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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.
Targeted ads have been around forever, but with less granularity. You don't advertise malt liquor in The New Yorker, and you don't advertise Tiffany in High Times. [Unless Tiffany started making bongs... ...did they... ...I digress.]
About a year ago, I took the plunge. I let Google see everything my Android sees and logged into Chrome.
Net result to me for giving up my privacy to big do-no-evil? Better service overall across the Google platform, with a minimal amount of what appears to be well tailored advertising for me. I'll let Google read my maps searches in exchange for being "politely notified" about a restaurant near my destination that has a 2-for-1 special that night.
I love 'em.
Also... Obligatory Futurama:
Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 21st century?"
Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree.
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
But I find a lot of adverts are extremely badly targeted.
For example, "Thank you for buying a BCI 526Y ink cartridge. Are you interested in our amazing special offer of a Canon MX885 printer to put the thing in?".
Or, "Thank you for buying an SD card from us. Here is a list of digital cameras that we sell should you want something to put it in."
Both those are real life examples from Amazon.
Come on, how many people buy a random inkjet cartridge and then wonder what they are supposed to do with it. Maybe they could wait for a bit, then advertise the same inkjet cartridge, in case I might think of buying it from Staples instead. Or maybe I might want the Cyan cartridge at some point, or the BCI 525Bk one. But that's not what they do.
Then there's the ads that follow you round the internet. For example I have a look at a pair of shoes a particular shoe shop. Then I see adverts everywhere I go for that exact same pair of shoes that that exact same shoe shop. Stop stalking me. I know you sell those shoes. I know I didn't buy them. Maybe there is a reason why I didn't buy them. Just leave me alone.
SOFIXIT
You can try but I revert any change that doesn't come with an additional three references and was approved in the talk page prior to the edit.
No, if you read the article, he's saying the opposite, targeted advertising is harmful to consumers.
His central thesis is that advertising is valuable to consumers to help correct an information imbalance between the buyer and seller. The buyer needs to be able to separate the low-quality option from the high-quality option. Seeing that one company is willing to spend $50,000 on an ad in a national publication is a good indication that they're confident in their product to believe they can recoup that. If a company is willing to spend $3 on targeted ads, there's a better chance that they can recoup that before the word of mouth got around and people stopped buying.
Basically, the more expensive advertising is, the more it's only available to the contenders and not the pretenders. Targeted ads even the playing field and lose their value to buyers.
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
The central part of the argument, referring to papers by Davis et. al., seems like batshit lunacy to me.
Davis et. al. ask the question, “Is advertising rational?” and come up with: “It is not so much the claims made by advertisers that are helpful, but the fact that they are willing to spend extravagant amounts of money on a product that is informative.”... what is a “screening mechanism” that will separate the sellers who believe their products to be of high quality from the deceptive sellers? The idea is to come up with some activity that is costly enough for low quality sellers that they won’t do it, but still affordable for high quality sellers. Advertising shows that a seller has the money to advertise (which they presumably got from customers, or from investors who thought the product was worth investing in), and believes that the product will earn enough repeat sales to justify the ad spending.
That's crazy talk. If that were true, advertising could just be a bunch of people burning money onscreen and saying "yeah, our stuff is so awesome we can do this with our spare cash". But what advertising really is (usually) is a bunch of scummy emotional ploys to make people feel deprived and needy of some product. Personally, I use any advertising I see as a signal of what not to buy: Banks, insurance, investment services, phones that advertise widely on TV always have the shittiest customer service (they must be so big they couldn't possibly care about me as a customer). As my friend says, "advertising is always a communication of the problems that company is trying to fix".
Advertising in general is just scummy shit to make people do what they don't want. Unfortunately Marti's argument falls apart by it being hinged on this insane "rational economy" assertion.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
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).
This feels like a precise regurgitation of my own position, only I also feel that advertisement as a whole is a tragedy of the commons problem that sabotage GDP for the individual advertiser's benefit.
I guess that second statement calls for some explanation. There is a nominal way you'd prefer to spend your money. If ads work(and clearly they do) then they spend capital(and labor) to change a person's spending preference from what they'd nominally enjoy. Economically, that's a decrease in utility, and thus rent-seeking.
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
Is part of that right to internet access the right to use YouTube without seeing an ad for Colgate Toothpaste or listen to Pandora without hearing a blurb for a Ford Fusion?
Umm... they can try. Good luck getting past all the adblock in my browser though. And fun fact; Have you ever noticed that if you're willing to wait until a couple hours after a show has initially aired, the torrent sites light up like a big christmas tree with new torrents of that show... invariably with the advertising cut out? I salute these people; Truly, you are doing God's work there. I will gladly wait a day to watch my favorite shows; Cut away all the fat and leave just a lean, mean, content machine. Delicious.
All those people who can't wait or don't know how to download a torrent client and join the revolution... they deserve the advertising. Burn in advertising hell, you lazy peons. :3
#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.
I think you missed the (early) Google business model. Ads shouldn't be annoying. They should be something that actually helps folks find what they're looking for. If ads show folks stuff that they're not looking for, then folks are perfectly morally right in shutting out those ads---screw the advertisers with their large bandwidth bills and starving families. I have no sympathy for corps that are intentionally trying to waste my time.
I've yet to see anyone complain about non-intrusive sometimes helpful ads (e.g. google adwords that show up when you search for something in google.com). Most ads aren't like that.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
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.
I completely understand your point, but I really think putting resume submission in the advertising column is a bit of a stretch. Ads are mostly unsolicited. I rarely go around shoving my resume into the hands of random pedestrians.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
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"
The only buying decision that matters is the one where the advertising agency convinces their customer to buy the advertising they are proposing. What the ad tries to sell to the end user is completely irrelevant. By the time the ad gets onto the air, into print or on a website, the sale has already been made - the ad agency has got its money.
Whether advertising is direct, targetted, stuffed under your windscreen wiper, blocked by a program or on the front page of the NYT is just a technique used to sell the advertising - not the product. Once agencies find that one form of advertising no longer convinces the client to part with their cash, they'll find the next "new thing" and the whole world will move on.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I completely understand your point, but I really think putting resume submission in the advertising column is a bit of a stretch. Ads are mostly unsolicited. I rarely go around shoving my resume into the hands of random pedestrians.
Stay unemployed long enough, and you'll be holding up a sign that says "IT/Network Administrator. Will Compute For Food." Actually, I did that for a few days. While wearing a cardboard cutout of a computer monitor around my head, and the text was on another piece of cardboard made to look like a keyboard. Got several interviews out of that -- I guess some employers still like seeing initiative.
People need to square with the idea that advertising isn't evil; anymore than a screwdriver is. It's the person that's evil (or not). Now my creative advertising worked for me; Why should corporations not be afforded the same priviledge? It all comes down to moderation and limitation; There's some things we just shouldn't do. But that's where the discussion needs to be; Not making blanket statements and proclaiming ultimate good or evil. Leave that to the professional news casting of Fox News if you need a dose of "the sky is falling". I want reasonable debate from reasonable people.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
My resumes are honest, solicited, and submitted for positions where I believe I am the best candidate. You can't say that about advertisements. A data sheet is not an advertisement.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Targeted advertising is great if you use it purely to discover products.
You know what else is great for discovering products? Asking knowledgable people with no financial interest in my decision.
If I'm dumb
Advertising doesn't only affect the dumb. If you've seen an ad for something, even if you don't remember the ad consciously, you're still going to favor the familiar, even if you don't know you're doing it. It's insidious.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Holding a gun to somebody's head and demanding they stop using advertisements is not the minimum bar for being entitled. Are you serious?
Straw man. That's not what he said. Fact of the matter ism that guy implied that being disgusted by advertisements or not bothering to watch an advertisement makes you entitled, which is absolutely false.
When somebody gives you something on the condition that advertisements play, and you decide you'll just take it but not run the advertisements, that's entitlement.
Incorrect. That's using something because it's there, and then modifying/blocking certain data. That is not the same as feeling that you're entitled to anything, and to say it is is to demonstrate that you're just using the word "entitlement" as a meaningless buzzword.
You don't deserve to get their content anyway -- thinking you do is a sense of entitlement.
You're arguing with people that largely don't exist. No one truly believes that they're entitled to the ability to control what other people do with their own websites, and you probably know it, but you instead choose to argue with straw men.
Try reading the reply the AC replied to: "but that doesn't change the sense of entitlement of people who can't be bothered to watch a 15-second ad before being served endless on demand video streaming by YouTube or mostly-free music by Pandora." I guess you're entitled if you can't be bothered to watch ads. That is exactly what he said; read the comment yourself.
Da derp dee derp da teedly derpee derpee dum. Rated PG-13.
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.
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"
Your definition for advertising is so broad as to be meaningless. Advertising can be more narrowly defined as corporate speech intended to persuade potential consumers into taking some sort of economic action, usually the purchasing of a product or service. The keyword there is persuade. They have no intention or incentive to be truthful, or to take the consumer's needs into account. Advertisers can and do use every trick and psychological hack available to sell products. It doesn't matter if the consumer really needs it. It doesn't matter if it's harmful. It doesn't matter if better alternatives exist. If some communication is giving you that information, it's not an ad, it's an informative communication usually by a third party (think Consumer Reports or Amazon product reviews).
Advertising is harmful because it is by its very nature deceptive, dishonest, and serves the needs of the advertiser, not the consumer.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
You did not listen to his argument and your definition of advertising is far to0 broad.
There's no way that using biased information can lead to better decisions than non-biased information, so advertising is always harmful
That statement is 100% true in all cases.
I have never seen advertising that contained a shred of truth. As another put it, advertising has always been about psychological manipulation of a person. This is also 100% true.
Is it advertising for me to post a resume online? No. Not if it was all factual.
Take a manufacturer's website for example. When you look at a product it of course covers the major talking points of the device itself. Already, it's many orders more informative (with non-biased information being included) than any regular advertising period.
Another important thing to note is specifications.
On what advertising, anywhere, is there an interactive tab that gives you black and white specifications? Nowhere.
So your definition is just far too broad and serves as a Straw man.
Once you have a tighter definition of just what advertising is , it's clear that he is absolutely correct. All advertising is indeed harmful, because all advertising contains only manipulative content devoid of any real truth. In fact, dissemination of truth is the last purpose of advertising.
Your warning about "black and white" thinking is really just an admonishment based on a Straw man platform you constructed and is therefore baseless itself.
Advertising is extremely harmful as a concept and you are certainly correct about one thing, a Red Queen Race.
People have fought against advertising for as long as I can remember. Advertisers fought back, and then became ever more greedy. What do we have now?
Louder commercials - This actually required laws to stop
More commercials - I've seen this over 40 years now. It's more than half and TV is so toxic with overlays that it's unwatchable to anyone in my generation now.
No Sanctuary tolerated, No Quarter Given - Fucking blaring advertisements at fucking gas stations! - NO PEACE ANYWHERE
Regulated devices. - PUOs (Prohibited User Operations) that are protected by DRM law that mandate you MUST put up with our shit period.
Draconian copyright laws - The law itself is being perverted to serve those who control content (not make it), and advertising is only a beach head unto our very way of life.
No, advertising is so harmful and toxic to the human experience that it has become an evil with its own life at this point with marketers and executives worshiping at its unholy altar to receive the blessings or more money, and the control that goes with it.
Ask yourself this: Has my life really become better due to more advertising?
People saw "posts advocating use of someone's special hosts file" and had bad flashbacks to do with that jerk who spammed his hosts file spamvert messages all over Slashdot a while back.
The above post, in fact, looks suspiciously like said spamverts...was it this guy?