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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

#21
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope that whole industry just dies and the hordes of wasted software engineers can instead be used on something that actually adds value to society.

And all the other software developers working on things directly and indirectly funded by that industry should what? Take up knitting?

If you already acknowledge that it's just a bullshit job because people need to make money to live, maybe they could do something that is not actively harmful.

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

#22
post #4

The likely process at play here is cutting out the middle man from ad placement. Before GDPR, a company would have likely contacted an ad agency to target the population that reads the NYT. Ads would then be sold to a pool of websites that included the NYT. After GDPR, this is no longer possible as the individual websites have stopped sharing targeting information with the ad agency. The only solution available to th…

Cutting out the middlemen and their asinine trackers might also help reduce the number of third-party scripts and random HTTP requests on the page. This will make the page load faster, especially on mobile. Which is known to help increase revenue.

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

#23

I honestly would not be surprised if the difference in effectiveness of targeted vs untargeted advertisement turns out to be none, negligible or even unfavorable to targeted. Sure, NYT is not enough data to be significant, especially when compensating for my confirmation bias, but I would really like to see more sites stop tracking, at least from an ethical standpoint.

You mean that following the users with the same repetitive ads across the net (for things that he might have even bought already) is not so effective? Yeah, tracking probably throws the ads into a local minima. But ad algos don't care about conversion, they care about charging the ad buyer more.

You mean advertising a Widget to someone who has just bought one? Yeah, I can see how that would be counter-productive.

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

#24

I honestly would not be surprised if the difference in effectiveness of targeted vs untargeted advertisement turns out to be none, negligible or even unfavorable to targeted. Sure, NYT is not enough data to be significant, especially when compensating for my confirmation bias, but I would really like to see more sites stop tracking, at least from an ethical standpoint.

Ads that are not in context, do not convert, unless they appeal to a majority (e.g. the big brands).

Note that ads can still be targeted, except that the article's context (or whatever the user is looking at) can be used instead of the user's profile and you're not violating anybody's privacy. And on the web this works great due to the long tail, available articles, movies, searches, etc. telling you a lot about what the user wants, without having to profile that user. It's not like on TV where the content has to appeal to a wide demographic, quite the contrary.

The problem with ad exchanges is that they are designed to violate the user's privacy by leaking user data on purpose, like the user's IP address and now with GDPR they rely on good actors, because the ad exchanges can't control who gets that data based on consent, with the threshold for vendors signing up being really low.

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

#25
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope that whole industry just dies and the hordes of wasted software engineers can instead be used on something that actually adds value to society.

And all the other software developers working on things directly and indirectly funded by that industry should what? Take up knitting?

Also take up working on things funded directly or indirectly by some other more valuable industry.

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

#26

I honestly would not be surprised if the difference in effectiveness of targeted vs untargeted advertisement turns out to be none, negligible or even unfavorable to targeted. Sure, NYT is not enough data to be significant, especially when compensating for my confirmation bias, but I would really like to see more sites stop tracking, at least from an ethical standpoint.

Does this include "remarketing"? From what I read it's much more effective. For those that don't know, remarketing involves showing ads to only people who have visited your website, or interacted with your brand before. Is this considered targeted?

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

#27

I honestly would not be surprised if the difference in effectiveness of targeted vs untargeted advertisement turns out to be none, negligible or even unfavorable to targeted. Sure, NYT is not enough data to be significant, especially when compensating for my confirmation bias, but I would really like to see more sites stop tracking, at least from an ethical standpoint.

[deleted]

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

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean that following the users with the same repetitive ads across the net (for things that he might have even bought already) is not so effective? Yeah, tracking probably throws the ads into a local minima. But ad algos don't care about conversion, they care about charging the ad buyer more.

You mean advertising a Widget to someone who has just bought one? Yeah, I can see how that would be counter-productive.

I think even Amazon suggests other cellphone models "because I bought 'Y phone' recently"

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

#29

I honestly would not be surprised if the difference in effectiveness of targeted vs untargeted advertisement turns out to be none, negligible or even unfavorable to targeted. Sure, NYT is not enough data to be significant, especially when compensating for my confirmation bias, but I would really like to see more sites stop tracking, at least from an ethical standpoint.

Does this include "remarketing"? From what I read it's much more effective. For those that don't know, remarketing involves showing ads to only people who have visited your website, or interacted with your brand before. Is this considered targeted?

I always wonder if this really works? Amazon uses it a lot and all I get ads for are products that I already bought. Which is pointless.

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

#30

I honestly would not be surprised if the difference in effectiveness of targeted vs untargeted advertisement turns out to be none, negligible or even unfavorable to targeted. Sure, NYT is not enough data to be significant, especially when compensating for my confirmation bias, but I would really like to see more sites stop tracking, at least from an ethical standpoint.

But also does targeted advertising increases the size of the advertising pie? Companies have an advertising budget, they will spend it where they think it will yield the most sales. But is that budget increasing because they can do more targeted ads?
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