Slashdot Mirror

I think you're confusing "tracking", with "ads". Those two aren't the same thing.

Advertisers suffer from the same confusion. Publishing consultant Oliver von Wersch put it this way: "the common perception in the market is there's no advertising without tracking. Deactivating tracking in the browser is a de facto ad blocker."[1] This is because the revenue for ads based on tracking is three times that for ads not based on tracking.[2]

[1] "Mobile ad blocking is becoming a bigger threat" by Lucinda Southern
[2] "An Empirical Analysis of the Value of Information Sharing in the Market for Online Content" by Beales and Eisenach

Online advertising no longer works like that. It is all programmatic.

By "programmatic" do you refer to it having become standard practice to run nonfree scripts on viewers' computers to perform large-scale surveillance of viewer's browsing history across multiple unrelated websites? If so, then perhaps online advertising needs to cease being programmatic in this way.

I couldn't find anything in Google's DFP (most popular ad serving tool) that says "don't show flashing animation".

Is there anything saying "report this ad for standards violations, such as inaccessibility to viewers with a seizure disorder"?

No one sells ads directly on their sites to advertisers, that is not a viable model because advertisers want to get their message out to a variety of sites instead of "sponsoring" one or more pages on a single site.

Publishers of newspapers and magazines never printed ads customized to each individual subscriber, and certainly not to readers who encounter a publication through a newsstand or public library. How did advertisers and publishers survive then?

if they know a user is potentially interested in going to St. Kitt's (because they searched for that island), they want to show that person St. Kitt's ads whether they are on a travel site or on a cooking site.

This is called "data leakage", allowing an advertiser to target high-value sites cheaply by advertising on low-value sites that the same viewer also visits. "Targeted Advertising Considered Harmful" by Don Marti and "WTF is data leakage?" by John McDermott describe problems with this race to the bottom.

There will always be sleazy advertisers out there, looking to game the system.

And you as a publisher are responsible for allowing these sleazy advertisers onto your site via these exchanges, whether or not you have meaningful control of what these exchanges serve. In fact, the lack of meaningful control ideally ought to be a reason not to use a particular exchange.

It means they've found easier ways to fingerprint you. [PDF] Marketers don't want generic "cookies" they want specific, verified identification.

They're going to have a better spy network than is legal for most governments to have.

Marissa inherited a company with the most popular email, finance, and fantasy sports sites on the internet. Despite still being in an exclusive advertising deal with MS (who wants to use Bing ads?) prior to her arrival, she decided to turn Yahoo into a "digital magazine" (hiring Katie Couric and David Pogue). And she even decided to renew the deal.

On the employee side, she introduced a "stack ranking" policy (shortly before even Microsoft abandoned it) that was done QUARTERLY which turned the whole company into a giant game of survivor. Even free sushi bars and smoothies aren't enough to keep many people from finding a new company (Google, Apple, Facebook) where you aren't constantly worried about being fired. Losing many of your long-time employees and focusing on short-term (quarterly) goals is a target-rich environment for anyone looking to break in and steal passwords.

It isn't hard to imagine a future where Yahoo instead chose to focus on retaining their positions (Draft Kings is more popular now than Yahoo Fantasy Sports) and not renewing their deal with Bing search. The best thing Marissa did is probably improve the cafeteria.

(Disclaimer: I worked for Yahoo in 2013 and have nothing but praise for the other engineers who work there.)

I'm kind of not looking forward to that...

See subject: Over 500 sites were infected by them delivering malware http://digiday.com/publishers/... even major sites like the Economist http://www.economist.com/help/...

APK

P.S.=> It's why I created my hosts file program... apk

They actually track which stores you visit to monetize ads. If you opt out then a lot of things including Google Now stop working.

http://digiday.com/platforms/g...

They even do the same thing on iOS if you use Gmail, Chrome or Google Now apps.

It is easiest for Google to conduct this passive location tracking on Android users, since Google has embedded location tracking into the software. Once Android users opt in to location services, Google starts collecting their location data as continuously as technologically possible. (Its ability to do so is dependent on cell tower or Wi-Fi signal strength.)

Android is currently the leading mobile OS in the U.S. with a 45.9 percent market share in 2013, according to eMarketer. A little more than a fifth (20.3 percent) of the U.S. population uses Android smartphones.

But Google can also constantly track the location of iPhone users by way of Google apps for iOS, Apple’s mobile operating system. IOS is just behind Android in U.S. market share with 38.3 percent of users, per eMarketer. Nearly 17 percent of the American populace uses an iOS smartphone.

When an iPhone user stops using an app, it continues running “in the background.” The user might not realize it, but the app continues working, much in the same way tabs function on a Web browser.

Google’s namesake iOS app — commonly referred to as Google mobile search — continues collecting a user’s location information when it runs in the background. This information is then used to determine if that user visited a store and whether that store visit can be attributed to a search conducted in the app. Store visits can also be tracked via Google’s other iOS apps that use location services. If iOS users open their Chrome, Gmail or Google Maps app in a store, their location can be deemed a store visit.

And they recently stopped snooping on the free Google Apps and email for Schools and even businesses after doing it for a long time to build ad profiles after they didn't dare telling the same lies in federal court that they were telling to the public about snooping on students to show ads.

http://www.edweek.org/ew/artic...

http://www.edweek.org/ew/artic...

But hey, it's Google so they get a free pass here while if MS did anything even close to that people would be shouting from rooftops.

Google will track which stores you visit if you turn on Google Now on your Android phone.

http://digiday.com/platforms/g...

Not just Android phones, even iOS devices.

If iOS users open their Chrome, Gmail or Google Maps app in a store, their location can be deemed a store visit

Even the Gmail app snoops on you. Why does it need your location? Sigh.

Google will track which stores you visit if you turn on Google Now on your Android phone.

http://digiday.com/platforms/g...

Contrasted with what, Apple?

I gave actual examples of why I find Apple's privacy model better than Google's. Can you rebut that, or are you just going to go on about "Apple owning the user".

Android isn't secure, true, but at least it isn't always owned the moment you get it, though Google does try.
Thus, the malware targets the devices that are most secure, from the perspective of those on the attack.

This just shows have zero understanding of basic economics. The lower hanging fruit is always the best bet unless you can justify that the more difficult is indeed far more profitable. And guess what - iPhone users are more valuable to advertisers and developers [1]... yet have only 1% of the malware. Nice try at sophistry.

[1] https://digiday.com/platforms/...

I wonder whether it's FUD around the option (probably defaulted to opt-in) to participate in Microsoft's "feedback" program.

I don't think there is anything that is overblown.

If you associate your Windows phone with an account (Required to load software from the only source permissible the windows app store) the phone also periodically and on demand of Microsoft uploads your location to a Microsoft server and there is **NOTHING** you can do about it and no way you can turn it off short of wiping the device and never associating an account which means not using the app store paying a hefty premium to use what is then essentially a "feature phone"

Microsoft's WP does not respect your privacy by default and there is no lever you can pull that changes this.

And how is that different from iOS or Android? Don't they do exactly the same if not worse? Also, you can turn off location services in Windows Phone.
Atleast they don't seem to be spying on which physical stores you visit unlike Google is. http://digiday.com/platforms/g...