Why “relevant ads are good” is bullshit | Hacker News Reader

Why “relevant ads are good” is bullshit

user.fm

54 pointsnvr21914 comments

“Relevant” implies that the advertiser is somehow determining my supposed interests, or otherwise tracking me, to make the ads “relevant”.

I would call that “targeted advertising”.

Not necessarily. You can provide relevant advertising by advertising on topical content that matches your product. Business products on a business oriented podcast or catheters on a Fox News show, for example.

While I agree with your general premise, I disagree about the "not necessarily" part: whenever "relevant ad" is mentioned, it's pretty much always in the context of "ad relevant to the viewer" (they just don't say it like that), instead of what "relevant" should really mean (relevant to the content being viewed, as you indicated).

Let's take FB for example, under the hypothetical situation where they're showing what they would call a "relevant ad":

A single mother, that has 2 kids, often talks/chats with other mothers about daycare, school activities, knitting, etc. One day out of the blue, she visits a FB group dedicated to electronics (say, assembling electronics, etc.). I can guarantee you that the first "relevant ad" she'd see on that group would NOT be about electronics, but rather something related to her interests, as tracked from her previous behaviours.

If it were truly a "relevant ad", it'd be something about electronics, and everyone else that visited that group for the first time would also see this same ad, regardless of their past behaviour (much like your podcast ad example).

Calling it "relevant ad" just means "ad relevant to the viewer", which simply translates to "targeted ad".

Advertising is of such a high percentage of lies, that it's safe to assume any ads are untrue.

Don't mistake pork belly junk for advertising. The product of advertising itself is the brand and cheap, high frequency and low effort advertising destroys it.

I heartily agree! I, too, want them to have brand power, but apparently, those pesky market forces drive advertisers to spam shoddy advertising all over and ruin their brands! What an unfortunate paradox advertisers find themselves in. Oh well, nothing can be done about it! I guess I'll have to work harder to figure out what's advertising, and what's crapvertising, and try to give credit to the brand for the ads, and ignore the crap.

>Advertisements have certain formal, legal obligations to truthfulness, but these are broad enough to allow for a great deal of rhetorical maneuvering

This can be said about so many things, and for a big part of it the conclusion is that some laws are left to be broad and ambiguous, like they're done so to be in the benefit of some.

Tax laws, environmental laws, governance spending laws, etc.

The second part of this problem is: who is enforcing these? For some media regulators keep an eye on them, for the internet it's left to the platforms who sell it.

I don't see any connection between the content and the claim that "'relevant ads are good' is bullshit". It's just a general argument that ads are bad, because they're biased.

If you want to dispute "relevant ads are good", you'd need to establish why I get no benefit from seeing ads that are relevant to me vs not.

I disagree with you reversing the argument. I want advertisers to prove beyond ANY doubt that ads do bring benefits to most of the populace.

If they can't do that then the onus is definitely not on me to "prove ads give me no benefit". That's like putting a toxic gas in my room and asking me can I prove it's bad for me. Even if I can't prove it I can definitely say I was fine without it before.

Great, but that’s a different thesis than promised by the title.

Welp, Silas, you got me.

You didn't want to provide accurate titles?

what

Amen

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