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GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

blogs.harvard.edu

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Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#191

Post by toomuchtodo »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #179
toomuchtodo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you’re not scrubbing IP addresses and other PII within a reasonable window of time.

IP addresses are not pii. (Maybe personal data under the gdpr, but they are not pii.) Also, what pii is tracked (by default) by piwiki or ga or access logs? I certainly cannot think of anything.

> Also, what pii is tracked (by default) by piwiki or ga or access logs? I certainly cannot think of anything.

Cookies and other artifacts in the request headers or query parameters that can identify a unique user.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#192

Post by criddell »

quotemstr wrote: post #180
icebraining wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Requiring them to check an "I agree to be tracked" checkbox and signing an agreement (which has just happened to me yesterday in an EU country in accordance to GDPR) before they can use a product/service is hardly much better. That's specifically not allowed under the GDPR. Either the information is needed to provide the service (and needed means actually needed, not "my business model depends on it"), in which case…

How is "my business model depends on it" not a bona fide legitimate purpose for information collection? Nobody is forcing anyone to patronize a business that relies on data collection for profitability. I'm extremely skeptical of regulation that interferes with consensual deals between economic actors. You want transparency? Fine. But you don't get to randomly outlaw certain entire classes of business.

There are a lot of companies that are collecting data about you and I that we aren't patronizing. For example, even if you don't have an account at Facebook, they have a profile of you. Even if you don't do business with Equifax, they are collecting your data.

People want more control over how information about them is used.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#193

Post by mpweiher »

dpq wrote: post #190

I'll play the devil's advocate and say that I'm actually disappointed by this development. A very long time ago when AdSense was young I was thrilled by the idea that instead of being bombarded by stupid ads designed to cater to morons people (including myself) will be getting relevant ads - ideally, ads about stuff that I am actually willing to buy right now. Kinda like legilimency. Too bad that this will be impossi…

Hmmm...just target it to the content of the site?

Just like targeting search ads to be relevant to the search?

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#194

Post by avian »

madeofpalk wrote: post #112
rossdavidh wrote: post #59

Oddly, I think the article underestimates the size of the change coming. I think one side affect of the surge of IT into advertising, is that it has become easier to measure exactly how well advertising works. By and large, it doesn't, very well. I am reminded of this, from Paul Graham, about his time at Yahoo: http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html "...The reason Yahoo didn't care about a technique that extracted the…

> By and large, it doesn't, very well. I know Twitter isn't known for being the best at advertising, but it was made exceptionally clear to me that online advertising is a massive bunch of lies when I did my GDPR Twitter data export and it included me in a bunch of incorrect, non-sensical and contradictory ad targeting groups. Twitter claims I: * Own a cat, dog and other animal (I don't) * Have between $100k- $999k l…

For Google, something similar can be found under My account -> Personal info & privacy -> Ads settings.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#195

Post by jimktrains2 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #191
jimktrains2 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IP addresses are not pii. (Maybe personal data under the gdpr, but they are not pii.) Also, what pii is tracked (by default) by piwiki or ga or access logs? I certainly cannot think of anything.

> Also, what pii is tracked (by default) by piwiki or ga or access logs? I certainly cannot think of anything. Cookies and other artifacts in the request headers or query parameters that can identify a unique user.

Identify a unique user does not mean that it's pii if I cannot produce the real world identity of the user from the cookie.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#196

Post by skybrian »

rossdavidh wrote: post #59

Oddly, I think the article underestimates the size of the change coming. I think one side affect of the surge of IT into advertising, is that it has become easier to measure exactly how well advertising works. By and large, it doesn't, very well. I am reminded of this, from Paul Graham, about his time at Yahoo: http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html "...The reason Yahoo didn't care about a technique that extracted the…

Most ad rates have dropped pretty dramatically since the early dot-com days, though. Are they still overvalued?

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#197

Post by solomatov »

vowelless wrote: post #57
solomatov wrote: post #30

One surprising side effect of this might be that the hordes of machine learners and data scientists who used to work for adtech might go to healthcare/bioinformatics where we might get new breakthroughs.

A lot will just move to finance... However, financial firms are usually pretty against open academic research that would allow publication of papers. Many researchers truly value the ability to contribute to this field openly. Perhaps you are right and they will move to health.

Dodd-Frank isn't repealed and AFAIU, it made taking investor money much harder than it used to be.

We can see the next most lucrative fields where ML can be applied to by Alphabet's portfolio: * Calico, Verily - healthcare * Waymo - self driving cars

Another fields which comes to mind is robotics but Google liquidated their holdings related to this (Boston Dynamics) for some reasons.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#198

Post by toomuchtodo »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #195
toomuchtodo wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, what pii is tracked (by default) by piwiki or ga or access logs? I certainly cannot think of anything. Cookies and other artifacts in the request headers or query parameters that can identify a unique user.

Identify a unique user does not mean that it's pii if I cannot produce the real world identity of the user from the cookie.

True! But some cookies are usually tied to a user account, with an email address, and/or other PII.

How careful are you with tacking cookies to requests? Be mindful, and keep documentation.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#199

Post by icebraining »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #185
dbasedweeb wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so it’s hard. Nobody is entitled to that being easy in the way that they are to privacy.

What privacy? Knowing that user dhsidhujdjdowhdyyehheis is using my website is not an infringement on your privacy! Why do you think you can control what I do with data you send to me? Don't send me data I'd you don't want me to have it.

Why do you think you can control what I do with data you send to me?

Are you really interested in rehashing this conversation? You got plenty of answers last time¹, I doubt you'll get new ones

¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16957978

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#200

Post by wdr1 »

madeofpalk wrote: post #112
rossdavidh wrote: post #59

Oddly, I think the article underestimates the size of the change coming. I think one side affect of the surge of IT into advertising, is that it has become easier to measure exactly how well advertising works. By and large, it doesn't, very well. I am reminded of this, from Paul Graham, about his time at Yahoo: http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html "...The reason Yahoo didn't care about a technique that extracted the…

> By and large, it doesn't, very well. I know Twitter isn't known for being the best at advertising, but it was made exceptionally clear to me that online advertising is a massive bunch of lies when I did my GDPR Twitter data export and it included me in a bunch of incorrect, non-sensical and contradictory ad targeting groups. Twitter claims I: * Own a cat, dog and other animal (I don't) * Have between $100k- $999k l…

> GDPR Twitter data export and it included me in a bunch of incorrect, non-sensical and contradictory ad targeting groups.

This is expected. It's not desirable, but it is expected.

The problem is your comparing it to an absolute. I.e. to perfect.

If advertisers had that choice, they would love it. They generally don't. Remarketing is kinda close, but limits the scale.

Rather, the only other scalable options are far worse. Think about it. What are the marketers other choices?

The one that should come to mind, and the one they spend most of their money: TV.

With TV you pick up a huge amount of waste. Say you buy a spot on Big Bang because you want people thinking of buying a new iPhone. Not a big stretch, right? At the same time thinking of all the other people they have to buy, who watch the ad, and aren't buying an iPhone. It's waste.

And that waste is huge relative to what you're talking about above.

So you're asking the wrong question here. It's not how good is the targeting in terms of precision/recall. The question is what's better?

The waste here is generally known & its priced accordingly.

> I was very disappointed that the Google and Facebook data exports don't contain this data.

It's in my Facebook export. Under "Information About You" did you uncheck "Ads"?

That's where the information is contained & it's checked by default.

You can also view it here for both FB & Google, as well as opt of both:

https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated?hl=en

https://www.facebook.com/about/basics/advertising

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