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Why Do Contextual Ads Fail?
minstrelmike writes If we give up all our privacy on-line for contextual ads, then how come so many of them are so far off the mark? Personal data harvesting for contextual ads and content should be a beautiful thing. They do it privately and securely, and it's all automated so that no human being actually learns anything about you. And then the online world becomes customized, just for you. The real problem with this scenario is that is we're paying for contextual ads and content with our personal data, but we're not getting what we pay for. Facebook advertising is off target and almost completely irrelevant. The question is: Why? Facebook has a database of our explicitly stated interests, which many users fill out voluntarily. Facebook sees what we post about. It knows who we interact with. It counts our likes, monitors our comments and even follows us around the Web. Yet, while the degree of personal data collection is extreme, the advertising seems totally random.
Yep, some other reasons:
1) Too many ads are annoying
2) If ads are too well-targeted then they become creepy
3) They often show you ads for things you've just bought. If I get a new laptop why do I want to see more laptop ads?
4) The products may well be out of your price range (a lot of Facebookers are young and broke) & this is more likely to depress the shit out of you than anything else. Just because you chat about Tahiti doesn't mean you can afford to go there.
5) Real-world advertising has increased massively - more TV ads, infomercials, free catalogs, pull-outs in the newspapers, 'sponsored' articles - it all gets a bit too much, so you go online to escape and get blasted with even more of the damn things.
6) Targeting only works sometimes. Example: I look for something on Ebay when logged on & get an email the day after 'Are you still looking for this?' If the answer is yes then cool. On the other hand if I've bought that particular article somewhere else or was just browsing aimlessly then Ebay is wasting my time and bandwidth.
IMHO, this should be part of your profile. When it comes time for you to purchase something, instead of getting some flashy ad in your face, you would get a pile of specs veted by a third party.
If the product doesn't stand up to comparison in the specs, then they shouldn't bother advertising to you. If the product does stand up, it's an easy sell and well worth the effort for them to send you the ad.
Instead... sadly, they send you crap and you fight to tell them that you're not interested in their jingle, bluster or shiny copy.
They even make it easy to order groups of items. "Order Drive Enclosure and this hard drive right now." My only gripe is that they present it as if it's a great deal (Buy X and Y for $50). When you look at the individual items, though, there's no discount. It's just the cost of the items added up (e.g. X costs $30 & Y costs $20).
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
2) If ads are too well-targeted then they become creepy
Creepiest ad I ever saw was ...
You might be interested in this (9 page) NYT Magazine article from 2012, How Companies Learn Your Secrets, about Target's targeted advertising algorithms. One case in point were pregnancy-related ads Target sent to a teenage girl, still living at home with her parents, based on some obscure buying habits. The father was outraged and complained to the store manager. Turns out she was actually pregnant.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Truthfully, the actual purpose of the advertising for cars involves makin recent purchasers feel good about their recent purchase. Purchasers who feel good about their recent purchase are more likely to talk their friends and acquaintances about their car and have a greater influence on them than the direct advertising can do. Listen to someone talk about their newly purchased car and you can hear the tag lines of the advertising coming out of their mouths - people use the advertising to focus their own conversations - whether its the rally tires, or MacPherson strut suspension, lock-up transmission, or a zillion other features that most people even know what they really are. These person's status upgrade depends on their being able to make the case to their friends that they made a good purchase, and didn't buy the kind of cars that social losers buy.
Toyota had a huge problem marketing to young first-time car buyers - they kept coming out with low-cost cars that they'd like to market to that group, but found that older buyers were buying them, and when young people saw old people driving the same car, their interest in them plummeted. They were more successful marketing the Scion than previous attempts because they went out of their way to make the car unattractive to older people, as well as other initiatives, including opening up the specifications early to third-party customizers, to encourage buyers to make the cars even funkier.