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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

#81

Post by apexalpha »

nopriorarrests wrote: post #16
blakesterz wrote: post #2

“The fact that we are no longer offering behavioral targeting options in Europe does not seem to be in the way of what advertisers want to do with us,” he said. “The desirability of a brand may be stronger than the targeting capabilities. We have not been impacted from a revenue standpoint, and, on the contrary, our digital advertising business continues to grow nicely.” I wonder if smaller sites could do the same th…

It's absolutely working so well because they are NYT. They can get sweet "branding" dollars from advertisers, and with branding nobody cares about return on money spent. Smaller sites have zero chance to strike a deal with large agencies who are serving large brands. So their only chance to increase ad revenue is to offer targeting, to improve viewability (aka put banners on top), and to hope that they will get enoug…

This comment makes no sense to me. First of all: do you have any source for your first statement that "It's absolutely working so well because they are NYT" other than your gut feeling?

Just because other sites are smaller doesn't mean they can't do it or work together. Smaller sites now also don't do targeted advertising; they just hire Google or any other ad network for that. They could do the same with non-targeted ads.

About your edit: Yes, this is literally how advertising has always worked; you 'target' an entire audience, not an individual. Same for newspapers (on paper), TV, magazines, books, billboards in certain area's...

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

#82

Post by manigandham »

thatguyagain wrote: post #78
manigandham wrote: post #64

I work in adtech. This has nothing to do with how effective targeting is, and a single site does not reflect the entire industry when they're all competing for the same pool of ad dollars. There is a massive drop in EU programmatic advertising because of GDPR. Most EU advertisers now buy a few large campaigns with coarse targeting instead, and sites with the biggest reach like NYT will get more money but there's less…

I don't understand. What stands in the way of a small niche website for, say, dog owners to sell ad space for dog related products without having some kind of data hoarding ad tech behind it?

Because advertisers don't want to deal with a bunch of smaller sites. That's why ad networks and exchanges exist, so you can buy a single impression for the right user wherever they are across the web.

Take away the fine-grained targeting and you end up with big blind campaigns running on a few large sites with the biggest reach. This is the way TV and radio work, wasteful and expensive but great for the channels that get them.

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

#83

Post by DoctorOetker »

baddox wrote: post #58
pytyper2 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes sense to me. If you are targeting me, I have told you I like it, and therefore don't need you to tell me about it.

That sounds vastly oversimplified. So you’ve discovered that I’m into hiking/camping gear. That doesn’t mean I will never buy another piece of outdoor gear or that I have heard of every brand and product in that category.

if you really are into hiking/camping gear, you probably know where to find it and at what kind of price, or perhaps you know you will actively search and compare when buying, so the ad is of little relevance.

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

#84

Post by olegious »

thatguyagain wrote: post #78
manigandham wrote: post #64

I work in adtech. This has nothing to do with how effective targeting is, and a single site does not reflect the entire industry when they're all competing for the same pool of ad dollars. There is a massive drop in EU programmatic advertising because of GDPR. Most EU advertisers now buy a few large campaigns with coarse targeting instead, and sites with the biggest reach like NYT will get more money but there's less…

I don't understand. What stands in the way of a small niche website for, say, dog owners to sell ad space for dog related products without having some kind of data hoarding ad tech behind it?

The small niche site doesn't have the resources to direct sell to these advertisers. Also, for most advertisers it is far more convenient to go to a player that can sell them many of these niche sites bundled together on a single order form.

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

#85

Post by cyborgx7 »

manigandham wrote: post #80
cyborgx7 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope that whole industry just dies and the hordes of wasted software engineers can instead be used on something that actually adds value to society.

Like what? Is generating trillions in economic activity and allowing billions of people to be employed and connected not adding value? What would you rather have people do?

>Is generating trillions in economic activity and allowing billions of people to be employed and connected not adding value?

By itself? No, not at all. At least not more valuable than giving the same people the same money for doing nothing.

>What would you rather have people do?

Literally anything not actively harmful.

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

#86

Post by YouKnowBetter »

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?

It allows you to sell more ads to the marketing people since it sounds very compelling. So there is your model.

The fact that I am still shown ads for items of the complete opposite (football) team that I am clearly (online visible, on FB, in my gmails, from my google search history, from my chrome browsing habits) fan of; show the targeting is still... moderate to say the least.

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

#87

Post by manigandham »

cyborgx7 wrote: post #85
manigandham wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like what? Is generating trillions in economic activity and allowing billions of people to be employed and connected not adding value? What would you rather have people do?

>Is generating trillions in economic activity and allowing billions of people to be employed and connected not adding value? By itself? No, not at all. At least not more valuable than giving the same people the same money for doing nothing. >What would you rather have people do? Literally anything not actively harmful.

You seem to misunderstand how marketing works. Creating customers is how companies grow and requires advertising, so creating those channels is filling a business need. Throwing money at people doesn't change that need.

>> Literally anything not actively harmful.

"Literally" must be the most overused word in English today, but a vague description like that is completely unproductive to any discussion and doesn't even begin to get over the subjective interpretation of "harmful".

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

#88

Post by epanchin »

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…

Why does Steve like the BMW 3 series?

I contend it is due to untargeted ads.

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

#89

Post by dspillett »

criddell wrote: post #48
kristianc wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is possible for advertisers to configure it so that this does not happen (in theory), but a lot simply do not bother. I've seen some compelling case studies that it does work, and even at low conversion % for big-ticket items (like hotels etc) it's insanely cost effective.

If I shop around for a lamp on 5 different websites and finally buy from a 6th site, how do those first 5 websites learn that I bought a lamp? The pervasive tracking of which retargeting is the most visible form is mostly what drove me to use an ad blocker. I wonder if the cost effectiveness calculation factors in lost future purchases?

> how do those first 5 websites learn that I bought a lamp?

Even Amazon's ad servering systems don't seem to be told that I bought the lamp from them never mind some other store.

Maybe they are hoping I liked it so much I'd decide that I need another lamp, so they want to remind me where I got the first one from?

> is the most visible form is mostly what drove me to use an ad blocker

My reason for blocking ads was because of the increasing incidence of malware riddled ad hosts often being used by high(ish) profile sites.

imgur.com was the final bail of hay that made me install network-wide protection at home. I also rehost any image I decide to share from there, to protect people outside my LAN. I don't want the tech support workload of cleaning other people's machines after what I'd too often seen their (obviously not sufficiently verified) ad partners try to pull.

My privacy is fairly shot already, but at least I can try to protect myself and others from other malware.

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

#90

Post by adzicg »

codq wrote: post #70
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.…

Perhaps there's some kind of Baader-Meinhof phenomena going on here. When a targeted ad is creepily accurate and on point, people flip and think that the machines have figured us out. But the ads that are irrelevant just fly by us without a hit. The one-out-of-a-hundred ads that get it right, likely due to an ad targeter's lucky strike, are the ones that get under our skin, and the only ones we really notice.

I read somewhere (can’t remember the book name unfortunately) that Tesco in the UK faced this problem when they started sending out personalised coupon booklets based on loyalty card purchases. People were freaking out. Then they started adding coupons to the booklet designed to be irrelevant - say if they figured out that someone was newly pregnant, they’d send a few pages of baby stuff, but also inject lawn mower coupons and stuff only men would care about. That achieved the whole targetted effect and avoided looking creepy for just a few pennies more.
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