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Users Know Advertisers Watch Them, and Hate It

Posted by kdawson on from the someone-to-watch-over-me dept.

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..."

7 of 243 comments (clear)

  1. Bottom line... by Divebus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nobody likes advertising. Period.

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    Most of the stuff on /. won't survive first contact with facts.
  2. I see you are having your period... by Hamster+Lover · · Score: 5, Funny

    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...

  3. Re:Bottom line...Not quite by plasmacutter · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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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    VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
  4. Well, block them. by Creepy+Crawler · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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).

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    1. Re:Well, block them. by Temporal · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Of course, note that by using TOR, you are essentially telling every web site you visit: "I am a user who is excessively concerned with privacy and knows how to anonymize himself. Statistically speaking, I am probably (though not certainly) college-age, computer-savvy, geeky, single, and male. Effective ads for me are likely to include ads for dating services, computer hardware, nifty gadgets, video games, and Ron Paul." Normally, advertisers would have to do a ton of tracking and data mining to determine these things, but you're just telling them right off the bat.

      Just saying.

    2. Re:Well, block them. by plasmacutter · · Score: 5, Funny

      you are essentially telling every web site you visit: "I am a user who is excessively concerned with privacy and knows how to anonymize himself. Statistically speaking, I am probably (though not certainly) college-age, computer-savvy, geeky, single, and male. Effective ads for me are likely to include ads for dating services, computer hardware, nifty gadgets, video games, and Ron Paul."


      or.. "I am a user who is excessively concerned with privacy and knows how to anonymize himself. Statistically speaking, I am probably (though not certainly) a reactionary paramilitary survivalist cult member. Effective ads for me are likely to include ads for weapons, military surplus, canned goods, religious iconography, industrial grade generators, and DIY bomb shelters."
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      VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
  5. I don't see the problem by InlawBiker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.