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More From Don Marti About Why Targeted Ads are Bad (Video 2 of 2)
The intro for yesterday's video interview with Don Marti started out by saying, "Don Marti," says Wikipedia, "is a writer and advocate for free and open source software, writing for LinuxWorld and Linux Today." As we noted, Don has moved on since that description was written. In today's interview he starts by talking about some things venture capitalist Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins has said, notably that people only spend 6% of their media-intake time with print, but advertisers spend 23% of their budgets on print ads. To find out why this is, you might want to read a piece Don wrote titled Targeted Advertising Considered Harmful. Or you can just watch today's video -- and if you didn't catch Part One of our video conversation yesterday, you might want to check it out before watching Part 2.
Stop putting together these multipart stories and then having a new thread to discuss it in. We hashed most of these points in the last thread. Now you're barfing it up onto the main page again... so we can have the same arguments a second time? Either wait until all the parts are there and post it as a whole, or join the threads together so we don't wind up rehashing things. It's wasteful and obnoxious.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I was HOPING in this second part, he'd say something new; but in essence it seems his entire argument comes down to various themes of "targeted advertising (online) is cheap and therefore anyone can and will advertise anything and you can't trust it".
Is that really it, or did I miss some insight as his voice made me doze off?
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
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I have instituted an easy fix for computers and networks under my control: I block ALL ads, web beacons, disallow DOM storage/LSO storage, tracking, 3rd-party cookies, adblock edge on all computers, disallow prefetch, CSS visited links, geo-enables, and more. Network is basically ad-free. This protects computers from malware, speeds up browsing, disallows tracking, and the Internet for these computers is enjoyable. I suggest the same as it really does help out with not using as much bandwidth. I dislike advertising, big business in general, and will not be tracked if I can help it. We use Debian on computers and disallow proprietary software in as much as humanly possible. Not perfect, but ad-free networks are great. Using router to block all ad company websites as well. Adding to this list daily. You would be surprised the bandwidth saved.
Targeted ads are bad because they're more likely to work, increasing waste and consumerism while decreasing environmentally and budget friendly reduction. This is why I have no trouble listening to the Blue Coal ads in old episodes of the Shadow or listening to the ad for the U.K. based ISP sponsering Linux Outlaws, but will block ads from or download only the text of articles sharing screenspace with ads that I fear might work on me.
The only reason to make this type of argument in a video is because you know your arguments will not stand up to careful scrutiny (no, I did not watch the video). If you have carefully thought out arguments, you put them in writing so that people can easily follow the flow of your logic, and go back and review how earlier pieces of your argument fit into what you just said.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Why should the percentage of time someone spends consuming print media be compared with the percentage of an advertiser's budget?
There are more factors at play than a person's viewing time. For example, who's to say that when a person reads print media, they are more focused on what they are looking at so the advertising found there is more effective.
Also, on the other side of the comparison, price as reflected in the budget will not evenly compare to number of consumable hours by the target audience. For example, a tv commercial during the superbowl will take up a huge portion of a budget, yet it will only be consumed for the length of a tv ad.
Percentage of time spent viewing an ad cannot reasonably match the percentage of a budget spent on those ads.
Dont play the video and use "Hide/Show Transcript" button. (Like I do)
You misspelled "sammich". :-)
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
Let me explain why you tin foil hat idiots are wrong. Everything has a cost to it, time if not money. Nobody makes anything unless they get something out of it. Sometimes, it's a warm fuzzy feeling they're after, but it can also be money. So basically, you need to pay for stuff. Ads are one way to pay for stuff without actually giving up your money. A lot of us just have another window/tab open to do something else, or pop-up blocker. And sometimes the ad is even useful. There have been ads where I was like, "Hey, I haven't heard of this product and it's pretty cool." I still didn't buy it, but I was happy to be informed. Targeted ads just make this even more common. I'm a dude. Without targeted ads, I would get ads about tampons. Now I get ads on video games (which I like) and tech stuff (which I like). This is better. I PREFER this system. If you want to create a video sharing site where a user pays $0.02 every time they watch a video, with zero ads, go ahead. I'm really not mocking the idea; for all I know it could work very well. But stop saying that anyone who's ok with Google/Facebook ads is a moron with no concern for their privacy. Some of us thought about it, and decided we like the ads.
what's with the porn music in the background?
The only reason to make this type of argument in a video is because you know your arguments will not stand up to careful scrutiny (no, I did not watch the video).
He did put it in writing. The written argument was referenced in part 1. Of course, no, you did not read it (or the summary that mentioned it).
captcha:nonsense
I google for something I want, I find the best price over the span of about ten minutes, then I either buy it or decide I don't really need it.
Then google and facebook show me ads for the next six months for something I'm not going to buy.
Those ads are completely wasted on me. Those guys at google aren't as smart as they claim to be.
people only spend 6% of their media-intake time with print, but advertisers spend 23% of their budgets on print ads
You know, I read that and I'm completely baffled. Either I'm a blithering idiot that has somehow missed the obvious reason why one should expect those two percentages to have a smaller (or larger?) spread, or the statement is bullshit and I've spotted it, which isn't saying much, and it's merely intended to trick other blithering idiots.
Which is it?
Where is it written that it is wrong for the spend percent to diverge from the erm, "media-intake" percent? Maybe that audience and the apparently limited time they spend in print is dramatically more valuable to advertisers.
I'm no advertiser, but if I were and someone said that to me, unqualified with any other factors that might establish a reason why there should be some expected correlation, exactly as it is in the summary, I'm pretty sure I'd write that guy off forever as either an idiot or someone who thinks I'm an idiot.
I've haven't read this story, or the last, or watched the video or anything, and I won't because I don't care enough. I'll take it on faith that the summary and the giant glaring hole right in the middle is representative of the muddle headedness of the whole matter and continue to not care.
So stop publishing this crap. I don't care.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
You misspelled "sammich". :-)
Why are we talking about Lake Sammammish?
I'm thirsty, can you get some iced tea while you're there?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
No Flash; Didn't Watch
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
So if I get his premise...
Conventional advertising is good because good companies with good products can afford the ads.
Ok, I guess I can kind of buy that if you through in a bunch of caveats and exceptions.
But where he's losing me is on targeted ads being bad because they're too efficient and thus lower the bar to enable any advertiser.
I understand the point... I once took out some very cheap ads that were targeted towards my nephew for an imaginary fake product in an elaborate prank.
However, that only worked because there was no competition. Nobody else bid on ad placements for the exact criteria that I knew perfectly defined my nephew and would result in him seeing that specific ad.
In real-world usage, if I'm constantly searching for shoes, I'm going to get all kinds of shoe vendors bidding to target me. Jimmy's Shoes won't be able to bid as high as Nike, and if what I want are Kenneth Cole, it won't matter anyway.
Even if I'm wrong and bidding isn't a factor, won't we just adjust to discrediting ads the same way that we discredit spam from Nigeria? Won't we rely more on editorial and user reviews as well as brands we've experienced and trust?
FTFY. But it's actually not entirely true. When I've made an effort to jump ship, I find that many of the alternative sites have not yet invented the paragraph.
Seriously, the background music in this video is the all-time low since the day I gleefully blacklisted Jon Katz. But sadly, this still beats conversing in sentence fragments. I've seen articles written by Katz since then, elsewhere, that were quite good. It's just that his round-about mush brain was a terrible fit at geek central. He was always trying to discover if he had anything at all to say by dangling it in front of enraged bulls with an actual clue.
For me, writing is thinking. So I pound out a few paragraphs here whenever I need to consolidate some nuance of my personal perspective on life, out of long habit. Sometimes I write to discharge something old, tired and ugly. Other times I write to embrace a fresh new slant on an old issue. It's useful to have a place to write where I can fully exploit the revolving door of mental evolution. If I were writing under my own name on a blog, or something more formal, there would be far less opportunity to write in the jettison mode.
For about fifteen years I used to patronize one of the first outstanding microbrews in town, in a heritage building with a patio overlooking the waterfront backed by the quaint skyline of the garden city. About eight years ago you could see their business model shifting. First, fetch your own beer from the bar turned into table service, who handed you a menu and didn't even bother to mention the special keg of something especially interesting at the end of the bar. Then the menu went all over the place, including a sojourn through expensive and unpalatable, before fixing the quality problem, but leaving the price alone, in the bracket where mainly tourists are willing to go.
Once a year or so, we meet there out of pure nostalgia. The beer's still good, but everything else is either sad or expensive. True beer lovers are not their target market any longer. We don't belong there. I don't belong, here, really. I just haven't completely kicked the inertia.
That's "sudo" make me a sandwich.
Hand in your fake id AND your geek card.
I read TFA (but didn't watch the video because I hate watching interviews on the internet). The argument boiled down to:
The last part is classic wrong thinking in economics, but I think in this case the rest of the argument is still valid. It just takes a different mechanism. I've never known somebody who thought ads actually communicated anything about how likely the seller is lying. But I have known many people who enjoy creative ads, like Geico (before it just got self-referential and boring) and others I can't remember right now.
Targeted ads are not creative. They're actually a little creepy most of the time, which is probably a major part of why more people are trying to block them. But more importantly, and here's where TFA has a good point, the ads are usually crap. The kind of crap we've seen in our email for the last decade. The kind that people have already figured out is dumb.
The point in TFA applies here because it explains how this happens. Targeted ads are dumb because they're cheaper than running expensive ads on high quality sites. That causes more low quality sellers to be able to afford the ads.
The key here is that we're picking up on the average low quality of the ads, not the underlying reason. Nobody goes around thinking about how much information an ad is signaling (besides its literal content). But in this case, the underlying reason seems directly related to our perception.
I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.
Before showing your face in public and advocating for a position, realize that people are judging you based on how you look. You will be a more effective advocate for your position if you don't come off as a weirdo. In this case the video maker has a mountain-man rapist beard.
To bearded video guy: before appearing in public again go to a hair salon (not a barbershop) and pay $30-60 to get a haircut and beard trim done by a woman or a gay man.
Unfortunately, and the really sad thing is that Don Martin is no longer with us.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Why would a taco want to be made into a sandwich?
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You remind me of the people who always whine about dupes.
It was always amusing that people cared about that. Half the time I missed the original post. The other half I missed the dupe. Maybe you're just checking slashdot too much. :)
You know what? Other people come and have the same discussion. Redundancy of discussion is assumed and unavoidable, since this is a news site, with comments on each of the endless stream stories.
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My post's on topic, useful, & correct - why down mod? Quoting ULTRON on this one, per my subject, addressed to "hit & run" unjustifiably downmodding my post trolls:
"You are NOTHING to me - 1 by 1, I will destroy you: I will never tire. I will Never SHOW MERCY, & I will never stop, until each and every one of you is gone..." - ULTRON (position 4:27 on the YouTube player control)-> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_-Ar-LTeYk
* Truth be told? I don't just *think* I've 'destroyed' the one doing the unjustifiable downmodding before - I know I have - hence, their "not man" behavior downmodding 'hit & run' style, yet not technically justifying on topic validly, why.
Their favorite color must be transparent - I see right thru it.
---
(As far as Ultron? He rocks, & James Spader's bringing him to the unwashed masses on the "Silver Screen" in the upcoming Marvel's Avengers 2: The age of ULTRON - whom I always considered one of their top foes!)
"Rue that you are but flesh, While I, am ALL-ABIDING METAL!"
APK
P.S.=> Anyhow/anyways: This place is unbelievable - it condones weak weasels that you can't identify doing bogus abuses of the moderation system + proving they won't stand behind their bogus rating, or their words either - the moderation system here needs that adjustment put into place & it'd be a far better place here (& I'm FAR from the only one asking that around here)).
Especially vs. trollish worms that pull "hit & run" downmods that are technically unjustifiable - & if anyone doesn't like that, they're free to validly technically disprove any points here on the topic regarding hosts efficacy...
(Good luck - you'd need it, plus a miracle (& you know it, hence the bogus downmod, + doubtless futher ac trollinga afterwards))
... apk