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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

#371

Post by jrobn »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #206
MarkMc wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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…

Show of hands. How many people have clicked on an ad and bought something directly related to the ad?

I was researching cameras. I saw very little camera ads in my research. After I bought a camera? Ads for the camera I just bought everywhere, for months afterwards. I have not once clicked on a ad and bought something. I maybe clicked on 10 ads in my lifetime and they were 75% stuff I THOUGHT I had no intrest in. I think targeted ads is the biggest con no of our age.

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

#372

Post by maxxxxx »

Barrin92 wrote: post #369
maxxxxx wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well hopefully integrating technology deeply into the rest of the economy to bring up productivity and share prosperity rather than trying to hijack people's attention with surface level consumer products. There is a very interesting generational rift between the pre-web companies like Microsoft and Apple and the Google/Facebook generation.

I think giving things away for "free" was the initial sin. It warped customer expectations and created bad business models.

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

#373

Post by tatersolid »

koonsolo wrote: post #279
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.

YouTube keeps presenting me French advertisements as a Flemisch person. So I guess "targeted ads" will remain not as targeted as you think. Also, when I just bought some appliance online, maybe it's time to stop showing me ads for it on every page that I visit.

What’s your browser language set to? Are you actually in Belgium?

If your browser is sending “Accept-Language: nl-BE, ” I wouldn’t be surprised if they showed French ads. It’s one of the official languages of Belgium after all.

They may not have any relevant Dutch inventory to show, or they’re getting more money for the French-language ads which also target Belgium.

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

#374

Post by seem_2211 »

komali2 wrote: post #346
FakeComments wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. This seems to me what "targeted advertising" should mean - NYT says "for all routes of nytimes.com/politics, show political ads. If it's local news, open it up to classifieds for local business." Etc. If someone's on the page,…

But also, if it's general interest that makes sense as well. Say an ad for BestBuy while browsing the NYT. That's one of the benefits of well trafficked sites - you can reach a pretty wide swath of the population.

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

#375

Post by tivert »

jrobn wrote: post #371
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…

Show of hands. How many people have clicked on an ad and bought something directly related to the ad? I was researching cameras. I saw very little camera ads in my research. After I bought a camera? Ads for the camera I just bought everywhere, for months afterwards. I have not once clicked on a ad and bought something. I maybe clicked on 10 ads in my lifetime and they were 75% stuff I THOUGHT I had no intrest in. I t…

I wonder how much of the purported "success" of retargeting is just mis-assigned credit? You research a camera, but it takes you some time to make a decision. In the meantime, you get blasted with camera ads, which you ignore. Then you actually make your purchase. Even though the ads had no effect on you, there's a fairly high chance you still purchased an advertised model at a vendor that targeted you with an ad for the camera you bought (there are only so many of each). The advertisers may claim credit for that sale, even though in reality they deserve done.

Even more egregiously, maybe sometimes the advertiser's metrics have some reverse-causality: you buy the camera, then they show you the ads for it; but something in their metrics isn't properly modeling the sequence of events (e.g. they correlate retargeted camera ads shown per week with camera sales per week). Then they mistakenly take credit for a sale that happened before the ad was shown.

That's not to say such mistakes always happen, but I wouldn't be surprised they didn't happen fairly frequently. Given that measurement is hard and both adtech and advertisers are motivated to present success stories, and may not be too motivated to second-guess positive-sounding numbers.

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

#376

Post by rock_hard »

jrobn wrote: post #371
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…

Show of hands. How many people have clicked on an ad and bought something directly related to the ad? I was researching cameras. I saw very little camera ads in my research. After I bought a camera? Ads for the camera I just bought everywhere, for months afterwards. I have not once clicked on a ad and bought something. I maybe clicked on 10 ads in my lifetime and they were 75% stuff I THOUGHT I had no intrest in. I t…

I do all the time!

Mostly clothing...things I didn't even think did existed

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

#377

Post by mschuster91 »

jrobn wrote: post #371
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…

Show of hands. How many people have clicked on an ad and bought something directly related to the ad? I was researching cameras. I saw very little camera ads in my research. After I bought a camera? Ads for the camera I just bought everywhere, for months afterwards. I have not once clicked on a ad and bought something. I maybe clicked on 10 ads in my lifetime and they were 75% stuff I THOUGHT I had no intrest in. I t…

Haha, similar. I was shopping around for a Sony mirrorless camera a year ago. Ended up with the model I actually had in mind in the first place (A7S2 for its supreme low light capability), but shit am I hounded on the Internet either for Sony cameras or accessories. And there's no way I know of to get rid of it! And for what its worth even Facebook and Instagram (at least the latter, I only use on my tablet in the app!) showed me camera ads.

This is annoying and, when one thinks about the implication that everyone and their dog knows who you are, scary.

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

#378

Post by semi-extrinsic »

dsr_ wrote: post #343
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes sense. While the "you might need a second vacuum cleaner" argument maaybe checks out, the "you might need a second sous vide machine/espresso bean grinder/welding machine" definitely doesn't make sense.

There are some people who end up buying all the best coffee bean grinders in search of perfection; there are people who can't resist a classic MIG welder. But those people were going to buy them anyway, and represent too few sales to justify any expenditure. What you need are complementary goods. These people bought coffee bean grinders? Show them ads for travel mugs, for high-end coffee subscriptions, and fancy grin…

Agreed; just to be clear, when I've had this happen to me it's showing an ad e.g. for the exact same model coffee grinder from the exact same store that I already bought one from. Clearly no intelligence involved there.

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

#379

Post by Ecolog »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #247
misterprime wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. Except that they do have a choice. Suppose there are five competitors. Everybody knows Steve is going to buy a BMW 3 Series. The margin is $5000. Assuming everyone else is going to do what you're going to do, how much does it make sense to bid to advertise to Steve? If you bid $10…

What you are describing sounds a whole lot like the Prisoner's Dilemma. For the highest personal success we need to think about maximizing group benefit, rather than being completely self-interested. However, this is rarely the case when competition is involved.

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

#380

Post by MarkMc »

schintan wrote: post #209
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…

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.

And it's not just about selling BMWs. Maybe Mercedes would like to place an ad in front of Steve? Or Rolex?

Maybe a payday loans company finds that people like Steve are less likely to be interested short term loans - so they avoid advertising to him.

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