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Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?

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Re: Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?

#21

Post by Estragon »

ben1040 wrote: post #12

I had no idea retargeting even was a thing, until one particular ad kept repeatedly showing up. When my grandmother died last year we looked up the website for a cremation service to find their phone number. Then for the next week or so I kept seeing banner ads for the same cremation service all over the web, on completely unrelated sites. I would expect to see a cremation service ad on an obituary page, maybe a loca…

Almost exactly the same thing happened to me. That's when I installed Adblock and Ghostery. (Hmm, I should install Ghostery in this browser, actually...)

Re: Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?

#23

Post by reginaldo »

alecbenzer wrote: post #6

It's funny that Hulu is supposed to have that "This ad isn't relevant" button to do exactly what he's describing (er, doing, I guess), but it doesn't seem to be effective for me at all.

Depending on what I watch, I get only cars, cell phones, foundations, and of course 5-hour energy.

I've always thought that this is because they don't have any other advertisers for that particular show. Like "this ad is not relevant but it's the only one we have so we'll show it to you anyway".

Re: Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?

#24

Post by bo1024 »

rglullis wrote: post #11

I really, really don't buy the idea that I should feel bad for using adblock. The whole "ads can be a way to provide quality services, and adblock removes that revenue" is the marketer's equivalent to the {MP|RI}AA's "every pirate is a stolen sale". The whole thing with the Internet is about desintermediation, and marketing departments are nothing but middle-men between producers and consumers. Even worse that they a…

I think this a good perspective. Advertising only has societal value when it helps connect people who want to buy something with services that want to sell it.

I can think of a couple other ways to get some sort of value from advertising. The first is using an ad to get someone to purchase something they otherwise wouldn't have. I suppose this creates societal value too, but in my opinion it mainly just benefits the advertisers. The second is to make "impressions" so that people remember your brand when they later choose (impulsively) to purchase something.

Since I don't participate in those two, I consider them pretty worthless. Showing someone like me an ad on a blog is worthless, because we have a zero percent click-through rate and a zero percent conversion rate. Showing ads on a search might actually be helpful if I'm searching for a product to buy.

Anyway, this leads me to two possible conclusions. Either we are in an advertising bubble where way more effort is put into ads than they're worth, or I just have no understanding/conception of the average Internet user's browsing and buying habits. After all, I guess enough people click on these things to make them profitable for the site, and enough of those actually buy something to make it profitable for the advertiser. So as a non-clicker, what do I know?

Re: Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?

#25

Post by getpost »

vladd wrote: post #7

Google allows you to manage your ads preferences at: http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/ Retargeting is basically disabled if one opts out there (for the web, search&gmail or both).

I checked that link, and Google's profile of me is way off. Earth Sciences? Seriously? This is a comfort, since I figure letting the system run on bad information is just fine. It does suggest that Google isn't using some information it has on me. I'm sure it knows my birth year, but my browsing habits seem to suggest someone much younger. I must be 'immature.'

Re: Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?

#28

Post by Karunamon »

shinratdr wrote: post #26

Internet advertising is always at the forefront of the shadiest practices. I'm not about to constantly monitor it. Either the industry reforms or I have AdBlock on forever.

So very much this. My time is worth more than you could possibly charge per impression/click when one of your shady ad networks gives me some form of malware.

Until ad network administrators take responsibility for what's being shown under their name, adblock stays on.

Re: Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?

#29

Post by nate »

joejohnson wrote: post #27

That "Kudos" meter in the top right corner is inaccurate. I moused-over the black circle before I realized what it did, and it counted my "vote" anyway.

I'll make sure to remember that you'd like to take away the praise and honor you bestowed upon me for my achievement. :)

Re: Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?

#30

Post by joejohnson »

tomkarlo wrote: post #17
rglullis wrote: post #11

I really, really don't buy the idea that I should feel bad for using adblock. The whole "ads can be a way to provide quality services, and adblock removes that revenue" is the marketer's equivalent to the {MP|RI}AA's "every pirate is a stolen sale". The whole thing with the Internet is about desintermediation, and marketing departments are nothing but middle-men between producers and consumers. Even worse that they a…

I agree with you that the MPAA claim is silly. But in this case, you're actually consuming the product - using their bandwidth, their servers, etc, all of which costs money - and denying them the revenue they use to support that service. The argument with the MPAA concept is that you're not denying them a sale, nor are you increasing their cost of doing business, but here you're you're doing the latter. Do you really…

That argument is false for a few reasons. With many online services, who's to say precisely what the product is. Aren't we (the users) the real product for a lot of large, free services (gmail, Facebook, etc.)? And for the bandwidth, I'm paying for that too. I pay an ISP every month to browser the internet. Shouldn't I be able to control what I use this bandwidth for? When I click on a link, I don't truly know what resources resolving that address will require; it only seems fair that smart consumers can decide to black/whitelist content that they don't want.
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