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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

#281

Post by reaperducer »

JAlexoid wrote: post #224
reaperducer wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that after a few weeks of training, Apple News does a much better job of picking stories I'm interested in than Google News. With two exceptions: There doesn't appear to be a way to filter out sports I'm not interested in, or even all sports. Apple News has a hard time telling the difference between Paris, France and Paris Hilton.

To be fair... Paris Hilton can be a Hilton hotel in Paris. So... Even an proficient English speaker can be mislead

Even an proficient English speaker can be mislead

I don't think so.

A human would understand context. AI isn't supposed to be simple string matching.

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

#282

Post by trophycase »

misterprime wrote: post #238
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you're sniping existing customers from other retailers, which is zero-sum when everybody does it, and it's possible for your competitors to tell when you're doing it and retaliate by doing the same. At which point you're both paying for advertising that only cancels out the competitor's advertising. A smart retailer is not going to be the first one to take a turn down that road. It's essentially iterated prisone…

That may be the genius of targeted ads. Once one vendor starts doing it, the other vendors have no choice but to bid on the same target. Winner: ad platform.

I don't know if this effect has a name, but this sort of thing happens in every industry. I noticed in on a popular tourist trap boardwalk where every restaurant had a "barker" out front trying to tell you to come in. It's basically added costs for all businesses with more or less a 0 increase in net demand for the set of businesses as a whole, it merely redistributes demand amongst them.

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

#283

Post by reaperducer »

JAlexoid wrote: post #213
reaperducer wrote: post #180

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. 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…

A hotel can be 90% empty and Booking could have only 1 left in their inventory to sell.

A hotel can be 90% empty and Booking could have only 1 left in their inventory to sell.

There's a difference between "Only one room left!" and "We only have one room left!"

It's called lying.

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

#284

Post by phamilton »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #235
schintan wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then you're sniping existing customers from other retailers, which is zero-sum when everybody does it, and it's possible for your competitors to tell when you're doing it and retaliate by doing the same. At which point you're both paying for advertising that only cancels out the competitor's advertising. A smart retailer is not going to be the first one to take a turn down that road. It's essentially iterated prisone…

You've basically described the wireless carrier scene for the past decade. It is indeed zero sum, and the arms race in advertising resulted in increased costs for the end consumer.

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

#285

Post by friday99 »

lotu wrote: post #50
raverbashing wrote: post #19

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.

From professional and personal experince, remarketing ads, what you are describing, are much more effective ($ spent / products sold) for the advertiser than traditional ads. So why do ads follow you even after you bought the product? Well the ads are still less than 1% effective (products sold / by ads shown), so for the average company (not Amazon) it is just not worth the engineering effort for a So what is the de…

That's not a good definition of effective. The advertiser actually cares about ($ spent / additional products sold that would not have been otherwise), which is much harder to actually measure as it involves a real causal question as to whether the ads influenced a purchase. Much of remarketing spend is likely wasted on customers who were going to buy the product anyways, especially so for people making a repeat purchase.

Its a not very well kept secret of internet advertising that it's so much more "measurable" than other types of advertising, but it's not actually measuring anything useful most of the time. There is the traditional quote that "I am wasting half my advertising budget, but I can't tell which half" With internet remarketing ads the answer might very well be both ;)

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

#286

Post by cm2012 »

phiresky wrote: post #275
cm2012 wrote: post #146

It's amazing how so many people who no knowledge of online advertising post so confidently in these threads. Since I have a lot of experience with targeted ads, it makes me trust the comments on topics I'm not an expert on less.

Feel free to share some of your expert knowledge with the rest of us (instead of just complaining about comments from non-experts).

I comment in these threads often correcting things, but it gets exhausting. Now that I'm not on mobile though:

Tons of comments here confidently say that the very idea of targeting clearly doesn't work based on their own experience or that it's a house of mirrors that doesn't work because of some obscure math.

I've managed over $10 million of ROI focused ad spend on Facebook and Adwords. You can test if targeting works trivially:

1) Use the platforms to target one audience that's a generic "All US Population" audience.

2) Test this against (for example) an algorithmically generated Lookalike that FB creates based on your seed audience.

The Lookalike will generally perform 3-20x better than the general population, depending on how specific the audience is your trying to target.

As far as public data goes, 90% of new ad spend goes to FB and Google for a reason - they're the best ways of targeting specific audiences online. And this is easily provable if you've ever worked on even mid-size ad campaign.

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

#287

Post by tivert »

wlesieutre wrote: post #113
SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a Casper mattress around a year ago and the websites I visit are still full of ads for mattresses. How many mattresses do they think I need, anyway!?

Funny you mention them, because I've only ever heard of Casper in podcasts, one of the few remaining non-targeted digital ad slots. Unless "listens to X podcast" counts as targeting, but that's no different from "reads X magazine" in offline media. No creepy tracking required.

> Unless "listens to X podcast" counts as targeting

It doesn't, except to the adtech targeters who want to muddy the water.

Ad targeting in this context means individualized targeting based on individualize tracking and data collection, full stop.

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

#288

Post by krisroadruck »

kuwze wrote: post #269
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The real issue imho is that there is no shared sales information. So you advertise BMWs to people who may have already purchased a car. I think that is a bigger issue.

This happened to me both times I've purchased a Jeep. I did a bunch of research on models and packages, price shopped a few dealers in my area, and then purchased a vehicle all over the course of a Saturday. For the next 3 months I get jeep ads following me all around the internet. I wonder how much revenue those completely irrelevant ads generated for google.

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

#289

Post by moron4hire »

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…

Doesn't that assume that the targeting information gets used appropriately? My understanding is that advertisers bid on placement and the largest big gets the prize, regardless of whether or not they are using it "correctly". So it wouldn't matter if BMW wants to target people with new job promotions if, e.g., Rolex is outbidding them for "luxury".

The vast majority of ads I see are of no relevance to me. It makes me assume that the companies that would have relevant products just aren't spending as much as broader interest stuff, bringing us right back to square one.

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

#290

Post by nekopa »

I toyed around for awhile with an idea I called Gadfly. Basically it's an idea for complete opt in advertising. It would have a dashboard for setting up what ads I want to see. So I could put in friends birthdays, things they like, and around that time get relevant ads of things to buy that they may like. Or I could say that I need a new laptop, and while I browse see relevant ads for what I want. I was hoping to make ads work for me, as I do understand 1 big reason for marketing, letting me know things that I want are available.
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