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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

#301

Post by soared »

tivert wrote: post #294
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.

> 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... Since you seem to work in adtech or advertising, that famous Upton Sinclair quote probably legitimately applies to you ("It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"). That's the big problem…

The problem with this approach is that it takes years to understand adtech. Reporters try to understand it but simply cannot. It would be a like a normal reporter trying to find the root cause of a financial crisis.

Below is an example of someone trying to write about ad tech, but just making incorrect claims throughout the entire blog post.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18732538

It also doesn't really make sense that every single person who works in adtech is biased, and unable to get around that. If a single person could "fix advertising" then they'd make billions of dollars by changing the entire industry.

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

#302

Post by PhineasRex »

cm2012 wrote: post #286
phiresky wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wor…

This is a bad test. The alternative to algorithmically target ads is not totally blind ads, the alternative is direct ad-buying which targets based on context.

Buying ads on the NYT Health section is a form of targeting. It's also a much lower noise targeting compared to programmatic.

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

#303

Post by kevinh »

tivert wrote: post #294
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.

> 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... Since you seem to work in adtech or advertising, that famous Upton Sinclair quote probably legitimately applies to you ("It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"). That's the big problem…

> Since you seem to work in adtech or advertising, that famous Upton Sinclair quote probably legitimately applies to you ("It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!").

It seems worth commenting that you could make the same argument about not listening to doctors for medical advice. In this context, it just seems like you're making an appeal against authority.

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

#304

Post by drb91 »

scarejunba wrote: post #253
drb91 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real creepy behavior is that companies can openly pay to manipulate you for most of your waking life, and people are fine with it.

By that measure of "manipulating", you're trying to manipulate me with your comment. The "manipulate" argument is silly.

Well yes, I am openly trying to manipulate you, but at least I don’t treat you like a euphoric wallet to sell you crap.

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

#305

Post by shdh »

maxxxxx wrote: post #251
pjc50 wrote: post #3

This is the thing the ad industry really didn't want people to discover: what if the behavioural and personalised targeting wasn't actually worth the cost?

If that turns out to be true what are all the talented people at Google and Facebook supposed to do?

Work on something other than ad-tech?

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

#306

Post by daveFNbuck »

character0 wrote: post #277
throw0u1t wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Steve need an ad to remind him that he likes the BMW 3 series? No doubt one of the first steps he took after his promotion was look up the prices, or finance offers on BMW 3 series, perhaps create a spec and then talk to his partner about it if he has o e. The thing is if there is something I want to buy, or own at some point in my life, I don't tend to forget about it or need some reminder from a targeted ad. I…

Perhaps he could be reminded. Car just won an award, which would direct him to look up more info about the car and why it's considered good. Maybe they just made an update to the car model he likes, but is not aware of this change.

Maybe that'll give him a slight nudge toward buying the thing he was already going to buy, but how valuable is that nudge? BMW has a lot more to gain by providing that info to someone who isn't already into their cars.

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

#307

Post by cm2012 »

PhineasRex wrote: post #302
cm2012 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wor…

This is a bad test. The alternative to algorithmically target ads is not totally blind ads, the alternative is direct ad-buying which targets based on context. Buying ads on the NYT Health section is a form of targeting. It's also a much lower noise targeting compared to programmatic.

It's a good test for "Advertising targeting techniques are a hoax" - which is the claim people in the thread are making.

I'll also note there's very little scale in direct ad buying - very few niches have scale that matters for any audience smaller than "interested in business". That said, programmatic outside of FB and Google is indeed trash and the NYtimes did well to drop it. But pretty much everyone in the thread conflates Facebook and Google (Again, 90% of spend) with the 1000s of random ad tech firms out there of dubious quality.

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

#308

Post by notriddle »

FakeComments wrote: post #271
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…

There’s a bigger effect: context. I don’t want to buy beef jerky when I’m reading about a military strike in the Middle East, no matter how much my profile indicates I like beef jerky — but I might be open to a book on politics. Because reading about content is self-selected disclosure of interest, the NYT already has all the information they need to target me — they know I read politics, and when I’m in that context…

In other words, you're better off with affiliate links and content marketing than you are with algorithmic banner ads.

Heck, even Google AdSense scans your site to match ads with the content (source: I've tried using AdSense). They just don't rely exclusively on the content for ad targetting.

for actual comparisons: https://thomashunter.name/posts/2019-01-09-generic-banner-ad...

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

#309

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#310

Post by vharuck »

Mirioron wrote: post #123
kijin wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If nobody can legally do behavioral targeting in Europe, it levels the playing field. That's the whole point of government regulation. Everyone will be forced to run good ol' untargeted ads. Meanwhile, companies still have their advertising budgets; they'll just have to spend money on untargeted ads. It takes time to measure the relative effectiveness of different types of ad campaigns, so it will take a while for th…

> If nobody can legally do behavioral targeting in Europe, it levels the playing field. No, it doesn't. All it means is that Europe will become even less relevant in tech than we already are. Just because European companies can't do behavioral targeting doesn't mean companies outside of the EU can't do that and the EU has no jurisdiction over them, if they can even find out that this is going on in the first place. A…

>Another thing you're not considering is that the EU has 30+ languages in it. I'm sure it will be great to see advertising in languages you can't even read.

I'm no web dev, but couldn't sites use the HTTP header `Accept-Language` to pick appropriate ads?

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