Slashdot Mirror
Student Project Could Kill Digital Ad Targeting
An anonymous reader sends this quote from Ad Age:
"[Rachel Law's] creation, called 'Vortex,' is a browser extension that's part game, part ad-targeting disrupter that helps people turn their user profiles and the browsing information into alternate fake identities that have nothing to do with reality. People who use the browser tool, which works with Firefox and Chrome, effectively confuse the technologies that categorize web audiences into likely running shoe buyers, in-market auto buyers, or moms interested in cooking and football. ... It's a bit like the ad blocker extensions of yore, except it scrambles information to trick ad targeters, all in service of an addictive game deemed 'Site Miner,' which allows players to fish for cookies visualized as sea creatures. Players can gobble up cookies Pac-Man style, creating a pool of profile information that has nothing to do with their actual web behavior. ... Vortex features a profile switcher that people can use and share to take on a new identity while browsing the web. 'It's a way of masking your identity across networks,' she said."
to paraphrase Tyler Durden:
You are not your cookie trail.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I'm not sure why I should hate targeted ads. I actually see ads for things I'm interested in... instead of random stuff. The tracking, ad infinitum, has always been going on, will always be going on.
I'd thought of doing that as part of one of my browser add-ons, but it has problems. The general idea is that you send your cookies to a central site which sends them out to others to confuse tracking. As the article says, "The Vortex system will build a database of cookies gathered by players." So you've traded multiple limited data collection systems for one central one. There are a number of obvious ways that can backfire.
Just turn off third party cookies. Or run Abine's Do Not Track Me.
Rachel is a she.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
but my alternate identity can't get enough of it!
When ad filters are on the offensive.
Today for most reputable sites You have a couple adds, more or less about stuff you are interested in.
Let me FTFY:
Today for most reputable sites You have a couple adds, more or less about stuff you were interested in before buying it from a different site last month.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I don't think most people block ads, unless you restrict "people" to tech-savvy people.
On the other hand, most of the people who don't block ads will also not install this browser addon.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Look at xkcd, not an ad on the site...
See this link?
You can get the Subways comic as a poster!
That's an ad. Them posters ain't free.
Not a bad ad, not an obnoxious ad, but still an ad.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I'll give you one reason: echo chamber. I don't particularly like seeing ads at all (yes, it's the price for "free" content); however, I like to broaden my perspective on the world. If I receive targeted ads for items that are of interest to me and a very small slice of society, I'm at terrible risk for mis-perceiving society at large. For example, I don't like (almost any) hip hop music. But I don't want to be denied the opportunity to be informed (via ads) that much of the rest of "western civilization" thinks it's great.
So yes, I want all my ads UN-targeted. If I need something unusual, I can bloody well find it for myself using The Google.
This doesn't even address the fact that the data accumulated to create targeted ads can (has, and will continue to be) misused for other purposes. For example,let's say your particular buying habits correlate with certain anti-social or unhealthy lifestyle choices, but that you don't have these particular negative attributes. A prospective employer or insurer might still use them to label you as a bad risk, and deny you a job or insurance policy.
Companies don't collect information about you for YOUR benefit.
It's different, IMO, since it's part of the site. It's the difference between going to a concert and the band selling CD's, and going to a concert and the band painting a Wal-Mart logo on the stage.
Why destroy all ads and marketing? We still need a mechanism that allows us to know what is available, and at what price.
What I want to destroy is the means for marketers to set prices of goods and services based on "targeted" information that seemingly have no relation to the product or service being purchased. I hate when people in Florida have are offered a product via a WWW site that costs more than the same exact product offered to someone in Massachusetts. It is even worse when you take a look at the picture on a global basis. I hate it when I pay $100 more for an airline seat than the guy sitting next to me. We both got the same exact service, but at wildly divergent prices.
Make a good product...sell it at a price point determined by supply and demand (which I am guessing won't fluctuate each minute) where a reasonable profit can be had, and be happy with it. Probably a little naive...
I would like to think in this day and age people are mature enough to ignore targeted ads.
is toss one site back to another, so they are tossing ads back and forth, making it look like all the hits are coming from other advertisers. I would suspect eventually the hosting sites will end up blocking themselves, and all will be well in the Twitterverse.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Then you will not have as many websites.
Only true insofar as quantity. Quality OTOH will likely improve, if you want the truth. Any site that relies (even in large part) on ad impressions for its survival is likely one that has starved itself to death a long time ago, is is barely straggling along.
there are far too many other ways of making income from a website (an internal store, premium content, even donations stand out as examples.)
Making and supporting a web site takes time and money.
So does any other worthwhile endeavor. Doesn't mean it has to have adverts, though.
I am not sure if you remembered how horrable adds were in the late 1990's early 2000.
I beg to differ - it's uglier today.
Turn off all your blockers/add-ins/extensions sometime, and go visit ZDNet or parts of CNET. They stand out as only a couple examples of how a company can jack in a shit-ton of intrusive dancing adverts (where even clicking on what looks like blank space will toss an advert at you). Also note that back in the late '90s you only had popups and cookies at worst (okay, they had Bonzi Buddy or whatever-the-hell-that-was, but that bullshit required your explicit collusion to install).
Today you have to contend with LSOs, stealth "toolbars" that slide in just because you updated Java and weren't paying attention, and other intrusive-as-fuck tracking techniques that slip right by most non-techies. Oh, and I won't even have to mention that now we get to put up with ISP collusion as a matter-of-course (ad-packed redirects for failed DNS lookups, anyone?)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Making and supporting a web site takes time and money.
Yes it does, and if you can't break even with it by asking for donations, you either accept that it's a hobby and you're not skilled enough to run it professionally, or your shove ads in people's faces. If we remove the latter option, I assert that the web will be a better place for it.
However, the main focus of the creator is the discrimination, that the information she is jumbling enables, like higher prices for certain groups of people. That we can sweep the legs from under advertisers too with her tool/game is just sweet, sweet payback for defacating in our beautiful playground.
... whatever
Don't be an idiot. A proper capitalistic system where information is transparent and the consumer is given the tools and the latitude to make informed and cost effective decisions makes for shitty QE reports. And who's more important? Little old you or shareholders of $CORPORATION?
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Right now, facebook
wants me to save 15% on my vacation (no thanks),
also offers to save me 40% on my vacation (are you fucking deaf?),
has determined that i need a harness for falling protection (huh?),
thinks that I would probably like a pulled pork burger (yuck!),
and wants me to test my smarts on some trade school's website (something to do on my 40% off vacation?).
Targeted ads are a joke, and this from a company that probably has the best vantage point in the whole goddamn world to shove ads in my face.
... whatever
I'm a military contractor.
I'm also a fitness instructor.
Due to my searches for weaponry, vegas trips, and yoga mats Adsense thinks I'm gay.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
well done good sir, This guy reserves the medal of freedom.
The advertisers want to shove those ads down your throat in a rapid fire super sized orgy of marketing intrusion.
The reason why the ads aren't as bad now is because people rebelled and found ways to kick their asses off the websites.
Then the advertisers found ways around those first restrictions and plastered everyones faces again.
The users again found a way to deal with it.
This back and forth went on many times, and will probably continue for a long time to go.
The "not so bad" ads you see now are the result of this war. Some of the advertisers finally figured out that people do NOT want constant mega in your face advertisements, it just pisses them off to the point where they find a way to get rid of them. Because of that, the advertisers have accepted a reduction of intrusion to a level that will fall below many peoples threshold of bullshit they don't want to see such that they don't bother to take action.
It's like the difference between a fly buzzing in your face and landing on your nose, vs the one flying around down the hallway. Which one are you going to swat? Most people won't even bother with the one down the hall unless they are an obsessed fly killer, or they've finally gotten tired of the last 3 hours of faint buzzing.
The advertisers want to be the fly on your nose, but everybody kills those, so they have no choice but to move out of swatting range if they want to live.
I just wish there was a plugin that would scramble this stuff automatically. Take each tab and generate a random browser string, garbage "clicked from" info, random cookies to scan, random history, etc. for every link I click.
Twinstiq, game news
I'm confused. Are you saying that Adsense is spot on or way off?
FWIW, I don't use blockers/add-ins/extensions. Of course, that means I find MANY web sites so obnoxious I only go there once. And that's without haveing flash installed.
ISTM that the basic idea is good, but it should, itself, be targetable. I.e., you should be able to "greenlight" certain web-sites, and to "red-light" certain extensions. This would, of course, interfere with it's anonymizing feature, but not, I feel excessively.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I'm guessing repeated searches for "catholic schoolgirls" are to blame.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
It's a useful filter, so should stay in common usage.
When you're looking around at the games in the Play Store or iTunes, quite a few games say 'the most addictive....' which identifies them as games probably not worth downloading since their developer/distributor has to rely on stale memes to market them.
That's pretty much my biggest issue with ads. Want to try selling me something, sure. I really don't have a problem with a respectable attempt to demonstrate a products value. I do have a problem when the person doing it is all but flat out stating that they feel we're drooling morons. The chances I've had to actually talk to people involved with advertising has made it pretty clear that the industry has no desire to move away from that model. Unless they do, I also don't feel bad about getting shows from newsgroups with the ads cut out, using adblock when it works, or even just staring at a blank screen for 90 seconds rather than watch a 30 second commercial in those instances when it doesn't function properly.
Everything will be taken away from you.
Then you will not have as many websites.
Awesome. I can thing of metastatic cancers like Facebook thet can go away right away.
Making and supporting a web site takes time and money.
And you know what? If advertising is not intrusive, I'll even watch it. I think most people will. I think most people understand that the sites and merchants are there to make money. But that isn't really the issue.
When you have sites stalking you, as we do now, placing cookies in non cookie places, companies like Facebook tracking you, whether you have a facebook account or not, and others, it gets a little annoying to say the least. And I would be more than happy for them to go away and stay away. I don't measure the quality of the web by the proliferation of junk sites.
The very odd thing is that in trying to sell you their goods, they have declared war on you. Facebook stalks you all over the web. It's almost understandable that Google would have data to offer with search analysis, but even they are stalking you heavily. Just the other night, I went to a Google maps page to check some map stuff out. Never signed in, just tried a few things with maps, and decided that wasn't the way I wanted to go. in maybe 15 minutes, I got an email to "anonymous+ a number". Was I supposed to think that because they sent it to my email as anonymous, they didn't know it was me?
That's a big line to cross, because they now have associated my name with my surfing habits. Just from visiting a page, nothing else. Right now, maybe that's just to target advertisement. Maybe that's it. For right now.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.