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GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

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Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#241

Post by distances »

zerostar07 wrote: post #230
TeMPOraL wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it ends up abused by marketers, and frequently ends up facilitating crime as well. GDPR as a law came out directly from the last decade of mass surveillance economy.

So what? It was part of the agreement when you consented. The same way that when you go to a club, a strip club, or a casino you know you 'll be exploited in a way. Sounds like advocating for overreaching laws that "save you from yourself" and keep you away from harm / drugs etc. It's a bit ironic that you brought up mass surveillance because GDPR explicitly exempts the police and security services from its reach. Ed…

> It was part of the agreement when you consented.

That's a big point in GDPR, I think -- there never was consent. It's the same as why terms and conditions aren't legally binding: nobody actually considers there to be a valid agreement when they click next. In a sense GDPR is just enforcement of people's expectations, and ending predatory practices that were misusing them.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#242

Post by m-localhost »

gaius wrote: post #116
scollins wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: What are the odds of someone offical even noticing that you are in violation of GDPR? It's not like they'll enforce GDPR and collect $7.89 in fines from small businesses.

What are the odds of someone offical even noticing that you are in violation of GDPR? Plenty of ordinary people will be actively looking for opportunities to file GDPR complaints. I know I will. This is a crusade. Taking the Internet back from adtech.

Are you going after amazon or my neighbours small online flower business?

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#243

Post by tzahola »

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 I can’t photograph your face?

Don’t reflect light in my direction if you don’t want me having pictures of you!

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#244

Post by yazr »

majani wrote: post #218
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…

The only way to eliminate all waste in advertising is to use an affiliate marketing model and that's the biggest cesspool of them all.

We are considering an affiliate model for a new side-product. Can you point out the worst issues we should watch out for ?

(Its a virtual-goods product. Not subscription, but usually multiple-return customers. Around 70% gross margin since we have some high upfront provisioning cost.)

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#245

Post by tomtheelder »

adventured wrote: post #222
fanf2 wrote: post #211

> perhaps a $trillion or more has been spent on adtech, and not one brand known to the world has been made by it Google.

You can add Alibaba, Baidu and Toutiao to that list. Nearly all of their revenue comes from adtech. Just three platforms used by a billion people. Yahoo was also made possible by adtech, it was / is a brand known to over a billion people. Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat - they only exist courtesy of their adtech. Can you imagine how difficult it would be for Twitter to sustain itself with a paid model? There's such an ex…

Out of the three you listed, only one has actually made money. Snapchat and Twitter have lost incredible amounts.

Also, I think what the article is suggesting is that brands don't typically get built on the back of advertising _initially_. All three of those started without it and added it in later once they were highly entrenched to try to monetize.

I still don't think it was a very good point in the article, though.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#246

Post by njx »

simion314 wrote: post #4
shawn wrote: post #2

And that’s on top of the main problem: tracking people without their knowledge, approval or a court order is just flat-out wrong. The fact that it can be done is no excuse. Nor is the monstrous sum of money made by it. I use Piwik ( https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo ) and track visitors without their knowledge or consent, because I need analytics. Piwik is also configured to respect the "Do not track" header, so o…

What site you run and why you need to log my personal data(IP,browser,other identifying data) do you have good reasons to keep it forever or you purge it after you analyze it?

How can a SAAS defend chargeback claims without IP address? Stripe stores IP address and the proof that the user paid for the subscription using the same IP and created an account ties them together.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#247

Post by tjoff »

wdr1 wrote: post #200
madeofpalk wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 w…

> What are the marketers other choices?

Advertise on a tech site, 80+% will be interested in tech.

Advertise on a dog community site is probably pretty spot on if you want to target dog owners...

Far better than what, 5% ? This isn't rocket science, we sold everyones integrity for pennies.

> who watch the ad, and aren't buying an iPhone. It's waste.

No, advertisements like that are more about selling the brand than selling iphones. Something TV is probably pretty good for.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#248

Post by fallous »

madrox wrote: post #235
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…

Oddly, I think YOU are underestimating the size of the change coming, too. An upended industry won't go quietly, and I think we're about to see a lot of technology innovation to circumvent the new wave of privacy restrictions.

I think you're missing the point that's being made in the parent post. It's not that enhanced privacy will cause advertising to implode, it's that as the industry has gained more knowledge and understanding of advertising it's becoming apparent that advertising isn't worth what they thought it was.

I saw a similar up-ending of an ad-dependent industry 15 years ago with newspapers. Advertisers for years assumed a certain value based on the circulation numbers as reported by ABC. There was no real way to directly measure that value other than inferred activity within a geographic region that could arguably be tied to newspaper advertising. With the internet advertisers began to be able to track specific value for ad campaigns based on click-thrus, cost-per-action, etc. Those values were lower than the assumed value of newspaper advertising, which began a shift in where money was spent. Combine that with the fact that ABC numbers started to show that they were far less accurate than originally assumed, due in part to gaming by the papers themselves, and revenue started seriously shrinking. The last firewall that newspaper had was classified, which quickly folded in the face of job and real estate sites and of course craigslist.

Internet advertising has been suffering the same game-playing by sites that newspapers pulled with ABC circ numbers, and as advertisers gather more and better performance data about the value of ads and campaigns they're realizing that value is less than they thought and seems to be trending down.

Regardless of whether there's more or less privacy for users/consumers, the indications are that advertising is becoming less and less valuable.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#250

Post by downandout »

briandear wrote: post #229
downandout wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guidance we have received is that if your business is not located in the EU, not targeting EU countries, you don't have parts of your site translated to languages spoken in EU countries, and do not have an EU-based domain name extension, your EU traffic is considered incidental and GDPR probably does not apply to you. But, as with everything in the GDPR, that is extremely murky. This law is subject to unique inte…

Language is a horrible benchmark. French in Canada, English and Spanish in the US, German among German expats (of which there are millions.) Targeting a business for extortion because of the languages offered? Ridiculous. GDPR should only apply to businesses with a physical nexus in Europe, anything else is an attempt to assert extraterritorial jurisdiction. Europeans don’t have to visit US/Canadian/Chinese websites.…

If you have a site in an EU language that is spoken in other countries as well (Spanish etc) but your site doesn't have an EU domain extension and your content and services are generally not targeted at EU residents, then GDPR likely does not apply. Language isn't the only test. If you have a site in German that is reporting German news though, you're likely going to have GDPR apply to you even if you have a .com extension and are not in the EU.

Unfortunately, I must use words such as "likely" here because there is a large amount of ambiguity in these tests, along with a major conflict of interest - it will essentially be up to the would-be beneficiaries of these fines to determine whether or not you are subject to them. The EU HN crowd seems to believe that their various governments will only fine "bad" companies "reasonable" amounts under this law, and that it will not be abused to extract government revenue from foreign companies and/or hobble foreign competitors of companies in their countries. I certainly hope they are correct, but this would be the first time in the history of the world that such a broadly worded statute was not abused. The only safeguard we have is that the world is watching. If/when the EU gets too out of control in their abuse of GDPR, hopefully countries like the US will implement legislation that makes it impossible to enforce GDPR fines within their borders.

Pakistan was once considering issuing an arrest warrant for Mark Zuckerberg because someone created a Facebook contest that offended some Pakistanis [1] [2]. The case would have carried a sentence of death by stoning. Even if charges had been filed, it is doubtful that the US would have extradited him to be stoned to death under the laws of another country. While GDPR fines are civil in nature, this case underscores the importance of not necessarily allowing the enforcement of other countries' laws in your own. If GDPR enforcement becomes abusive, one would hope that similar protections would apply in our home countries.

[1] http://www.adweek.com/digital/could-mark-zuckerberg-face-a-p...

[2] https://tribune.com.pk/story/342031/blasphemy-arrest-mark-zu...

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