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Reddit abandons user privacy - Ars Technica
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this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
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I love how everybody is so busy about mining your behavior for ad tracking data and then like 2/3 of the ads I actually see are utterly irrelevant gut doctor / toenail fungus / 17 Most Embarrassing Topless Celebrity Moments crap.
(I think the reality is that they're mining that data to identify a small number of people susceptible to high-value scams - like getting addicted to an F2P mobile game and spending $1000s on it - and the rest of us just get generic infill)
Yea it feels like something has been rotten with the ads industry for a long while. I’ve read a few pieces here and there about how it could collapse and that it’s built almost entirely on dumb lies. But it’s still here.
I’m no economist, but my best guess is that it’s a little like war and the effort we put into it. Complete trashy waste almost all the time, except for when one person or country decides to put effort into it, because then you have to as well or run huge risks. We’d all be better off without ads, including brands/companies, but when one is doing it every company has to too.
Ads are meant to get brand recognition out there for most things. Then when you're in a store you buy what you've heard of before. They wouldn't do it if it wasn't effective.
You're putting too much faith in the talent and insight of marketing executives. Large companies throw tens of millions of dollars at their marketing department. They'll spend the money on a diverse ad campaign that ticks boxes, not one that is actually effective. People don't buy based on the commercial they saw last. People buy what's shoved in their faces.
That's great, but you're still wrong.
Absolutely spot on reply.
Brand recognition and memory triggers is what big brand ads are about.
Cleanex, Hoover, Coke, most cologne/perfume ads, Old Spice...
Late reply, but-- the above makes much sense to me when it comes to inexperienced / first-time buyers of a product. And/or buyers who simply get in to a rut and keep buying that product without trying anything else out.
But for everyone else, I would think they sample enough tissues, sodas, perfumes, etc to gain an understanding of the ins & outs of a product, settling on choices which best represent their favorites / desired price point. For bigger-cost stuff like vacuum cleaners, I'm thinking people in this group also learn to use review resources to evaluate best choices rather than buy a Hoover just because some ads ran.
So what does this all mean? Aside from overlap between these two groups, that there's enough revenue being produced by the former childlike group such that ad systems can afford to almost completely ignore the latter, more adult group..?
The most effective ads I've seen in my lifetime have been podcast ads. I don't remember shit I see in mobile apps or on most corners of the internet. I could personally sell Blue Apron or Harry's Razors for all I've heard about them on podcasts though. The smartest companies allow the podcasters to joke around in their ads too. My Brother, My Brother, and Me will say some borderline offensive but hilarious stuff in their ads and I'll be damned if it doesn't keep me listening to their ads and hearing about the products being advertised.
They wouldn't do it if they didn't think it was effective.
You've forgotten the second layer of advertising, convincing companies they need to buy ads
Yeah, you go ahead and try to sell something to a mass market of people without ads or any brand recognition and let me know ow how that goes for you.
With very, very few exceptions, any time I see an ad I make a mental note to never buy that product. As such, most products I am familiar with(presumably because I saw an ad) I will not buy. The exception is pretty much just Hershey's chocolate bars, I can't live without them.
You had me on board until... Hershey's chocolate? That's not even chocolate anymore, it's like putrid brown wax!
And by definition it's still nothing but systematic brain washing. It's actually very 1984, and I can't understand how some people are ok with being manipulated into buying shit 24/7 and think that global perpetual invasive advertising is this perfectly normal thing that humanity has always had around...
I think capping it 1984 is a bit extreme, but I do agree with the overall sentiment. We've gone wag overboard in trying to monetize evert aspect of modern life. It gets old.
Advertising only has as much value to the advertiser as it can get in modified consumer behavior.
If I only have $100/month in truly discretionary income, all the advertising in the world is only fighting for that $100. Realistically, though, we're not all susceptible to the same advertising influences, which is why ad personalization exists. But personalize it all you want and you're still, at most, getting a few percent of my monthly budget to shift towards what you want me to buy.
That means that advertising is only really worth it for whales. The type of people who might buy hundreds of dollars of goods or services through clicking on ads on Instagram, who have that combination of a huge amount of discretionary income and are fickle enough that they might impulse buy big ticket items.
It literally just dawned on me that some people intentionally click on ads. That's such an outlandish idea, it feels like fiction.
Clickthrough rates are one thing, but plenty of ads don't rely on the ad being in the actual chain of purchase. Ads for small stuff like movies, beverages, snacks, etc., or big stuff like cars, furniture, etc., try to get consumers to buy those things outside of the medium that the ad is being presented.
Plus native advertising when you're looking for a specific purchase can sometimes factor in. Someone might pay more for a particular hotel room to get more prominent placement in results, and I'm not going to intentionally ignore that sponsored placement when choosing between a bunch of hotels. Maybe the ad didn't actually make a difference (in theory my purchase decision would've considered that hotel anyway, and if it's the best for my needs then they would've gotten my business without the ad), but I've definitely purchased sponsored results when searching for a product that I already intend to buy.
And if it counts as an ad, paid referral links from recommendation websites I trust are an easy way to "support" an outlet that I use.
I'm not disagreeing with your point, but it's funny; if a result is "sponsored", my first thought is "what is wrong with it? Is it crap?".
I see you have learned about “impressions”.
I don’t believe I know what you’re referring to.
The simplest explanation is generally the right one. Online advertising is a scam. They manipulate the numbers to create the illusion of value. Scammers scamming scammers. Liars and thieves all the way down.
Sounds perfectly capitalist and job creating.
As a data programmer I can tell you for a fact that no amount of data can salvage shitty dev time.
The reality is that the internet itself is at a tipping point. Advertising platforms know their service is basically worthless as most people use an adblocker, and most companies have idiotic marketing teams that don't know how to properly sell their product/service in the first place. Companies are seeing less and less ROI on their marketing budget. Without ads, the internet goes bye-bye, or it turns into a subscription model for every website.
Or - as many of us hope for - we manage to make the economics of the fediverse work (don't forget to support your instances, people) and the most valuable users move to blissful ad-free places like Lemmy and Mastodon.
Indeed, throw in open-source AI (thanks, weirdly, to Zuckerberg) and Wikipedia and you can start to see the contours of a post-advertising internet.
A problem I see is scalability. For example on Lemmy once an instances hits a high enough user count the costs far outweigh donations and moderation becomes a full time job. It’s ad-free for now but costs are going to keep increasing as the demand for storage and constant moderation increase with the userbase.
most people aren't tech-savvy enough to do that
Anecdotal but I don’t know anyone, including old people who don’t use Adblock. Sure I installed it for half of the ones I know, but the others found it all on its own. The ads are just insanely disruptive so one could see why it would happen naturally.
Your data isn’t just being sold to advertisers. There are all kinds of companies that are willing to pay big bucks to get near real-time insights into consumer behaviour, prices, manufacturing and anything else that can be tracked somehow.
Edit: And there’s a near 0% chance that you’re not part of a dataset that’s being sold to someone, somewhere…
Why don't you use applications, plugins and/or DNS settings to never see any ad?
Think you got the ads meant for me
Where are you seeing ads? Do you not have uBlock Origin installed?
I have spent thousands of dollars trying to cure my toenail fungus in the last three months.
I guess I’m a toenail fungus whale?
Have you tried oral terbinafine?
It’s on my toenails, not my mouth.
Stop sticking your toes in your mouth. That oughta fix it
But it's not in my mouth.
In that case you need to start sticking your toes in your mouth. That oughta fix it
What’s with all you fucks and toes in mouths?
Y’all perverts.
It takes months (I think almost a year) for the toenails to fully regrow, and if its still in your feet you will reinfect your toenails while using toenail specific meds.
What worked, for someone I know, was the oral meds, using a separate towel for feet and not using it for nails, and after about a month when your feet are mostly healed you have to throw away and buy ALL of your shoes new.
They also replaced all of their socks, but you might be able to wash them in 90°C. (Issue is, most water heaters can't keep the temperature up for long enough so it's probably not worth the risk)
You see ads? Bruh…
^ me when I visit friends...
Have you had yourself checked out for toenail fungus bro? Might be a thing.
They obviously have major whales as customers not caring as much for interest groups trying to get them in. These ad companies have a much clearer image of people as anyone might expect.
Maybe you are good in protecting your privacy