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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."
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
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.
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Hey, dimethylxanthine
Lol, privacy on the internet, come on consumers.
"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!
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
.. 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!
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 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.
hey, enjoy all the relevance you want. I prefer no ads. There is no reason to *have* to see ads.
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.
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.
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I actually like ads to be catered to my tastes, it seems like a more useful use of screen real estate.
Years ago, I worked doing p-shop for advertising, and my boss taught me something important about marketing: The people paying for the ads want those ads to go to peope who aren't already interested. They want to reach people who have no interest in the product, and to alter their minds.
It's a waste of money to pitch to someone who's already sold. In other words, advertisers want to advertise to you the opposite of what you want.
You can't take the sky from me...
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.
I actually *would* love them. If they didn't suck.
I'm willing to acknowledge the fact that virtually everything I get 'for free' from the internet is, ultimately, either created by people for free, or by people getting paid through advertising revenue.
I don't go out of my way to block ads because ads support the websites I love. Even running a personal site has costs associated with it. If someone can recoup some of that with a banner-ad; more power to them.
And if the banner-ad could be stuff I actually want.....wow, even better. Now I'm shopping for things I need, while supporting the websites I like, win-win.
But, in practice, those ads always suck. Here is how it goes.
1.) Decide I need a new X
2.) Find a new X on the internet
3.) Order X
4.) Spend the next month or so seeing ads about X, something I'm not interested in, because I just purchased one.
It's annoying. Far more annoying than random ads. I just purchased a new bed, I don't need a new bed anymore. Not for *years*. If the ads were smart enough to wait 5-6 years and remind me of the age of my bed, that would be awesome. But showing me ads, particularly, ones for THE SAME product I purchased, it's just stupid.
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.
Shouldn't you be upset that the records from your sex change were released?
Zing!
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
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.
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.
I actually *would* love them. If they didn't suck.
I'm getting to a stage where ALL ads, whether targeted or not, have a tendency to occupy such a large proportion of my screen-space that I almost have no choice (for sanity's sake) to adopt a ruthless approach of filtering them all out.
Thanks to adblock, flashblock and an extensive hosts file, I now see very few ads at all, where I would have been happy to accept a limited amount to offset the costs of hosting the content in which I'm interested. The marketroids are sabotaging their own interests with their policy of saturation advertising, and they only have themselves to blame if people are physically tuning them out.
Yeah, I think this is very important. I worked in advertising briefly, and it creeped me out. The way advertisers see their jobs is not how most people understand advertisers' jobs.
So here's a funny thing that many of you don't realize: you probably want to see some ads. I only really realized this until I cancelled my cable (Netflix only) and had been using Adblock for months. I realized that I had no idea what was going on. New products were being released, new movies were in theaters, and I didn't know these things existed. I wanted to know that they existed. I wanted to buy some of those products and see some of those movies.
So I really started thinking about advertising, and specifically targeted advertising. I thought about how I kind of wish there was a site that I could go to what would tell me about all the things that I was missing by not seeing ads.
So I wanted to learn about all of these things, but I wanted to learn about these things on my own terms, I wanted to look at the ads that I wanted to see, and not other ads. I wanted to look at them on my own schedule. I wanted to skip any ad that I didn't like. And that seemed totally reasonable to me, because in my mind an advertiser should be looking to connect me with information about products that I might want to buy.
And then I remembered: That's not how advertisers see their jobs. Advertisers specifically do not want you to learn about anything on your own terms. They want to control the whole setup so that they can push you into buying products that you don't really want. Advertisers are not happy allowing you to watch the ads you want to watch, they are only happy when they force you to watch an ad that you don't want to watch.
And what really drove this home for me was trying to watch movie trailers on YouTube, and YouTube was making me watch an ad before each movie trailer. It took me a second to remember that movie trailers are themselves advertisements. YouTube was forcing me to watch and ad that I didn't want before they'd let me watch the ad I wanted to watch.
What it comes down to is this: It'd be great if we could match entertaining and informative advertisements up with people who would like to see those ads. There are advertisers who will try to do this. However, advertisers are generally employed by people who want to sell crap to people who don't really want that crap. As long as that's the case, advertisers will try to push you ads that you don't want to see.