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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

#201

Post by tivert »

frereubu wrote: post #152
rusk wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Me too - but I do wonder sometimes if there's a long game involved, where it's more likely to make you recommend it, or give it as a gift. I can't quite see how that would work in practice, but it just seems so utterly stupid otherwise.

> Me too - but I do wonder sometimes if there's a long game involved, where it's more likely to make you recommend it, or give it as a gift. I can't quite see how that would work in practice, but it just seems so utterly stupid otherwise.

I'm going to go with Occam's razor here: the advertisers are not scarily competent but instead typically bumbling and stupid.

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

#202

Post by rchaud »

reaperducer wrote: post #180
distances wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Booking pushing advertisements for the exact same hotel I've just checked on their service. I can't understand how that would seem like a good idea to anyone.

And Booking pushing advertisements for the exact same hotel I've just checked on their service. I can't understand how that would seem like a good idea to anyone. This happened to me just last week. Unfortunately, it's the least of Booking's user-hostile traits. Like sending me e-mails pestering me to review a hotel I checked into less than an hour before. Or flashing "Hurry! Only 1 room left!" when I know for a fact…

All those little tricks you described are part of a strategy usually called Conversion Rate Optimization. They do this because it works. What you described was likely A/B tested. Some visitors to the site saw the nagging message, while others didn't.

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

#203

Post by scoot »

tzs wrote: post #135
rock_hard wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You be surprised how much less sophisticated Googles and Facebooks ad targeting is! We are far away from a machine classifying you as being single and going to the gym every day or liking BMW and having gotten a promotion. Not that I don’t think we couldn’t get there...but today these system are far away from it! Just go to your Facebook ad settings to understand how primitive the information is they have about you.…

> You be surprised how much less sophisticated Googles and Facebooks ad targeting is! If Google's ability to discern my interests for ads is as bad as is their ability to discern my interests for news, then I would not be surprised. I have never been aware of listening to any music by the band "Foo Fighters". I've almost certainly heard their songs in passing, but never in a context that gave me the name of the band.…

I hadn't looked at google news for a while, so went to see what headlines they'd offer compared to the Apple news app. I wasn't looking for it, or expecting it, but, second headline under "For you":

"Letter from Foo Fighters frontman to Cornwall Council goes viral again"

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

#204

Post by plausibilities »

soared wrote: post #192
bunderbunder wrote: post #160

Wild speculation: What if cutting off the ad exchanges was a dose of quinine for the New York Times? NYT is a premium venue for people who want to advertise, because its regular readers (especially the ones who don't live in New York) tend to have above-average disposable income. Because of that, the NYT should be able to charge a premium for advertising with them. But if they opt into the ad exchanges, then they've…

I'm not clear how that would work. How does NYT enabling ad exchanges enable advertisers to target NYT readers or the NYT website?

JS injection into display ads, which happens a lot more often than you would think when it comes to ad display network content.

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

#205

Post by sigi45 »

MarkMc wrote: post #52
bitofhope wrote: post #6

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.

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…

My biggest issue is, i can't remember when i clicked on a ad and was not closing that tab asap.

It would be really nice to see those people buying to understand it more.

Amazon for example still shows me washing machines after i purchased one through amazon. But that feature is still here on a high traffic user landing page!

Perhaps it matters for products which are clearly build for a very specific target (like a startup selling a shopping service to 30 year olds which work all the time) but there might also be a lot of standard products which everyone would buy?

Dog food, dog toys etc.

Also i often enough see companies paying (at least those are ads) for there own name. When you enter 'Miele' (well known german company for washing machines and other stuff). You get an ad for miele.de but miele.de is already the first hit. The same when googling 'Samsung S9'.

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

#206

Post by AnthonyMouse »

MarkMc wrote: post #52
bitofhope wrote: post #6

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.

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…

> 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 diet. Are such details of no significance determining what ads to show these people?

It's possible that some combination of efficient markets, semi-inaccurate/incomplete tracking data and chaos theory combines to make it mostly irrelevant.

So Steve just got a promotion and likes the BMW 3 series, but advertising to him is useless because he has already decided to buy a BMW 3 series. Whereas Larry has had the same job for ten years, and the same Ford for ten years, but if you put a luxury car ad in front of him it may get him to take a test drive and actually create a new customer.

The data says Mary is single and goes to the gym every day, but it only thinks she's "single" because she's in a committed long-distance relationship and isn't interested in dating anyone else. And she's a fitness expert who is willing to spend her time researching fitness products, so she already knows everything there is to know about those products, already buys the ones she wants, and advertising them to her isn't going to create any new exposure. Whereas Jane never goes to the gym, so you might actually sell her a gym membership or a piece of fitness equipment because she doesn't already have one or know anything about it yet.

John has a 10th wedding anniversary coming up, but he has also known exactly what he's going to do for years. Whereas he has a third cousin whose wedding is coming up and has no idea what to get, so you should be showing him ads for toasters and flatware rather than jewelry and chocolate.

In general, you may do better to advertise your stuff to the people who aren't already interested in and knowledgeable about it. Which actually looks kind of a lot like random scattershot rather than targeting.

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

#207

Post by JAlexoid »

MarkMc wrote: post #52
bitofhope wrote: post #6

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.

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…

You're listing interests... Using that just reminds people of their desires.

John has a 10y anniversary - will make John focused in buying stuff, he'll need exposure to new products... Not ads for stuff that he already looked at. John is probably not an amnesiac.

Mary is single and likes gym - doesn't make her more interested in gym clothes, she's already well aware of the gym clothes...

Steve getting a promo bundled with him liking BMW will be a total waste of a ad target. He already knows the cars and will buy a BMW with or without an ad from any car manufacturer.

Going on a diet implies that you know what diet you're going on.

In short retargeting is great at reminding people of what they like. It's really not great at acquiring new customers.

I worked on this stuff and it's flashy, but ultimately just a great way to siphon off marketing budgets out of corporations.

Don't sell your stock just yet. The product is useless, but it's a scam that is as prevalent as organized religion

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

#208

Post by DeusExMachina »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #206
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…

> 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 diet. Are such details of no significance determining what ads to show these people? It's possible that some combination of…

That's exactly how it works for me.

I have been running my online business for 5 years now. I learn (and keep learning) all I need to know from the same, high quality source.

I get targeted all the time by adds on landing pages, email funnels, Facebook ads, etc. Some of these are legit, but thanks to my experience I can see that most of them are of poor quality.

They will never sell me anything, while they might sell something to someone that hates his job and is looking for another way to make money.

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

#209

Post by schintan »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #206
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…

> 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 diet. Are such details of no significance determining what ads to show these people? It's possible that some combination of…

Even though Steve has already decided to buy a BMW 3 series, he most probably hasn't decided which dealership to buy it from. So a dealership advertising has a good chance of a look in.Same case for Mary, she knows she wants to buy a fitbit , but where to buy from can still be influenced by an ad.
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