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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.
Because there's always going to be a disproportionate amount of ads delivered for those willing to spend the most money on them. If there's 30,000 users who actually like fast food, and McDonalds pays for 5 million impressions per day, people who don't like McDonalds are going to have some golden arches shoved in their face.
I don't think that there's any such thing as an advert that I actually want to see.
yeah. I know that when I look for something - like motorcycle boots, I see tons of ads for motorcycle boots. The problem - they are the SAME boots I already looked at. If I wanted THOSE I would have bought them. Give me other boots. Stupid.
Do people really still browse the web without an ad blocker plugin?
And then the online world becomes customized, just for you.
Fuck that, just give me the information. I don't need no customization. There's a reason AdBlock exists.
It's bad enough we have to put up with shitty web sites 'designed' by people trying to show off how shiny, but unusable, things can be, we don't need ads trying to predict what we want adding to the damage.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
If an ad exists in the same context as that which I'm attempting to read, it's like a gnat buzzing in front of my eyes. It's a distraction, and an annoyance. Annoying those you want to reach isn't the way to communicate your message,
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
I could not disagree with this more. There is nothing "beautiful" about harvesting personal data to serve contextual ads. I doesn't matter how well-targeted the ads are -- ads are not a benefit to me at all. The real problem with this scenario is that my personal data gets harvested in the first place.
Because the advertisers overreach and try to push stuff that their audience is unlikely to want. Advertising is full of wishful thinking about how powerful adverts are etc - many advertisers seem to believe that it is simply a matter of "targeting" their adverts and then people will invariably buy, no matter whether they like, need or can afford the product. The reality, meanwhile, is probably that by far the largest part of adverts are unwelcome, simply because people were not looking to buy and they feel affronted, when they are being slapped in the face with some irrelevant distraction. If you want to sell a product, you have to persuade your customer to like you, but nobody likes SPAM, whether it comes in emails, inserted into your favourite tv-program or through your letter box, and all that kind of advertising achieves is to alienate huge numbers of potential customers.
I know and deal with a lot of marketing people every day. People get very confused about what marketing really is... to the point that most don't really know. Marketing primary product is: Marketing
They spend about 95% of their time proving they are worth keeping around. They do things like send free gifts to 100 targets considered to be "Leads" Then, later, when a salesman makes a sale to that person they claim "See? We made that happen!" But if you ask the salesman about the deal he says "I call everyone... every month. They launched a marketing campaign for winter coats in October. Of course they bought one. The free pen had nothing to do with it."
So what did the free pen really do? Allowed marketing to run a report showing a correlation between the pen and the sale, then suggest to management that is was a CAUSE not a correlation.
So now we're going down the same rabbit hole with the internet. Want to fix it? Disprove their nonsense data. Show that this garbage doesn't work. It shouldn't be that hard given the amount of data captured. Pop-up adds generate clicks... but do they generate sales? No... and it took a while for the industry to realize that, but they did.
So, are you shilling for the ad industry, or do you really believe this is supposed to be a good thing?
Sorry, but I'm not interested in your ads of any form, I'm not interested in targeted ads at all, and I don't trust the entities gathering this information with any of it, or that they won't abuse it.
So, screw your contextual advertising. I will continue to block every ad tracking site I can identify, block your ads, your web bugs, and everything else I can.
If you think letting unknown third parties collect information about you, put cookies on your machine so they can know everywhere else you go, run scripts, run Flash ... or pretty much anything else ... is a good idea, then you're either clueless, or getting paid from this.
I think your entire premise is flawed, or dishonest.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
How many contextual ads are for things the user just bought? These people are probably the *least* likely future customers.
I recently reinstalled my OS and started Chrome without AdBlock for the first time in a while. God, the internet is like walking through Times Square on an acid trip without AdBlock. It would be sadly funny if it didn't bring my browser to a crawl.
Online advertising is a waste of money as it often irritates the very people it is intended to draw in as customers. Actually searching online for something is terrible as the results you get are invariably based on page rank, not on the suitability of the product for the customer.
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Let's just get this out of the way: I, for one, am happy that I never get tampon ads online.
Ads are chosen by advertisers, not some personal shopping assistant. The ads I've seen on FB and Youtube (which is where I actually see most of the online ads) tend to be at least tangentially related to my life. Tech stuff that I might actually be interested in. Concerts for genres I like. I know that they're trying to sell me stuff that I don't have* so there will be misses. YT ads normally allow a bypass after 5 seconds. There have been two cases in the last month that I've watched the whole ad, because it happened to be something I was interested in or wanted more information about (but not badly enough to go look it up). That's an advertising win right there.
Except LG. I've seen more ads for the G3 that I already own on FB than for possibly any other single product. Note to LG marketing: I'm not going to buy a second one just for fun; you can stop.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The difference between Facebook and Amazon, with Facebook, you are the product, not the customer; with Amazon, you are the customer, not the product being sold.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I don't understand all the comments expressing bafflement as to why you get ads for something you already purchased. The contextual advertising company has no access to your purchase history... if they are going to serve an ad, guessing that you might have already not made a purchase is not a bad start. Is it usually wrong? Sure! Most ads are ineffective. But it's way better than showing the same ad to some random schmuck.
And why do you see Amazon ads after you've already purchased something from Amazon? Well, if you did ANY web browsing at all about it prior to the purchase, it likely got picked up by a contextual advertising company, which, again, has no access to your purchase history, and therefore has no idea they are serving an Amazon ad for something you already bought. The ad may not even be paid for by Amazon; it could just as easily be an affiliate marketer.
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.
Facebook is banned here, precisely for trying that shit. Facebook domains don't resolve.
Same here
Facebook is not trying to accurately place adverts only to the people who would want to buy the advertised good.
Facebook is trying to sell adverts.
If they can say 'targeted ads have a 30% higher click-rate' - then that may be enough to get people to buy them.
Even if it's off-topic for 95% of the people it's shown to.
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).
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