<story><title>Forget privacy: you&apos;re terrible at targeting anyway</title><url>https://apenwarr.ca/log/20190201</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>manigandham</author><text>1. Targeting is rarely as sophisticated as you think. Many campaigns are run wide and cheap (all users in a region, maybe some particular hours, etc). It&amp;#x27;s easier to optimize after this initial run based on actual performance rather than trying to figure out the exact people who would respond.&lt;p&gt;2. Some companies are also taking ad auction bidding in-house and running their own algorithms with their 1st party data, like upselling their own customers. This doesn&amp;#x27;t need any relevance matching since they know exactly who they&amp;#x27;re going after.&lt;p&gt;3. Targeting is not free. There is a continuum of price vs precision and high precision is rarely worth the costs, especially if the product itself cannot support those margins. Again this is why optimizing after a wide start is better than targeting upfront, and also why if you&amp;#x27;re trying to reach a very narrow audience it&amp;#x27;s easier to just send them email, or even direct mail.&lt;p&gt;4. People only notice the bad ads, not the good ones which they like or are influenced by. This is no different than complaining about bad CGI in movies when your average sitcom is 50% artificial but nobody notices because it just works.&lt;p&gt;5. Recommending movies as entertainment with cost in a subscription plan is nothing like finding relevant ads on the internet.&lt;p&gt;6. The adtech industry has 2 of the most valuable companies in the world and generates petabytes of data and billions in profit proving how well ads work. A random blog post by an outsider who has no idea how the industry works but claims it&amp;#x27;s all broken in direct contradiction to the data just comes across the same as a flat-earth conspiracy theorist.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>setr</author><text>&amp;gt;The adtech industry has 2 of the most valuable companies in the world and generates petabytes of data and billions in profit proving how well ads work&lt;p&gt;Targetting a demographic in terms of search or social media or television makes sense — the information is there simply by virtue using the platform. This is fine and well, and what the article agrees with.&lt;p&gt;Pulling it from demographic to individual by means of mass data collection is quite new, and unproven — facebook and google made their money &lt;i&gt;before&lt;/i&gt; profiling was a major thing, and thus their wealth is &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; proof that its successful; they certainly believe theres mobey in it, as well as the advertisers and trackers, and are transitioning to it, but they aren’t proof that they wouldn’t be just as successful if they never transitioned.&lt;p&gt;Ads work. This has been shown by the last century of their existence in every medium they can fit in. Personalized ads, specifically those that are based on your non-current activities (eg buy on amazon and get served shopping ads when you later browse fb) are questionable.</text></comment>
<story><title>Forget privacy: you&apos;re terrible at targeting anyway</title><url>https://apenwarr.ca/log/20190201</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>manigandham</author><text>1. Targeting is rarely as sophisticated as you think. Many campaigns are run wide and cheap (all users in a region, maybe some particular hours, etc). It&amp;#x27;s easier to optimize after this initial run based on actual performance rather than trying to figure out the exact people who would respond.&lt;p&gt;2. Some companies are also taking ad auction bidding in-house and running their own algorithms with their 1st party data, like upselling their own customers. This doesn&amp;#x27;t need any relevance matching since they know exactly who they&amp;#x27;re going after.&lt;p&gt;3. Targeting is not free. There is a continuum of price vs precision and high precision is rarely worth the costs, especially if the product itself cannot support those margins. Again this is why optimizing after a wide start is better than targeting upfront, and also why if you&amp;#x27;re trying to reach a very narrow audience it&amp;#x27;s easier to just send them email, or even direct mail.&lt;p&gt;4. People only notice the bad ads, not the good ones which they like or are influenced by. This is no different than complaining about bad CGI in movies when your average sitcom is 50% artificial but nobody notices because it just works.&lt;p&gt;5. Recommending movies as entertainment with cost in a subscription plan is nothing like finding relevant ads on the internet.&lt;p&gt;6. The adtech industry has 2 of the most valuable companies in the world and generates petabytes of data and billions in profit proving how well ads work. A random blog post by an outsider who has no idea how the industry works but claims it&amp;#x27;s all broken in direct contradiction to the data just comes across the same as a flat-earth conspiracy theorist.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ghthor</author><text>I think it&amp;#x27;s a little harsh to relate this to someone who thinks the earth is flat.</text></comment>