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Nobody is joining Google's FLoC

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Re: Nobody is joining Google's FLoC

#71
post #63
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CPM price for targeted ads is lot more than untargeted ads. So likely the publishers will increase the number of ads per page to maintain the same eCPM yield. Also the ads will optimize for top of the funnel (clicks) than bottom (conversion). So we will start to see aggressive & intrusive ads. (remember the "punch the monkey" ads from the early 2000s?)

> CPM price for targeted ads is lot more than untargeted ads. Only because they're viewed. If we can get everyone to install an ad blocker, that price will plummet, and business models that aren't based on abusing users will be allowed to succeed.

This means that the only way to make money is via subscriptions or cross promoting something that makes you the real money. The walled gardens, being able to both avoid Adblock and sell targeted ads, will do quite well.

If your goal is the open web of yore, that doesn’t exactly sound like a win.

Re: Nobody is joining Google's FLoC

#73
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s wrong with just showing normal ads like we had for over 100 years? Is tracking really needed to prevent walled gardens?

CPM price for targeted ads is lot more than untargeted ads. So likely the publishers will increase the number of ads per page to maintain the same eCPM yield. Also the ads will optimize for top of the funnel (clicks) than bottom (conversion). So we will start to see aggressive & intrusive ads. (remember the "punch the monkey" ads from the early 2000s?)

That is only true because targeted ads are possible.

In a world where there is no targeted ads, companies still need to get clients and compete. The marketing budgets of companies would not miraculously go down if targeted ads ceased to exist, the money would just go to other means, and non targeted ads are a very good candidate (also they can be extremely hard to block as they can be served first party if needed)

Re: Nobody is joining Google's FLoC

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a consumer, I want targeting features default-on, but I also don't mind too much having to turn them on manually.

why do you want them default on?

I think it's pretty simple. drusepth wants targeting on, so of course drusepth also wants default on. It is generally desirable for defaults to match what you want since it saves you effort to configure.

Re: Nobody is joining Google's FLoC

#75
post #73
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CPM price for targeted ads is lot more than untargeted ads. So likely the publishers will increase the number of ads per page to maintain the same eCPM yield. Also the ads will optimize for top of the funnel (clicks) than bottom (conversion). So we will start to see aggressive & intrusive ads. (remember the "punch the monkey" ads from the early 2000s?)

That is only true because targeted ads are possible. In a world where there is no targeted ads, companies still need to get clients and compete. The marketing budgets of companies would not miraculously go down if targeted ads ceased to exist, the money would just go to other means, and non targeted ads are a very good candidate (also they can be extremely hard to block as they can be served first party if needed)

> The marketing budgets of companies would not miraculously go down if targeted ads ceased to exist

If marketing returns drop, all other things being equal, budgets being cut is the natural consequence, because less spending will be possible before declining marginal returns result in negative net returns to further spending.

Re: Nobody is joining Google's FLoC

#76
Aren't IP header fields granular enough for most tracking purposes?

On mobile, you can do interesting things with Header Enrichment, which helps even more.

IPv6 should "just work", but it seems there's fingerprinting available.

That leaves residential IPv4, which you can solve with some coordination between site owners.

This seems to say - Yes?

https://www.sans.org/reading-room/whitepapers/testing/paper/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP/IP_stack_fingerprinting

Once you get some sort of fingerprint, then all that's needed is for one site to share with another and they're back to tracking across devices and sites.

Re: Nobody is joining Google's FLoC

#77
post #29

As a website owner, you can opt out by setting the Permissions-Policy header to "interest-cohort=()". I rolled that out for pirsch.io today.

Cmon, this is as backward as the "do not track" header... asking websites to explicitly opt out... in order to protect users from the users's own browser!? No, just don't build stupid things into browsers.

Let's say, Chrome has a bug that causes a crash unless you send Workaround-Chrome-Bug header. Why wouldn't you send the header until the bug is fixed in Chrome?

How is this situation in any way different?

Re: Nobody is joining Google's FLoC

#78
post #73
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CPM price for targeted ads is lot more than untargeted ads. So likely the publishers will increase the number of ads per page to maintain the same eCPM yield. Also the ads will optimize for top of the funnel (clicks) than bottom (conversion). So we will start to see aggressive & intrusive ads. (remember the "punch the monkey" ads from the early 2000s?)

That is only true because targeted ads are possible. In a world where there is no targeted ads, companies still need to get clients and compete. The marketing budgets of companies would not miraculously go down if targeted ads ceased to exist, the money would just go to other means, and non targeted ads are a very good candidate (also they can be extremely hard to block as they can be served first party if needed)

Most of the internet ads are direct response. As long as companies get back more than they spend they keep spending. So there is no set "budget". If direct response goes away there is not enough brand budget to buy all the ad impressions so the prices go down a lot.

Re: Nobody is joining Google's FLoC

#79
post #33

I'm definitely in the minority of commenters on these FLoC threads. I hate that 3rd party cookies exist, and support FLoC if it would hasten the demise of 3rd party cookies. It seems like many consider the alternative to FLoC to be an anonymous web where content can be accessed without login. The migration of content into walled gardens like Instagram seems more likely to me.

Why do you prefer empowering Google even more to walled garden model?

Walled gardens are good, at least in that there are several of them. This means the Web as seen by the average consumer is still somewhat decentralized.

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