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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

#451

Post by sah2ed »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #77
akie wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's either a one-time investment, or a permanent loss of a (perhaps small) part of your users. Perhaps it doesn't make sense for the LA Times, but I'm wondering how large the investment really is and whether or not it would start getting worth it if you look at (say) 3 or 5 year periods.

> whether or not it would start getting worth it if you look at (say) 3 or 5 year periods It's a market targeting and opportunity cost question. Yes, many of Apple's consumers are probably high-priced wine consumers. And yes, winemaking is a profitable business. That doesn't mean, however, that Apple serves its interests by expanding into wine. It's promising, though, that we now have data showing psychotic targeting…

> It's promising, though, that we now have data showing [psychotic] targeting practices are unnecessary. Perhaps, even inefficient.

Perhaps you meant psychographic?

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

#452

Post by reitanqild »

buboard wrote: post #446
reitanqild wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> yeah but the category "plays games" is too broad, rivaled by "reads blogs". Plays x game on y website at z time of the days however should tell you something though.

the question is how it overlaps with what the advertiser wants to promote. e.g. "is looking for new jeans"

It doesn't overlap with everything a random advertiser might want to promote.

But based on the site, game and other indicators it might be a good place to place an ad for:

- stupid mobile games (assuming the audience is just bored)

- discount consoles/games (assuming audience is playing it because they don't have access to a console)

- toys (assuming audience is kids)

- etc

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

#453

Post by tivert »

aembleton wrote: post #442
tivert wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

Google should know when I've bought the camera. They can read my email, as I use Inbox!

> Google should know when I've bought the camera. They can read my email, as I use Inbox!

I can't even imagine the outrage that would happen if it emerged that Google was using its access to people's emails to measure ad effectiveness.

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

#454

Post by magicalhippo »

manigandham wrote: post #425
magicalhippo wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This also puzzles me. If I buy a household appliance that's not a consumable product (most shouldn't be), why does it recommend more of the exact same? Why doesn't it instead recommend other types of appliances? The key take-away should be that you're comfortable with buying household appliances online, usually not that you need another vacuum cleaner within the next year.

It's data, and a lack thereof. It's easy to know you're browsing a site. It's almost impossible to know you bought something. Banks and merchants and publishers and advertisers and all the layers in between create dozens of data silos and nobody is interested in sharing. Add to that the weird expectation that people don't want to be tracked but yet want adtech to know when you've bought something.

Well surely Amazon knows what I bought on Amazon...

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

#455

Post by misterprime »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #415
com2kid wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are assuming the ads don't have any impact on where Steve goes to buy. In reality what happens is marketing runs an ad for $3000 offering a $1000 incentive, Steve makes the purchase, and making gets to (possibly correctly) claim they netted $1000 in sales. Those marketing people want to keep their jobs, so they are going to work hard to justify their existence!

> You are assuming the ads don't have any impact on where Steve goes to buy. No, I am assuming that advertising works the same for everyone. If there are five dealers and fifty customers and with no advertising each dealer gets ten customers, then with each dealer spending $50,000 on targeted advertising, each dealer still gets ten customers. When each dealer spends the same amount they each get the same benefit, so…

What if two dealers spend a total of $20,000 and the other three don't spend anything?

Where are the customers gonna end up?

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

#456

Post by distances »

reaperducer wrote: post #180
distances wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Booking pushing advertisements for the exact same hotel I've just checked on their service. I can't understand how that would seem like a good idea to anyone.

And Booking pushing advertisements for the exact same hotel I've just checked on their service. I can't understand how that would seem like a good idea to anyone. This happened to me just last week. Unfortunately, it's the least of Booking's user-hostile traits. Like sending me e-mails pestering me to review a hotel I checked into less than an hour before. Or flashing "Hurry! Only 1 room left!" when I know for a fact…

These are so obvious that I find them mostly hilarious, even if they are clearly dark patterns. I can see how less experienced hotel bookers can fall to this trap though. I do end up booking with them, as for some reason they usually are cheaper and have more stock listed in Europe than the main competitor Hotels.

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

#457

Post by juiyout »

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…

I believe your counter examples show the need to pick good targets instead of the invalidity of targeting.

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

#458

Post by BoorishBears »

krageon wrote: post #430
BoorishBears wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re pretty short sighted huh? I don’t work with ads. But we have B2C clients that wouldn’t exist without the ad industry, in fact how would people know we exist without the ad industry? How many of your customers are funded by ads, or use tools funded by ads, or have customers of their own that are? Not to mention stuff most people use, like GMail, Google Search, “free” apps We’re part of an ecosystem, you can’t p…

I appreciate that it's easy to misconstrue what I said as a personal attack on you, but I was actually talking about the "you" as in any of the audience. If it doesn't apply to you, great! Let's keep it that way. In keeping with the guidelines of this website, I think it's fair to not immediately resort to personal attacks as a retaliation for a perceived slight. As for the rest of your reply: I have not and continue…

> If that means questioning when people do things that I see as wrong, I think that is a virtue.

It doesn’t and it isn’t.

You’re waxing poetic about simple hypocrisy.

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

#459

Post by DeusExMachina »

kaybe wrote: post #441
DeusExMachina wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly how it works for me. I have been running my online business for 5 years now. I learn (and keep learning) all I need to know from the same, high quality source. I get targeted all the time by adds on landing pages, email funnels, Facebook ads, etc. Some of these are legit, but thanks to my experience I can see that most of them are of poor quality. They will never sell me anything, while they might sell…

Can you tell us your source?

Ramit Sethi, at growthlab.com and iwillteachyoutoberich.com

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

#460

Post by Mirioron »

kijin wrote: post #183
Mirioron wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If nobody can legally do behavioral targeting in Europe, it levels the playing field. No, it doesn't. All it means is that Europe will become even less relevant in tech than we already are. Just because European companies can't do behavioral targeting doesn't mean companies outside of the EU can't do that and the EU has no jurisdiction over them, if they can even find out that this is going on in the first place. A…

Contextual targeting still works. No ad agency in their right mind will run a French ad on a webpage written in German, or show an Italian ad in an app where the default language is set to Swedish. None of this requires tracking individual users across websites and apps. Besides, as other commenters have pointed out, there is no concrete evidence that targeting individual users is any better (in terms of bringing in…

>No ad agency in their right mind will run a French ad on a webpage written in German, or show an Italian ad in an app where the default language is set to Swedish. None of this requires tracking individual users across websites and apps.

Tell that to all of the ads I used to get and sometimes still get that are in Russian on sites that are in English or apps that are in English.

>your European agency will be in a perfect position to grab market share there.

They will be long dead by that point. Even if they weren't they would be in no place to grab market share, because every region is going to have their own unique rules which means that the biggest companies will profit the most.

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