (i.e. not disruptive, not flashing auto play vids etc, they just look like another news item and you can just scroll past them like other news articles you're not interested in), but I have actually found t…

I love the idea of targeting advertising. But the current implementations I hate. The ASR voice recorder app gets this right. It lets me use the full featured version for three days, after which I need to watch a few ads to get another three days. I choose when to watch the ads, and if I'm late there is nothing worse than a small nag at the bottom of the app. I actually now start every day with the ads, while I cook…

The problem with the idealism of targeted advertising is that it assumes that there is always an ad that fits your desires. In reality, some people have very niche interests and preferences, and not every business advertises through the same channels or with the same budget. Ads will pretty much always cater to the lowest common denominator even if you account for the individual.

Re: We're testing new ad formats in Search and expanding our Direct Offers pilot

#150

Post by pbasista »

hootz wrote: post #129
pbasista wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but virtually impossible to block the text itself Why do you believe so? As long as there is a clear indication somewhere on the webpage (in the metadata or in the text itself) that a specific portion of a text is an ad, a browser extension will be able to block it. And I assume that there are laws mandating that the ads must be clearly marked in order to be distinguishable from the genuine content.

That's only doable if the ads are artificially injected. But what if they are part of the training, system prompt or the search results that are fed to the AI? What if Google Search bumps up their paying advertiser up in the internal search results for Gemini (as they are basically already doing)? The AI will be biased towards the advertisers without literally embedding an ad into the output text.

> if they are part of the training

That would be an intentional poisoning of the models with biased or outright untruthful data.

I believe that many people would be unwilling to use such models.

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