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Longtime Linux Advocate Don Marti Tells Why Targeted Ads are Bad (Video 1 of 2)
"Don Marti, says Wikipedia, "is a writer and advocate for free and open source software, writing for LinuxWorld and Linux Today." This is an obsolete description. Don has moved on and broadened his scope. He still thinks, he still writes, and what he writes is still worth reading even if it's not necessarily about Linux or Free Software. For instance, he wrote a piece titled Targeted Advertising Considered Harmful, and has written lots more at zgp.org that might interest you. But even just sticking to the ad biz, Don has had enough to say recently that we ended up breaking this video conversation into two parts, with one running today and the other one running tomorrow.
First, they suck. I buy a camera, like it, don't return it, yet am then bombarded by ads from the vendor - .
I typically use blocking software on most sites, but not all. What I find is the ads are always too late to be useful.
As an example, I was looking at AutoTrader for a used car. Found one I liked, went to dealer, and purchased it. Now, weeks later I still get ads for vehicles. No problem; maybe they assume people search longer for a car. I'll buy that. Purchased flowers for my fiance and the next day I'm getting ads for flowers. Yes, I love her but I'm not buying flowers everyday.
Basically what I'm trying to say is that the ads lag behind what I'm in the market for. They aren't predictive (maybe Google does better when scanning your email) and thus don't add much value if you're already done with the purchase. Facebook seems a bit better because they link them to topics people are discussing in posts. I like to post about cool guitar gear I find so an ad for a discount at Guitar Center might be useful. However, that is rare too.
BTW, don't like ads anymore than anyone else.
I love the sound of distortion in the morning -- webcommando
Advertising Considered Harmful.
No. Advertising is just fine. Ever submitted a resume for a job? Advertising. Ever held up a sign to protest something? Advertising. Ever posted something political to your Facebook? Advertising. Advertising is nothing more than heading out into the big blue room and yelling "Here I am! Over here! Look at me!" ... or if you're from the South, "y'all ain't gonna believe this shit. Hold my beer." Advertising is neither good nor evil, neither harmful nor beneficial. It's just an umbrella term for anything that tries to get another person's attention.
Advertising becomes harmful when it encourages people to do things they shouldn't be doing. For example; Casinoes. Ever notice they almost exclusively target the elderly? These are vulnerable adults who, due to age-related cognitive deterioration, don't have the best critical thinking skills and tend to be overly-trusting. They're easy to take advantage of. And most of the lever-pulling zombies they have on the floor really, really, should not be there. They're on fixed income and they're pissing money away to pull a lever like some lab rat. A cocaine habit would be cheaper for some of these poor bastards.
Advertising becomes harmful when it crosses lines of privacy and cultural norms to get that extra sale. Obama, please stop sending me e-mails. I also don't want v1agr@ for 'cheep', penis or breast enlargement pills, and the list goes on. This isn't just ineffectual advertising, but it results in loss of impact globally, creating a Red Queen race amongst advertisers.
Advertising also becomes harmful when there's too much of it. Something like 1/3rd of television is overt advertisement, more if you consider the pop-unders and animated shit they put across the screen while you're watching the show. And then there's paid product placement. All tallied, probably over half of TV content is advertising.
And not just harmful to you or me, but also harmful to the advertiser! Having to jack the volume up to level 99 to try and capture the attention of your viewers because it's a veritable crap-flood for 5 minutes at a go, fed to you in 10-30 second screams out of your idiot box... is not improving your sales figures.
And that's just TV and print media. On the internet, advertising isn't just annoying or ineffectual -- the platforms for serving these ads all over the internet can be compromised to spread malware, viruses, and government-endorsed spyware to millions in mere moments.
My point here is that advertising itself isn't harmful; Particular advertising methods are. You can't get rid of advertising, and in fact, it has a valid use. Companies need ways of attracting new business. Targeted advertising, especially opt-in, is much better at doing that than previous methods. But as a society, we need to figure out a way to balance the legitimate business needs here with the equally legitimate privacy and quality of life concerns of the general population. A good balance between these things benefits all parties -- businesses and citizens alike.
But right now, it isn't balanced, and in fact is so out of balance it's toxic. But that does not mean advertising, as a concept, is harmful. So please be careful tossing off one-liners like this -- they rarely paint a complete picture, and encourage black and white thinking.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Meh, I don't care. I'd rather put actual money towards the ad-blocker teams if there was an adblock/ad arms race than face ads I don't want to see. I'd also stop using sites that had ads that intrude on my life.
What other people want me to see will never be a determining factor in what I choose to see in life. I don't care if high expense sites die in the process. I don't care if paywalls crop up for content with actual value. I don't care if its tragedy of the commons or not. I didn't sign a deal that said I had to be exposed to ads, so I won't(and I wouldn't sign such a deal).
Well sure. You deserve the internet.
Myth: Busted
Several countries have added internet access to their constitutions as a basic human right. Sorry if you don't live in one of those countries.
I'm sure someone will respond telling me that advertising is an outdated business model,
No. I don't think we will. We'll respond by telling you that you jumped the snark. Advertising isn't an outdated business model, it is essential to it. Nobody's arguing that. Well, nobody with more than a tenuous grip on the subject matter. Our concern is the toxic byproducts of excessive advertising, which include violations of privacy, computer security, and watering down of mass communication technologies like TV to the point they are so super-saturated in advertising as to be nearly unusable for the purpose of getting anything else, which in turn is caused largely by a massive power imbalance between private citizens and corporations -- our legislators are inaccessible, hidden behind a wall of money built by advertisers who are engaged in a Red Queen race with each other... with increases in advertising driving the response level and interest of their audience straight into the dirt.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
The premise is wrong. Ads have very little informative value. They are mostly acting on human psychology. The more expensive ads are, the less informative they are. Pretenders are another issue. Lemons versus peaches. The solution to the problem can vary for different products.
Advertising is more than just informing someone. It's informing someone with the intent of getting them to give you money they would not have given you otherwise. What we, as good citizens and neighbors, should want is for everyone to make the best decisions based on the best information. The way people do that is to use non-biased information sources. There's no way that using biased information can lead to better decisions than non-biased information, so advertising is always harmful.
When you lose your job, please remember these words of wisdom, and submit no job applications, resumes, or talk to anyone about your skills and abilities.
Dude, black and white thinking -- you got a severe case of it. Please see a doctor.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Unless you've agreed to some sort of TOS, you don't have a specific obligation.
I'm apparently in the /. minority, but I still believe there's a tacit agreement to keep websites operational by at least giving their revenue model a chance. Right now, that model is mostly advertising.
I have the option of disabling ads here, but they're fairly unobtrusive (and generally well targeted since I'm "all-in" with Google), so I do the "right" thing and leave them on. I do similar by leaving the ads on at places like 2+2.
Does giving them a chance equate to clicking every banner, watching every video and donating to every request? For me. No. ...but that doesn't change the fact that I believe that we have a tacit agreement to not simply "steal" the bandwidth from sites we frequent because ad-blocking makes our lives easier.
As a result of this thinking, I try to pick good sites to suck bandwidth from.
YMMV.
Except, from DAY ONE the model on the web was that the server serves up the content, and the browser decides how to interpret/display that content.
Who is the more entitled one; The person who configures his local browser to display and interpret content in the manner which he chooses, or the content producer who specifically disregards this model and implements his own business in such a way as it relies on specific vagaries of specific browsers in specific configurations, and then whines when people choose local configurations which break his model?
Yes you linked an image on a third party server, is there an RFC somewhere which specifies that a web browser MUST parse all HTML content and MUST load any content referred to, regardless of source?
If so, I missed it. The ad blockers are using the WWW as designed. Anyone claiming that this situation should be different because reality is breaking their business model is the entitled one.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
no, targetted advertising is bad fort advertisers. (as well as the rest of us).
My case: I need a new pair of windscreen wipers, so I googled for them, found the kind I wanted and the shops that sold them. Placed my order and when they arrived, stuck them on my car.
So now, when I browse the web (without adblock, for some sites) guess what adverts I get... and guess how many additional pairs of windscreen wipers I'm likely to purchase. So those advertisers are paying good money to show me adverts that I will definitely not be interested in. Which is ironic as targeted adverts are supposed to do exactly the opposite.
There is another argument in that the targetting is too easily gamed. I look at the hungersite.com, and click whatever advert is on there. So now I get ads for womens clothing and telecoms products. None of which I bother to look at anyway, but still shows that the targetting is pointless.
Ad systems that work, work based on the demographic of the website visited. You gather info about the kind of user you have, and then sell ad space directly to advertisers that are likely to want to advertise to your users. So a technology site is not going to do well with adverts for baby products, but will do much better with adverts for computer hardware. Its the same model used for television - people who watch soaps will want adverts for household products, those who watch space documentaries .. something else. Advertisers who want to maximise their advertising budgets would do well to understand this.
The funny thing with tacit agreements is... you can say they mean whatever you want them to mean, so no one with a brain cares if you believe they exist.
Da derp dee derp da teedly derpee derpee dum. Rated PG-13.
I see your problem. You are using a bad model to understand these interactions. One does not, usually, put ads on a website, one puts references in a website to other sites which serve ads. In the default configuration of most web browsers a browser does, connect to such sites and download their content...right along with the original site, and runs any and all scripts handed to it from all sites.
This is a default behaviour, and one Guy A has now based his attempt to turn a profit on.
Guy A is entitled when he starts bitching that people want to browse the web with nonstandard configurations that don't do what he expects and assumed all web browsers would do. It isn't Guy Bs fault that Guy A based his business model on unwarranted assumptions about Guy B's browser.
So yes, when Guy A complains about it, he is acting pretty entitled.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"