Slashdot Mirror
Users Know Advertisers Watch Them, and Hate It
Chris Blanc tips an Ars writeup on a survey of consumer attitudes toward targeted advertising. The results of the survey, conducted for TRUSTe, confirm that advertisers are in a tough spot. "[The survey company] randomly selected 1,015 nationally representative adults... Although only 40 percent of the group was familiar with the term 'behavioral targeting,' most users were well aware of the practice. 57 percent reported that they weren't comfortable their activities [were being] tracked for advertising purposes, even if the information couldn't be tied to their names or real-life identities. Simultaneously, 72 percent of those surveyed said that they find online advertising annoying when the ads are not relevant to their needs..."
I'm not sure exactly ... what privacy we are supposed to expect online. We're essentially driving on open roads while surfing the net, right... sending packets over open wires or open air. As long as it isn't malicious and isn't gathering actual personal information, I'm not sure this is unexpected or even a problem; no different than checking to see what kind of people shop at certain stores or malls to see what to put on the billboard...
Nobody likes advertising. Period.
Most of the stuff on
spyware ? driven by advertising
spam ? driven by advertising
splogs ? driven by advertising
just about every threat to your average user on the web is in some way attributable to advertising
Why worry about your period when you have more important stuff to think about?
At Tampax we understand this and that's why our tampons are designed to suit your body and help you get on with life...
This Article reminded me of a Simpson's song. To stop those monsters 1-2-3, Here's a fresh new way that's trouble-free, It's got Paul Anka's guarantee... Lisa: Guarantee void in Tennessee. All: Just don't look! Just don't look! Just don't look! Just don't look! Just don't look! Just don't look! Seriously though I've stopped paying attention to ads altogether. Except for those amusing General Insurance ads where you play a car and avoid getting hit, those ads I fully support.
...was the subject line that I expected after reading the summary.
Advertising is fine.. "MARKETING" is what people dont like.
advertising is merely publishing the existence of a product.
marketing is the active, dogmatic, flagrant, imposition of a product to a particular target using the most invasive means possible within the boundaries of the law. An advertisement would be a poster for a revlon product in a department store. marketing would be the woman who blocks your path and burns your eyes out with a well placed blast of a perfume bottle.
your typical toy marketing campaign is not about convincing you and your kid to get this toy.. it's about deliberately manipulating your kids into pissing you off until you pay them temper tantrum protection money.
Slashdot's ads are actual advertising, while those seizure inducing flashers, popup windows, and fake system alerts are marketing.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
We all are smart (or many claim to be). We push Firefox and such software so we take control of the web.
Every machine has a hosts file in which machines can be locally defined.
So, lets take what we know and make ads gone.. maybe not all of them.. Lets start with the annoying ones first.
First, get Firefox.
Next, we gets some plugins:
Adblock Plus
NoScript
NukeAnythingEnhanced
Flashblock
What, you dont like being watched? Now get TOR from tor.eff.org and install it, along with accompanying firefox plugin for proxy changing
Set up TOR and now you have ad-free browsing, with optional anonymizing surfing when needed (for performance hit).
Today, browsing would be well nigh impossible for me without adblock or opera's build in ad-blocking features. It's pretty much a given, before browsing. The huge size of the block lists are an indication of how almost every site is infested with ads, like termites.
TrustE is more of an apologist than a regulator. TrustE stopped being serious about privacy in 1997, when they "simplified" their seal program. A TrustE seal doesn't mean that any standard has been met. All it means now is that the company claims to comply with their own privacy statement, whatever it says. That's it.
Even worse, a site with a TrustE seal is more likely to have badware than one without a seal.
TrustE has revoked only two certificates in its ten year history.
There are no positive articles on the topic of "behavioral targeting" because of how hard privacy activists try to publicize their views, and like "death tax", this is a case where the phrase itself is used to push an agenda. No one wants their "behavior targeted". So for the people who know and use the term "behavioral targeting", we can already assume they have a predisposition on the topic a bit. If instead we use "relevant advertising" to refer to the same technique, surely this will effect the way it is perceived.
With that said, I don't see how harmful this can be. Browsers do a good job of protecting us from the worst case scenarios, and web sites have a hard time implementing this effectively anyway. The sites best at this are those with real information, like amazon or ebay that have your info and can track what you do. But again, you are on their turf, so its kinda like complaining about being watched by security cameras at Best Buy, or about the membership card that tracks everything you buy at CVS.
That's marketing?
I always called it "bullshitting."
Marketing, to me, is a very subtle [like a charging rhinoceros] plan to raise one's awareness of a product in order to gain eventual acceptance through repetition. Product placement in movies is marketing. A big cuddly cartoon character who smokes is marketing. The stuff that makes network television unwatchable is advertising.
Most of the stuff on
Hey! You!
BUY STUFF!!!
I don't get that at all from these numbers; personal experience tells me that people don't want to see ads. Relevent ads aren't as bad, and some can be useful, but most just don't want to see ads.
The fact of the matter is that it is the advertisers themselves who want us to see their ads, not the other way around. To do this, they add stuff to their advertisements in order to make you pay attention to them.
People who pay attention to advertisements/commericals are the product to be sold, the advertisers are the real customer, and the content, whether it be magazine, movie, game etc is just the bait to lure us into the 'snare' and pay attention to the advertisement.
When people WANT to view an advertisement, we'll look for a product then. Building brand awareness beforehand might be effective, but that doesn't mean we enjoy being conditioned in such a manner. If we could have the carrot without risking the snare, we would totally take that. When we want the snare, we'll let you know.
Am I the only one? I see it like this - I get content for free. Somebody has to pay those people to create, host and maintain that content. I know the ads are not going away. So long as the ads are there I prefer them to be relevant to my needs. So sure, track away. I'd rather see ads for things I'm interested in than things I'm not. They don't know my name or where I live so no harm done. If ads are too pushy or distracting from the content I'll use another site This is one of the reasons Google won the search engine war - their ads are not annoying and they work for the people trying to sell us stuff.
Sorry, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
True marketing deals with WHO buys WHAT. After that ADVERTISING takes over.
The slashdot crowd may unilaterally hate "marketing", but thats because they don't understand what it truly does. It is ironic that most people here who hate marketing don't sign their own checks.
Confusing B2C advertising methodologies with true marketing is ignorant. Apple is winning due to marketing, not advertising. Microsoft won due to Marketing, not advertising. Sony pwned for 2 iterations of gaming devices due to marketing, not advertising. Band-Aids, Toyota, Whole Foods, Glock, Clorox, Dyson, BMW, Jones Soda - these entities are winning due to marketing, not advertising.
Marketing is an analysis of data....thats it. Those who choose to use tha data to advertise corruptly are the culprits.
Get a clue.
I'll let the other slashdotters eat you alive for accusing them of being deadbeat leeches on their spouses and/or families, but jones soda is not winning based on marketing OR advertising.
jones soda is winning because they actually follow the equation P = MC. They don't skimp on their ingredients like the major bottling houses do, and they don't gouge like they do.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
The people who get the data in the first place are as corrupt as the advertisers. Marketing still is pure manipulation. Apple is a fine example: They offer sub-par hardware (Iphone without 3G, Macbook without great colors...) with an alternative OS to incredible high prices. They use chinese sweatshop-labor, highly toxic chemicals and somehow still have a positive image. That is pure evil manipulation.
Get a clue.
I would, but apparently I'm not in the target demographic.
Like a do not call list
After clicking the Google RS feed - I was prompted to skip a full screen ad for a Dell something or other.
Damn, I hate that.
jones soda is winning because they actually follow the equation P = MC. They don't skimp on their ingredients like the major bottling houses do, and they don't gouge like they do. The fact that you know so much--and are so enthusiastic about jones soda (i think you just advertised for them)--shows how well their marketing is doing. You've bought into jones soda as an "alternative" to Big Soda. Marketing. Jones soda spends quite a lot of money on marketing!
As the saying goes, sell the sizzle, not the steak. p=mc, ingredients, alternative to major bottling houses, not gouging--sizzle. You didn't say a single thing about the flavor! Seems very telling...
No it's nothing like that at all. But hey, I'm obviously just a privacy advocate pushing an agenda (AKA: facts)!
Just wanted to say I enjoyed your posts on marketing.
"advertising is merely publishing the existence of a product"
Uhm, there is NO clear demarcation between advertising and marketing. When someone from my bank calls me up about credit card offer X/Y/Z WITHOUT my persmission they have gone overboard and it's no longer advertising but STALKING for profit. No business should have the right to HARASS it's customers or "inform them" of things they DON'T want to be 'informed' about. I do online banking and they are free to advertise on their site but to CALL ME UP and say "we have x/y/z" is just a little too much for me.
It's a money grab pure and simple, the guy on the phone is being paid to advertise a product. They will harass you until they meet their profit targets. I'm not sure what alternet reality you live in but companies are getting to the point where they just know too much about you and are basically like big brother, except this big brother is a greedy shill trying to meet their profit targets.
not true.
I "bought into" a package of a particular flavor of jones soda because it tastes like a drink that's exceedingly expensive to import. (it's sold in the asian district for about 25 cents an OUNCE)
the soda was 40 cents less a can than the pepsi products on the same aisle.
nothing to do with marketing, it's called a competitive product -- something foreign to the US economy for a long time because the vast majority of producers who pull that "capitalism" crap are bought out and shut down by the incumbents.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Yes it is, as is common in economics. Market analysis is different from marketing, see my original post.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Market analysis is a function of marketing. See any productive business.
Adblock, Noscript, & regular cookie trimming should keep those pesky web trackers working hard for those pennies.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
What is it?
I make websites and stuff. Buy one.
just as sprockets are a function of military weapons. you still can't classify sprockets as military weapons.
btw, I bookmarked your sig. nice.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
That's funny, I'm seeing a 'google-analytics.com' in my spam blocker... I'd say that is marketing.
nosig today
to tell you the truth I dont know.
One of my chinese friends handed me some one day and I liked it, asked where it was sold (I can't read the characters... there are only tens of thousands of them in the chinese alphabet : P)
for all I know it could be chinese for "soylent green" or "death to america"
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
You must realize, there are marketers out there who are interested in the common good. We do know the reality of the situation and want to rectify it for the good of the consumer and the business. Fuck, Google was a prime example until about 2004.
Band-Aids, Toyota, Whole Foods, Glock, Clorox, Dyson, BMW, Jones Soda
Could it be that those products are winning because they have consistently high quality?
Sure I suppose that some of that could fall under the heading of marketing, if marketing means knowing that people don't like shoddy design, planned obsolescence, or unnatural food additives. I suppose that making a connection between poor business practices that result in a boycott or lack of trust in your product would have to qualify as marketing too. I'm fine with businesses knowing that those things are important, but then marketing should also understand that I find databasing my non-consumer habits to be an offensive business practice, and apparently so do many other people.
Just make a product to that the CEO would actually want to use on a regular basis and the company will have a good reputation.I believe all Apple design is centered on pleasing Steve Jobs, Apple has a good reputation for quality. I'm guessing that the upper management of McDonalds doesn't eat there regularly and the Waltons don't shop at Wal-mart, those companies have bad reputations for quality. No need to snoop my search data to have a good reputation.
We are all just people.
"Users Know Advertisers Watch Them, and Hate It" ... just not enough to do anything about it.
It turns out that users like free/cheap stuff a lot more than they hate advertising or "behavioral targeting." People clicking on ads is a big part of the reason why we don't have to pay anything for Slashdot.
Don't you just hate that?
When I moderate, I only use "-1, Overrated". That way, I never get meta-moderated!
Given a targeted ad or a non-targeted ad, I would prefer the targeted.
Yes, sometimes it is irritating when I see an advertisement that I know is hitting my demographic exactly and pushing my buttons. But a few times I have disregarded it and been sorry I did because I would have wanted the service/item at a critical time.
Overall, I'd rather see ads for computer equipment than scuba gear. The latter is a total waste of my time, the former keeps me up on prices and features of stuff I buy all the time.
Of course, with adblock/Tivo/Netflix/BitTorrent/removal from snail-mail spamming lists, I rarely see an ad that is forced on me anyways. Mostly it's when I go looking. Unsolicited advertising is for the little people.
99.99%* of ads can be avoided by blocking cross-site images and scripts (cross-site scripts should be killed outright, while images can be replaced with placeholders).
The other 0.01%* of sites that actually host their own ads have special deals with the companies to advertise their products directly. Those usually result in reasonable, non obtrusive ads that actually make sense on the site.
*numbers pulled out of my ass
You forgot the ASCII art. Fail
Make SELinux enforcing again!
Well, the big deal is that
1. people change their behaviour when they think they're watched. Doubly so when it's recorded and they're not even sure when it'll be used, how, and in which way it'll bite them in the arse.
My favourite example is about the USSR. Everyone knows the brutality of Stalin's NKVD and about the Gulag, but that got toned down a lot after Stalin. Mostly because it was cheaper and more effective to just give people the impression that everything they say or do goes into some dossier, and they have no idea when it'll be used against them or how. Maybe it'll be the GULAG, but maybe they'll never travel abroad again, or maybe their kid won't ever get a promotion because of what their father said, or God knows what else. Or maybe nothing will ever happen, but there's no way to know.
That uncertainty is actually scarier than immediate repression. It removes the feedback. With Stalin's NKVD, you could know pretty soon whether they have anything against you or not. With something that might, or might not happen, and might take a decade or two to, you just don't know.
The bigger effect is that it made people distrust each other, and thus unlikely to get organized. If comrade Piotr swears at the Party, how do you know if he isn't some agent provocateur trying to get you to say something you'll regret. And even if he isn't, do you want it on your record that you hang out with a disgruntled enemy of the people? Best avoid going drinking with Piotr in the future.
Of course, you could point out, that was only because Big Brother there had not only ears, but also an arm with a whip and an inclination to use it. Well one way or another disincentives exist just as well in a free society, and in the West we're all the more eager to accept them if they're wielded by the private industry instead of the state.
E.g., just like in Soviet Russia you might have feared that you'll never get a well paid job if you have on your record that you're a maladjusted malcontent, the exact same can happen in the west too, in a world where employers routinely google their employees. Even if your current boss doesn't mind it, how do you know if the next job interview doesn't get influenced by something you said or did?
E.g., to get to more mundane western worries, if you're, say, in a particularly bigotted town in the Bible Belt, do you want your next employer to know that you're surfing for gay porn? Most people even if they're not particularly secretive about either being gay or surfing for porn, don't wear "I download gay porn" on a badge at a job interview either.
This whole data collection, and the possibility that it'll get leaked, sold to the highest bidder, or just given as a "gift to the community" like the infamous AOL search data, is enough to make a lot of people think twice about what they do. Even if it's not antisocial per se. Better not trip someone's sensitivities the wrong way, and all that.
(And, yes, I know, maybe _you_ are brave and fearless and never give in, bla, bla, bla. The vast majority of others aren't. That's the problem.)
It can enforce a degree of conformism that's outright scary.
2. Data mining, especially the way Joe Sixpack doesn't even understand it, adds another layer of scariness to it all. You don't know over what inferences they'll get to you, or whether you'll be a bystander casualty of one.
Basically the same as you wouldn't go into a black or jewish boss's office carrying some white supremacist magazine under your arm. Chances are the "pays to read that kind of thing => probably is a racist" inference won't help your career much. So even the real bigoted guys still wouldn't do it.
Data mining promises to make the same kind of inferences from other more mundane things. That even much more innocent things could finger you as something you'd rather not proclaim yourself as, or even genuinely aren't.
E.g., what if some data mining survey says that employees drinking Coca Cola are twice as loyal to the
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I suspect most of us would mind it a lot less if we only saw adverts that were discreet and addressed our needs exactly; in fact, I think the best and probably most efficient kind of advertising is the one that comes in a form similar to the good, old Yellow Pages telephone catalogue. You only see them when you are actively looking for them, at which point you are higly motivated, and the adverts therefore are highly relevant.
The new Intelligent Barcode encodes both sender and recipient, along with a ton of other info. The PO is allowed to track this and turn it over to the three letter agencies.
The FBI no longer needs a court order to open mail, and the Intelligent Barcode makes it easy to track and intercept mail midstream to grab it for opening.
It's Tire Pressure Monitoring for the mailstream tailor made for the police.
Well, given what they post: " 57 percent reported that they weren't comfortable their activities [were being] tracked for advertising purposes...72 percent of those surveyed said that they find online advertising annoying when the ads are not relevant to their needs"
Ok, so the consumer wants add targeted to their behavior without tracking it?. Therein is one of the problems - the vast majority of users don't really know what they want - or I guess a better description is that they want something that can not be.
You can not want add at all (that would be my choice) but that isn't going to happen. Unfortunately these things cost money and you either have subscriptions or adds to pay for it. Since I hate subscriptions more than I hate add guess which one I am stuck with. As such we have adds - no real way around it, a few may be wealthy enough to just pay for it but I bet few want to limit themselves to sites that are such (or are totally donation based given how well donations work).
That leaves us with adds. We have three choices.
First and easiest is blanket adds - that is there is no tracking whatsoever. That means me (a conservative in nearly all the sense of the word) will get adds for sexual aides and places for me and my wife (hahaha - I'm a geek also) to swap partners even though everything shows we are not interested. I can't complain because I don't like being tracked - if I;m not tracked I can't get targeted adds.
Second is the track my behavior but do not link it to me individually - well, I have some nice ocean front property in Arizona real cheap for sale too, only a few million and I will transfer my title through E-mail. If they would actually do that then it would be the best case, however I expect to have that e-mail transfer of ocean front property in Arizona first.
This leaves the last option - total removal of any privacy you thought you may have on the internet. This is pretty much how it works now, never ever send anything over the wire that you would never want others to read. Even if there is no issue technologically the stuff isn't legally confidential. So, send some nice trade secrets over E-mail to an unsecured computer and said server (or any of the hops in between) feel like reading it? Oh well, should have encrypted the thing and thought about it beforehand. Same thing goes for browsing history - it can not technically be private as it may very well go over places you have no control over whatsoever (and may not even be in your a country your laws have *any* jurisdiction over).
Such is life on the internet - it was created as a decentralized organization wherein everything is public. Given that don't be terribly surprised when things are, well, public. Further when you agree to things that even further erode your privacy don't be surprised when then do so (say accepting tracking cookies and such). A users ignorance is no excuse especially when the place in question wasn't trying to mislead.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
>It is ironic that most people here who hate marketing don't sign their own checks.
So true.
This sig all sigs devours
I smell something funny in this article. It is written to do one thing very badly; Show the article to an advertiser and tell him, yes web advertising makes sense.
I don't understand the general acceptance of Google in the slashdot community (some verging on the edge of fanboism--a term I don't use loosely) when Google's primary business is to generate targeted advertising. Which is it? We hate targeted advertising or we love Google?
Gviven the current state of big internet companies starting to realize that people are actually using their "unlimited internet" to download...ahem...legally obtained....movies from netflix should we be worried about ads and the cost of our precious bandwidth
I know its impossible to actually stop advertising, but what about making sure we actually want to see the ad. (i know stop laughing)
what about asking for permission first....Do you want to see this ad...it is XX bytes
that should solve advertising problems all together (agian please stop laughing...try to think of this in a serious way)
of course that leads to the ever popular optOUT feature...but thats for the next issue
The whole purpose of tracking user activity is to avoid bombarding the user with irrelevant advertising. If the advertising is targeted to what the user is looking for then it's entirely useful and worthwhile for the advertiser. I would much rather see ads for things I'm likely to need or want than endless viagra ads.
The slashdot crowd may unilaterally hate "marketing", but thats because they don't understand what it truly does. ... Marketing is an analysis of data....thats it. Those who choose to use tha data to advertise corruptly are the culprits.
Oh, the Slashdot crowd understands exactly what Marketing does.
It's not merely an innocent analysis of data as you suggest, but also a focussing of a company's energies in a purposely distorted direction as a result of that analysis. Your claim of innocence is empty.
This is why marketeers, like lawyers, are quite rightly regarded as the scum of the earth. Their "innocent" analysis and advice leads their victims to do things that they would not otherwise do.
Products should compete on merit, not on marketing. What you do is a distortion.
People think that targeting ads are just adapted to customers to make them more attractive. But the target may not the ad but the web user himself! In The digital Person , Daniel J. Solove mentions the case of a banker in Maryland who checked its list of bank loans with the records of people with cancer in order to cancel the loans of cancer sufferers. With targeting ads, advertisers accurately select their customers. Therefore, a bank could soon directly refuse to addresses its ads to cancer sufferers. Relying on all the gathered information and the established user profiles, they can easily targets the wanted costumers.
That's also true for insurances (health, car, house): advertisers can choose to display really good offers to profitable clients and expensive offers to other users. Similarly, job offers can target specific users: depending on your political opinion there could be job offers that you would never see. Google already proposes to advertisers to target web users depending on their annual salary, their age and their ethnicity...(demographic targeting)
Internet is becoming a primary place for social interactions where search engines play the most important part. Our political, social and cultural behaviors on Internet directly impact our social interactions and users have no control on their own profiles. Job, house, insurance, travels... will depend on our opinions, behaviors, health records and our personality.
I wrote a longer post on these issues: http://squigglesr.free.fr/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=15.
I am so sick to death of ads, everywhere I go, no matter what i do. I am so utterly sick of the fact that some money-grabbing dirtbag feels the constant need to monitor my every move and try and sell me his latest supersonic hydromatic piece of shite. What's more annoying is having to set up so many different "systems" to fight them off. The London tube system, used to be OK, a few wall posters, easy to ignore but now they have started fitting flat screens with moving ads, the buses have flat panels with ads. Browsing obviously has ads everywhere, so you install ad blockers, flash blockers, just so you can save bandwidth and stop being targetted. I very rarely watch TV these days as the TV ads just annoy me too much, I get my TV shows from torrents, because I know they will be ad free. I don't bother with loyalty cards at supermarkets, so I don't get junk mail. I have to sign up to telephone and mail privacy services, so I don't get cold-called or bombarded with junk mail trying to sell me credit cards or some such shite. In the end it's all just pure greed isn't it? I don't mind some selected ads, but only when I choose to find them, when I want a new PC, vacuum cleaner, washing machine, I will pick up a magazine and decide. I'm adult enough to be able to read reviews, ask friends and make my own decisions. Please just let me be the judge of what, when and where, otherwise just leave me alone.
Windows guys please stop pissing on everyone and the Linux guys stop pissing in the wind, hoping to hit Windows guys!
Maybe [s]he meant more like what flavour of Jones Soda is it?
Sometimes I wonder if I think too much.
The longest, most insightful, and least funny Soviet Russia joke I've ever seen on Slashdot.
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
The issue comes at having their cake and eating it too. I used to work for an online magazine company which does not charge our customers for access to content, as people don't pay for online content for the most part. So, we had to turn to advertising to try and keep us in the black. The issue comes, how do you turn a profit if advertising is unwanted, save through underhanded methods like data selling. So, what alternatives are there, if the subscription system doesn't work and customers don't wish for advertising?
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
While another poster already pointed out how wrong you are about advertising vs. marketing, this tidbit caught my attention:
"Slashdot's ads are actual advertising, while those seizure inducing flashers, popup windows, and fake system alerts are marketing.
In the past week or so I've three times clicked on a discussion link here only to be greeted by one of those full page ads with the 'Click here to skip' links at the top. I'd call that just about as annoying and intrusive as popups.
I'm a capitalist and have no problem with sites using advertising to generate revenue, but this is an instance where marketing research was just plain bad. I'm betting quite a few other slashdot users are annoyed as these full page ads become more common here.
Know...your...audience...
I think this is because every company is going to do what the Goog' and Apple do; Hardware is going to be expensive, and a data company is going to mine data. The difference is that unlike other companies, they actually deliver a product that is worth the cost. I can't stand it when a sub-par company wastes my time and energy, and their product sucks, big time ! I understand that Apple's hardware costs more and is probably somewhat inflated, but, at the end of the day, I'm not screwing around. I want the most reliable product/software/widget/operating system/insert object here and I don't care about the cost until the benefits are painfully marginalized. But, if I'm paying my time/data/money, said product had better deliver with more than mediocre performance.
Unfortunately, these days you just can't seem to find things worth the money or time they cost. If I stood outside with a hand full of cash and waved it at everyone passing by and offering that fistful of cash for the first person who could deliver to me a motherboard that's fully functional, delivers performance, is upgradeable, delivers on every bullet point on the box, fits in a standard 1U case with heatsink, and has drivers for Linux, I still couldn't it.
I've got a Dual Socket 1207 if AMD ever releases processors for it - and it promised to work with quad core when they came out... except for that hardware bug that prevented it. Oh, yeah, and that memory interface that was going to be forwards compatible fell through, too. Did I mention DMA doesn't work with Asus' Linux drivers? I shelled out $300 (mind you, I'm a student, that's big cash) for a dual socket motherboard because I wanted the best money could buy and I still got screwed. By Asus, nonetheless. The only reason I put up with them is because the alternative is BioStar who unashamedly pumps out crap that limps along for a year before dying. At least Apple and Google are delivering!
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Persuasion is nothing new or necessarily evil. We tend to modify our own environment for our own benefit. That environment often contains people.
Unless you're planning to take action to change the situation, crying about it is a waste of time. If you don't like it, do something about it. Learn to recongize other people trying to get you to do what they want. Use the knowledge to get them to do what you want. If you want them to leave you alone, convince them to do that.
Some reading to get you started:
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
I'm guessing that the upper management of McDonalds doesn't eat there regularly and the Waltons don't shop at Wal-mart, those companies have bad reputations for quality.
I spent a bit of time in the television industry in the early 80's. I was always amused by the fact that TV executives don't actually watch much television at all. If they were all forced to spend two or three hours a night for a month of two watching what they put out there, maybe we'd see some improvement in the quality of programming.
From TFA:
TRUSTe notes that this attitude presents a conundrum for advertisers, who are simultaneously being told that consumers want to see more relevant ads but don't want to have their activities tracked in order to make those ads relevant.
Until the web gave advertisers the ability to track individuals (even if anonymously), the standard way of making advertising relevant to consumers was to advertise in media that reach your target audience. Magazines have sold themselves to advertisers for decades by offering the ability to reach tiny slices of the population collected together by shared interests. What advertisers now want is the ability to target you, not "18-29 yo males with an interest in technology."
You can continue to make advertising relevant by placing the ads where the target audience is likely to be found. You don't need to track me to preserve relevance.
I always called it "bullshitting."
This is slashdot, you need links.
Bullshit
Bullshit
Bullshit
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I for one welcome our new advertising overlords and the useful products and services they use to improve our lives.
How does 72% of people are annoyed by irrelevant ads mean that those 72% are not also annoyed by relevant ads that are still tracking them? Obviously, depending on the questions, that could be determined, but based on the info given we don't see that.
That's advertising, not marketing.
You can scream all you want, hold your breath, pitch a fit for all I care - but the evils you describe are carried out by unethical advertisers.
Your claim that all marketeers and lawyers are scum proves your ignorance. How did Google first come about - Market analysis. How did Apple return from the dead - market analysis. See my previous list of current winners.
As for lawyers, I guess constitutional, environmental, civil rights, and consumer interest lawyers are all scum also.
Products DO compete on merit, what you fail to recognize is that not everyone holds merit to the same aspects. Your feeble understanding of how people work in general is astounding. Your world view is incomplete, and therefore inaccurate. Stating misunderstandings in a slanderous declaration doesn't change reality.
You're mad at unethical and shady advertisers, not marketing. Not understanding the vocabulary doesn't change the reality. The fact is, you flat out don't understand what your talking about.
Reading the article the following advertisement showed
Anastasia International.com
Quality Russian Dating Service
Talk about behavioral targeting, mailorder bride anyone of you basement-bound tech junkies?
I don't understand Jones soda. It's made with the same laboratory flavors and highfructose corn syrup shit as any other soda, and the flavors themselves (to me) seem too vague and dilute. I wish I could still get Skeleteens Black Lemonade. :(
Oh oh! Let me! I actually like Jones soda, except the 'sugar free' versions. The Jones sugar free sodas all have one thing in common, despite what the label says, they all taste like ass. Their root beer rules and I'm partial to their cream soda myself. They do a good job on the fruit flavors too. But avoid their sugar free like it was the plague!
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
Dumber. They don't want non-targeted advertising, but they don't want anyone to pay attention to what they are looking at.
In other words, people are rank stinking hypocrites and childish. Let me explain. It appears that those complaining want 3 things:
1. Millions of free (as in gratis) web-pages and free services like Google.
2. If they have to deal with advertisements at all, they want ones that are relatively unobtrusive and aren't irrelevant to them.
3. They don't want anyone gathering anonymous information on their viewing habits.
Hmm...well, basically all of those 3 things together are impossible, unless people throw a tantrum and childishly expect *everyone* to give them stuff for free, at their expense, with no way to make money from it. It is hypocritical to ask for contradictory things, and to ask things of others that you yourself wouldn't do. You don't see these whiners going to their job and working there for free, do you? Furthermore, I bet if Google offered an "ad-free" version of their website for paying users, there would be very very few people who would be willing to pay even 1 extra cent for that. Although they would switch to an identical non-profit equivalent to Google that didn't have ads (if such a thing existed or could exist, which it doesn't and can't).
And if it really bothered them, they'd get add-blockers. Most of them do have popup blockers. And as far as I can tell, popup blockers work pretty well. I haven't had many problems with popups in Firefox and Safari.
In any event, I really can't get over how this sounds like childish whining. How else do they expect the companies that provide various online services for free to make money, if not from effective advertising, which requires some information-gathering on the target-audience. Guess what, there is no such thing as the "right to privacy"; that's just sometimes something that you have by default in certain circumstances, as a derivation from your other rights (like property). But if you tell someone some embarrassing secret about yourself, they're free to go and spread it to the world. Likewise, people can and do walk around collecting data on random people walking down the street.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Heh, well, yes, it was just the long and roundabout version of, "In the West you know where to find a party on a Saturday night, in Soviet Russia the Party knows where to find you." ;)
;)
I guess it just shows that explaining a joke makes it not funny any more
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I know nothing of Jones soda but if it happens to be a better product, then it's a better product. Some marketing might be required to inform a potential customer of the product's existence but if the quality speaks for itself, the customer will keep coming back with no advertising. You will see fans of a product go to great lengths to secure it, far beyond what could be explained by consumer zombieism. By personal example, I'm quite partial to a local brand of barbecue sauce, Blue Front. The sauces put out by the likes of Kraft I find insipid and the other good fringe sauces just don't keep me coming back like Blue Front. I don't think I've ever seen them advertise. Hell, they haven't changed the fucking label in 30 years. But it's good and there's a loyal following.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
So, 57% of users don't like their online activities being watched so that advertisers can learn more about them and 72% of users don't like seeing advertising that is not relevant to them.
However, the only way an advertiser can know what is and isn't relevant to a group of users is to observe the user's activities and learn from them!
The more information an advertiser has about you the less non-relevant advertising they will give you. In the end, it's a trade off. Either maintain your privacy and see more crappy ads, or let them have your information and you'll get ads you're more interested in.
Quantum Physics a.k.a. sub-molecular statistics
To be completely honest, I'm not that familiar with Apples' hardware (although I hear their servers are screaming fast); I've got a G3 PPC and it has outlasted its PC brethren of the same age, FWIW.
Huh, shoulda' learned to shut my big mouth. I apologize for going off about that mobo; Asus finally released a BIOS to support the 23xx series Barcelonas two weeks ago. The motherboard is a KFN5-D SLI. The nForce chipset has an AHCI problem with almost all the kernel except for 2.6.21-2.6.23 or so. The problem reappeared after that, IIRC and AHCI support was repealed. It's been a few months since I've toyed with it, but I think that it was DMA not playing nicely with NCQ (the chipset doesn't like it when the NCQ code sends resets too quickly and one of the kernel devs hacked around it by inserting a millisecond delay between NCQ commands).
Your point on the memory is well taken. Although when I said "... if they ever release processors for it...", I was exaggerating to make a point about platform support. 4 CPUs is quite different than the days of Socket A where I could almost grab a Duron or Athlon from any system a drop it in another. There was a Socket A for every speed, series and cache size that AMD had in production it seemed.
Anyways, that example blew up in my face... but I meant to show that even if you don't mind paying top dollar for the top tier product, you don't even get a great product. So, I'll stick to my guns on the original intent of my post; Google and Apple still deliver a solid product at the end of the day, and that's why people like them.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
This has probably been mentioned by five other people but the title of this news item can be interpreted in two ways.
yes, they are synonyms.
You say: No. It's marketing if the preferred product is indistinguishable from or even worse than the competition. Look at the market segmentation for bottled water, it's all reverse osmosis filtration unless they just go and use direct tap water, there's no fucking difference! But you'll have some water positioned as for edgy hipsters, others for extreme athletes, etc. OED definition: b. The action or business of bringing or sending a product or commodity to market; (now chiefly, Business) the action, business, or process of promoting and selling a product, etc., including market research, advertising, and distribution. You, like others in this thread, are completely confusing marketing and advertising. Jones soda is an example of an extremely well researched product, and a company that goes to GREAT length to advertise and market their products (check out the wikipedia page if you don't know anything about them, particularly the sections on promotions and marketing). The previous poster illustrated exactly how successfully they've found and targeted a market audience--before he said one word about flavor, he talked about how they're a different kind of a company, how their quality is different, etc etc. They market as an alternative drink! Just think of that, it's completely brilliant--a hip company, a hip drink--not one word about taste! I know nothing of Jones soda but if it happens to be a better product, then it's a better product. Here we arrive at another problem--"better" is opinion! What if I don't like your example of Blue Front sauce, who's to say it's better or worse? The consumer/user.
Which is better coke or pepsi? vi or emacs? linux or freebsd? Better by one person's definition frequently doesn't have any relation to most people's opinions, or whether the product succeeds, stays niche, goes out of business, explodes, etc.
Are you suggesting then, that marketers share no part of the blame whatsoever when the corrupt advertisers use their data and research to confuse, confound, and harass the public? Are the marketers not specifically enabling the offending activity to take place?
I was recently surfing and came across a new advertising network called Ad Bard. It seems to be one website owner's response to the obnoxiousness of advertisements these days -- he's building his own network with "relevant, non obnoxious advertisements" using open source. It sounds interesting, offering FOSS-oriented advertisements to FOSS-oriented websites. Perhaps there are more of these niche-type advertising networks out there?
I have a custom CSS on Firefox. Combined with a custom hosts file, adblock, scriptblock, etc. add-ons, I haven't seen an interstitial ad in several years.
My computer, my choice what material I want to view. It's that simple.
jc
"I'd much rather be mistaken as a lesbian by a bigot than be mistaken as a bigot by a lesbian."
Information has no intrinsic bad or good properties. The application does.
You can use marketing data to analyze a target and then go make an awesome product reflecting their desires and needs or you can take that same data and use it to spin your existing product towards that target knowing full well it doesn't stand up to snuff.
So no, they are not enabling them - in the same way car manufacturers aren't enabling drunk drivers. In fact, without marketing data advertisers would be way worse.
Someone *paid* for a survey to find this out?
-- VOTE -- Moped Jesus in '08!
Marketing: bullshitting the public into using your product, usually because it's a turd that needs polished and cannot stand on its own merits.
Serving the needs of your customer is respectable. Researching what the market demands and meeting that demand is respectable. Obfuscating the facts with a blizzard of bullshit and selling based on hype and misdirection with the touting of total intangibles is contemptible marketing bullshit. Products touting image and lifestyle and emotional manipulation instead of simply presenting the facts and letting the customer decide.
Example: Jones soda says "Hi, we're just trying to sell a soda. You'll either like it or not, please give it a try and see for yourself." Selling a product on its merits, respectable.
Example: Coke says "OMFG buy our shit cuz you'll be hip and sexy and so trendy! Watch us shove our ads down your throat like an invading cock!" Brain-washing people into buying the product, believing that hype and repetition will bludgeon down defenses until people mindlessly consume, contemptible.
When Bill Hicks suggested marketing people should kill themselves because it's the only way to save their fucking souls, I disagree -- their souls are already lost. But I still want them to kill themselves.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Marketing: bullshitting the public into using your product, usually because it's a turd that needs polished and cannot stand on its own merits. Ok, well, no other way to put it--you're wrong. Those are your own totally idiosyncratic definitions, and are at odds with reality. Example: Jones soda says "Hi, we're just trying to sell a soda. You'll either like it or not, please give it a try and see for yourself." Selling a product on its merits, respectable. Or pay Bam Margera to do it for you
Bullshit
"Every machine has a hosts file in which machines can be locally defined." - by Creepy Crawler (680178) on Wednesday April 02, @01:19AM (#22937920) ----
Man, agreed, 110%... especially on the HOSTS File (possibly Tcp/Udp filtering & firewalls + more galore, all MOSTLY free too, in my p.s. below)... just techniques, with existing OR FREE TOOLS that are well noted & rated as well!
ON YOUR PART/SUGGESTIONS-WISE? The HOSTS file is a great, & FREE way to do this, & "no added layers of complexity" for the OS or browsers (or DNS caching tools etc. et al) required!
Why do I "say NO" to adbanners? MANY GOOD REASONS, not just the issue of psychological attack via constant flashing banners either, vs. poisoning by bad adbanners, & slowing me down too (I pay for my linetime is why)!
I don't like being:
Attacked PSYCHOLOGICALLY (& I do interpret it as this no less) online, via FLASHING ads etc. I personally find annoying!
AND, being attacked online, ESPECIALLY LITERALLY as can & does happen today AND FOR THE PAST 2-3 YEARS NOW, ala the "RBN" (look them up if you are not aware of they) via POISONED Javascript &/or IFrames in ADBANNERS If not just bogus site javascript code too).
Nope... I like to stay safe, so no thanks!
Hey, it may affect ad-driven sites, & too bad (adopt a better & safer business model then)...
----
HOWEVER - I like to, instead:
Go faster online by NOT LOADING POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS (or just slow) adbanners, too
I.E./E.G. -> Why the HELL should I spend my monies each month, loading someone's adbanner code that not only SLOWS ME DOWN ONLINE, but also has been known to poison others' systems also??
Think about it... & there's a LOT more you can do to stay FAR SAFER & yet OPERATE FASTER too, on most ANY OS there is... I concentrate on Windows below, some Linux though, because Windows is the MOST attacked! If you're still reading & interested?? See my P.S. below & the URL in it. It works...
APK
P.S.=> Got a Windows (OR, even LINUX rig)? Want that type of SAFE & FAST SYSTEM ONLINE (no addons required really/most likely, @ least not a lot you spend cash on)?? See here:
HOW TO SECURE Windows 2000/XP/Server 2003 & VISTA, & make it "Fun" to do, via CIS Tool guidance (+ more):
http://www.security-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=50567&sid=7e046401a54540e28d722f26178352a2
It really works, for BOTH extra speed AND SECURITY, online, especially today/lately... apk
Here's my good advertising story, one night I was out drinking with friends, I mentioned to him that I would one day like to learn how to play the guitar, he said I should just get one and go for it. Anyway the next afternoon I had a bit of a hang over so I turned on the TV (a pretty rare event for me, it was a pretty bad hangover) and the second Ad I saw was for an End of Financial year sale for the Sound Centre (a Music store) which happened to be the next suburb over. I went there and had a look around and left with a brand new Acoustic Guitar (25% off). Advertising made me aware of a sale for a product I wanted to buy.
So Product awareness is good, excessive Brand awareness is bad. This brings me to my next point, like so many things in our lives Advertising is not inherently bad but it has been used incorrectly which makes it bad. It's flood advertising, a Macca's ad on every corner. Companies like Coke or Nike don't need any more brand awareness, certainly not to the levels of advertising currently employed. This form of advertising is only meant to put pressure on the viewer to purchase something they may not want. This kind of flood advertising is actually counter productive as some people will not search out alternatives or worse block (consciously or subconsciously) attempts by smaller alternatives to advertise their product. With my good advertising story, yes it helped my buy something I wanted but I don't want to be spammed with adds for Guitar strings.
IMO, advertising should be opt in, I would very much like to go to search.ads.google.com and look for whatever product I would wish to buy. Google points out the people that have paid for premium advertising positions and I like this, companies can pay for a higher placed ad and I know they did (same deal as before but minus the manipulation).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
A simpler, truer statement: Users hate advertisers. There is no other comment you need to make, it's all redundant after that.
Okay, so the advertisers are tracking you using a non-personally identifiable cookie. What about the government? They are wiretapping your home phone and your wireless phone without adequate 4th amendment protections. To top it all off Congress is trying to give immunity to those who violated your Constitutional Fourth Amendment rights.
People are pissed off because Amazon knows you want a roll of toilet paper, but don't care when the government might be spying on you? Get a clue and get your priorities straight.
http://www.stopthespying.org/
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/02/myth-facts-about-retroactive-immunity-and-attorneys
http://del.icio.us/milican/domestic+surveillance
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
In the parking lot is a billboard, which in 1994 was advertising Red Dog beer.
As you can imagine, the AA members were less than enthused.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .