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GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

blogs.harvard.edu

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Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#271

Post by scarface74 »

madeofpalk wrote: post #240
wdr1 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Looking at the hundreds of mostly incorrect or irrelevant demographics that Twitter has be in, I would still say there’s a huge amount of waste going on. At least with offline advertising (like TV or print) the “fuzziness” is very explicit. Here, Twitter sells you that you can target “dog owners”, but nowhere through the Twitter ad buy process does it tell you how BS that targeting is.

And that's why Twitter is not doing as well as Facebook. Facebook doesn't need algorithms to know what you are interested in, where you like to eat, etc. You explicitly tell them in your info and by what types of articles you like and share, and what you post.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#272

Post by DmenshunlAnlsis »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #270
quotemstr wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Business models are arbitrary and orthogonal to services provided. That's a very interesting claim. So you're saying it'd be possible to organize fighter jet production as a co-op vegan collective?

If you can find enough vegan aerospace engineers and have them liquidate their savings for the good of the collective, then sure, why not :). Maybe "orthogonal" was a bit much. But almost always there's plenty of wiggle room to choose alternative business models.

You wouldn’t think that militant orders of Christianity would have been workable, but they clearly were. I have no doubt that money and power can lead any ideology far from what we’d associate with their base principles. I doubt that vegans are the exception.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#273

Post by _o_ »

downandout wrote: post #250
briandear wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ext…

Don't worry, I am sure it wont be abused. The whole fearfull effect was created by adtech companies trying to create public outrage and paranoia to pretect their money source. Be sure that there are going to be some nasty penalties for greatest violaters (like online dating sites) I have noticed a lot of them is packaging GDPR into terms and conditions and privacy policy changes and those will have to get a fine, but I am sure warning will come first. But as one of ICO said (UK?), "We will always try to use carrot instead of stick, but some companies are carnivores, they don't eat carrots."

Also I am sure, half of world will have similar laws in next few years. Private data invasion just went to far, this has to be stopped.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#274

Post by dmoy »

marcosdumay wrote: post #224
wdr1 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Rather, the only other scalable options are far worse. Is it really worse than "this article is about X, Y is related, let's show some ads for Y"? I bet from the point of view of the advertisement middlemen it is not. Because they capitalize mostly on showing ads of products that people already decided to buy or are very near deciding. But that is yet another racquet that only decreases the value of the industry. M…

Right but the advertising budgets for things actually related to articles or other media content are vastly dwarfed by the advertising budgets for unrelated things that actually make more revenue/profit.

So you'll end up having to try to monetize something that has little no no related things that are profitable to advertise.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#275

Post by guitarbill »

mayniac wrote: post #160
guitarbill wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adtech is a joke. Even targeted ads are so irrelevant to the point where I don't think most people can tell if they're random or not. Except when the creepiness kicks in, because they show you ads for this one thing you googled a week ago. Google can't get it right. Their ads suck, and their Youtube suggestions aren't much better. Amazon can't get suggestions right in their own store. The whole ad industry is a joke.…

I honestly think this is very, very user dependent. Mainly because if Google's ad tech wasn't working, they wouldn't be making so much money.... You, I, and everyone else on this site don't represent the average user. Personally whenever I Google something out of curiosity as a one-off thing (e.g. "lyrics to Rasputin by Boney M" or "0-60 of a Golf GTI") I switch to in-cognito, just because I've noticed that Google is…

> Mainly because if Google's ad tech wasn't working, they wouldn't be making so much money....

Depends what you mean by "working". Like I said, companies always want to market their stuff. Online ads just need to be better value than print, TV, or radio - a low bar. Also, attention is a zero-sum game, if you don't target online you're missing out on a huge slice. An especially important slice of younger people.

> I honestly think this is very, very user dependent.

Of course. And as engineers, we're painfully aware how important attention/concentration is, and value that higher than most. I think content creators are similarly cognizant of that though. On podcasts, you're much more likely to hear "I don't watch TV".

Sure, in the short term, nothing is going to change. My parents probably won't stop watching TV, although Netflix usability is pretty good, even for them. But in the long term? And it isn't like TV is cheap. In America, cable packages are expensive, although the big media conglomerates are pushing some shitty deals to get people to keep buying them. In Europe, it's often worse. Decent, country-focused TV is usually free. But if you want to watch Game of Thrones, you're basically going to have to pirate it.

And even on shorter timescales, you can see changes. For example, I've followed some creators from Youtube to Twitch and find myself using it more, even if I'm not a fan of the UI or watching streams in particular. So it isn't even the same use-case, but the more time I spend on Twitch, the less time Youtube gets. Or podcasts. Youtube is still useful for discovery, but many people switch away from Youtube for consuming podcasts they follow.

In any case, on average people are more aware of how valuable attention is - a trend I think is increasing.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#276

Post by downandout »

_o_ wrote: post #273
downandout wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ext…

Don't worry, I am sure it wont be abused. The whole fearfull effect was created by adtech companies trying to create public outrage and paranoia to pretect their money source. Be sure that there are going to be some nasty penalties for greatest violaters (like online dating sites) I have noticed a lot of them is packaging GDPR into terms and conditions and privacy policy changes and those will have to get a fine, but…

Don't worry, I am sure it wont be abused.

It would be the first time in history that such a law has not been abused. The fear is real and fully warranted.

I am sure warning will come first

There is no mandate written into the GDPR requiring warnings before fines, nor is there anything preventing multimillion-dollar fines for first-time, minor violations.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#277

Post by tzs »

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.

They can still use sufficiently anonymized data under GDPR. They also will have data from people who have consented to have their data used. They will also have data from visitors who are not in the Union.

I would not at all be surprised if this is enough for the machine learning and data science people to be effective, especially at very high traffic sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#278

Post by FRex »

guitarbill wrote: post #106
Animats wrote: post #14

From one of the references in the article: The Google consent interface greets site visitors with a request to use data to tailor advertising, with equally prominent “no” and “yes” buttons. If a reader declines to be tracked, he or she sees a notice saying the ads will be less relevant and asking to “agree” or go back to the previous page.

Adtech is a joke. Even targeted ads are so irrelevant to the point where I don't think most people can tell if they're random or not. Except when the creepiness kicks in, because they show you ads for this one thing you googled a week ago. Google can't get it right. Their ads suck, and their Youtube suggestions aren't much better. Amazon can't get suggestions right in their own store. The whole ad industry is a joke.…

I had that "creepy" moment but it was more silly than creepy to me.

I was googling a lot about a certain piece of software (config, how to set this and that up with other things to work together, etc.) and that resulted in me getting ads for it from there on.

I mean yes, the targeting 'worked' - it's a software that interested me at the time, I even own a copy already. Targeted ad money well spent..?

The surgery was successful but the patient died.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#279

Post by reaperducer »

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…

>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.

If that was true, Coca-Cola and McDonald's wouldn't exist.

Re: GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

#280

Post by reaperducer »

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…

That's not a failure of advertising. That's a failure of technology.

The fact that you choose to purchase certain items over other equally suitable items is largely because of advertising.

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