83% Of Consumers Believe Personalized Ads Are Morally Wrong (forbes.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Forbes: A massive majority of consumers believe that using their data to personalize ads is unethical. And a further 76% believe that personalization to create tailored newsfeeds -- precisely what Facebook, Twitter, and other social applications do every day -- is unethical.

At least, that's what they say on surveys.

RSA surveyed 6,000 adults in Europe and America to evaluate how our attitudes are changing towards data, privacy, and personalization. The results don't look good for surveillance capitalism, or for the free services we rely on every day for social networking, news, and information-finding. "Less than half (48 percent) of consumers believe there are ethical ways companies can use their data," RSA, a fraud prevention and security company, said when releasing the survey results. Oh, and when a compan y gets hacked? Consumers blame the company, not the hacker, the report says.

Comments

kill them all

[gravewax]

I think you can drop the personalised "Consumers believe Ads are morally wrong". Ad's used to be kinda ok, but now companies like Google and other Ad purveyors have become such arseholes and so intrusive that I think you would find a majority think they need to be blocked. It seems they think it is their right to intrude on us and how dare we look to stop them. I think it was about 2 years ago when they broke the camels back with the sound and video Ad's, especially the automatic playback or mouseover ones, now all my browsers have an Ad blocker installed, hell even where I am currently contracted is looking at putting an ad blocker into their corporate desktop image.

Re: kill them all

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly.

They are so intrusive it's ridiculous. They show up everywhere. Break up content so much you can barely watch or read anything anymore.

They steal personal data on us to personalize these ads. In many instances they show things that can be kind of questionable to show. In some instances they even have truly obnoxious ads that practically scream at people.

More crazy yet, using our personal info, they frequently show us things we either already bought or decided not buy. They don't only do it once or twice a day but can even show us 1000s of times a day the same stuff that we are NOT going to buy.

To be clear, yes, old school advertising is significantly better. I find that often times old school ads will show me relevant items I wasn't aware existed. Now we have these new 'improved' piece of shit ads that can't go away soon enough.

Re: kill them all

[rtb61]

Yeah, which is exactly why they are using an ad blocker, like duhh.

Ads should only ever by aligned with content but that takes time and costs money. No corporations has any right to private information and should by law be required to disclose all information they hold about people to those people.

Re: kill them all

[Z00L00K]

"Personalized" ads are rarely relevant for me anyway and are just obnoxious, especially if they are for items that I recently purchase.

Ads served have gotten totally out of the hands of the consumer these days and the only remedy is to protect yourself using adblockers.

What I worry is that soon we will see a huge backlash where any actor in an ad have to watch their back when they are out and about. But the way around that would be for the ad companies to rely solely on avatars.

Overall there are way too many ads, which is one reason why people stop watching TV shows. If there's a product placement in a TV show where there could have been one brand or another - like a car - then it doesn't matter for me as a viewer and that has happened since TV started to run series more or less. But when there's a push for that product it's giving me the creeps. Interrupting shows is also a huge annoyance. So overall people do find other avenues of entertainment. Some may even stream filtered versions or purchase the hard media version. But even hard media like DVD and Blu-Ray suffers from the ad disease with unskippable ads that soon are getting irrelevant since they are for a limited time.

Add to it - ad serving is one of the avenues for malware as well.

Re: kill them all

[Opportunist]

This is why we block them. Duh.

Re: kill them all

[fazig]

These days, the majority of people who access the internet would probably do that through their mobile devices. And it often happens outside of the WiFi they have control over.
Coincidentally systems where the developer also made it less convenient to block them than on PC operating systems.

From personal experience, most people can't be assed to do something about it on their own, so they bear it on their mobile devices.

I would assume that a significant part of the population is exposed to their personalized ads.
Now I can't speak from personal experience, since I do block ads as well. I don't have looked enough at other people's ads to be sure what they are getting. But if so many complain about it, from what should be a decent sample size (if taken care of other biases), there must be something about it that bothers these people.

Re: kill them all

[CrimsonAvenger]

"Personalized" ads are rarely relevant for me anyway and are just obnoxious, especially if they are for items that I recently purchase.

If "personalized ads" are for items that you've recently purchased, then whomever did the algorithm for "personalizing" those ads was a complete cretin. If you just bought one, then you're (probably) not in the market for one.

On the other hand, knowing you just bought a hoover vacuum, ads for bags for hoover vacs might be useful....

Re: kill them all

[rnturn]

Indeed. I've trained myself over the years to ignore random images in the margins of the web pages I'm reading. But it's when they pop up and obscure the content that I'm trying to read that really pisses me off---regardless of whether thy're personalized of not. You know the ones... they pop up or slide across the web page about 5 seconds after you start reading and require you to stop, close the effing ad, and then reread the paragraph you were in the middle of. They're like some guy wearing a sandwich board stepping in between you and a friend while you're trying to hold a conversation. Or when the owner of the web page feels it's oh-so clever to pollute the comments section of their page by injecting ads in between the actual user comments. Yes, personalization is creepy and/or disgusting but it's the constant barrage of interruptions that I really dislike and what makes me less likely to return to a site.

Re: kill them all

[Cro Magnon]

Unfortunately, the ads ARE for the product I just bought, so yes, the algorithms were designed by complete cretins. Personalized ads need to FOAD.

Re: kill them all

[petermgreen]

If "personalized ads" are for items that you've recently purchased, then whomever did the algorithm for "personalizing" those ads was a complete cretin.

Afaict the issue is that the advertising firms know what you have been looking for but not what you have actually bought.

So you start looking for a new vacum cleaner, the ad networks pick up on this from the pages you visit and the search keywords you use. They start showing you vacum cleaner ads because people who are searching for vacum cleaners have a higher probability of cliking through on vacum cleaner ads than generic ads.

At some point you go ahead and buy a vacum cleaner, but the ad networks don't know that. So the ads for vacum cleaners continue for a while until they have gathered enough information to belive you are no-longer interested.

Re: It's okay

[Anonymous Coward]

age old complaint. Except when the user sees an ad for something they did not know they needed. That is the exception.

Yeah, right up until that moment you are walking through the subway and some personalised sign shouts out your name and a big picture of a spiked butt plug appears.

Brave Browser

[Anonymous Coward]

Promote an advertising experience that's not invasive and respects both the content creator and the consumer by downloading the Brave browser.

Re:Brave Browser

[unicorn]

The only way you're going to get what you want, is if you stay offline, and cancel your TV service.

Don't let the door hit you on your way out.

Re: Brave Browser

[Anonymous Coward]

Or use adblock and torrent sites and you'll never see an ad again.

That expanding buttplug seems to be making you cranky. You should ask your wife for the key when she's done with the pool guy.

Search Serves Consumers, Targeting Serves Corporat

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't need corporations to personalize content for consumers, when consumers can personalize it with a couple key words, or choose customization with a click.

Personalizing content including advertisements serves the corporation and creates opportunities to manipulate, deceive, invade, and sell the minds of human beings who are all classified as consumers. That is only the first bias that corporations place on you. The next thing they do is limit who you become my limiting or shifting the bias of information that you receive, whether to be less diverse and more like the you they decide you are, or more like the you they want you to be.

All search engines should be legally required to provide a 100% bias-free and private search experience as an option to any user at any time. The alternative is ultimately evil and simply unnecessary to the consumer. How much does Google make from you in dollars per day? I was thinking to know that number and be able to pay then for a zero data retention unbiased option, and I want the government to enforce their compliance.

It's as important as clean water and healthy food, since information is something we consumers as much as the other two. Think about it. Add your voice.

All advertising is morally wrong.

[TigerPlish]

All adverts are morally wrong.

They either:

1. Prey on your fears

2. Exploit your darkest, deepest desires

3. Promise you an easy-out to your problems

The best things in life speak for themselves and need no pushing. You find them or they find you by word of mouth, or you see it on your own, or.... you just know about it through some inexplicable mechanism.

Re:All advertising is morally wrong.

[The Evil Atheist]

Well no. Adverts aren't forbidden from being neutral - not preying on fears, not exploiting desires, and not promise easy solutions.

It's just that those adverts that do those things gets more attention by design.

Re:All advertising is morally wrong.

[caseih]

I disagree. Quite often I'll see an ad for a product that solves a particular problem in my current line of work, and occasionally I'll buy the product. If the ad is relevant, non-intrusive, and not pushy, they can be invaluable tools both for the marketer and for the person or business who might need that product (even if he doesn't know it yet). Quite often I've seen an ad in a trade magazine and thought, oh that looks like a very good idea that could really benefit me. So I've bought more than a few things (business-related) because of that.

Maybe one could argue consumer ads for things no one really needs or can afford are immoral. But not all advertising in general. I don't mind my podcast ads usually because they are actually quite relevant to the interests of the listeners. For example, I learned about a particular VPS provider that way. I also don't mind ads in trade and tech magazines.

What I'm not interested in are annoying, popup, popunder, interstitial ads on web pages. It's fine to see an ad in a magazine on paper, but not on my computer screen with animations and sound. No thanks. And browsing without an ad blocker is a security risk I can't afford to take.

Re:All advertising is morally wrong.

[TigerPlish]

This type of advertising is much more insidious. http://www.americantable.org/2...

If they can do that with something as simple as breakfast. What else have we been manipulated into?

The two combine.

1. The picture of the dollop of shaving creme on the 90's - 2000's cans of Gilette Foamy show a fist-sized mound of creme. Amount you really need to get proper coverage: 1/4 that. Half a ping-pong ball, not a fist-sized mound.

2. THe long-ass string of toothpaste shown on Aqua Fresh (and i'm sure others too) toothpaste adverts is about 1.5 inches long and curled at both ends. Amount you truly need: 1/2 inch or so. They're encouraging one, subliminally, almost, to use so much more product than is needed that a 10-oz can of shaving foam that should go for half a year is spent in 3 months.

Got Milk? is an example of what you speak of. So's "Beef, it's what's for dinner." That they used Rodeo by Copland as the music was just inspired. Steak and Copland, all you need is a slab of apple pie to finish off the Classic Late 20th Century American Dinner.

The only defense against this shit is to teach children from early on to think critically and not to trust everything they see / hear / read at face value. To always ask themselves "Who benefits from my actions? Am I putting too much money into the seller's pocket?"

Re:All advertising is morally wrong.

[scottrocket]

"personalization to create tailored newsfeeds..."

Just for the individual reader? It seems to me that this would also be exercising the echo chamber/bobble head effect. But I could be misunderstanding what they're saying.

Re:All advertising is morally wrong.

[Brett Buck]

So you are so constitutionally weak that you are slaves to it, therefore it is morally wrong to offer you something you might want to buy?

      Why is that that so many people think they require protection from the most trivial things?

Re:All advertising is morally wrong.

[Yosho]

Actually, I'd say that there are advertisements that aren't morally wrong. A company that advertises its product by simply stating what it is and how it compares to its competition is doing nothing wrong -- and, in fact, that's how advertisements basically worked before the 1920's. People writing advertisements assumed that other people were rational actors, and that if you wanted somebody to buy your product, you simply had to demonstrate that you made the best product.

That is, until Edward Bernays, arguably the second most evil man of the 20th century, discovered the concept of exploiting peoples' emotions in order to convince them to buy things they didn't need. That turned out to be shockingly effective, and it's all been downhill since then.

Re:All advertising is morally wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to want protection from smarter people telling you what you have to do to comply with the societal contract...

Re:All advertising is morally wrong.

[eggstasy]

That's absurd. I see ads for basic stuff like jackets, because i've been dying to replace my aging overcoat and have searched for alternatives. Nobody ever told me the jacket would make me sexy, the ads have a picture of a jacket and a price.

Re:All advertising is morally wrong.

[CrimsonAvenger]

The best things in life speak for themselves and need no pushing. You find them or they find you by word of mouth, or you see it on your own, or.... you just know about it through some inexplicable mechanism.

So, just curious...

Would the personal computer revolution have occurred if none of the PC makers had been allowed to advertise their products? Same for any particular piece of software? And yes, Linux would have to be included in "any particular piece of software" even assuming Linux could have existed without the personal computers that noone would have ever heard of without advertising.

Or automobiles. Airlines. Trains. Refrigerators....

Face it, advertising is how people learn that there are new things they can spend their labour on. Without it, we're back to the nineteenth century (or earlier)....

Re:All advertising is morally wrong.

[thegarbz]

That comment is just dumb especially since not all adverts fall into those three categories, and also because not all three of those categories are morally wrong. "Prey", "Exploit", "Promise". One of those are not like the other, and if said promise is broken a company ends up in a nice legal problem.

You find them or they find you by word of mouth, or you see it on your own, or.... you just know about it through some inexplicable mechanism.

For this mechanism to work the product on service in question needs to widely publicly distributed or easily visible. Congratulations your suggestion just killed 100% of small companies on the internet, and likely will sink many brick and mortar startups as well.

Re:All advertising is morally wrong.

[Mandrel]

No, "build it and they'll come" doesn't often work well, though online word-of-mouth is making it work better than it has done before. You can still get steamrolled by competitors who do push their products in people's faces (hello "ambassadors" and "influencers").

Yes, all ads spin. Independent helpers are better. But in a free society ads will always be with us.

The best response is for the worst forms of advertising (door-to-door, consumer telemarketing, mass spam, intrusive ads embedded in media) to become so hated that they're ineffective, and to boost the availability of independent guides as a substitute for ads.

Re:All advertising is morally wrong.

[Mandrel]

Yes, ads in their proper context (trade mags, search results, classifieds, point-of-sale) are the best of the bunch. They still spin however, not telling you about any problems or worthwhile competitors. So such an ad can be worthwhile as inspiration for further research, or as a trigger for an evaluation purchase.

Re:All advertising is morally wrong.

[Mandrel]

Yes, the more novel the offering, the more people have to be told it exists, and be convinced to purchase.

Back in the 70s there was no social media to help spread the word, but many read newspapers and magazines. But these were mainly funded by advertising, and I doubt a PC company could have forgone advertising and relied on editorial to get the word out. The publications would have blackballed them for not buying ads.

Still happens today, but at least media is now more democratic.

Re:All advertising is morally wrong.

[KiloByte]

Nope, all adverts are fraud. Their purpose is to make you buy something you wouldn't otherwise -- ie, to make you do unoptimal decisions. There's also a second effect of making the good's price increased by whatever was the cost of the advertising campaign, making you actually pay for being lied to. The third effect is wasting your time and attention.

Effects 1 and 3 can be countered with an ad blocker. Setting one up properly might take a bit of time but is strongly beneficial to you in the long run.

Re:All advertising is morally wrong.

[Monoman]

s/all/man

There are very few absolutes in life and this isn't one of them. Some ads are actually just being informative but not most.

Re:All advertising is morally wrong.

[eddeye]

2. Exploit your darkest, deepest desires
3. Promise you an easy-out to your problems

Speak for yourself. Some of us pay good money to hear those things.

Now tell me more about this easy out...

Re:All advertising is morally wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a pretty evil guy next to Salin, Mao, Pol Pot, Hitler, Che Guevera, etc. ... but I'm willing to be convinced that this Edward Bernays guy fits into that group.

Re:All advertising is morally wrong.

[epine]

Quite often I've seen an ad in a trade magazine and thought, oh that looks like a very good idea that could really benefit me.

Ads in trade magazines are not push. They're mostly pull. Anyone who buys a trade magazine thinking it's clock-a-block with articles is a royal fool.

Scanning ads in trade magazines is a perfectly fine way to pinch a loaf: cooling your jets on the hinged horseshoe, the ads don't randomly impinge on your attention span during maximum cognitive load.

You've also engaged in a classic fallacy.

The value of advertising is the expense of consuming every ad rejected, plus the gain of every ad pursued. If the ads arrive asynchronously to your cognitive focus, each ad must also be penalized with a context switch.

Contrary to the multitasking canard, context switches are immensely expensive, as all the neurological literature demonstrates (an add for a new chip when I'm designing a circuit board is only demands a partial context switch, unless the ad also includes giant boobs, which do not merely amount to a context switch, but are positively an invasive species when other work remains to be done; work hard, play hard—in single file).

Nobody ever argued that ads can't deliver compelling value to exactly the right person, in exactly the right place. But some people do, however, suspect that mentally registering 1000 ads for every winning ticket redeemed is bad commerce all around.

Re:All advertising is morally wrong.

[The Evil Atheist]

Is an advert reminding people of certain sex and age to get mammograms a fraud?

Re:All advertising is morally wrong.

[gravewax]

I can't stand Ad's but your statement is patently false. Many Ad's aren't specifically about getting people to buy what they don't need, they are often purely about brand awareness. For example my parents used to run a series of furniture Ads for their, it was all about ensuring people know they exist, people didn't see it and think "OH WOW, I must run out and buy a $6,000 leather lounge", it was aimed squarely at those shopping for them already.

Increased walk through traffic in their store from Advertising actually allowed them to lower prices as they can survive and compete on much lower margins then they would otherwise.

Re:All advertising is morally wrong.

[KiloByte]

And that "brand awareness" is positive or neutral for the rationality of shopping decisions, how?

Re:All advertising is morally wrong.

[petermgreen]

The reason they have become rare is because they are no longer needed.

The first part of the sale process is attracting the customers attention, then you have to help them decide what exactly to buy, and then finally you can make the transaction.

In the specialised print media world, before the rise of modern internet commerce the ad served both the purposes of attracting the customer's attention and helping them decided which product they wanted. Then the customer would make the actual transaction by mail of phone. As you say this took up a lot of space, I remember some ads that were a lot bigger than "one or two pages".

On the Internet companies have their own websites that are only a click away from the ad. So all the ad has to do is the first step, attracting the customers attention.

Re:All advertising is morally wrong.

[gravewax]

it informs people of options they did not know existed. So in my parents case it would save the shoppers money who would have otherwise purchased the same goods at considerably higher prices from the well known big name retailers . It doesn't change their purchase choice, merely the location and price they purchase from.

Get a real browser

[AHuxley]

One that respects your right as a computer owner to have control over your own computer.
Don't use a browser from an ad company that protects its approved ads deep into the computer, browser and OS.
Consider using
Adblockers
No script
U Block and U Block matrix.
Ghostery.
Anything to slow and stop tracking away from the site visited.

Ads will just move to the site and be part of the content generated per user.
Be ready for ads and tracking to become the site content.

Re: Get a real browser

[ElderKorean]

Donâ(TM)t forget that most people also use a mobile phone that was created by an advertising company.

Re:Get a real browser

[strikethree]

Consider using
Adblockers
No script
U Block and U Block matrix.
Ghostery.

Did you ever notice that finding "no script", when searching for extensions for Firefox, is not as simple or easy as it could be. If you know what you are looking for, you can force "no script" to show up, but if you don't know, it never surfaces, despite being the most downloaded "security" extension that is available.

Did you also notice semi-recent changes to the Firefox engine that prevents "no script" from being as effective as it used to be? Now, requests are made to servers and "no script" can't block them, previously, it could block those requests before they ever went out.

Mozilla is in bed with the advertisers and other control freaks on the Internet. Mozilla is evil, just as Google, Microsoft, and Facebook are objectively evil. They clearly have the idea that you should have no control, but should be on display for others to examine and manipulate. This is not a SJW evil, this is a real evil. You have the fundamental right to defend yourselves and they are working HARD to take any semblance of defense away from you. Mother fucking assholes.

Re:Get a real browser

[AHuxley]

Re "You have the fundamental right to defend yourselves and they are working HARD to take any semblance of defense away from you."
This internet use is getting more expensive. A VPN added to IPS per month :)

A quality VPN in external hardware at the end of the network will be the only protection soon.
Ads and malware will part of trusted encrypted servers and be very hard to seperate from each visit to a "trusted" site.
Different computers for each task?
One for games?
One for work?
One for searching on books, hobbies, fun?
One for health searching?

All because browsers won't protect a user and their computer.

They'd be just as outraged by a paywall

[unicorn]

Just try putting content on the web behind a paywall, and just imagine the screams of outrage.

One wonders how they expect everything on the web to get paid for...

Re:They'd be just as outraged by a paywall

[mrgren]

What's missing is a reliable/trusthworthy/unobtrusive/easy micropayment system.

I'm not going to subscribe to any of the thousands of news sites that very occasionally have a single article I want to read-- but I would be willing to make a one-off payment of 1 cent, or 1/10 of a cent or whatever, to view their one article that I'm interested in. If browsing the news ad-free cost me $0.20 a day (distributed over various sites) I'd do it. But I have zero tolerance for ads.

The turning point for me came when I was watching a footrace on TV (years ago, I don't watch TV anymore)-- it was the end of the race, and the runners were approaching the finishing line, and there was a white tape stretched across the track........ but it wasn't a plain white tape anymore, oh no: it had printing on it that said ADVIL ADVIL ADVIL ADVIL ADVIL ADVIL ADVIL etc.

Advertisers are scum.

Re: They'd be just as outraged by a paywall

[tepples]

Some people want to pay, but they don't want 30 cents per page view to go to the credit card companies. What method of accepting payment without 30 cents per page view going to the credit card companies would you recommend?

Re:They'd be just as outraged by a paywall

[tepples]

The web would be a lot better if you removed all the stuff that has to "get paid for" by advertising.

But would there still be enough "stuff" left to make wide use of home Internet access worth what the ISPs charge?

Re:They'd be just as outraged by a paywall

[tepples]

Netflix and Amazon might survive, seeing as they offer subscription services. But I imagine many would feel unwilling to cut the cord if YouTube and other ad-supported services were no longer an option for at least some of the programming they view.

So wrong

[Livius]

I find 'personalized' adverts to be morally wrong, profoundly so.

Aside from violating my dignity as an individual who can make my own choices, the sheer volume of advertising guarantees that I will block them out, either mentally or technologically, which means they are misrepresenting the value of the services to the businesses buying the advertising. So two strikes against them on the question of morality.

But more often than not I am finding them to be factually wrong, in the sense that whatever guess their algorithm is making about me is wildly inaccurate. For example a few Google searches for the price of an object is far more likely to mean that I have made a purchase of one than it is that I will be highly motivated to make new purchases daily for the following six months.

Or their inference is so exact and narrow as to be transparently absurd. E.g. Local women seeking 53-year-old!

And then there's the ones where I try to find a restaurant in a city I'm going to visit and I can't block out adverts for restaurants for the area where I live (you know, the one place I'm guaranteed not to physically be in any time I travel).

Re:So wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

So many people agree with you.

And yet nobody cares enough to actually do anything about it. They disapprove of how Facebook uses their data, and yet they keep using Facebook. They blame the companies that get hacked, and yet they keep doing business with those same companies. Where are the public protests? Where are the petitions demanding jail time? Where are the donations to lobbies pushing to introduce consequences?

People don't like it, but they put up with it. And so long as they keep putting up with it, the companies the perpetuate it couldn't care less what the people don't like.

Re:So wrong

[dgatwood]

I find 'personalized' adverts to be morally wrong, profoundly so.

Then, with all due respect, you are uninformed, and profoundly so.

Want to know why? Because all advertising has always been targeted. From the dawn of advertising. Don't believe me? Take a look at the types of ads that they run on any TV show. If a show demographically skews to younger women, they show tampon ads. If a show demographically skews to elderly men, they show Viagra ads. I guarantee you if they reversed this, people would scream that the ads aren't targeted enough.

Where the web becomes a problem is that websites tend not to skew strongly to any given demographic, so personalization has to be done in some other way.

Aside from violating my dignity as an individual who can make my own choices, the sheer volume of advertising guarantees that I will block them out, either mentally or technologically, which means they are misrepresenting the value of the services to the businesses buying the advertising.

You see, this is where your argument goes fundamentally off the rails. The sheer volume of advertising exists primarily because the overwhelming majority of advertising is not targeted well enough. If advertisers knew that everyone seeing an ad had a 50% chance of being interested in that product, the ads would cost a lot more money, they would be a lot more effective, and you would see a heck of a lot fewer ads.

So you're really arguing for more personalization, not less. The alternative to ad targeting is for the number of ads you see to increase fairly dramatically.

But more often than not I am finding them to be factually wrong, in the sense that whatever guess their algorithm is making about me is wildly inaccurate.

This is a sign that ads should be personalized better, not that they should be personalized less. It is also a good argument that you should be able to correct those inferred interests. And at least for Google, you can do just that. And Facebook has that feature, too.

For example a few Google searches for the price of an object is far more likely to mean that I have made a purchase of one than it is that I will be highly motivated to make new purchases daily for the following six months.

Often, that is true. This is why you'd be better off if your purchasing history were part of the data feeding into those advertising engines, so that they could see that you already bought it.

That said, even if they knew you had bought the product, that still wouldn't be the whole story. Say you've been searching for information about a Tesla Model X. At some point, you've probably stopped planning to buy one, and you probably own one. But there are hundreds of companies out there making products specifically designed to work well with that Tesla, and those are much more likely to be of interest to you than, for example, products designed to work well with a Ford Model T.

Or their inference is so exact and narrow as to be transparently absurd. E.g. Local women seeking 53-year-old!

And then there's the ones where I try to find a restaurant in a city I'm going to visit and I can't block out adverts for restaurants for the area where I live (you know, the one place I'm guaranteed not to physically be in any time I travel).

All of these things are, indeed, problems, but none of them make targeted advertising morally wrong. If you got advertisements for restaurants in the area where you were planning to visit, at a bare minimum, you wouldn't find the targeting to be useless then. The only reason you're annoyed is because the targeting is suboptimal. Again, this is an argument for more targeting and better targeting, not less.

Re:So wrong

[dgatwood]

Please tell me then, o wise one, how Netflix suggesting shows you might like is exploitative. Please explain to me how not showing tampon ads to men is exploitative? And so on.

The problem is not that you don't like personalization of ads. The problem is that you don't like ads. And that's certainly a reasonable opinion, but it has nothing to do with whether the personalization itself is moral or immoral.

Re:So wrong

[thegarbz]

Aside from violating my dignity as an individual who can make my own choices, the sheer volume of advertising guarantees that I will block them out

Wait what? I thought you're not able to make your own choice?

For example a few Google searches for the price of an object is far more likely to mean that I have made a purchase of one than it is that I will be highly motivated to make new purchases daily for the following six months.

That depends on what you are buying and how much effort you're putting in. The algorithm is incredibly dumb but if you're looking up the price of something and buying now it means it fails for you, it doesn't stand to reason that it fails for others. Many such algorithms rely on the fact that:
a) the customer is still researching and didn't buy something on the first moment they searched for the price
b) the customer bought something that is likely to gain further sales. e.g. Buying a new Camera, let's advertise more camera related companies to said customer, they may accessorize.

Re:So wrong

[Livius]

The sheer volume of advertising exists primarily because the overwhelming majority of advertising is not targeted well enough.

That's logical, but it's the opposite of what we see in reality. Targeting is obviously better than in the past, even if the advertisers are over-estimating the reliability of it, but the volume of advertising has exploded, demonstrating that the strategy is clearly quantity and not quality, and giving the industry their own tragedy of the commons problem, but at a cost to me in time and opportunity.

Advertising is already morally dubious, and no-one has an expectation that an advertisement is unbiased, but there's at least a minimum of transparency if they can only rely on directly available information and not on guesses that are only marginally better than random.

Re: So wrong

[dgatwood]

Why would we see fewer ads if they were targetted? Why would a network not sell every second of ad time it can?

Because advertising has diminishing returns. The more ads you see, the more you ignore them. So the more ads you sell, the less valuable each ad is.

If they sold fewer ads, they would need more content to fill thirty minute time slots, which costs money.

Broadcast and cable TV are basically walking dead anyway. In fifty years, nobody will believe that anybody actually watched content that way. And for streaming, it doesn't matter if the show is 30 minutes or 26 or 23 1/2. It ends when it ends. So those artificial restrictions are at best temporary.

That said, I think the trend is towards less ad-supported video and more subscription video, and for good reason. There's no way for a video ad to not be intrusive. It is inherent in the very concept. For everything I said above, you should assume that I'm speaking solely about text-based ads, banner ads, and other similar ads on web content, and not about ads injected into the middle of TV shows or other similar content.

Re:So wrong

[dgatwood]

That's logical, but it's the opposite of what we see in reality. Targeting is obviously better than in the past, even if the advertisers are over-estimating the reliability of it, but the volume of advertising has exploded, demonstrating that the strategy is clearly quantity and not quality, and giving the industry their own tragedy of the commons problem, but at a cost to me in time and opportunity.

Actually, I don't think it's a strategy so much as a desperation move. Companies are finding it harder and harder to subsist on declining revenues from ads, and the main reason for the decline is that more and more companies don't think ads (particularly on the web) are cost-effective. And so you're seeing each ad being worth less money, and ad-supported websites throwing more ad space onto every page to make up the difference.

And I'm not convinced that targeting really is all that good yet. As others have noted elsewhere, probably 75% of the ads I see that are targeted at me (as opposed to ads based on the site I'm visiting) seem to be ads for things that I just bought and am no longer interested in. And I tried using ad targeting a couple of years ago, and I was very unimpressed by the lack of sufficiently narrow categorization, the low rate of click-throughs, and the poor cost-benefit ratio. It really seems like ad targeting is in its infancy.

Either way, this is obviously just my current theory. There's a decent chance that I'm completely wrong. But we're still a long way from being able to meaningfully evaluate whether I'm right or not. Until targeting a user is dramatically better than merely targeting specific websites that cover particular interests (by several orders of magnitude), we're all basically just trying to find a tiny signal in a huge pile of noise, which means it's still anybody's guess whether targeting really will reduce the number of ads, increase it, or have no effect. :-)

Re:So wrong

[dgatwood]

Yes, they do. Sections with names like "Because you watched [show/movie]" appear in Netflix all the time.

Re:So wrong

[dgatwood]

People can't give reasonable consent to use their data for personalization, because they can't know how their data will be used. It will always be an abusive power relationship.

If they know that their data is being used solely to chose which ads to show, then I would argue that they know exactly how their data will be used. I think what you're really arguing here is that the average person doesn't understand the tech, and can't give informed consent because they don't understand what data is being used/stored and why. That's a very different issue.

And to that end, I would argue that the right solution is a set of laws that clearly spell out what types of personal data can be stored without consent, the extent to which it should be anonymized, the extent to which individuals have the right to inspect and correct data about themselves, the extent to which that data must be kept secure, the financial penalties for failing to do so, the maximum period of time that personal data can be retained, possibly a requirement that the user be allowed to control that time period, etc.

Seem reasonable?

Personalized Ads for the thing I already bought?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is Econ 101 stuff. The marginal utility of the next $thing is usually close to zero.
E.g. if I already bought an 80" TV, the chances I need another one are pretty darn small.
That's the kind of "personalized" ads that Zuckerbook keeps showing me. I really don't understand why people are paying for ads on Zuckerbook. And the ads are invisible to me anyway because I don't even look at them. In that case I'm there to see what my friends are posting and nothing else.
One of these days the advertisers are going to catch on.

Re: It's okay

[Fly Swatter]

No, your example is one of idealistic marketing, which doesn't exist.

For marketers, the holy grail is getting some idiot to want something that they won't actually ever need or use.

I would argue it's not intrinsic.

[Gravis Zero]

Personalized advertisements in and of themselves are completely amoral. If a company kept everything completely compartmentalized so that nobody could ever access your information except a benevolent AI that want to help you then it could be moral because the AI wants to help you complete whatever your task is. However, in this scenario, the AI would also not advertise to you if it were determined you were better off with a competing product or none at all. This is the moral ideal of advertising but as we know, morality and advertising parted ways before they ever met. Advertisers are simply looking to make you purchase a product, even if it (slowly) kills you.

The same argument can be made for companies that churn out addictive games. The moral ideal is to offer entertainment that will improve someone's day but the reality is that neurology is exploited to maximize the addictiveness of the game to cause someone to pay out an endless stream of money.

TL;DR: Advertisers don't care if the product will ruin your life, they only care about getting you to buy the product (so that they get paid).

Re:I would argue it's not intrinsic.

[AHuxley]

The money is in selling in bulk to a 3rd party.
Then putting all the data from other sites back together again.
Selling on that data thats had some powerful math done.
Nothing stays free with free sites and free services :)

Ban all ads

[UnknownSoldier]

When is the insanity going to stop?

Normally I don't advocate extreme ideology but after the constant visual pollution of ads (online, billboards, TV, movies) I'm starting to wonder if society just wouldn't be better off with a simple policy:

Ban all ads. Just ban the fuckers outright.

The world has existed for thousands of years without the modern exploitative manipulative propaganda and I'll be the first to say:

And nothing of value was lost.

A person can dream, right?

Re:Ban all ads

[AHuxley]

It has to get much more intrusive on each and every site.
Content as ads, ads as content. Each site tracking users for the ads.
No more 3rd party ad site to block.

I donâ(TM)t get it

[registrations_suck]

I wish all ads were personalized. It would be so much better than random crap that has no relevance to me!

Re:I donâ(TM)t get it

[dcollins]

I see this sentiment widely on Slashdot. And only on Slashdot. I've never once had a face-to-face conversation with anyone and had them say they want more personalized ads. I've been baffled by this Slashdot thinking for a long time.

Re: I donâ(TM)t get it

[registrations_suck]

Iâ(TM)d probably be happy to just tell them what they want to know. They wouldnâ(TM)t have to do anything nefarious.

Advertising is normal, Why are people crazy?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, IBM making the machine used during the holocaust is ok while advertising is bad? America's economy fully dependent on a constant state of war (not officially declared war, just covert, proxy, or "police actions, etc.) is ok, but advertising is a problem?

We have always opted-in to tracking our purchases through credit cards and club cards, so why not push it further with internet images and videos? Why do people suddenly care? No people seem to be complaining about the surveillance cameras on every stop-and-go light post. How about the DHS funding for municipal surveillance cameras (parks and recreation areas). No regulation for the algorithms and companies that must consume that data, nor the security involved, how long the data is retained, etc.

The reason advertisers are currently being painted in a negative light is that they have too much information when compared to the government. That is speculation, but should be the only reason for the suddenly anti-advertising trend (isn't anti-advertising anti-American?).

All?

[virtig01]

I saw an advert promoting recycling; not sure which of those three categories that would fall into...

Re:All?

[TigerPlish]

I saw an advert promoting recycling; not sure which of those three categories that would fall into...

Easy-out. Planet going to hell in a handbasket? Recycle! At least here in florida it all goes to the landfill anyway. Moot point. I still throw my plastic glass and paper into the green bin, but most ends up in Mount Trashmore anyway.

NOt entirely sure a recycle ad is really an ad, to me it's more of a PSA. Of course, you must ask -- who's benefiting? In my case, it isn't the planet, it's Waste Management (WM). They get paid by the city, and my shit still ends up in Mount Trashmore. Yeah baby. Fake recycling.

How was it actually phrased on the questionaire

[HiThere]

FWIW, I believe that personalized ads are fine. It's personalized prices that are immoral.

BUT!!!
This requires them to have collected personal information on me, which *isn't* ok. Not unless it's based on things I've bought from them before. And not if they sell it, or leak it, to someone else.

And 100% of Men

[wisnoskij]

And 100% of Men polled did not want to see tampon ads...

In all seriousness, 100% of people do not want to see ads that are not targeting them.

Re:And 100% of Men

[phantomfive]

We just get manpons

Re:And 100% of Men

[dgatwood]

In all seriousness, 100% of people do not want to see ads that are not targeting them.

Exactly. The reality is that you can create any results you want if you word the poll in a way that leads the pollee in the direction you want.

• Ask the public if they want their private personal information used to target ads, and almost everyone who doesn't understand the technology will say no, because it sounds scary.
• Ask the public if they want to prevent porn site ads from showing up on their children's computers, and almost everyone will say yes, because that is scary.

Now obviously that second one is an extreme example, because porn ads are legally restricted in most jurisdictions, and thus are unlikely to show up on children's computers. But substitute something like condom ads, and you'll get mostly the same results. When you ask people whether they want to avoid specific types of advertising that horrify them or want to see more ads about products that interest them, they overwhelmingly say yes, even though that reality would be impossible without personalized targeting.

The main problem with surveys like this is that only a tiny percentage of the general public has the slightest concept of how computers work, and as a result, if you want to learn the public's opinion of tech issues, you have to ask questions in ways that are likely to produce meaningful insight into what specific things they want and don't want. If you ask broad questions that assume even the most basic understanding of the technology, you will learn nothing whatsoever.

For example, almost half of people in these countries said that they couldn't imagine an example where a company using their personal info would be ethical. But your purchasing history is considered personal information. Can you imagine if Amazon didn't tell you that you already bought that movie? Can you imagine if you couldn't see your purchase history to do returns online or buy a product again? Can you imagine if Google couldn't show your search history? If your web browser couldn't show your browsing history?

The ethical uses of personal data are mind-bogglingly common and obvious to anyone who actually understands how computers work and what the industry means when we say "personal information". But your average person probably doesn't even think of 99.999% of those things as personal info even though they are. And that's why there's such a huge disconnect between what people say their opinion is about personal data and ad targeting versus what their behavior indicates.

Most people simply have no real grasp of what tech industry people mean about when we say "personalized ad targeting". To your average person, it's just some vague, scary, nebulous concept, and they assume that you're talking about showing ads for condoms because you sent a dirty email to your significant other last night.

But as soon as you start putting it in concrete terms that they understand — whether ad vendors should be allowed to show iPhone owners more ads about iPhone apps and fewer ads about Android apps, whether they should show tampon ads only to women, whether they should show condom ads only to people over 18, etc. — you get a much better picture of what people do and don't want.

This poll obviously did not do that. If it had done so, it could not possibly have gotten such patently nonsensical results. I guarantee if you asked people in Europe whether it is ethical for Amazon to tell you that you already bought a DVD, you would not get 55% of them saying no. They literally cannot possibly have asked reasonable questions and gotten the numbers that they got.

Re:And 100% of Men

[novakyu]

I'm fine with tampon ads—it's the ugly women in the ads that I object to.

Re:And 100% of Men

[stooo]

>> porn ads are legally restricted in most jurisdictions, and thus are unlikely to show up on children's computers.
You must be new on the Internet.

Re:And 100% of Men

[stooo]

You never were confronted with ads for diapers for the elderly, did you ?

Re:And 100% of Men

[Anonymous Coward]

You are presenting a bit of a false dichotomy.

The way advertising always used to work is that the magazine, tv show etc would appeal to a certain audience, and advertisers who wanted to court that audience would advertise there.

From an advertiser point of view this hasn't changed, but the way ad companies target people has. They don't generally pick where they advertise, but to a target demographic, and the ad network uses its shadowy network of sleazy entities that follow people around and take notes about what they read, and where I spend my free time, to match an advertiser with an individual. So when I go to any website using that ad network I get adverts for chainsaws and pinball machines, and my brother gets adverts for expensive shoes and watches.

There are at least three options for advertising, and the industry is increasingly pushing people to my preferred option, 0:
0) No advertising. If I want info on your product, I'll look it up. If I want to support a website, I'll subscribe.
1) Content-targeted advertising. If I'm reading chainsaws.com, then I get ads for chainsaws.
2) Person-targeted advertising. I get ads for chainsaws everywhere, because I just bought a chainsaw.

A lot of people find option 2 creepy, and are increasingly solving the problem by blocking all ads. I understand that running websites costs money, especially those that generate original content. I'd be fine with unobtrusive content-targeted advertising, but because I can't get that without going to extreme lengths I have to resort to 0) and block everything. I do want to support services I find useful and creators whose work I enjoy, but not all of them make that easy to do; Patreon is fine, but some have an ads+merch model that doesn't work for me (I don't buy physical goods unless absolutely necessary) and others just don't have any other way of supporting them.

Marketing is hard; you spend most of your money reaching people who aren't interested. The ideal of only reaching those who are interested must seem very appealing, but if the only way to do that is to pay a creepy stalker to follow people around, then advertisers should really be asking themselves if that association is a good fit for their brand.

Re:And 100% of Men

[novakyu]

You mean this one?

Re: And 100% of Men

[dgatwood]

The only people that like it are those selling the tech.

Nope. People who work at websites and newspapers and TV stations and radio stations that make their profits through advertising like it, too. My undergrad degree was a double-major in communications (broadcasting) and CS, so I'm fairly well attuned to what's happening with journalism these days. Without advertising, a decent percentage of my friends would not be employed.

I understand why you don't like advertising. Nobody really likes it. But as yet, nobody has come up with a viable alternative that is practical. Everybody wants their content for free, and nobody is willing to pay for it (with few exceptions), and as a result, the only means to cover the cost of creating that content is through advertising.

So if you hate advertising and wish it would go away, please come up with a viable alternative. Until you do, the best we can hope for is that advertising will become less intrusive, and will become targeted at least enough to ensure that folks aren't bombarded with ads for stuff that they wouldn't buy in a million years. Because you're right. Ads are annoying, and ads for uninteresting things doubly so.

why are there advertisements ?

[swell]

The main reason that ads exist is that they are for generic products and services. When your product is indistinguishable from all the similar products, one way to sell it is to advertise. There are other ways, such as lowering the price. But generic products tend to be priced near cost anyway. The best way to sell your product is to make it distinctly better than similar products.

Pepsi and Coke sell essentially the same product: sugar water. As a result they must advertise like crazy to get buyer loyalty. Ford and GM have battled the same way for generations over cars that (despite certain crazed fans) aren't really very different.

Every week, many of us receive by post a packet of ads from local retailers, supermarkets, restaurants and nail salons. If you look closely you won't find among them an ad for Walmart or Amazon. Why would the worlds largest retailers need to waste money on those ads? Target will occasionally use that medium, hoping to grab some Walmart customers.

OTOH, Phillips / Norelco actually created two unique products that for a long time lead the field: the first cassette tape recorder and the first rotary electric shaver. They had no real competition and the need for advertising was only to introduce the public to a genuinely new and potentially beneficial product.

For a few years Apple sold its products with big images of great thinkers (Einstein, etc) and two other elements: the words "think different", and a small Apple logo. No product was mentioned. Elsewhere in the world of personal computers there were 20 brands with names like Compaq, Dell, H-P, etc. They were all making 'clones' and fighting furiously to sell these basically identical products. Lots of ads promoting minor distinctions, but mostly low prices. A race to the bottom.

If every vendor of goods and services had a unique product that clearly stood out in its field, the need for advertising would be greatly reduced. Thus most of the ads you see are for items that are essentially uninteresting.

Unfortunately, we benefit from the clones of every industry. The race to the bottom means standardized products and low prices for consumers. We don't have to pay the Apple/Norelco premium price. It's nice that there are innovators, but also good that we have access to affordable traditional products. Thanks to advertising.

Re:why are there advertisements ?

[hjf]

You're incredibly verbose but ultimately so stupidly wrong.

Following your line of reasoning I can ask the question: why do you live? You live the same inane existence of billions of other people. You make no contributions to society and anything you "may" contribute is just irrelevant. Nothing matters. Coke is water with sugar. Ford sells rubber and steel. You breathe in valuable oxygen and expel nasty CO2. Unfortunately, due to whatever reasons, we're stuck with you.

Re:why are there advertisements ?

[theycallmeB]

Actually the main reason you won't find Walmart in the mail ad packet is that packet is generally set to arrive on Wednesday's because grocery stores are a major customer and somehow got into the habit of running their ad weeks from Wednesday to Tuesday.

Walmart started as a general merchandise retailer so they run Sunday to Saturday ad weeks (same for Target and all the big department stores) and they push their print ads in the Sunday newspapers. Both Walmart and Target will do grocery specific ad flyers in the Wednesday packet during the lead up to eating holidays.

I'd like them more if they were smarter

[skam240]

I'd like personalized ads more if they were more intelligently done. With cookies turned on if I buy a video card from Amazon I then see ads for video cards...

What kind of stupid is this?

Re:I'd like them more if they were smarter

[apoc.famine]

It's sales and marketing stupid. If you've never worked with sales and marketing, you wouldn't understand. Sales and marketing is a different world, with different rules. It's the people who need the expense account to take clients to fancy dinners and shows. It's the wheelers and dealers, the schmoozers and show-offs.

It's those hung-over, strung-out assholes who make these stupid decisions at a meeting they wander into 10 minutes before it's over, throw everything decided already onto the floor, vomit a pile of stupid in its place, and then walk back out because "they're late for a meeting".

If they instead asked the developers? They'd think about what one would do with a new video card, and then recommend ads for the hottest AAA games that need that sort of horsepower, and new SSDs, motherboards, ram, and processors. Because if you're the sort of person that upgrades a video card, that's the sort of shit you're going to buy next.

I still won't add advertisements into my life if they somehow actually would be relevant, but man, it would make them a little less irritating.

What % pay for apps vs. use "free" ad model?

[misnohmer]

How many of those 83% refuse to use any app which provides them such personalized ads and/or collects their data in exchange for a "free" app? People say a lot of things on the surveys, but do otherwise in life. I seriously doubt that 83% of people purchase apps when given the "free" option with targeted advertisements.

While I have no love for advertisements at all...

[mark-t]

... if know that I have to see ads, I'd still rather see ads that actually are relevant to my own interests or needs than ones that aren't.

99% of consumers...

[Narcocide]

... too stupid to know where personalized ads come from,

'Repent, Harlequin!' Said The Ticktockman

[tanstaaf1]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... "... No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost." -The Matrix

Re:While I have no love for advertisements at all.

[larryjoe]

... if know that I have to see ads, I'd still rather see ads that actually are relevant to my own interests or needs than ones that aren't.

If I can't use software to block ads, then I will use personal control of my attention to block ads.

I don't see why "personally relevant" ads are better than generic ads. In either case, I usually receive information about something that I'm not interested in buying. The only time when I want personally relevant information is when I'm searching for that information, and then I want the information to be unbiased by ad money.

This should be a "Monday" topic, not a weekend one

[DarkMagician07]

Honestly, you don't get much engagement on the weekends, so this really should be something that is exposed on the weekdays. Having it come out during the weekend just sucks, really.

Re:While I have no love for advertisements at all.

[wierd_w]

Personally, I would like to see advertisements become expensive to display, thus increasing the benefit to content producers for displaying the ad, and driving total volume of total ads shown waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down.

In other words, the debiers model. Diamonds are extremely common. The price is kept artificially high through a marketing campaign that reinforces the notion that they are rare, coupled with an aggressive supply side monopoly and warehousing operation.

By ensuring only a select number of diamonds hit market, the prices stay high.

Same thing here with adverts. When the supply (of viewers) is restricted (by not showing adverts), the advertisers must pay more per advert impression, allowing fewer adverts to be displayed, for the same revenue stream.

Adverts are indeed a needed thing. What we DO NOT need, and what the public DOES NOT WANT, is to be so saturated under an avalanche of advertisements that the value of each advertisement is close to zero, forcing content producers to ever increase the number of adverts to sustain their content production businesses. "Targeted adverts!" are just the latest in a downward spiral toward a singularity of infinite adverts that the current trends are driving. People do not want it. Content delivery people do not want it. The only people that want it are advertisement agencies, and people with shit products they want to sell.

Quality over quantity. One ad per page view.

This needs to be the goal that needs to be driven home. Not "Oh, but those poor advert companies **NEEED* to know all about you so they can make ends meet! Have you seen the falling value of ad impressions lately!?"

If the feds made some regulatory laws about this, limiting number of adverts and data aggregation scripts per page view, I would be all for it.

Visit a web site just once

[xack]

Get adverts from them for weeks afterwards. This happens to me on one of my browsers which can't install an adblocker. Thankfully I block ads on most of my computers.

Devils advocate / rant

[geekymachoman]

I hate ads, personalized or not, and I use an adblocker. However, I also run a site that requires hours of attention every day from multiple people, and many of people here use it often.

When we suggest our users to do donations, they refused.
When we suggested premium membership model, they refused.

99% of the users want the content that 4 people maintain, for free, demand it what's more, and we even got blamed that we're extorting users by having a premium membership and ads, not realizing that if the ads were gone tomorrow - the service would be gone too.. and premium membership was a way for us to DISABLE ads. Eventually, we got rid of premium as it was useless.
Don't want personalized or otherwise fucking ads ? Pay for the shit you use, because ... I don't get the servers for free, nor the bandwidth... nor the knowledge how to program, set servers up, maintain all of that and create content.

Re:Devils advocate / rant

[stooo]

business model on the decline ?
Not easy to get a better one.

Re:Devils advocate / rant

[Mandrel]

What about charging all users your best estimate of the average value they get out of your site, with a one-month trial?

Would your membership be decimated because few get much value from it, and could easily move to a competitor?

There are other potential solutions depending on the nature of your service.

Re:Devils advocate / rant

[hjf]

Ads are what keep the internet working.
No ads means no internet. Ads are the "business model" not of a "website" but of the whole fucking thing. Take ads out of equation and you get the "academic" internet again.

Re:Devils advocate / rant

[hjf]

no. there are no solutions. this is how things are.
People DO NOT LIKE TO PAY FOR STUFF. Simple as that.
And i'm not going to "subscribe" to every fucking website I visit *AND GIVE THEM ALL MY PERSONAL DATA SO THEY CAN BILL MY CREDIT CARD* just because some fucking nerd on slashdot doesn't like ads.

Re:Devils advocate / rant

[Mandrel]

It depends on the value the site provides, and the difficulty of it being cloned. Top newspapers are doing quite well with digital subscriptions, and they don't even give subscribers an ad-free experience. And I'm amazed at the success with which free-to-play games sell cosmetic items — selling to susceptible kids helps here. Then there's the paid exclusive content and free lure model.

Also, companies like Apple and PayPal allow one to set up regular payments without anyone else getting credit card details or other data.

And yes, for certain services there are alternatives to ad revenue that don't require people to open their wallets.

Re: Devils advocate / rant

[hjf]

No. It just doesn't work that way. You propose only one person (the first one) can do "something" and the rest are just clones.

Also you're denying of access to information to the 90% of the world's population. The people who simply cannot afford to pay for every website they visit. not to mention all the people who simply don't have credit cards (newsflash: CCs are rare outside the "first world" and the issued cards usually are only local or national. International cards have requirements 90% of the world's population cannot meet)

Re:Devils advocate / rant

[Pitawg]

All you said was "I have a worthless product. All of it's current consumers define it as such. So, I whine that it is worthless, providing yet more worthless content."

You are as bad as the advertisers targeted by this article.

Re:Devils advocate / rant

[apoc.famine]

If you can't get people to donate because they love what you're doing, what you're doing isn't valuable to them or unique enough to differentiate you from others.

It's a harsh truth. And if you want to do it no matter what, great. That's a nice hobby that makes you happy. But don't complain that your viewers aren't supporting you if you're in this for a hobby.

That said, have you tried Patreon? I keep spending more and more money there on people doing shit I enjoy seeing. Music, comics, videos, educational series, social change projects, etc. It's really easy for me to say, "Yeah, they are worth a beer a month to support." Especially when I get special treatment because of it.

That's the real hook with Patreon. Your premium was "pay us or we'll irritate you with ads". That's a protection racket. Patreon is generally set up more as a "the more you pay, the more cool access to us you get" sort of deal.

Some of the people I support there give early access to their stuff before it hits the public website, allow supporter feedback on early drafts, let supporters drive the direction of their work, get feedback on scripts and plots, and use their biggest fans as a soundingboard before unleashing their stuff on the public. That makes their big fans even bigger fans, and gets them personally invested in the work. If you can't get some folks to donate $5 a month for something like that, you really don't have fans.

Re: Devils advocate / rant

[Mandrel]

Everyone not first, but inspired by the first, is by definition a clone in some way. But here we're talking about how the ease with which a service can be both cloned and indirectly funded creates competitive pressure against a paywall.

Poverty means not being able to buy a lot of things. Is information special? Governments can always provide or subsidise important sources of information if they don't want the poor to suffer an advertising ghetto while the rich go ad-free (where ad-blocking is hard or unpopular or obscure). Most countries have public media organisations.

Re:Devils advocate / rant

[DNS-and-BIND]

Despite what you think, the world won't miss your site. It's telling how you think the users owe you something and you think they're ripping you off, when they don't owe you a damn thing.

Re: Devils advocate / rant

[hjf]

OK, so since Little Special Snowflake doesn't like ads, governments around the world have to work to pay for content for their citizens to consume.
Nothing can go wrong with such plan.
Nothing.

Re:Devils advocate / rant

[stooo]

Nope.
Internet and HTTP browsing predated online ads. By far.

Re:Devils advocate / rant

[ortholattice]

I don't have premium memberships on any sites, not necessarily because I don't think they're worth it (often the fees are rather modest), but simply because I hate setting up an account, giving them my email address and personal info, risking my credit card data (and not being sure there won't be automatic renewals that are nearly impossible to stop), etc.

One possibility I might consider is buying a membership from a third party like Amazon, something like a gift card, where a code number gives me access to the site from say up to 10 different computer+browsers for a set period of time. Otherwise, the site knows nothing about me, won't bug me with email spam, and in general leaves me alone.

Maybe I'm different from most people, but it's something I might experiment with if I had a site where people weren't "biting" the premium membership offer.

Re: Devils advocate / rant

[Mandrel]

Trying to find an alternative to advertising isn't going to stop funding by advertising working for those who either don't mind them or can't block them. At the moment this pool is large enough that advertising still works for many large tech and media companies. But this is falling, more-so for some types of services, so we need to think of good alternatives.

Re:Devils advocate / rant

[tepples]

Take ads out of equation and you get the "academic" internet again.

Internet and HTTP browsing predated online ads. By far.

That was what hjf referred to as "the 'academic' Internet". If the Internet were to suddenly contract to "the 'academic' Internet" tomorrow, I doubt that there would be enough demand among home users for "the 'academic' Internet" alone to support the continued availability of home broadband Internet service.

Re:Devils advocate / rant

[stooo]

OK, cool, let's go there.

Re:Devils advocate / rant

[tepples]

I doubt that there would be enough demand among home users for "the 'academic' Internet" alone to support the continued availability of home broadband

OK, cool, let's go there.

If the academic and subscription Internet alone cannot sustain enough home broadband subscriptions, "go there" would involve having to ride your bike or the bus to the library in order to use the Internet. Would you find that acceptable?

Re:Devils advocate / rant

[tepples]

What makes you think even cellular carriers would see enough demand for the academic Internet if that were all there were?

Re: It's okay

[thegarbz]

Yours and the GP's descriptions aren't mutually exclusive. The goal is always to sell *your* product. If that is at the expense of the competition then so be it. Being in the position to actually *want* to buy said product makes the advertising hugely more likely to succeed.

e.g. Marketers can pump information about Tylenol towards me all they won't. It still won't make me want to buy their product. On the flip side Facebook spamming me with suggested posts about "this company just reinvented how to control a DSLR" ... well aside from being incredibly resistant to bullshit like that, I'm at least in a position where in my life buying a DSLR accessory makes sense.

Re:While I have no love for advertisements at all.

[thegarbz]

This. People forget the advertisements in the early days of the internet consisted of mostly girls and penis enlarging drugs.

Re:Personalized Ads for the thing I already bought

[stooo]

>> And the ads are invisible to me anyway because I don't even look at them
It does not work that way, unfortunately:
https://theunboundedspirit.com...

Re:Bilbo

[Opportunist]

Good advice.

Maybe start lobbying to exempt people working in that industry from laws concerning murder. Make it legal to hunt them for fun and profit.

Belief vs opionon?

[Misagon]

Why does Forbes use the term "believe is morally wrong", when this is a question about opinion?

It seems to me that they want to hammer their own opinion into the heads of the readers, and belittle those with one that is different from theirs.

Bad form. A new low.

Leading questions

[ET3D]

When the question is "If a company loses my personal data/information I feel inclined to blame them above anyone else, even the hacker", the results aren't that surprising.

This survey feels truly meaningless to me. I doubt that many people truly prefer non-targeted ads or generic feeds. Sure, people might dislike ads in general, or hate it when targeting fails, which is what often happens, but that doesn't make targeting unethical.

Not creepy, just oddly useless

[Applehu Akbar]

Suppose I'm in the market for a new camera lens. I google for tech reviews and user critiques. I make a choice, and then jump onto Amazon.

A week after my new lens arrives, every online ad I see is suddenly for the lenses I searched for, including all the ones I didn't buy. What have all these advertisers bought from Google, exactly? While I'm out on the trail shooting with my new lens, they are funneling targeted ads they paid a premium for to a target market that no longer exists.

Would you do without home Internet?

[tepples]

Would you accept not having Internet access at home? If, as you suggest, there were "no ads. For anything. Ever", there would likely not be enough economies of scale for your cable company to continue to offer affordable Internet access to your residence. Adblock Plus will not protect you from the "You are offline" notice.

I don't see them anymore

[ThomasD3]

On the web, I block everything and use AdNauseam for it. But I realize that, over the years, I just don't read stuff in the street, in shops, etc. anymore. Quite a few times I was looking for information that was in front of me, but I somehow learned to mentally block any communication thrown at me if it's in big bold letters and I don't even realize it. I developed a fully functional mental ad blocker :)

Re:I don't see them anymore

[apoc.famine]

I'm in the same boat. I just tried to think of some ads I know I saw recently, and I honestly can't really remember. Some sort of drug ad with a lot of side effects, wife was watching a home improvement show, so I think one about paint?

I know there are a lot of vehicle ones, but I can't tell you which was honda and which was toyota. I know chevy is running a pile of "people surprised that it's a chevy" ads, but I couldn't tell you what models they were. And ford is lying about their new aluminum F-150 by calling it "military grade aluminum". That stood out enough that it made me laugh, so I remembered that. But the next vehicle I'm buying is electric, and none of those ads are for one, so that's all a giant waste of their time and money for me.

If you want to trick me into reading about your shit, the best way is to organize it, make it informational and comprehensive, and provide outside sources. Put some effort into making it scholarly and I'll potentially dive deep. Shout a slogan in big bold letters and like you, that goes right past me.

Re:While I have no love for advertisements at all.

[apoc.famine]

The world would be a better place if this was true for more people. Unfortunately advertising works for a large percent of the population. I remember a few years back when I was interacting with a handful of teenagers, one kid starts belting out the jingle for a fast-food fish sandwich. Half of them joined in, then they decided it would be hilarious to go get fish sandwiches.

What. The. Fuck.

It blew my mind that that shit actually worked. Then it occurred to me that if it worked on them, it also works on millions of other people. Tell you you have a problem often enough and they have the cure, and after awhile you forget that you were only told you have a problem, but you still believe you need the cure. You're hungry, thirsty, not manly enough, not pretty enough, not wealthy enough, not fashionable enough.

Even if advertisement doesn't work, we're still going to get advertisement. It's enough to see other people doing it for businesses think that they probably should too, just to be competitive.

Re:While I have no love for advertisements at all.

[apoc.famine]

Well to be fair, you wouldn't want one without the other.

Much lower CPM for non-interest-based ads

[tepples]

Such old-fashioned ads can be seen on Daring Fireball and Read the Docs. But their cost per thousand impressions (CPM) is one-third of what interest-based advertising can produce according to a 2014 study by Beales and Eisenach.

Internet equivalent of a hawker in your face

[Rick Schumann]

I dunno about 'morally wrong', but imagine walking down a crowded street on your way to a specific destination, and there are people putting flyers and signs right in your face, yelling in your ears to buy this-that-the-other, and occasionally someone who actually grabs your arm and pulls you aside to blather on and on about some crap he (or she) wants to sell you; how would you feel, especially about that last example? Annoyed, pissed off a little, and absolutely outraged, or if you're not then I wonder about you. That's the internet these days, and the last example is if you don't have some sort of pop-up blocker in your browser.

I also dunno about anyone else, but ads don't do much for me even if you manage to get past everything and get them in my face. If there's some product I need to go looking for, I search specifically for it, I don't look at random ads, watch random commercials, and so on, I go search for what I want specifically, decide on what's best, then go buy it. Ads don't sway me. I don't think ads sway most people, in fact, I think most people are like me in that respect. However advertising companies seem to be demonstrating classic signs of insanity: they keep repeating the same behavior over and over again expecting a different result -- and when it doesn't work any better than the last time around, they just get more and more intense about it, somehow thinking it'll work better this time. Guess what: it won't, it just annoys people more and more.

Memo to advertisers: Change up your game, what you're doing isn't working, and doubling-down on it isn't helping.

It would have been fine if it was for my benefit

[rundgong]

If personalized ads was for my benefit I would have been okay with it, but right now it is strictly for the benefit of the advertiser.

Right now we have a situation where financially literate people looking to borrow money see ads from serious lenders with competitive rates,
whereas people who are not financially literate get to see ads from predatory lenders and scams.
These are exactly the people that need help finding the good options, and the advertisers take advantage of them.

Sunk cost of 99 unused page views

[tepples]

Well, you could sell page view tokens in quantities of more than one per transaction for starters.

What good is buying single-site page view tokens in minimum quantities of 100 when a reader plans to view only one article on a site? The sunk cost of the remaining 99 page views produces almost the same filter bubble effect as the sunk cost of the remaining 29.9 days of a monthly subscription.

Porn sites had(have?) the adult verified affiliate network where for one aubacriptio you get access to a bunch of sites.

I'm aware of Adult Check, and I've suggested a similar multi-site subscription model before because adults can pay for nice things. But what appears to have brought down Adult Check was the fact that so many sites on the network were carrying infringing copies of photographs taken from Perfect 10 magazine. The publisher of Perfect 10 sued Adult Check and won. What should a multi-site subscription network do to mitigate its vicarious liability for infringing activity of its participating publishers?

Advertise only on specialized sites

[tepples]

If you start a new company and have a new product, how are you going to tell people it exists?

Advertise on a website about that class of product, not on the web at large. For example, advertise a video game on a website about video games, and advertise tampons on a site about women's health.

If you're unemployed and want to find a job, how do you know there are job openings?

Look at ads posted on a job board, such as Indeed, Monster, or Stack Overflow Jobs, not on the web at large.

If you're not happy with a product and want to find some alternative, what do you do?

Subscribe to Consumer Reports, a not-for-profit publisher of less-biased product reviews. Or look for reviews on some other website specializing in that class of product.

stalking

[bigtreeman]

it's called stalking and it's against the law in lots of places.
I feel threatened when I know someone or some company is perpetually watching me and interacting with me in a way I don't want or like.
Call me paranoid ? I'd be paranoid if it was just in my head.
They are mostly doing it to steal money from me.

Like this is going to make any difference

[Chris Mattern]

"Sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of cashing my checks"
      -- Every Internet entrepreneur everywhere

Marketing IS people!

[bussdriver]

I'm too late for many to read this but I'll make the point anyhow:

Marketing is a necessary evil every capitalist and free market supporter MUST support as an essential part of their economic religious beliefs. It's hypocritical to oppose it. If you just THINK seriously about it you can't see it any other way.

Can it go too far? can it be too much? Well, you can't believe that without also saying the same for capitalism and consumerism.

The problem is that the optimal balance is thrown off by improvements in technology and productivity as well as globalization etc. Due to the nature of the system (or lack thereof.. being "free") you can't put the genie back into the bottle without blasphemy against your economic belief system. That is what it boils down to. Not enough jobs, because demand is not strong enough; people must become bigger consumers to support the imbalanced system... and we are running into resource limits as well as consumption limits as it spirals more out of control. Not to mention the 3rd world who has been shafted the whole time and will always be because it CAN NOT scale outward to them... we'll blame the victims who are removed from our understanding as well... it's human nature. Times will get interesting as the 1st world feels the pain and marketing desperately tries to compensate for a larger problem.