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.

Comments

Duh

[i kan reed]

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.

Re:Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Duh

[fahrbot-bot]

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.

Hardly surprising

[brantondaveperson]

I don't think that there's any such thing as an advert that I actually want to see.

Re:Hardly surprising

[gstoddart]

When deciding what to buy I seek ads out.

Funny, I use search engines and read review sites.

Ads have never added any benefit to me on the internet, and I simply don't care to provide them with the information they'd need to do a targeted ad.

Because I'm not interested in either the ad, or having these companies know anything about who I am and what I like.

In fact, ads want me to let arbitrary web sites run scripts and other crap which makes things less secure. Think I'd trust the people at DoubleClick to run scripts or Flash? Hell no, the entire domain is blocked at my firewall.

Re:Hardly surprising

[swv3752]

A year ago I bought a Volt. In the month prior I did a bunch of research on electric cars. Six months later I was still getting ads on Leafs and Volts. Those ads seemed fairly pointless as I already owned a Volt. I find it happens a lot that I look for a certain product, then after I buy it, I will get ads for that product. Except for items that I buy regularly, then I never see an ad.

Google, when I buy a bathroom scale, I am no longer interested in hearing about bathrooms scales two weeks later. I buy tea regularly, why do I never see an ad for tea.

Re:Hardly surprising

[Dr. Evil]

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.

Re:Hardly surprising

[craighansen]

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.

they fundamentally don't get it.

[Roachgod]

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.

Huh

[Ultra64]

Do people really still browse the web without an ad blocker plugin?

Customization?

[smooth wombat]

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.

Whaa??

[JohnFen]

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.

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.

Marketting

[Charliemopps]

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.

Re:Marketting

[Anonymous Coward]

You had me at "free pen". You should lead with that next time.

Hmmm ...

[gstoddart]

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.

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.

Re:yep, timing and related products

[Archangel Michael]

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.

Is everyone really that confused?

[sirwired]

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.

Re:Speak for yourself

[WaffleMonster]

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

Re:yep, timing and related products

[Jason Levine]

Amazon gets it right on their product pages - people who bought this also bought these things.

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).