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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
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.
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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).
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."
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.
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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.
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...
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.
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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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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