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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

#431

Post by a_imho »

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 hate ads (particularly the ones interrupting TV programming) and try to avoid products/services that are heavily advertised. Imo it is the hygienic thing to do but also with a spin it is also smart business if one is price sensitive, why pay the for the obscene marketing budget factored in?

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

#432

Post by hnuser1234 »

tzs wrote: post #135
rock_hard wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You be surprised how much less sophisticated Googles and Facebooks ad targeting is! We are far away from a machine classifying you as being single and going to the gym every day or liking BMW and having gotten a promotion. Not that I don’t think we couldn’t get there...but today these system are far away from it! Just go to your Facebook ad settings to understand how primitive the information is they have about you.…

> You be surprised how much less sophisticated Googles and Facebooks ad targeting is! If Google's ability to discern my interests for ads is as bad as is their ability to discern my interests for news, then I would not be surprised. I have never been aware of listening to any music by the band "Foo Fighters". I've almost certainly heard their songs in passing, but never in a context that gave me the name of the band.…

More effective: unsubscribe from any sources that report on the crap. Don't just say you're not interested in the story, say you're not interested in the source at all. After a few weeks of doing this daily, you should have mostly purged it.

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

#433

Post by hnuser1234 »

wlesieutre wrote: post #55
jarfil wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst kind of targeting is when I go to a website, browse some similar items comparing their features and price, buy one... and now you decide to show me ads about those same products for the next week even if it should be clear that I've already made up my mind (I'm looking at you, Amazon).

Customers who bought this television also bought: 1) different television 2) another television 3) alternate listing of the same television and 4x the price because it's controlled by some idiot algorithm 4) more television 5) yet another television Suuuuure they did

There are different sections, "also bought" and "related". They both show up in the same formatting.

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

#434

Post by stubish »

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…

Google is in general not selling stuff to people. It is selling ad space to companies. Targeted ads only provide advantage if these companies will pay more, or if companies will spend more of their advertising budget for targeted ads.

I would be astounded if revenue dropped at all if Google stopped providing targeted ads, at least in the short term, because there is no serious competition. Longer term it may well be an advantage as you think, but I don't think it is a sure thing. Unless targeting gets an awful lot smarter, I think companies may choose to spend their dollars on cheaper, dumber services that provide the same conversion rates. Especially if privacy concerns and law changes enable a lot more people to drop out of the targeting.

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

#435

Post by skookumchuck »

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…

I get amazon ads all the time, "based on your interest in X you might like Y".

They've been wrong 100% of the time.

Maybe I'm just weird.

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

#436

Post by majani »

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 efficiency of targeted ads depends greatly on there being a sufficient number of ads and sophisticated buyers on the platform. If you only have one unsophisticated advertiser on Adsense, it's a high likelihood that Adsense will just end up showing that ad to its entire network and the targeting advantage is completely negated. This is the problem left to be solved in advertising and it's really hard to solve

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

#437

Post by stubish »

trophycase wrote: post #282
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.

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.

And then there is me going into the only restaurant without a barker, because it was the only one I could check out the menu of without being hassled :)

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

#438

Post by wastedhours »

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…

> 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?

Really valuable - but is it best to be done when they're reading something completely irrelevant? If they're reading a piece on the latest political issue of the day, are they really in the mindset to explore that purchase?

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

#439

Post by orbifold »

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've installed grammarly after seeing an ad for it >100 times on youtube. Did even briefly use it.

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

#440

Post by londons_explore »

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…

> In general, you may do better to advertise your stuff to the people who aren't already interested.

If true, that would be easy for an ad network to detect. If the click through rate for ads on a topic not matching the users interests (as determined be browsing history) are higher, then your theory is correct.

It's basic stuff, and I'm sure they already do that.

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