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The State of Online Advertising
conq writes "BusinessWeek has an article looking at how internet advertising has changed and is changing. From the article: 'The race is on to find new ways to track customer behavior. Advertisers and agencies are progressing far beyond the standard arithmetic of counting clicks and page views. They're tracking the to-and-froing of the mouse on Web pages, and they're finding new ways to group shoppers by age, Zip Code, and reading habits. CEO David S. Rosenblatt of DoubleClick Inc., which serves up some 200 billion ads a month for customers, says that every campaign now allows for 50 different types of metrics'"
How much do you want to bet that one of DoubleClick's "50 metrics" isn't 'number of customers driven to using AdBlock because of our ads?'
... whatever it is they call its ad-blocking feature.
Personally I just don't use any browsers without blockers anymore. Safari has PithHelmet, Firefox has AdBlock, and Konqueror has
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
At the places where I am the root, doubleclick.net and the likes are DNS-null-routed (to a localnet IP 127.0.0.127). At other places, I
use Firefox, JS selective blocking, and Adblock to disable them forever (occasionally after getting a single hit). Spyware/adware sucks, I am not supporting them, and willing to invest my time to make my point and educate my co-users.
VKh
DoubleClick? Aren't those the guys who have just for any URL within their domain?
Oh, wait...
Online advertising had crossed the line of tolerance more than ten years ago. I'm afraid that with more and more sysadmins protecting their users against ads and trackers, most future analyses will show that most users are IE-using uneducated home folks...
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Now we can use detailed tracking to figure out EXACTY how and where people punch the monkey for a free XBOX, or if they would rather enjoy shooting the ninja for a free Ipod.
DoubleClick Inc really are the enemies of the internet that we enjoy today, yet they will argue ad naseum about revenue stream keeping the internet alive.
Thier marketing practice is little more than virtual fish trawling - destroying vast tracts of future growth in order to reap thier rewards.
If they manage to piss off 1000 users to get one click through, they have achieved an objective. How sad.
It's the most disgusting form of advertisting, as subtle as unsolicited junk mail and just as annoying. But hey, they make money from it?
So how about a revolution against these dire marketing tactics, that would turn the web into one big advertising board - I'd say that it's entirely possible to thwart these corporate assholes at thier own game, track thier methods and just jerk them around until they start to lose revenue.
Unleash a mess of spiders onto the web to emulate the traits they are looking for in users - a huge zombie net of "fake users" who fry any attempt to gain "meaningful" information - just complete random noise at massive level.
How I would love that - possible? - perhaps?
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
That would be a great way to block the previous generation or two of web analytics providers like DC. These days though, many solutions in that space rely on a first party domain for their data collection, which they use DNS to send to the vendors data collection server. This is easy to set up and requires nothing to be hosted via the website being tracked...they just have to set up their DNS appropriately.
"Whether or not you believe me, I'm right" -RWF
At the risk of sounding obvious...why don't you advertise other pr0n sites? Wouldn't that pay better and you wouldn't have to worry about 'objectionable' material?
BTW, is 'ass heat' a measurable phenomena?
$30 Off All Plans: Use code TRIPLESAWBUCK
They still have that on the web? For some strange reason, the entire internet shed its ad clutter the day dowloaded Firefox + AdBlock + Filterset.G.
1. How do they do this? (JavaScript?)
2. They're going to find my mouse movements utterly baffling. I like to wave my mouse around in circles, highlight random chunks of text & various other pointless, yet occupying hand motions.
I'm going to start practicing how to spell out "Suck It" in mouse movements, just for these guys.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Effective CPM tells you everything you need to know, the little bit of data like where the mouse is is all gravy. Nothing in this article shows innovation or anything remotely new/interesting. In fact, online advertising hasnt evolved much from the 90's with the exception of adsense.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
I have found this host file from someonewhocares.org to be pretty good.
Selling advertising space online isn't what it used to be. Sometimes, the goal isn't even to get people to buy your products -- the goal is to learn more about what products consumers want.
The article describes a banner ad campaign that was used to determine demand for different food products in the preholiday run-up. This kind of market research is taking the place of (or augmenting, in some cases) traditional market research like telesurveys, focus groups, etc.
The problem as I see it is that we're getting even more LCD goods as a result. All the people who want the same products I want are blocking the research tools. Not to sound elitist, but when only morons are hit up by the market research, more products for morons are released.
This is one reason why we get crap films, crap television, crap music, etc rammed down our throats.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
The state of Internet advertising isn't great because now people are worried about fraud from Google & Yahoo. Especially with Google having to make that settlement for click fraud recently. Even before that there has been increasing chatter about cost per action advertising as opposed to cost per click/views. People want something new, they're looking for it and that research is showing in more and more news articles coming out about tracking, etc. Tracing people through a webpage isn't new. I can't remember the exact name of the software but a piece of live help software I've seen allowed you to track people's movements through your site in real time. People have been using these metrics for years. I haven't heard or used the name Doubleclick in years?
For some reason I refuse to use either spell check or the spacebar properly.
Is this the appropriate topic to vent about how the Internet's promise of customized ads -- ads tailored to the audience, ads that we'll want to look at, ads that are relevant to our lifestyles -- is a crock?
By way of example, I have three tabs open in Mozilla right now, each with a Slashdot story displayed.
And each with an ad for Lane Bryant.
Now, tell me, how are those ads tailored (ahem) to a 37-year-old white male geek with no unusual tastes in clothing, beyond the occasional geeky t-shirt?
MacOS, Windows, BeOS, GNOME, KDE: they're all just Xerox copies
Yes, many web sites require ad revenue to continue to exist. Yes, many people have been driven to use various forms of adblocking because of the intrusiveness or annoyance factor of online advertising.
One could infer, then, that the people who are not using adblocking fall into one of two categories: those who enjoy the advertising, and those who do not, but are too novice to set up adblocking. Both of those classes of people are the kinds that online advertisers want to target, because each of those classes is more easily separated from their money than the class of people who do not like online advertising and are savvy enough to block it.
This is why you don't hear online advertisers really making much noise about adblocking. Those who are blocking ads are much less likely to buy were they to see the ads anyway, and the fact that they're blocking reduces load on the technology supplying the ads.
It's a win-win. Those who don't want to see ads -- don't. Those who want to target ads to the consumers who are most likely to respond and buy -- do.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
Web Sites will have to start hosting their own ads again, or else somehow detect that the browser is no longer letting ads through and cut off content. Actually, from a coding perspective the app server could proxy those ads for delivery without a problem, but there needs to be a whole new level of intimacy between the ad server and the content provider, otherwise their metrics are going to get screwed up or be untrustworthy.
I've found this ad blocker to be exceptionally good: http://everythingisnt.com/hosts.html. Just install and you're good in any browser.
I will give them all my buying habits for $10 per month.
It might be worth that to some company, but not if you're anonymous.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
At the places where I am the root, doubleclick.net and the likes are DNS-null-routed (to a localnet IP 127.0.0.127)
A combination of several hosts files available online:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~marschip/hosts
You need to ADD it to your current hosts file (not replace it)
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
The ads placed on pages unrelated to the advertisements' message actually attracted 17% more looks.
This means that contextual advertising, whether by topic or keyword, actually has the reverse affect that it is intended to have. Contextual advertising is supposed to attract attention and therefore clicks, but according to TFA, contextual advertising is doing the exact opposite.
You know something? I'll be really happy about being a member of the human race when we all turn into free-thinking individuals who appreciate uniqueness in ourselves and in others. The fact that too many people revel in mediocrity & lack of change in their lives means that the marketing vultures can use their insiduous "pigeon-holing" techniques to sucker yet more money out of us.
PLEASE don't make it easy for these people - don't just buy one type of music, don't just read political novels, have the GUTS to try something new and different occasionally.
As people, we are the sum of our experiences & if all we've ever experienced is mediocrity, then we are mediocre as people.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
If I were a system administrator I would do it as a security measure. If ad companies are going to start using more metrics than a simple click, I would consider that a potential breach of security. Who knows what information they might be gathering. But if they are gathering any information which might be personally identifiable. The last thing that a company would need is to have an advertisment database that included the company's domain name with what the people at the company look at on the internet. Call me paranoid.
In the more practical area, it will save a little bandwidth by blocking those sites. It might not be much, but if you have a large organization it can add up.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
Let me be the first to say it. If you have 50 different ways to measure something, you do not have any measurements that matter.
When advertisers are looking at buying media, they want to use a standard metric so that they can do a rough apples to apples comparison. The question advertisers want to know is how much it costs and how many people that might buy their product will see it. In the world of three network TV channels, you could talk about cost per million and you basically have a homogenous mass, so it was pretty easy.
Nowadays, you have media fragmentation and advertisers do not know what to buy. Should you buy commercial time during the NCAA tournament? How about the Simpsons? How about on MTV? Since people are using DVR, maybe it is better to do a product placement and put that Coke can on American Idol. Maybe you should just buy search advertising on Google.
You get the point. While it may be interesting for advertisers to track purchase habits with loyalty cards at grocery stores, through capturing personal information via Google or targeted search results ads, the bottom line is that you can measure it 50 ways till Sunday and it doesn't much help with the central problem - what media do you buy and how much do you buy? Advertisers want an algoritm that breaks it all down and gives them the best bang for their buck.
There is an old saying in advertising, "I know I'm wasting half my money on advertising, I just don't know which half." The reality is that despite all the scary privacy issues that are starting to come into play - advertisers generally have no clue about what they are doing. And you know what? It's only going to get harder. People can talk about getting into the content tail, but it doesn't make the advertiser's job any easier.
Speaking of the state of online advertising... I have now seen two ads for CACIQUE Bras exclusively at Lane Bryant. Last time I checked I was male and I certainly don't need anything from the 36C-48DDD,F,G,&H cupsize range they advertise.
Obviously it's for your girlfri....oh, wait, nevermind.
Then what do you propose as a way the companies that deliver the websites you visit and block ads from should cover the costs they have for serving their content to you, plus a little profit ?
You know that big lump of color advertising in the middle of the Sunday newspaper?
Well... I throw that out too without looking at it.
Do you know what I do when a crappy commercial comes on the tube?
Yeah... I change the channel.
Do you know I do when a commerical comes on the radio?
I... err... Well there doesn't seem to be any ads on my iPod. I guess I could put them there, but maybe that is why I stopped listening to the radio on the drive to work.
Truth of the matter is I am an advertisers worst nightmare and I don't really go that far in refusing to view ads.
Its not because I don't like the idea of advertisments, but if the advert interupts my stream of entertainment or causes annoyance... I tend to find a way to stop it or I find another mehtods of entertainment.
Billboards, related ads to entertainment, and entertaining ads will get my eyes and ears.
Obtrusive, non-related ads, and annoying ads will get my immediate disintrest.
Entertainment and information with the ads is just as important as the content... Otherwise if I can't shut out the ads, I'm going to shutout the content.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I run with "prompt always" too. I differ from you in that for the most part I reject all cookies by default, unless it's a forum or some place I'm interested in creating or maintaining a longer-term relationship. Occasionally I'll be too quick to say no, and Cookie Button makes it darned easy to go back and reenable them. Firefox's cookie manager is horrible to navigate -- it's virtually unusable after you've built up a list of a thousand different sites that you've rejected or accepted at some time in the past.
John
I strongly recommend the Adblock Plus extension for Mozilla Firefox, together with the Adblock Filterset.G Updater extension. The dynamic duo has kept my web browsing experience fast and clean ever since I discovered them.
With the advent of these powerful and extensive adblockers (supports regular expressions!), and the ease of installation and usage, it makes me wonder how online advertisers could survive...
w00t
Truth of the matter is I am an advertisers worst nightmare
And yet you bought an ipod.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.