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Study Says Targeted Ads Gettin' a Lil' Creepy
eldavojohn writes "Ever load up a completely random webpage to see an advertisement at the top for products related to what you're reading about? What about the advertisement with binoculars that says your green denim jacket doesn't really go with your eyes? Well, a recent marketing study (PDF) is saying that making a highly visible advertisement content aware is too much for consumers. It seems that to optimize clicks and purchases you should use a highly visible ad or a more diminutive ad that is content-aware, but not both. For marketers, this report talks about the consumer having this crazy notion of privacy and at some point they start to feel like you're crossing the line."
I love them!
Researchers have recently discovered gamblers like money, scholars spend lots of time reading and fishermen are often on boats.
like this classic example
http://www.ntk.net/2001/07/06/dohburn.gif
Diminutive is better.
But in general, if I have to see ads at all I'd prefer them to be relevant for me.
About the time I added "Brooks Brothers" to my 'interests' sections on Facebook and started getting Brooks Brothers ads on every website that I visited after that, is when I started to feel violated. Not sure why FB kept trying to sell me Jewish dating websites, when my profile clearly indicated that I was not Jewish... an Anglo-Norman name, 'Zen Buddhist' as my religion... seems like they missed the mark with that one. However, now I just run ABP and I don't ever have to see ads anymore either, and I took out nearly all the information from my FB profile. I'd just get rid of it if not for the fact it's my main method of keeping in contact with a lot of people I'm actually kind of fond of. It still feels very stalkerish.
Steve if this is OK, he is the only one with the answer.
Perhaps it is just being misinterpreted and is simple just magical.
In the words of Bill Hicks:
By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself.
No, no, no it's just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day, they'll take root - I don't know. You try, you do what you can. Kill yourself.
Seriously though, if you are, do.
Aaah, no really, there's no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan's little helpers. Okay - kill yourself - seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously. No this is not a joke, you're going, "there's going to be a joke coming," there's no fucking joke coming. You are Satan's spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It's the only way to save your fucking soul, kill yourself.
Planting seeds. I know all the marketing people are going, "he's doing a joke..." there's no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a Yank friend - I don't care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking makinations. Machi... Whatever, you know what I mean.
I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too, "Oh, you know what Bill's doing, he's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market, he's very smart."
Oh man, I am not doing that. You fucking evil scumbags!
"Ooh, you know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar. That's a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We've done research - huge market. He's doing a good thing."
Godammit, I'm not doing that, you scum-bags! Quit putting a godamm dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet!
"Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market, Bill's very bright to do that."
God, I'm just caught in a fucking web.
"Ooh the trapped dollar, big dollar, huge dollar. Good market - look at our research. We see that many people feel trapped. If we play to that and then separate them into the trapped dollar..."
How do you live like that? And I bet you sleep like fucking babies at night, don't you?
"What didya do today honey?"
"Oh, we made ah, we made ah arsenic a childhood food now, goodnight." [snores] "Yeah we just said you know is your baby really too loud? You know?" [snores] "Yeah, you know the mums will love it." [snores]
Sleep like fucking children, don't ya, this is your world isn't it?
Lol, privacy on the internet, come on consumers.
I barely even notice most adverts really. It's either some annoying pop-up style advert that annoys me enough to close the window down immediately (so I don't really look at what is being advertised) or I just filter them out like I filter out background noise.
I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
"Ever load up a completely random webpage to see an advertisement at the top for products related to what you're reading about?"
No. Thanks Adblock!
Ever load up a completely random webpage to see an advertisement
Not in many years.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
I skimmed over the paper and I'm not sure it's privacy that reduced the effectiveness. I think it's more out of annoyance.
Lets say there are two types of people that click on ads: People that are actually interested in get more information provided by the ad and people that just click on the ad on an impulse. Now consider if someone is going to an auto web page to do some research on cars they might want to buy.
If they get some giant random ad about about guitar lessons or whatever then most people will probably just ignore it and continue on (they're doing car research after all). In that situation the people that would click the ad would be the impulse types (maybe from people not all that interested in actually doing car research at that moment). On the other side, if there is a small targeted ad about cars then people would either just ignore it because it's small or click it because they want more information (they are doing car research after all).
Now consider the situation where a giant targeted ad pops up. This is basically a forced distraction. You're looking at doing your own research and the site is trying to forcibly tell you what you want. That would piss people off because it's forceful (giant ad) and targeted at the subject they were trying to research on their own.
http://xkcd.com/713/
I've always felt that these ads aren't just intrusive, they're -lying- to me. There isn't actually a ton of hot women in this town looking for a nerd to comfort them at night. It's ridiculous. In fact, for that scenario, there's -nowhere on earth-.
It got to the point a few years ago where I just ignored anything that had the name of my town. Why? Because I found a 'news article' that said the writer was from my town. This confused the hell out of me, because it was extremely unlikely. Then I realized the 'article' was just a fake and was really an advertisement.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
It still feels very stalkerish.
Most people don't like being stalked! News at 11!
Seriously, makes you wonder why people can make money with these trivial kinds of studies. Then again, they can cater to retards in marketing and management departments where having no common sense is an entry requirement.
"Our results show privacy matters in something of a subtle way in online advertising," says Goldfarb. "Sometimes privacy violations are fine, sometimes they're not." :)
Nice to see what costumers like to project onto consumer rights
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Surely everyone already knew this? In any case, they wont be going away any time soon. Just look how much money Google makes off targeted advertisements.
.. are the ones relating to nothing on the page you are currently on, but stuff you have recently been looking at.
For instance, I just bought a puppy recently.. and quite frequently now I'll see ads for obedience training.. while looking at computer parts.
I'm actually perfectly cool with how this is pulled off.. but it is still a little weird!
i haven't seen anything aside from text ads from google in years. it's called ad block, and the more desperate ad companies get the more i lol.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
People do not like the idea that you come to their most private place, their home, unasked and uninvited, and try to force them to buy your junk. Who would have tought that they do not like that idea?
Now, you say, ads have been our companions for decades, if not centuries. Why suddenly that rejection? We should be use to them by now. And yes, we are. But these ads are different.
So far, we had ads that yelled at you, in the equivalent of a street hawker. He yells out what goods he has, come and get 'em! That's basically what TV and radio ads are like. They do not talk to YOU. They talk to, well, anyone listening. Targeted ads are more like the guy at your door trying to sell you some magazine subscription, only that he also happens to know a lot about you. He knows your hobbies and he offers you magazines related to your hobbies, with the undertone of "this has to interest you, I know it".
And people don't like strangers to know their private details. Especially if those strangers try to sell them something.
And people don't buy from people they don't like.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ever tried to search for something linux related, and found tens of mailing list aggregation sites, each one differing from others slightly, but mostly in URL and placement and quantity of AdSense ads?
Is there some way to blacklist such sites and share blacklist info through some firefox extension?
http://opencm3.net, http://www.nongnu.org/gm2/
Back in the '90s everyone surfed nekkid, and you didn't have to worry about them guessing the green denim jacket.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I actually like ads to be catered to my tastes, it seems like a more useful use of screen real estate. So if there was some sort of central repository, say Google, that housed what ads fit my shopping habits, I'd be for it. However then there are the cons. I don't really want them sending me ads for things that might be private. So I searched something for a health concern, I need to be able to remove that from my "ad profile". But if they want to show me ads for all the new video games coming out, things for my favorite sports teams, movies I might like, etc; I have no problem with them profiling me for those.
I am finding it kind of annoying/spooky that the same ad seems to follow me around to different websites via DoubleClick. Yes I was looking up information on stock photography, now stop showing me the exact same ad twenty billion times on 50 different websites. I am not going to click it.
Sometimes I wonder if people are so dense even a good whooshing wouldn't get through.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Almost as irritating are the shopping sites that sell the same products, at the same prices, with the same inventory, but different site names and slightly different layouts or colour schemes for the stores. It's highly irritating when you search for a particular product, and have to wade through all of those.
Best I can tell, these sites operate from one place (looks like Florida), but have "operators" all over, whose contribution is to take orders by phone and pass them on to the "parent" store.
Because of this irritating practice, I refuse to buy anything from any of these stores, even if they should have the best price or availability.
> ...a more diminutive ad that is content aware but not both. For marketers, this report talks about the consumer having this crazy notion of privacy and at some point they start to feel like you're crossing the line.
Right-o. Because it's a privacy violation when the ad is large, but not when it's small, apparently. Less personal information collected for the smaller ad, ya know, coz not as many pixels to render.
WTF?
I like the targeted ads that are a little too dumb, like you get targeted ads for the company you work for. It's like they say "Hey! We see you work for this company, would you be interested in buying products from that company!?"
The ones at Engadet are pretty bad, surf from like an apple store you get ads for apple products. Or you get ads trying to sell you internet access from your provider.
I remember the feeling of paranoia wash over me when I first began receiving the penis enlargement emails.
The paranoia has returned, but mostly because of the herky-jerky ads showing pictures of my penis and the names of ex-girlfriends.
You guys getting those?
i've been noticing this on Pandora.
i'll glance down at my iphone and notice adds that are just way too taylored to either me or the song.
the creepy part is when i send an email to a friend saying i need new trim and to repaint parts of my house, then start getting adds for house paint.
the funny one was when listening to pink floyd's the wall, and they starts adds for a new private school for my kids shortly after the line, "Teacher, leave those kids alone".
but yeah, they've long past up creepy.
I have made it a point in my life to let advertisers know if I see their unwanted ad when surfing, I refuse to click the ad and will most likely not deal with the company the advertisement is for in the future. I use ABP also. If the masses as a whole would just stop clicking the ads, and make it a point to block as much as possible, maybe the marketing scum that thinks this stuff up will finally get a clue. -- "Couldn't get a clue during 'Clue Mating Season' in a field of horny clues."
They'll know when they cross the line... or rather, they'll find out...
I remember browsing Amazon for wheel rims at some point, and one of the suggestions for "other people who viewed this product also bought" was a fleshlight, picture and all. Needless to say, I stopped browsing wheel rims... didn't want to become associated with one of those people :-P
Tastes and cultures change over time. As more advertisers practice targeted advertising, the more we will get used to it. I'll bet at some point, we'll even start to get offended by ads that should be targeted but aren't. You can say now that you abhor these ads, but all things change with time. Not too long ago, americans weren't comfortable with top-level athletes wearing logos. We used to think rock music was edgy. We used to think NPR was ad-free.
Birth is the leading cause of death.
and a blacklisted hosts file, or whatever, just a word of warning.
Be prepared the next time you browse the web on a strangers machine, or a public machine.
It happened to me recently, and it scared the crap out of me. Adverts EVERYWHERE and some of them were shouting at me.
I would liken it to a BBC viewer having to sit through American cable television for an hour.
It's not pleasant.
That kind of thing happens a lot, actually, if you actually look at the ads. Mind you, keyword matching has never yet given me a single ad I was interested in, but I still occasionally look at the ads because of gems like these:
- I'm looking up the lyrics of a goth kinda song, you know, about death and suicide, and it mentions eternal sleep. An ad on the side dutifully offers to sell me sleeping pills. (Not only morbid, but I really don't think that they want to become known as the company desperate enough for a sale that they'll even offer to sell a means to commit suicide to depressed teens.)
- I'm looking up the meaning of the word "insipid." Of course, a lot of the words in the definition have to do with taste and cuisine. An ad on the side (or was it two?) point me at some traditional Jewish cuisine cookbook. (I figure having that as an illustration for "insipid" in the dictionary isn't exactly an inspiration to buy it, you know?)
- I'm looking up the meaning of the word "sycophant". An ad on the side points at some book for children about how one can become president. (I guess it would explain Dubya;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
If only, on a gaming page: [bigfont]"I herd u liek mudkips. My pokemanz. Let me show you them."[/bigfont]
Problem: your ads make consumers aware they've willingly given up their privacy, and they hate it. We can't have that.
Proposed solution: be more subtle about using the information we have about them. Besides, it's more effective.
Seems you missed the point. Targetted works, super targetted doesn't. Advertising housing to me when my mail box is filled with housing related mails works. Advertising that a girl is living next door who sells services I might be interested in considering the images I am downloading... well that is just creepy.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
That's a good idea. There are recommendation sites for music (last.fm), films (filmaster.com) and so on. There should be an equivalent for search results. I.e. if you blacklist expertsexchange and scribd, then it finds other people who did the same and uses their preferences to modify your search results.
Google had a thing where you could delete search results for a while, but I don't know if it did anything like that and it seems to have disappeared.
http://www.givemebackmygoogle.com/
Google, without affiliate links. (Also skims a lot of aggregator sites)
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
The targeted ads have gotten much more accurate.
I've noticed that I don't get penis enlargement ads any more. (*shoots cuffs*)
You are welcome on my lawn.
Another story about Marketing? I'm staying out of this one.
What do you think most Apple stories boil down to?
About a month ago I went to the Serif web site to read about their DrawPlus software. Since then, I'd estimate that around 25% of web sites I visit have an advert of some kind for DrawPlus.
Now, I assume this is cookie-related. But who baked the cookie? Maybe it was Serif. Maybe it was Google, because I used Google to search for DrawPlus. But it feels a little creepy when you look at a product once and then get nagged to buy it all the time.
How about when you share a computer, like my wife and I do? We don't close the other person's session, we just open a new tab. I almost wish didn't run adblock. What demographic does titanium billet, computer parts, + (whatever girly stuff my wife is into at the time) put you in?
Nevermind, I'm on Slashdot. Duh!
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
No substance, just a rant. And yet, it seems to resonate with some people here at /. The fact is, if something is free** it is either paid for by advertising or tax dollars. The following are a couple of my favorite free things: my content on the internet (with the exception of netflix). If you hate advertising that much, be prepared for the alternative when you get your wish,. Pay-walls everywhere.
Are you lonely?
Have you spent half your life in bars pursuing sins of the flesh?
Are you sitting in a bean bag chair naked eating Cheetos?
Do you have the urge to get up and send me a thousand dollars?
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
I was looking for replacement temple pads for a pair of glasses. Now I get sidebar ads about eyeglasses, sunglasses, precriptions, Lasix, you name it. I'm not a candidate for Lasix, but the ads keep coming. I found the pads, but the ads keep coming. I even have new glasses coming, but the ads also keep coming.
I was looking for a new electric shaver. Guess what ads are coming up now? No, not shavers for the blind, but close.
It is apparent that anything you search for more than once seems to come up as an ad for you sooner rather than later. And it's not just creepy. For me, it hurts the advertiser.
Not just the Google ads that offer to find you the best price on root.apk (funny), but the ads that clearly knew you were searching for something. It makes my wife wonder how they know that. When I try to explain, she rejects such a notion as just plain 'wrong'. Then she gets it. And it is even more 'wrong' to her. I pointed out to her that I was seeing ads for a women's clothing chain pretty regularly a couple of months ago. Since I don't crossdress, she gave me a pass. And realized she had been looking at both their site and a competitor's looking for a particular piece of clothing. She's creeped out.
I get entirely turned off by these, and the retailers that sponsor them I avoid if possible. I can tell you that their return rate on me is less than .01% over the years, since this is not really a new phenomenon. That's a tenth of what they hope for. And good riddance.
We may have to have this fight in the courts. At some point, we may want to tell advertisers that they can collect a lot of data on us, but sharing or selling it without our permission is unacceptable. We may even want to tell them how long they can keep it. But Congress may not do this for us. After all, they get paid by the corporations.
So we may see that corporate campaign finance reform is the first step. As in NO corporate campaign financing.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I remember finding it a bit creepy/amusing when I was having an argument through gmail with my ex and ads for counseling and relationship therapy were appearing.
Wait a few months and it'll go away. Consumers on the internet get used to any invasion of privacy really fast these days.
We need a "+1 -- nice sig" moderation.
That's what popped up in the RSS feed item for the article.
So you pay for it either way, with or without blinkenbanners.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
"Ever load up a completely random webpage to see an advertisement at the top for products related to what you're reading about?
They can place an ad on a page related to what the page is about? How do they do that? They must be running a keylogger on my PC!
No substance, just a rant. And yet, it seems to resonate with some people here at /. The fact is, if something is free** it is either paid for by advertising or tax dollars. The following are a couple of my favorite free things: my content on the internet (with the exception of netflix). If you hate advertising that much, be prepared for the alternative when you get your wish,. Pay-walls everywhere.
Pay-walls on content will only be there if the site is being run for profit. People running a site about a topic, for the love of the topic, will not mind paying the pennies that hosting really costs. And if a site gets really popular, whilst remaining amateur, voluntary donations can easily cover hosting costs.
And if you feel that that is just a rant with no substance, you clearly don't understand what is written between the lines.
Car analogies break down.
Thanks to Track-me-not, I lead the market demographic for Green Wasabi Thimble Machines.
Oh sure, it violates Google TOS. I weep not.
http://cs.nyu.edu/trackmenot/
You have to go into the plugin and manually enable it fyi.
When I search for information on the band The Police, I don't want a degree in law enforcement. When I search for information on the Trencher comic book, I don't want information on digging equipment. And, no, I don't live anywhere near the guess you made about the geolocation of my ISP's assigned IP address. These ads are so WRONG it's silly. They have zero credibility.
And if you think that a site that gains popularity only cost pennies to run or is easily covered by donations, you clearly have never run, or known anyone who has run, a major site.
Upon finishing, websites that I also go directly to, started showing ads for B&H and the cameras that I was looking at. I also started seeing "sale" prices from other camera vendors for the cameras I was looking at.
I'm thinking it's Google.Who else has access to my browser's URL bar? Doesn't whatever I type there pass though Google? And we know that's how Google is getting so damn rich: targeted advertising.
Browsers I use: Firefox and Chrome.
Oh, Adblock doesn't block everything. Some websites have found a way around it - it's as though the ad is part of their content or something.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
I recently bought a 2nd LED LCD TV and must have done a fair bit of searching. I keep getting ads that specifically show the TV model that I already bought. I guess there is no easy way to tell big brother that I already bought it!
Huh? There are ads on the net?
What are ads again?
— An AdBlock Plus user.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
What if the ad was also the product? And, if there weren't laws (there are, thankfully, in the USA) against mailing and billing for things without the recipient's permission, we'd all have FASRADs, whether we wanted to or not.
I'm a little scared, disgusted and disappointed. It seems we're already moving towards a future like that with thrusters on full.
When this article came up, I'd like to recommend two addons in addition to adblock plus. I'm not the author or maintainer of either, but all too often people think they're protected when they still leak information. Pandora actually *really* surprised me with their use of LSO cookies--and I knew about them.
Specifically, I recommend:
"BetterPrivacy" --which you can configure to purge LSO cookies.
"Ghostery" -- which is much like adblock, but bans webbug widgets and other objects from your page. Adblock gets some, but not all of these as of the last time I checked a month or two ago. This one pops up a bit much for my taste, but gives you a convenient link if you want to opt into any beacons/ping tracking type networks. Otherwise, you can block them for good with a click.
I also like trackmenot, but that one isn't in the mozilla archives.
Anyone interested in sharing some work to develop a 'cookie munging' addon? Instead of deleting them, I want to corrupt the data and send it back to the site...really screw with their tracking habits. Maybe it could start impersonating beacon API's with crap data too.
What's really creepy is Slashdot allowing/profiting from the RSS fecal spewage that is Newsmax.
And if you think that a site that gains popularity only cost pennies to run or is easily covered by donations, you clearly have never run, or known anyone who has run, a major site.
So number 6 on Alexa's top 500 list isn't major enough for you?
http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2006/20061019.jpg
And oblig Penny Arcade
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
I find it amusing when research groups drone on about this or that, in the end the Marketing groups that are pushing millions of dollars in advertising a month know when so much as a fraction of a point changes in conversion rates, either direction.
Online marketing seems to be very reactionary and any group I've worked with that have managed to stay successful know their numbers VERY well. The only way that too-targeted of ads won't work is if people don't click on it.
The marketing-departments don't give a flying rats ass about privacy, morality or ethics. They ONLY care about what will convert your click to a conversion, and nothing more.
Paying more or less for that marketing data is only useful or valuable to them if you give them your eyes, or money.
For them to coach where a marketing department should put their budget is laughable, and if a marketing group is having to even ask that question, they aren't making their decisions based on performance, they are making it based on assumptions and feelings which will be nothing more than a Fail-Boat marketing campaign, and likely has no clue what they are doing and won't stay/survive in that market long.
I was shopping for a telescope mount a couple of weeks ago. Suddenly I found an ad following me around the net. I went to /. and saw it. Went to BoingBoing there it was again. Kind of makes me want to purchase it somewhere else. Not only that it seems to me to defeat the purpose of most ads. I had already done my research and found where I wanted to purchase for a good price. The ads were showing up after I made my decision so they were pretty much wasting their money.
For more information about advertising in the modern age look up Age of Persuasion. I attempt to listen in whenever I remember its on, because this program offers an amusing and informative perspective of advertising. And as the programs slogan states, we live in the Age of Persuasion.
the optimizegoogle extension for firefox allows you to remove sites from showing up in the results (though they don't prevent google from sending them back) I do it a lot with expertsexchange, about.com and a host of freesoftware sites...
I prefer the way without blinkenbanners. However, there should not be the government involved. My solution? Pay content through the ISPs. Instead of the web content provider paying for traffic, he should be paid for traffic. After all, content providers are what makes the web useful for content users, and therefore create the market for ISPs. The money the content provider gets for his money would, of course, coming from those getting the content. More exactly, through their internet bill.
Yes, I don't mind paying for content, if I can do so hassle-free. No registration, no exchange of bank account or credit card numbers, no paypal, just my normal internet bill. I pay my ISP, the ISP passes the money on (after taking his cut), and the content provider's ISP pays it to the content provider (again, after taking his cut).
OK, but wouldn't web content providers then try to serve as many bytes as possible per visit? Well, probably, but on one hand, their pipe has a certain maximum bandwidth (they would still pay for the availability of bandwidth, of course), and also their servers can only serve so much (more or better servers cost money, as well), and on the other hand, if their content loads too slowly (and turns out too costly), less people will visit their site, which again reduces revenue. So ultimately the market will regulate that.
Of course content provider would be anyone putting up stuff (any http server would qualify), no matter whether it's a big company or a small private web server. Whether it's worthwhile content would be decided by the market (since sites which don't attract users don't generate revenue to the site owner).
There could be pages who explicitly won't want to pay; those could be put into a special IP range (probably hard for IPv4, since most addresses are already assigned, but probably possible for IPv6; I think 1800::/16 would be a nice option), and probably should also get a special TLD which is exclusively assigned to those IPs (say, .free).
Now I'm realistic enough that I know the chances of implementing this in the real word are close to zero, but that's what I think it would work like in an ideal work.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Except that Ghostery is owned by BetterAdvertising, which is this new startup doing exactly what you'd expect... helps advertisers.
Try TACO instead.
Would love to see one of those NoPiracy.org ads that have been popping up here on Slashdot to show up suddenly on a site like The Pirate Bay.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
My impression is that currently most Apple stories boil down to "Apple restricts what you can do with your iWhatever."
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I sent Amazon a nasty letter because I started receiving email about items that I had merely *clicked* on. To me this seems a little too much, and it's exactly the same as a brick and mortar store having a sales person ask who you are when entering the store and then follow you through the aisles as you browse. I asked them to stop and they didn't even have a flag they could set in my profile. Instead, they 'advised' me not to sign into their site.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Hmm. Well, 5-6 years might be a bit too much turnover for most companies. However what if they're showing you ads for accessories related to your purchase. If you bought a bed, you don't need another, but you might still need:
a) A new sheet set
b) A mattress (if you just bought a frame)
c) Pillow covers
d) Fabric-protectors. Pillow tops. etc etc
Also, check out the Abine project and their Privacy Suite add-on, which blocks all types of cookies and sets opt-out cookies for targeted ads.
http://www.getabine.com
Online advertising is a piece of crap as it is.
Let's ignore how creepy they get. Those ads are generally not creative, not interesting, and rarely go beyond "BUY THIS" (almost literally).
Look at TV ads, they tend to be creative to catch the audience's attention. Everyone has been amused or even entertained by a TV ad, and even at times those ads went into pop culture from being campy, imaginative or inspired, or just hilarious.
Not the case with Internet ads, they are just in the middle, doesn't expose the product (would you buy food from internet ads?) and it's simply not appealing. Its only purpose is being very annoying and hope you click by accident.
I use twitpic to upload some sort of game development blog, and I was showing a friend some of my progress on his computer, and the ads came to full force(he doesn't have adblock like I do). I was even afraid to scroll (laptop touchpad thingy) because I really didn't want to leave any of my friend's ID on those creepy "free antivirus scan" ads by virtue of failing to scroll (got finger damage and my fingers like to stop during actions, thus I get a lot of clicks when I want to scroll in touchpads).
Really, showing ads nowadays only serves to "sponsor" sites you like a lot. They fail as an advertisement medium entirely.
The experience I have had of amateurs running web sites as part of a hobby is that compared to what they spend on their hobby, the website's financial costs are a tiny fraction. Relatively it is "pennies", or at least that is how it is seen.
Have I known people running a genuinely major website? Well, I don't know Bezos, Zuckerberg, or even Taco. But what does major mean? Were you trying to define the terms of debate just so you could "win"? The amateur sites I have known of have been reasonable major in their niche, and considering how democratising the web is compared to other media forms (like TV), a minor player on the web is equal (in some respects) to the big boys.
As my sibling AC post points out, Wikipedia. If profit isn't being creamed off, then it does appear that you can run a major site on donations alone.
Car analogies break down.
"No. Thanks Adblock!" - by Stele (9443) on Monday June 14, @09:03AM (#32563768) Homepage
HOSTS FILES ARE ADBLOCK'S SUPERIOR ON SEVERAL GROUNDS (& in combination/together? Pretty much the best "browser level" security, in "layered security fashion" you can do currently)!
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1.) HOSTS files eat A LOT LESS CPU cycles than browser addons do no less (since browser addons have to parse each HTML page & tag content in them)!
2.) HOSTS files are also NOT severely LIMITED TO 1 BROWSER FAMILY ONLY... browser addons, are. HOSTS files cover & protect (for security) and speed up (all apps that are webbound) any app you have that goes to the internet (specifically the web).
3.) HOSTS files allow you to bypass DNS Server requests logs (via hardcoding your favorite sites into them to avoid not only the TIME taken roundtrip to an external DNS server, but also for avoiding those logs OR a DNS server that has been compromised (see Dan Kaminsky online, on that note)).
4.) HOSTS files will allow you to get to sites you like, via hardcoding your favs into a HOSTS file, FAR faster than DNS servers can by FAR (by saving the roundtrip inquiry time to a DNS server & back to you).
5.) HOSTS files also allow you to not worry about a DNS server being compromised, or downed (if either occurs, you STILL get to sites you hardcode in a HOSTS file anyhow in EITHER case).
6.) HOSTS files are EASILY user controlled, obtained (for reliable ones -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_file ) & edited too, via texteditors like Windows notepad.exe or Linux nano (etc.)
7.) HOSTS files aren't as vulnerable to "bugs" either like programs/libs/extensions of that nature are, since it's NOT a program, only a filter... OR even less "buggy" than DNS servers (see Dan Kaminsky's findings & Moxie Marlinspike's also), as they are NOT code, & because of what's next too
8.) HOSTS files are also EASILY secured well, via write-protection "read-only" attributes set on them, or more radically, via ACL's even.
9.) HOSTS files are a solution which also globally extends to EVERY WEBBOUND APP YOU HAVE - NOT just a single webbrowser type (e.g. FireFox/Mozilla & its addons exemplify this, such as ADBLOCK)
10.) HOSTS files are NOT BLOCKABLE by websites, as was tried on users by ARSTECHNICA (and it worked, proving HOSTS files are a better solution for this because they cannot be blocked & detected for, in that manner), to that websites' users' dismay:
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http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/03/why-ad-blocking-is-devastating-to-the-sites-you-love.ars
An experiment gone wrong - By Ken Fisher | Last updated March 6, 2010 11:11 AM
"Starting late Friday afternoon we conducted a 12 hour experiment to see if it would be possible to simply make content disappear for visitors who were using a very popular ad blocking tool. Technologically, it was a success in that it worked. Ad blockers, and only ad blockers, couldn't see our content."
and
"Our experiment is over, and we're glad we did it because it led to us learning that we needed to communicate our point of view every once in a while. Sure, some people told us we deserved to die in a fire. But that's the Internet!"
Thus, as you can see? Well - THAT all "went over like a lead balloon" with their users in other words, because Arstechnica was forced to change it back to the old way where ADBLOCK still could work to do its job (REDDIT however, has not, for example).
However/Again - this is proof that HOSTS files can still do the job, blocking potentially malscripted ads (or ads in general because they slow you down) vs. adblockers like ADBLOCK!
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This is NOT possible for websites to pull on you, IF you use a HOSTS file (vs. other adblocki