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I agree that relevant ads are better than completely random ones for everyone involved. But there is a significant middle ground between “show this user a random ad” and “show this user an ad based on data collected through tracking”. There’s also “show this user an ad similar to what they’re currently looking at”, like the search ads on DuckDuckGo. I find that these kinds of ads are just as relevant as targeted ads. The big disadvantage compared to using tracking is the inability for advertisers to select demographics directly (instead, they would have to choose pages or search terms to appear near).

A random ad would be strange. An ad based on the content of the page or type of site would actually fit in better.

> The economic value of a well targeted ad is probably 10x otherwise.

> Ergo - unless you are willing to pay for apps - you might now see 10x more ads appearing on pages than otherwise.

I'm afraid that this is nonsense. If the economic value of selling bread went down by 10x, do you think people would start offering you 10x as much bread?

Only someone with absolutely no understanding of advertising would say this, because the effectiveness of targeting is a given, it's not controversial.

I would urge you to consider the real economics of the situation instead of propagating bad information, and embarrassing yourself.

Ironically, the evidence for the relative value of ads is right on Facebook Ad Platform itself!

You can run an experiment today, right now.

Create a Facebook ad, and send people to your web site, with some kind of intended action.

Send 'Ad 1' to a completely untargtted audience.

Send 'Ad 2' to a crudely targeted audience (say, nation and demographic)

Send 'Ad 3' to an interest based demographic.

You will right there, plain as day, in a single day, see that ads 1, 2 and 3 will each have an order of magnitude of a different conversion rate.

Most public commentary on ads is based on ignorance, which is somewhat understandable because it's domain specific knowledge, but because it's a 'personal issue' to some, they have an opinion about it.

Targeted ads are unambiguously better for everyone: sellers, marketers, exchanges, buyers.

The issue is privacy.

I know that targeted advertising is more effective and I am not disputing that. I did not dispute it in my comment.

I am disputing your random assertion that, if advertising became less effective (say by removing targeting), the quantity of advertising that people see would go up significantly.

The amount of adverts that people see currently is not based solely on their economic value - it is based on their value relative to how much people are willing to put up with being advertised to. If advertising becomes less valuable, that doesn't mean people will suddenly put up with more of it.

Indeed, if the value of adverts went down, I would expect to see fewer advertisements, not more, since the value of showing them to people is now less relative to their willingness to put up with them.

It seems obvious to me that they didn't mean economic value. Clearly ads make money. People don't pay for them recreationally.

As for 10x more ads if they get less effective, that doesn't make any sense. Advertising supported media isn't showing the minimum amount of ads needed to cover their costs out of some sort of altruism. They show the profit maximising amount. Any more ads will cost them more eyeballs/clicks than they currently get.

> In fact - advertising that is 'well targeted' is considerably less annoying than ads that are poorly targetted.

And better than targeted ads are ads that only need contextual information to work. If I'm on a page for a bit of sports equipment, I'm probably interested in sports equipment, or at the very least sports. Didn't need a complex data collection and analysis pipeline there.

> unless you are willing to pay for apps - you might now see 10x more ads appearing on pages than otherwise.

I do in fact pay for apps, and I'd very interested in seeing the data collection + sale markets collapse, so that apps are not tempted to double-dip and sell my data anyway.

> The better we are able to connect people with the things they want, the better we all are.

I'd suggest that the more efficiently we are able to let people find what they need, the better. Advertising exists to sell you a product, totally regardless of whether it's the actual best product for your needs.

> Of course, privacy matters as well If advertising can be done even 50-60% as well without scooping every piece of user data it can get its hands on, then it should be.

"If I'm on a page for a bit of sports equipment, I'm probably interested in sports equipment, or at the very least sports. Didn't need a complex data collection and analysis pipeline there."

Unfortunately, this simply isn't true.

The value of a vistor to a 'sports site' may be considerably more for some other product or service.

The fact is - most content is placed on sites for which there is no obvious context: Facebook, Twitter, news - none of it provides much information.

"I do in fact pay for apps" - it doesn't matter what you or I do - it matters what people do. The fact is, people are considerably more likely to opt for ad-based products than pay-based products, and for some kinds of products, it has a strategic consideration (i.e. those with network effects).

Ads are not going away.

"I'd suggest that the more efficiently we are able to let people find what they need, the better."

People never knew they needed a smartphone, did they? Nobody was thinking 'hey I really want a 'big screen phone'.

So I agree 'search for stuff' should be better, but advertising is not going away.

The 'ill effects' of privacy are negligible.

Nobody is harmed because of what FB is able to discern 'out of network' vs. what it already knows from what you do 'on network'.

There are definitely considerations, but in reality, no harm.

Can you think of examples where you, or someone you know has been harmed by FB out of network data collection?

Ads are not going away, better ads are better for everyone, we need to figure out how to deal with privacy.

> Unfortunately, this simply isn't true.

It quite literally is. I like mountain biking, if I go to Pinkbike (largest MTB news site), all the ads are for mountain biking products. If I'm there, I don't want to see ads for cloud services, or toasters, because that's literally not what I'm interested in at this point.

> The value of a vistor to a 'sports site' may be considerably more for some other product or service.

Like what? Probably less utility to the user though.

> The fact is, people are considerably more likely to opt for ad-based products than pay-based products

Many products are advertising only, and there's a strong culture (pushed by the advertising industry I might ad) of ad-supported above all else.

> The 'ill effects' of privacy are negligible...Nobody is harmed because of what FB is able to discern 'out of network' vs. what it already knows from what you do 'on network'.

In your opinion, sure. So what, we should all just have to put up with it, just because Facebook thinks it "deserves" to make money. Phillip Morris and friends argued that cigarettes didn't harm anybody as well.

> There are definitely considerations, but in reality, no harm.

The previous American election and the well documented effect of troll farms would indicate otherwise. Targeted advertising, enabled by invasion of privacy and amplified by the ill-effects of social-networks literally enabled that directly. The "chilling effect" of constant monitoring on culture is a well documented effect.

> Ads are not going away, better ads are better for everyone, we need to figure out how to deal with privacy.

"Ads are here, who cares about privacy, we want to make money". We have a right to privacy, advertisers not have right to make money, and when rights and advertising collide, I don't see any reason beyond "let's just endlessly feed people to the machine of capitalism" why the latter should be allowed to win.

You are conflating 'targetting = harm' with the more broad concern of 'private information in private hands = harm'.

It's a huge stretch to say 'targetted ads disrupt elections'.

What if we could to 'perfect targetting' without invasion of privacy? Well, the 'Evil Russians' would still be able to try to use ads.

They are completely separate issues.

'The Russians' FYI mostly use FB pages, Reddit pages and fake groups to generate outrage, not just ads.

There isn't really specific harm to individuals by FB having this information. It 'feels' creepy, but it's really not a material issue. It's something we would rather not have, obviously, and there are elements of privacy we definitely don't want to give up (ie intimate moments haard by Alexa), but in general not something that's bad.