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Comment by jchw | Hacker News Reader

Nobody wants to “customize their cookie preferences.” Ever. It’s clear this should be a yes or no that has no impact on functionality, but once you do that it becomes clearer: why isn’t the answer just no for everyone? Is someone out there really thinking “ah man, if only advertisements were more relevant!” ???

I do see how someone could plausibly prefer relevant ads over irrelevant ones. But I’d be willing to bet a majority of people simply do not care and in fact would rather see neither.

Of course, this is bad news for some, but it was supposed to be bad news. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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>if only advertisements were more relevant

Has anyone ever bought anything because they saw an ad? If anything ads cause me to not want to buy the product. I have stopped buying certain products because whenever I see them in the store I'm reminded of their stupid ads and all I feel is resentment.

Of course then people come with the whole "you pay with your attention" thing. No you don't, because if you pay, you'll still be served ads, because why the hell not right? They'll still mine your data, bother you with 'suggestions' and annoying ads.

Being a consumer sucks.

> Has anyone ever bought anything because they saw an ad? If anything ads cause me to not want to buy the product.

It is tempting to think that. And to think these ads have no influence on you.

But since marketing costs many companies tons of money and they happily pay it, I'm more inclined to believe that it works. Especially since the correlation between marketing budget and income is something that can be directly seen by these companies.

It's like how many Youtubers say the hate doing the "Like and subscribe" thing, but they can see in the analytics that videos where they say that perform better.

Also, attention isn't payment. You pay the marketing budget when you buy the product. Only you also pay with time, your bandwidth, your CPU time, electricity, sanity and privacy.

The idea that ads help us have things for free might be the greatest marketing stunt they have ever pulled

>to think these ads have no influence on you.

Yes, it has an influence, it influences me to avoid their shitty products. My assumption is that if you have to sink 80% of your budget into ads, I assume it sucks and I'll end up paying for more ads to be directed at me. Especially if the ads are annoying on purpose to "make you remember them" I avoid their products like the plague.

>The idea that ads help us have things for free might be the greatest marketing stunt they have ever pulled.

That was sort of my point. But the real secret of marketing is that it has a very low success/conversion rate. Marketing and ads are a product sold to the companies who pay for the ads, it's a racket. Marketing companies will pretend that you'll lose money if you don't, so you'll have to spend that money on them instead.

> But the real secret of marketing is that it has a very low success/conversion rate

That's not a secret. Everybody who books advertising online knows their conversion rate. It doesn't matter whether it is low, what matters is that a dollar spent on advertising turns into more than one dollar in revenue.

> Marketing companies will pretend that you'll lose money if you don't, so you'll have to spend that money on them instead.

Many companies - especially those starting out - don't care about losing money, they care about not increasing revenue. If hiring more sales people and spending more on marketing increases revenue - and it generally does - then operating at a loss is okay. If it doesn't, maybe there's no way to salvage your product - figuring that out has value, too.

> Has anyone ever bought anything because they saw an ad?

Yes. Advertising works. It's usually not that an advertisement immediately turns into a purchase. However, once you've seen the ad, you're more likely to purchase product if you encounter it again.

> I have stopped buying certain products because whenever I see them in the store I'm reminded of their stupid ads and all I feel is resentment.

Maybe that is true, but that's because you're a curmudgeon. Most consumers are not like that. If they were, the economy would collapse under its misanthropy.

> Being a consumer sucks.

You know what sucks even more? Being a producer.

Same. I just ignore everything, and with really stupid ads (that don't even mention their product/brand, or maybe I can't see it; same result) I wonder who tf is getting paid for that.

Sometimes I make a special note to avoid the company, because 2-5 minutes of bullshit is not an ad and you deserve to fail.

But having worked in affiliate marketing, I can tell that people do buy A LOT of stuff based on ads. I was running mostly targeted campaigns with relevant products on relevant websites/forums and relevant keywords on Google/Yahoo/Bing, but even on untargeted ads work.

AdSense used to work (probably still does, I hated it from the first try), and I can't fathom who clicks on those ads and even makes a purchase.

Pre-covid, I actually benefitted from Instagram advertising (without personalization) because I got to hear about new restaurants in my area... Considering that I block every other kind of advertising and tracking through rather draconian measures, I cannot compare if something else would have been of benefit though. I'd have done the same for Instagram, but then I found some rather excellent places through it, so...

It always amazes me how little self reflection most people have.

> Has anyone ever bought anything because they saw an ad?

Ask almost any woman a few weeks after breastfeeding at night where browsing the web is one of few entertainment options. (Spoiler - yes, so many of them did)

That's an extreme "yes" case, not otherwise, sure people do. That's why companies spend money on the ads. (some of them in clueless ways wasting money)

> Is someone out there really thinking “ah man, if only advertisements were more relevant!” ???

honestly, yes. adverts pay for most if not all of the free content on the internet. if adverts were more targeted they would become more profitable and therefore pay for better content.

very well target ads will suggest things to you that you would genuinely like or would be useful to you but have not yet heard about.

> if adverts were more targeted they would become more profitable and therefore pay for better content.

If ads were more targeted, that doesn't necessarily increase neither the ad spend of companies, and it most definitely doesn't increase the amount of money that consumers can spend on the things that are being advertised.

Most of the time, advertising is a zero-sum game. If you take ad targeting away from everyone, everyone will just do untargeted ads (i.e. ads that are only related to the context they appear in, not related to the person seeing them), and there will be no comparative disadvantage for any particular advertiser.

I personally prefer having personalised ads over vanilla ones. Especially if the data is not sold but merely used to improve ads. If possible I try to pay where possible to not have ads in the first place.

> Especially if the data is not sold but merely used to improve ads

Which is never. It's disingenuous to even pay homage to this idea being possible in practice, as it makes the space seem a lot less seedy than it is.

You can be targeted without explicitly selling data to a third party. This is how most large advertising networks work. They don't send a dump of all user data to a third party who wants to advertise.

I do admit that this is a valid viewpoint. But also, the problem is that the choice is between “the data is collected” and “the data is not collected,” and ads being relevant is just a proxy for that. Even if a company was actually responsible with data and had a proven track record in data security, it just seems like unnecessary risk for something that is not very important to the end user.

I’ve learned to love more direct advertising. Granted, I will admit that NordVPN and Raycon may not provide the best or even in some cases most honest products, but the model they are using to advertise, by having reputable creators appeal to their viewers in enjoyable ways (see, for example, the way Internet Historian uses his signature video editing style and makes the whole ordeal of an advertisement into an over-the-top joke; people end up looking forward to these ad reads) is pretty solid, and it might have more room for growth with creators seeking more direct monetization with both their fans and sponsors alike.

Compared to that, even the most relevant ads generated by some algorithm will always feel impersonal. It’s a giant machine to me.

> if the data is not sold but merely used to improve ads

Have you considered how the ads are improved? Websites don't use their own information to serve ads...

They don't have to dump the data, your request for the ad is itself data that allows more targeting by that network. Part of your identity is sold by default the moment you content to the linked ad network.

That request is made to the ad platform (e.g. Google/FB/Amzn) and not the 3th party who owns the ad. Even when following the link the website does not get any personal information it does not already get by you visiting their website.

You mentioned data originally, not personal information. You do give the 3rd party data about your current visit which is connected with all the information they already have about you - which builds up your profile. But the difference is not that big - for example did you visit page for the local school with a facebook button? Yeah, facebook already knows which area you likely live in.

Advertisers have proven time and time again they're not trustworthy.

And any website that says "your privacy is important to us" while deliberately tricking you into accepting terms and cookies you weren't easily made aware of is a hostile adversary.

I've said before, I'd be happy to see ads that were embedded in the website's content, unchanging and baked in on the day the page was written (like print publications) as there would be no need to track and stalk me, profile me and sell my behaviour to dodgy companies around the world who are making money from me without my consent.

Do that and I'll turn my ad blocker off. Until then, let's bring on the gdpr lawsuits.

Typically they say ”We value your privacy”, which can be read in a very literal way…

I personally couldn’t care less. The cost way outweighs any benefits.

> Is someone out there really thinking “ah man, if only advertisements were more relevant!” ???

There's a r/google I sometimes peek at. One common theme there is someone complaining about the ads they get, another one asking about personalisation and the complainer confirming they have it disabled. Not getting ads for mail-in brides is nice.

Disclaimer: I work in Google but nowhere near ads.

Right, absent a very extensive dossier about my habits and desires most reasonable choice for google when serving an ad for this `sed' tutorial is for a mail-in bride?

What else should it be, when nobody tries to put ads relevant to`sed'[1]? Normally, Google would fall back to "put ads for whatever this person is into". But without personalisation, it falls back further to "put ads for whatever the Internet is into". Which appears to tend towards mail-in brides, softcore pornographic games and other sadness.

There's been here a rather good blog post from an engineer actually working on ads on the topic. I think a couple weeks back.

[1]: well, for `sed' I'd rather expect someone trying to sell you an IDE, or to get a cut from recruiting you. But then, what do I know.

> What else should it be, when nobody tries to put ads relevant to`sed'

If there's one company who should know what to advertise when the user searches for "sed", that company is Google. Yes, without personalization, as the user just gave you the information you need!

If they don't they might as well roll the doors down because that's the main core business of Google.

How did advertisers knew what to put on the WSJ? on Time? on Sports Illustrated?

Please try to follow the line of thinking your own questions suggest and stop the ad-hominem.

Where's the ad-hominem? I honestly don't see it.

It has been edited away.

The majority of people want to not pay, and also not see ads, so what they want isn't useful.

Has anyone ever been harmed by being tracked? I'd rather see one ad that's relevant to me and will earn the website 1 standard currency unit, than 100 ads I'll never click and will earn 0.01 SCUs

Yes. Cases of privacy breach:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...

And I'd argue that any time anyone bought something they weren't interested in before seeing an ad for it, they were harmed.

1 case 9 years ago is it?

You're assuming that a) buying things is bad, and b) you're interested in everything that's good for you and already know every product that exists.

It's obviously an example. You asked if anyone's ever been harmed - yes they have.

Chances are that the site you are on has some topic that could be the subject of relevant ads. That's how advertising has worked before it became a game of stalking every user to the maximum extent possible.

Yes, during chemo my mother bought on several reiki or hsimilar crooked pseudoscientific stuff to help her cope.

I'm not against seeing your occasionnal pastor/homeopath or other not-doctor that will at least take time to listen to you and rescribe placebo ater you unloaded on them (i think a shrink is more usefull and cheaper, but really i'm not in a crusade or anything, and i'm okay with sect/religion/"natural remedies" as long as it is not lithotherapy and you still get your chemo).

However pseudoscience stuff with no human component and just money is just taking advantage of fragile, suffering people. Aiming at them is as amoral as it get.

Tracking is shit because the ad industry is shit.

I second everything you said but I try to always customize my cookie settings. But I'm pretty certain it has almost zero effect.

At least I could potentially be in a position to sue (maybe).

So I'm using ff with noscript ublock privacy badger containerization and the likes to mitigate.

It is plain crazy!

> Is someone out there really thinking “ah man, if only advertisements were more relevant!”?

To be fair, people who prefer personalized ads do exist. Some of them are not aware this involves not only tracking but also profiling them.

Give them your finger, and they'll not only take the whole hand, but your arm too and then divide up your other limbs and make it into a wholesale.

If only there were some kind of browser feature for blocking or allowing cookies on per-site basis, so that we could avoid every website having to create their own javascript implementation

Those banners have nothing to do with cookies, they are about tracking - there are a lot of other tracking techniques besides cookies. So if the number of users who would block cookies reaches a certain threshold the advertisers would switch to other technical means, and would still have to present you this dialogue.

I do want to, and have, customized my cookie preferences. On some sites I blanket-allow, on others I blanket-deny, and on others I’m somewhere in the middle.

What is this middle ground? Do you actually go advertiser by advertiser and allow/deny their cookies?

Typically if I allow some cookies, it’s because I trust the company to use analytics data to better the product.

There is a 3rd option: not making your website available for EU.

Funny you mention it. I recently visited a site which did exactly that. It blatantly stated, that content is not available for EU customers gabba gabba yadda yadda and in the end it said "No tracking cookies were served with this page", yet ublock origin and privacy budger showed 8 blocked cookies from various souces on this site. Yeah, thanks for nothin'.

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