Breaking news: advertsing company wants your personal information
marco.org
marco.org
I agree with most of this (since it basically says "I dunno, I don't like Google, they have a slim chance of creating a successful social network but there is a chance", otherwise known as "no shit, Sherlock"). But why is advertising depicted so deplorable by all these tech pundits? I honestly don't get why these people lionize the idea of creating good products sold for money and vilify the idea of creating good ads sold for money.
Here are some potential reasons, which I do not necessarily personally endorse:
A good faith purchase of a product or service is a transparent and mutually beneficial arrangement. Ideally, each party acquires something more valuable to them than what they gave up and there is no deception necessary.
Throw advertising in the deal and it becomes more of a competition. Now you have three or more parties involved and none of them have an explicit agreement on everything they are giving and receiving. The value flowing from consumer to producer to advertiser is left ambiguous.
Anyone who has experience with contracts knows that ambiguity = conflict.
Also, it could be considered inefficient, in a macro-economic sense, to spend resources just to convince people to buy other things.
And finally, we've all seen what happens when advertising goes horribly wrong: spam.
Another salient difference: Google: Thanks for looking at 100s of ads you hate. Apple: Thanks for buying 100s of dollars of stuff you love.
https://twitter.com/#!/hotdogsladies/status/8101850288606412...
If I'm looking to buy a specific product, have finished researching it and now know what I want then I don't really care if I get the product via an ad, via an unpaid link, or via walking to the shop. It comes down to price, availability, and service and if I'm delivered that via an ad I'm happy.
It's called perfect advertising[1][2] and - while no one is there yet - Google is doing more to make it happen than any other company I'm aware of.
[1] http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/ad-perfect.html
[2] http://nicklothian.com/blog/2010/08/25/perfect-advertising/
However, I run AdWords for our web design agency, and every so often we gain a new client through them. And, I'm proud to say, the vast majority of our clients are very pleased with our service and level of quality. So I would argue that for them, Google has brought them a significant amount of value, just as they have for us.
People underestimate the power of free.
You meant 'marketing', right?
Marco also has a stake in a wholly different idea of what advertising is. Notice "The Deck"s advertisement in his sidebar? He doesn't hate advertisements at all. He wants ad networks that are targeted, instead of being spammed out across every site and requiring invasive tracking to determine who and what product to show.
"It sets a precedent that tracking someone's movements is A-OK."
Anything that large will require metrics and user tracking to understand what to show. It matches the ads to the user, not to the site, by invading the user's privacy to understand exactly what to show.
Not sure how you get this from Google building a new destination site. Doesn't this mean they'd do less cross-site tracking (since presumably they will spend more time on this new site)?
Some media outlets let the advertising money corrupt them, and some don't. Just because some do doesn't mean all must.
Exactly the same argument can be made about product companies. They can become more profitable in the short term by making shoddy products that break after a while. Is that a sensible strategy? I don't know, but I think it's exactly the same as saying that pleasing advertisers becoming more important than pleasing customers.
First of all–why do Facebook and Google care so much to canvas the web with little buttons to encourage users to share content? In fact–why do they care if users share content at all? Are they really that loving of the human race that they are doing so solely for our benefit? Of course not.
A little background:
- Facebook and Google know an inordinate amount of data about you - they track, store, and interpret every move you make through their services with the goal of figuring out who you are, mainly to sell to you.
- But this wasn't enough, so Facebook introduced the Like button and Google +1. Now Facebook and Google can track your every move on the web - regardless of whether you interact with the button. Companies claim they delete this data, but only after they fully interpret it or extrapolate it into descriptive data.
- The problem that Facebook and Google still face however - is that they collect massive amounts of data–but have a heck of a time monetizing it–because they essentially spied to get it in the first place. So what is the solution? Well, if the user actively shares the content–especially in a public realm but also privately, that user has consciously connected themselves to that content and monetization becomes easy. (This is why Gmail ads are creepy, but discounts from Foursquare checkins are welcome)
more analysis here: http://knowit.posterous.com/google-a-reaction
Is this really a bad thing?
I think that Marco is more complaining about how the advertising company in question figures out that you are you at that IP address and computer combination. It's the back end analytics they employ that is building and refining a database of people that continually use their products, of which the users either can't see, access and review, or are ignorant of in the first place. Being helpless is something we all fear as humans, and not having any say as to what kind of information may be in that database scares some people. Is it something that we all should be aware of? Probably. Should it keep us up at night? Probably not. +1 or Google+ helps them refine who they think we are, but really, they don't care who any of us are individually, they care about what will interest us next.
22 year olds who were 21 last year, but graduated and have jobs this year.
And, imho, Google does not feel threatened by facebook. They have done nothing to harm facebook ads. On the contrary, facebook has banned Adsense from 3rd party applications.