311–320 of 464 posts
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Tbf Amazon has the least experience with ML of the FAANGs.
It seems that it would pay out a lot for them to do a few simple heuristics by hand. For example: if just bought something do not show a thing from the same category. At most show a thing from accessories category, which I think they do.
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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…
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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.
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.
Like, fashion and clothing can be pretty individualistic so it might actually help to micro-target. Not even just for styles, but if you're a swim suit maker who specializes in plus-sized clothes you can target ads at them. You could even not bother sending ads for a sale on jeans to people with, say, size 30 inseams if you're sold out of jeans in that size. I never see them used this way though.
But almost every use case I can think of that is mutually beneficial (like the sizing), seems to be demographic information rather than behavioral analytics. I'm having trouble coming up with a way to leverage behavioral analytics in a way that doesn't seem invasive or impertinent. I guess it might work for content curation/recommendation engines (movies, books, music, etc.) But even then, you just need to know people's backlogs and basic demographics, you don't need to start snooping on their web browsing behavior.
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?
The NYT doesn't need returns on ad space to appease the purchasers of that space. They have the audience and some companies are more than happy to just have their name out there for one reason or another.
This isn't just a media thing. It happens at sporting events, conferences, fashion shows, etc.
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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.
Probably the clearest example I can think of is doing a no-adblock Google Search for "Coca-Cola." The first result is an ad, put out by the Coca-Cola Company. This might not seem to make any sense, since the first non-ad result is an identical link to the same website, but imagine what Cott Corporation or PepsiCo would do if they could by the first result for their competitor...
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.
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> 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 au…
You could, but mainly against things like billing practices and perhaps the necessity of certain procedures where there might be a conflict of interest.
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> 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 se…
So you're saying we should just take whatever Wall Street says as the truth, since only insiders can really understand?
I think sometimes insiders confuse "not taking an insider perspective" with being wrong or being unable to understand.
If you think they're missing something, find an good reporter (who can understand you, find alternative viewpoints and call you on any BS), then volunteer your testimony and experience to them.