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Insane state of today's advertising part 3

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Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#401

Post by hsod »

belorn wrote: post #338
mozumder wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yah your argument against adverting is bullshit. Even consumers love ads. Did you know that they even pay money because they want ads? Those 900 pages of Vogue that they buy every September, do you think they're filled with articles? Because they're about 870 pages of fashion ads. People specifically buy them because of the advertising. And did you know Sunday papers are a thing, filled with coupons, that are basical…

Most things are completely different if they are voluntarily or involuntarily. Trend magazines, price comparison sites, and coupons are all examples which people want to be exposed to advertise-like content. Scam-like advertisement that use browser exploits to track you is not one of them. None would pay for that service, which is a good indication about which from of advertisement is wanted and which isn't.

This whole subthread started with the claim "the only good ad is a dead ad"

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#402

Post by ancap »

manigandham wrote: post #397
ancap wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Marketing is a 12 figure industry and billions are spent with little accountability Isn't it wonderful that they could improve the human standard of living to the measurement of billions of dollars? Everyone who makes a profit in a free market system did so by improving the lives of their fellow human beings, else no exchange would ever take place. But I really don't get the "little accountability" comment. Account…

What are you even talking about? Yes privacy today is and should be a primary right. We are no longer in "historical times" and privacy is implied in the 4th amendment as well as integral to many recent laws. This is also far away from what this post and thread is discussing: Programmatic digital advertising today is full of fraud and terrible ad experiences because buyers of such advertising and the entire supply ch…

In order for their to be fraud you would have be a party in some economic transaction. In the case of advertising the parties are the ad provider and the content provider. Are you suggesting the content provider is being defrauded? How so? An advertisement which causes a browser to make thousands of request does not necessarily denote fraud unless the contract the ad provider and content provider had prohibits it.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#403

Post by undersuit »

ashark wrote: post #392
eveningcoffee wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Preroll ads are valuable because people are mostly paying attention. eg you went to youtube to watch X, and they show you 15 seconds of swiffer beforehand. Personal anecdote time. Preroll ads are the main force for me behind installing the adblocker. I just can not stand something that manipulates my flow. I call it televication of the Internet. It is unbearable. If for some reason I am not able to block them then…

> If for some reason I am not able to block them then I just do not watch them and I am not listening to them (I look elsewhere, say a lalala mantra in your mind). Ah yes, the realization that all the spy-economy-supported content provides vanishingly little value to your life, and that if they managed to actually lock things down so you couldn't block ads it'd harm you not at all to simply stop looking at their stuf…

What am I actually supposed to do in those 15 seconds?

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#404

Post by phamilton »

Macha wrote: post #249
phamilton wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely is fraud. I worked on one of those big video exchanges and we'd sometimes see ads run through our own system multiple times. We couldn't spot it until after the ad ran because of the way the ad actually plays. It ends up a bunch of black box Russian dolls, where the spec says you call methods on the ad unit you are playing, which will just wrap another ad unit, which in turn wraps another ad unit. We co…

As an example, I'm currently diagnosing an issue where an ad refuses to play in our player as it incorrectly identifies itself as being adblocked. We load the advertiser provided ad (really a DoubleVerify fraud protection module) which loads a custom video player which eventually loads the advertiser's media file. The DoubleVerify script is downloading a bootstrap JavaScript file from their server, which then randoml…

It was definitely worse when it was all flash. At least JavaScript has ubiquitous debug tooling.

VPAID 3.0 (or is it 4.0?) has some proposals to fix this. It makes fraud analysis a first class citizen of the spec, sort of like companion ads. This allows them to be downloaded separately, as well as cached.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#405

Post by ancap »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #399
ancap wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we want to enjoy the protection that the rule of law affords us, we will have to accept that there needs to be some sort of social process that determines what our laws should be. It's a negotiation. I have seen this sentiment a lot on HN as a counter to libertarian arguments, but really it's a straw man. The argument you are making is essentially: as a society we make rules, therefore we can enact rule x. Where…

>The argument you are making is essentially: as a society we make rules, therefore we can enact rule x. No, I was responding to this very general question by thecrazyone: "Why should anyone be restricted in their actions because of your opinions?". I was interpreting this question in the sense in which libertarians are often framing it: "What gives society the right to get involved in voluntary agreements between ind…

> I find this primacy extremely contradictory given that there can never be a level playing field and libertarians keep arguing against levelling the playing field where that would be possible to some degree (inheritance tax)

> I also question whether private property is sufficiently well defined or definable without taking into account other considerations of what it means to be human.

I'm sure we could have a very interesting discussion on these objections but I'd hate to go completely off topic. But I'll easily bite :)

> I don't know what outlandish demands you are talking about.

In the context of the thread, clearly the outlandish demand would be regulating the advertising that B uses in providing A a service.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#406

Post by ashark »

undersuit wrote: post #403
ashark wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If for some reason I am not able to block them then I just do not watch them and I am not listening to them (I look elsewhere, say a lalala mantra in your mind). Ah yes, the realization that all the spy-economy-supported content provides vanishingly little value to your life, and that if they managed to actually lock things down so you couldn't block ads it'd harm you not at all to simply stop looking at their stuf…

What am I actually supposed to do in those 15 seconds?

Huh? I mean stop watching the low-value media supported by ads, if you can't skip the ads. We're awash in excellent media. The best humanity's created for the last few millennia. The problem of this age (at least in the developed world) is deciding what not to look at. In that environment, most of the stuff behind 15-second ad videos isn't worth my time if I can't block the ad.

If ad-blocker-blocking gets too good, I could ditch it at an infinitesimal cost to my quality of life. My alternatives are many and could last a few lifetimes even if no new content of any kind were produced at all. News, even? A news habit is of about as much practical value as a soap opera habit. I could drop this stuff like that. No problem. Go ahead and somehow permanently break my adblocker or wall off a large part of the web behind custom protocols and DRM. Bye bye.

[EDIT] the "realization" I meant in my earlier post was that, on examination, one may find that desire to watch/hear/read most ad-supported media is so low that not only is it not a need, it's barely even a want.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#407

Post by rahimnathwani »

belorn wrote: post #192
rahimnathwani wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the ads were static (e.g. advertiser A bought a specific place on one of publisher B's pages, for a month), and advertiser A didn't want independent verification that the ads were seen, then your proposal could be simply implemented. "What am I missing?" Many ads are served after real-time auction: whilst your browser is loading and rendering the page, an auction is going between advertisers for the ad spot(s) on…

Which reveals a problematic truth. The tracking is worth more than getting rid of ad blocking.

Or some amount of well-targeted advertising is worth more than a larger amount of poorly-targeted advertising.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#408

Post by manigandham »

ancap wrote: post #402
manigandham wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you even talking about? Yes privacy today is and should be a primary right. We are no longer in "historical times" and privacy is implied in the 4th amendment as well as integral to many recent laws. This is also far away from what this post and thread is discussing: Programmatic digital advertising today is full of fraud and terrible ad experiences because buyers of such advertising and the entire supply ch…

In order for their to be fraud you would have be a party in some economic transaction. In the case of advertising the parties are the ad provider and the content provider. Are you suggesting the content provider is being defrauded? How so? An advertisement which causes a browser to make thousands of request does not necessarily denote fraud unless the contract the ad provider and content provider had prohibits it.

There are more parties including the consumer and the ad buyer. Ad fraud almost always means the ad buyer being defrauded by buying digital advertising that is not executed according to contract terms, if at all.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#409

Post by ancap »

manigandham wrote: post #408
ancap wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order for their to be fraud you would have be a party in some economic transaction. In the case of advertising the parties are the ad provider and the content provider. Are you suggesting the content provider is being defrauded? How so? An advertisement which causes a browser to make thousands of request does not necessarily denote fraud unless the contract the ad provider and content provider had prohibits it.

There are more parties including the consumer and the ad buyer. Ad fraud almost always means the ad buyer being defrauded by buying digital advertising that is not executed according to contract terms, if at all.

In my comment the content provider is what you termed the ad buyer. When you say consumer, who are you referring to? A person who visits a website with an advertisement? If so, they are not a party involved in an economic transaction.

> Ad fraud almost always means the ad buyer being defrauded by buying digital advertising that is not executed according to contract terms, if at all

If this is what you mean by fraud, why do you say there are no consequences for the violation of the contract? The ad buyer can seek recourse through a civil suit. Additionally the ad buyer can switch to a different advertisement provider.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#410

Post by fauigerzigerk »

ancap wrote: post #405
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The argument you are making is essentially: as a society we make rules, therefore we can enact rule x. No, I was responding to this very general question by thecrazyone: "Why should anyone be restricted in their actions because of your opinions?". I was interpreting this question in the sense in which libertarians are often framing it: "What gives society the right to get involved in voluntary agreements between ind…

> I find this primacy extremely contradictory given that there can never be a level playing field and libertarians keep arguing against levelling the playing field where that would be possible to some degree (inheritance tax) > I also question whether private property is sufficiently well defined or definable without taking into account other considerations of what it means to be human. I'm sure we could have a very…

>I'm sure we could have a very interesting discussion on these objections but I'd hate to go completely off topic. But I'll easily bite :)

OK :-)

>In the context of the thread, clearly the outlandish demand would be regulating the advertising that B uses in providing A a service.

I don't want to regulate against annoying ads either. That's not what I'm talking about at all because this is something consumers can see with their own eyes, install an ad-blocker or stop using the service where there are alternatives.

But some of the things that ad networks are doing behind the scenes are so unexpected, complex or even malicious that consumers cannot be expected to understand them or to have voluntarily agreed to them. That's an area where I think something should be done.

We already have a lot of rules on the legality of contracts, on transparency, on duty of care, on liability for damage, etc. Not all of these rules have caught up to digital services yet.

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