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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

#381

Post by darkpuma »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #242
badwolf wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a point I bring up when casually talking with non-tech minded friends when they start talking about machine learning taking over everything... I bought a Dyson last summer. Amazon is still suggesting that I buy more vacuum cleaners.

Dyson users probably disproportionally have second homes, holiday homes, etc.. You're more likely to recommend to a friend of you see a deal "hey, I bought this awesome vacuum, you should get one, I saw a deal" ... It's not as silly as it seems. I buy repeat items as gifts (I like this, X will like this), or for my parents (home stuff), or when I bought something for one child I know and it turned out to be well made…

If Amazon of all companies, who regularly ship things to my home, can't figure out that I only have one home then maybe all this targeting stuff is hopeless after all.

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

#382

Post by propogandist »

lrem wrote: post #347
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…

> Having said that, I'm constantly surprised by how bad Google is at targeted advertising. For example, today when I visit nytimes.com I see an ad from Google with the ad text in French. Hey Google, despite my recent visit to Paris I don't speak French - maybe your AI experts could analyse my 13 years of Gmail and search history to figure that out! No, they literally could not, because the data flow between Gmail and…

Gmail is the exception, as google can harvest all the data from other Google services.

Virtually all google products are governed by a shared google privacy policy, which allows Google to combine data across products and services. This change was made years ago, despite some end user protest.

Most apps and products are also optimized to maximize data harvesting - ex. Android OS and Maps will nag if users don't give up data. So I don't really believe what you're saying.

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

#383

Post by mschuster91 »

kijin wrote: post #22
pacbard wrote: post #4

The likely process at play here is cutting out the middle man from ad placement. Before GDPR, a company would have likely contacted an ad agency to target the population that reads the NYT. Ads would then be sold to a pool of websites that included the NYT. After GDPR, this is no longer possible as the individual websites have stopped sharing targeting information with the ad agency. The only solution available to th…

Cutting out the middlemen and their asinine trackers might also help reduce the number of third-party scripts and random HTTP requests on the page. This will make the page load faster, especially on mobile. Which is known to help increase revenue.

> This will make the page load faster, especially on mobile. Which is known to help increase revenue.

Most ad loaders actually run async these days, cutting out middlemen/trackers doesn't help you for time-to-first-readable-content. Biggest culprit there are expensive assets like dozens of different fonts/variation combos, pre-roll video ads and uncompressed images.

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

#384

Post by mschuster91 »

paulie_a wrote: post #69

Why is the New York times...key words being New York even paying any attention to the GDPR? I don't get why so many US based websites are concerned about an EU law.

> I don't get why so many US based websites are concerned about an EU law.

Given that they likely have paying EU customers for subscription, they operate in the EU area. Which means they can be subjected to GDPR. Enforcement would be difficult, of course, but not impossible (think of seizing credit-card payments or bank transfers for sales proceedings of printed NYT in Europe).

And GDPR violation fines can be massive.

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

#385

Post by kiriakasis »

seem_2211 wrote: post #374
komali2 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

In this sense I would like it if site took advertisement more seriously. Asking feedback, allowing personalization, selecting a few "endorsed" ads (as a quick and cheap Boolean review).

For Google and Facebook it doesn't make sense, but for a newspaper i would expect some selection on the ads they show.

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

#386

Post by JoeAltmaier »

BoorishBears wrote: post #241
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take it down a notch? Lots of sites sell things, which is enough reason to make those sites. Millions of sites are representing businesses (restaurant etc). No, the web isn't going away because joe shmoe can't put up ads. Its so cheap to put up a website anyway, folks do it for many reasons.

How do you think those people sell? Or their customers find them? Where do people search for sites representing businesses? The Software industry would retract almost to the point of death relative to its current size without ads.

I surely never follow ads. Most sites I find by word-of-mouth I think?

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

#387

Post by hyperpallium »

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…

> How can it be that having intimate knowledge of someone would not allow you to sell them more stuff?

If the unknowns have a greater influence. So, a little knowledge makes google overconfident.

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.

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

#388

Post by oneplane »

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…

The content of ads rarely matches with something I'm actually interested but uninformed in. The most wasteful ads are probably the ones about products I already bought, or the ones about products referring to a conversation partner or shared links to websites which hold interest to the sending party, not the receiving one. The ads are very targeted but not targeted at someone who would ever buy the advertised thing.

If only one could 'scan' the product they just bought to no longer see any ads about it...

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

#389

Post by mensetmanusman »

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.

How would a small business advertise a new short-term promotion to people in the area when all local papers are gone?

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

#390

Post by therealx »

rusk wrote: post #65
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…

My experience of targeted advertising is Amazon trying to sell me things I’ve already bought ...

I've heard this is done sometimes to make you feel good about your purchase and the decision you made by showing you inferior options.
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