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It’s not about the ads to buy things. That’s part of it for sure, but it’s more than that.
Google, Meta, Microsoft, etc. want your data, your habits, routines, opinions, etc, so they can influence the way you think and behave and understand the world.
There’s a clip I saw recently of Peter Thiel saying they could never get people to vote for the things they want to do, so instead they are using technology to change things.
Even if you block ads, if you still use platforms owned by tech mega-corps, they have your data. Sure you might not see the targeted ads, and so you think you’re coming out ahead, but you don’t realize that every piece of content you see between the ads you’ve blocked is being filtered to influence the way you think about the world.
I work in this space and I’m appalled at how much targeted ads make my company.
Every smart person I know is using adblocking too. So is there’s like a percentage of people who eats ads all day and open their wallets up?
Yes, most people. Adblockers are used by a minority.
I wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t have multiple friends who I have recently noticed don’t have ad blockers. Absolutely feral behavior and they were properly shamed for it.
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There’s plenty, with a bit of doing. Definitely not as easy as installing ublock through a browser extension store but very doable
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uBlock Origin Lite on Apple App Store (pretty new): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ublock-origin-lite/id6745342698
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uBlock Origin for Firefox on Android: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/ublock-origin/
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Firefox on android can just install extensions. No clue about the iphone. I remember some chromium browsers also having extensions on Android but I’m not 100% sure which ones.
There’s also DNS blocking of ads which can be set in your DNS settings or be part of your VPN connection. This will effectively block all ads too (even embedded ones in apps). On android ofc, yet again no clue about apple.
On iOS it’s the same, extensions for browser or DNS for apps
An unfortunate truth.
Some people justify it by stating that they keep ads because they want to support the websites, but don’t know that at the very least they should be blocking trackers and 3rd party cookies
Even then the proper way to do that would be to Adblock and then whitelist sites you support and know don’t have turbo intrusive ads
Yeah that’s what I do, but if they don’t know about adblock, they’re not gonna know about that.
Same thing on every other creative platform. People don’t know that it’s much better off for the creators to receive support in buying merch or patreon than it is for them to get a small fraction of what YouTube makes in ad revenue
they want to support the websites
Are these people actually clicking on the ads and making purchases through them? Because if all they’re doing is letting the ads clutter space, but not interacting with them, does that really support the site at all?
Someone on here some weeks ago had a beef with me saying I skip passed promo content in YouTube videos. They said something about wanting to support the videomakers. K, but if I’m not in the market for a new mattress (as an example of an ad I sometimes hear), it doesn’t make sense for me to listen to the sponsored mattress read-through. If I don’t make a purchase with the YouTuber’s promo code, then what’s the difference if I skip a couple minutes ahead? Do I owe a video “respect” by listening anyway? And if for some reason the advertiser cares more about me listening to their spiel than about me actually making a purchase, well, that’s silly and sucks for them.
There are some things advertised that I’m never going to buy no matter how much they’re shown to me. Meal kits, gambling sites, men’s boxers, these are all things I’ve seen countless sponsored ad placements mid-video for, and they are all things I don’t use and can’t see myself using. Yet the ads persist.
So I will continue skipping.
Are these people actually clicking on the ads and making purchases through them? Because if all they’re doing is letting the ads clutter space, but not interacting with them, does that really support the site at all?
For the most part, no, it doesn’t support the site, since most Google ads are PPC (Pay-Per-Click).
Sure but the metrics that companies produce after running an ad campaign to see if it was effective do not depend on those pay per click metrics. They will generally look at what the total sales or total amount of engagement with their content was pre and post the marketing campaign. If the number goes up they call it a success and will pay for another ad campaign. I guess the real question is are ad payouts for sites hosting them still generally based on pay per click or other engagement analytics that run after the campaigns are finished. That I am unsure of
It’s not actually most. It’s just enough to cover the ad spend.
Someone needs to create malware that installs ad blockers. That will more than half their conversion rate.
I showed my sister ad block and she was like why would i want to block ads. She said she has her algo dialed in and the ads just show her products she probably wants to buy.
as i have commented on another thing:
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“compliant consumer” is a mental illness
Understand that we in the minority position here and the “compliant consumers” are intelligent humans making just as many choices and trade offs with different values, skills and priorities just as we are doing.
I think there is a solid argument to make for both sides since the issue is morally relative and only one side has a working solution. I could never support it but i can see why others do.
That hurts my brain to hear, oh my!
You think that’s an obscene amount of money? The intermediary services that collect, collate, aggregate, etc. that same data in the first place before selling it to companies like your employer? That’s where the insane money is. That’s the long game. 🤢🥲
Middlemen make the most money of any profession.
Market Makers. Insurance. Everyone involved in the mortgage world. Research publications. Mid-level managers.
I’m a mid-level manager. I do make a good amount of money.
Was about to comment similarly 🤪
I’m going to push back on this. The experiments that had scientific rigor shown that broad ads were only marginally less effective then personalized ones while being way cheeper.
A lot of what you see may be attributing conversion to sales that would happen anyway. Classic examples would be do you use branded search keyowords? Off course you do, despite the body of evidence that it only cannibalize the organic search.
But there are other much more complex mehanics in play. Each sestem takes away more and more control to replace it with “autootymization”, so you truly have no idea to whom and when your ads is shown. Exact keywords are broader then broad “back in a day”. Who knows how google is mixing your ad components, an now AI will dynamically change the ad content and placement using unknown criteria. All this to obscure that what we do is advertisal (?) equivalent showing a pizza ad to people who finished giving their order to the waiter.
Measurable online was here to save us from ineffective offline. Big data was here to save us from innefectove CPC. Algorithms were here to save us from paralism of to much data and now AI is here to save us from all this producing mostly a negative ROI anyway.
I honestly belive we were in the middle of a massive online advertising bubble, that we manage to cover up with even bigger AI bubble.
We are fucked.
I work in this space and I’m appalled at how much targeted ads make my company.
And here is the hint (with the fencepost) that it might be more wishful thinking on the customers side (the companies renting the service). Similiar to the AI slop bubble.
They absolutely are. Everything I got from my family this past Christmas was slop from the TikTok shop. They just clicked the fist ad they saw and bought whatever. I even got two of the same item because my brother didn’t realize he clicked two ads for the same thing. I’ve been calling it Dropshipmas.
💀
“compliant consumer” is a mental illness
How did you find out? Did you talk about it?
They were pretty happy to volunteer the info. He still gave me the duplicate!
Oh shit I forgot all about this! After the holidays, everyone in the office was talking about all the garbage they got, and most of them were talking about how many sales/deals they got off of Tiktok.
Garbage in garbage out
Ads Georg, who lives in a cave and looks at adverts 17.7 billion times a day is an outlier and should not be counted.
Why? That seems like a pretty typical number for someone scrolling through Facebook without an ad blocker based on what I see from my family.
Most people use apps or standard Chrome. And Google targeted the most popular adblocker there deprecating Manifest V2 and using only V3 by default (maybe V2 is already removed?)
There are enough stories about somebody installing a pi-hole and a family member getting angry because now the ads for all the pretty things are gone.
You have to remember we’re the minority.
There’s already enough effort put into sabotaging AD blockers. If everyone used AD blockers, there wouldn’t be enough effort on Earth to keep corporations from destroying them left and right.
Our safe-haven of an AD-free internet only exists precisely because most people just put up with it.
Having said that, I don’t like things like Sponsor-block. I’m perfectly fine with the mega-corporation not getting my money, but I absolutely do want to make sure the creators who are putting cool things out there are getting paid.
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It’s all so stupid. I can’t remember the last time I got an ad for anything I was interested in buying. It’s all just whoever paid the most to shove their garbage in your face. Why even bother with all the spying at that point?
Why do so many advertisers think I own a dog? We have like a private, digital panopticon and they still serve me ads for dogfood for dogs I don’t don’t have.
I used to have a chrome extension that basically poisoned my data by clicking on every ad in the background while hiding the ads from me. I forgot what it was called.
It also benefitted the websites I visited by improving their click-thru while also hurting the advertisers by costing them money for ads that would never be effective.
sounds like adnauseam. https://adnauseam.io/
I have to use facebook for work every few months. All sandboxed and shit. They seem to think I’m in the market for conceal carry yoga pants. Which I fine with, because that means they have no clue about my gender, hobbies, or political alignment.
I mean, the rich are benefiting from all the ad spending which is all that matters! /s
People really need to remember that you’re paying for the ads regardless of if you see them. The only people who lose out are those who show the ads and giving the amount of websites these days that are solely built around showing ads, I really have no sympathy for them.
The bigger question no-one seems to ask is, how much cheaper would products be if they weren’t spending trillions on ads in the first place?
Depends on the product, a lot of things exist to be ad bate, and don’t really serve a wider purpose. Tshirts is an example that comes to mind where people just buy dozens of designs they never wear.
The whole premise has become shopping is the fun activity, the product is just the waste from that activity that needs to be discarded.
So I guess sans ads we would see a lot less arbitrary products (and places like Amazon would take a hit [yay])
I would be curious to know how e-commerce would change though as without ads people would likely gravitate to the big box stores
I find it so funny how I use Spotify daily*, and the account is linked** to my google account that I use a lot, and in the past I made sure to downvote any ads that don’t fit my interests at all, so basically giving as much aminition to give some good targeted ads to me.
Turns out, after all that, I get rubbish collection ads, face mask ads and wastewater management ads, even though I have truly never thought about any of those nor have shown interest in them, AND I’ve shown tons of interest in only technology.
Asterisks
(*) - I use the iOS mobile app, so I can’t really block ads unfortunately, even though I’d love to :/
(**) - I made the google and Spotify accounts when I was in my early teens, so I didn’t really know or care about digital footprint or tracking, so if I was able to go back, I would’ve at the very least gotten multiple google accounts to sandbox my activities. But hey, better late than never I guess!
I have a similar account for everything that I expect to have some form of tracking. Yet all of these services that are supposed to spy on me to find out exactly what I’m interested in have not once succeeded in targeted me with advertising for something I have any interest in getting. I’ve only seen them work for people who have Facebook or something that actively listens for things to make ads about, which I don’t have.
At one point, the advertising algorithm for Tinder decided what I needed in my life was a tractor. A massive, eleven tonne tractor intended for work on a large farm.
It probably wouldn’t fit up my driveway.
i think advertising purposes are just a front. They use it for something, but ads is just an afterthought/excuse for public.
They were the seed that started the surveillance machine, but you’re completely right nowadays the real ““value”” is elsewhere
I mean microtargetting the ads would mean they’d get less ad revenue. I think the big ones are
A) they use the data to evaluate markets and target new markets.
B) they sell it to police/intelligence agencies to fluff up their sales with bigger data numbers even though some of the data is “likes popcorn” and “bought a spoon off amazon”
C) corporate espionage type stuff, you collect info on a lot of people but then ID your main competitors or detractors to read their chat logs.
I think it was proctor gamble that zeroed out their $200 million yearly adtech spend and saw zero impact to their sales from it. There’s a good possibility we’re making everything terrible just so that Zuckerberg and friends can keep getting richer to nobody else’s actual benefit.
Yeah, I dare say there’s companies that benefit from it, but P&G is one of those companies that exist purely on creatures of habit buying the same big branded boxes every month, because they haven’t fallen quite far enough in life to consider supermarket-brand products.
In much the same way as nobody ever got fired for buying IBM, no clueless husband ever got told off for bringing home P&G branded fanny pads.
I lived in a country where people don’t speak English. There’s a sizable expat community of English speaking workers there. The ad targeting was so useless that I was constantly shown ads in a language I couldn’t understand. This was on an Android phone where everything was set to English. With every single interaction I with any app or web page I was broadcasting the language I know, and yet they couldn’t figure even that absolutely critical detail out.
This targeting was so bad that an old fashioned newspaper ad printed in ink next to a story would have been more effective. At least a publisher is going to put English ads in an English newspaper, German ads in a German newspaper, etc.
If the ad companies can’t even figure out the language(s) that their targets understand, their knowledge of their target must be essentially zero.
If the ad companies can’t even figure out the language(s) that their targets understand, their knowledge of their target must be essentially zero.
Sorry but this is the wrong takeaway here. They are so incredibly good at segmenting and profiling their audiences, they just don’t really give a fuck about serving good ads (or any other service for that matter) anymore. Cambridge Analytica anyone?
when i used apps with targeted ads, amongst generic type of stuff i also used to get two polar opposites of ads:
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ah, we see you’re in poland and use english a lot, want to learn english?
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ah, we see you’re in poland and use english a lot, we can help you get your immigration papers for legal employment
both at the same time btw. apparently being a polish national who speaks english fluently marked me as some sort of ad-anomaly
the ads also believed that i was a senior? at some point i even got a spam call inviting me to join a study on back pain T–T like bro you’re at least 10 years early, relax
Was ad number 2 about how to get immigration papers as an English-speaking person in Poland? I imagine Poland doesn’t have a lot of immigration from people in English-speaking countries. Especially not from people who haven’t figure out all the legalities necessary to gain employment in Poland.
i mean, the ad was in english so kinda? i never clicked on them so i can’t say for sure
though don’t forget that a person who speaks english doesn’t have to be from an english speaking country. most people who want to travel/live abroad will know at least some english
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I mean I think that it does work on most people. I have a few people in my life who just don’t block ads. Some of them do not even change their radio frequency when ads play through it. They think that they can choose for it to not affect them, but that’s not really how propaganda works.
Just think how many people started making sourdough bread during covid lockdowns. That may not have been intentional advertising, just a few people starting a thing & then it was everywhere, and so many people who’d never cooked a day in their life became obsessed with sourdough bread. Advertising fills in the blank when you say, “Fuck it, let’s just _____”
It works well enough to get returns on ad spend.
The Tumblr-clone I use for porn has been feeding me the same (rather gross) heterosexual ads for so long I finally added every available list to my PiHole so they’re finally gone. Good job morons. Couldn’t even figure out how to show a gay guy cock.
The “algorithms” are also dumb as fuck. For example on a large retailer site you spent a couple of hours browsing for a particular kind of item. You are comparing different kinds, looking up reviews and issues, watching YouTube videos about them. And finally you pull the trigger and but the thing. Then for the next 3 months that site (and others that picked up on the research) will go: Hey here are some more of that thing you like, you really liked it right? Would you like to compare some more items? Uhm no, I actually bought said thing, you made the sale. All of that “targeted” advertisement is just wasted, I have zero interest anymore since the need has been filled.
It’s either that or stuff I can’t afford (like memory or graphic cards) or really weird stuff I have no idea why it’s being shown to me. Sometimes very alarmingly so. Just recently I got an ad that said “Popular in your region” and it was for illegal Nazi dogwhistle flags, “self defense knifes”, baseball bats and tracksuits. That’s a bit scary. On the other hand the same site gave me an ad for a “easy to conceal” blowjob machine sex toy. Like holy shit what kind of people are living in my region?
Targeted ads have been terrible for as long as I can remember. I don’t think I ever bought anything through an ad or hardly ever even clicked on them. Only time I click on them is because the site and my adblocker are fighting and when I try to click somewhere on the page, it inserts an ad the last millisecond, shifts the entire page so I accidentally click on it.
One of the parts that gets me is there is a good opportunity for more sales there (if that should happen is another debate I don’t have the energy for). A few years ago I bought an electric kettle. So cue months of ads for electric kettles. It’s a kettle, you only need one. Now if I had been shown different teas or coffees, stuff I would use the kettle to make, they would have absolutely hooked me easily. I had a new toy, I was excited to use it, I would have loved trying new teas with it. I still did, but they were all ones I chose.
Yup! Bought an android phone on Amazon. I got a bunch of ads for phones or incompatible accessories. Amazon… You know I bought a android phone, why are you selling me a lightning cable? You know it was a pixel phone, why are you selling me a phone case for a Samsung s series phone?
I’ll piss off a bunch of lemmy users with this but… I don’t mind ads. I hate useless ads. As you said, ads about teas or coffees would of been useful for you. 99% of the time if I buy something I don’t need more of that, maybe some associated stuff but not that. If I buy a video card yesterday I don’t need another one. Sell me the latest games. Sell me da monitor with high fps/resolution to show off what the video card can do. I buy a clothes washer, I don’t need another one. Sell me detergent. Sell me fabric softener.
How have all the advertising companies missed this?
True. If I buy a fridge try selling me other kitchen appliances because I might be remodeling. Don’t try to sell me more fridges. This is ludicrous!
I always just assumed I was too weird to effectively algorithmicly advertise to. I’m far away from the average American by a lot of measures and my interests are very niche.
When I get suggestions or ads they feel like they are for someone else a lot (I like your blowjob machine example, many ads assume I’m male and lonely even though I’m a woman. Maybe that demographic is so lucrative and I’m so hard to sell to that I get those ads)
I bought a used school bus on eBay a few years ago (to turn into a skoolie) and since then I’ve been bombarded with ads for used school buses. I can assure anyone interested that one is more than enough. Yes, there are school districts and companies that maintain large fleets of school buses, but they do not buy them on fucking eBay.
I still get recommended tampons because my ex-gf bought some with my Amazon account 5+ years ago. Peak recommendation brilliance.
can you imagine being a transman post hysterectomy?
FUCKING NO! I don’t use those anymore!
Amazon thought I was a toilet seat collector for 3-6 months after I bought a 3-pack. No amount of not clicking on those promoted items could convince them otherwise.
well that’s the problem. people usually buy one
When that one embarrassing purchase from last year still haunts your algo…
I had to buy adult diapers for my elderly parents. Whoo boy did that unleash a storm.
It thought I was a transvestite for lime a year after a Christmas where I bought my my mom a sweater, and my girlfriend jewelery.
Like full on recommending me panties and lingerie in my mens size 32 waist.
FWIW, a good chunk of lingerie ads are meant to target men (assuming they’re heterosexual and in a relationship).
Sure, but they were showing them in my size, lol
Do they make them in size 38? Asking for a friend.
Illegal nazi flags are “popular in your region” and bought together with weapons? Maybe tip the police off?
Idk how much action they can take on something like this, but it seems like something is going on that shouldn’t be.
Most people don’t use adblockers
Even when I saw ads, I never clicked on them (at least on purpose) and they basicslly just become noise my brain filters out. Like going noseblind to a smell that is constsntly there.
You still were subjected to the constant imaging exposure
You might not have noticed but your brain did
Even still, it was always either
A) Shit I’d absolutely never buy
B) Shit I was planning on buying anyway before the ad
C) The ad reminds me “oh yeah I do need new underwear” (idfk lol), but even then I just mentally log that and go buy underwear later, never “click the add and buy those underwear,” not even necessarily the same brand at another retailer, like instead of Hanes™ the ad could say “Underwear^TheConcept” and it’d be the same thing.
The targeting seems to not be worth piss to me imo.
Most advertising isn’t trying to convince you to buy product X that’s being advertised. It’s trying to get you to think about the brand itself. They’re saying “Buy this fridge from Brand A” but they’re not actually trying to sell you a fridge, what they really want is for you to think of Brand A the next time you’re looking for a new appliance or some other product they sell.
But I already know I want a Speed Queen, so when Samsung advertises whatever shit new Samsung AI Washer/Dryer with wifi and bluetooth horse shit, my brain goes “ahh yeah put more money towards that Speed Queen.” And then when I go to replace my phone I go “hmmm lets see what can use grapheneOS” and Samsung loses again, then I go to replace my TV and get a used Vizio from 2008 at the flea market, etc…
It just doesn’t work along “brand” lines at least for me.
Everybody thinks advertising doesn’t work on them.
