Comment by seanp2k2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by seanp2k2 | Hacker News Reader

On targeting, is anyone else shocked at how, even with all this data on us, ads are still so awful and irrelevant? I probably get ads that I’m most interested in on Instagram, where I’ve actually purchased things based on seeing them in ads before, but Hulu ads in particular are absolute garbage. I constantly get ads for prescription drugs for diseases no one in our household has. Hulu ad tech also frequently plays the same exact irrelevant ad back-to-back, thinks it’s on an ad when it’s actually on content and so disables FF / RW controls, repeatedly restarts an ad block when trying to go to the beginning of content and will start the whole 3 minute ad block from the beginning unless it completely finishes, sometimes ads ARE able to be FF’d through, sometimes content just downscales to the lowest quality and won’t scale back up, etc etc. I just don’t understand how they’re such a huge platform and obviously advertisers are spending millions showing there, when the ad tech itself is such a steaming pile of hot garbage. If it was my business and they were doing this to my ads, I’d be very upset with them.

This is the kicker when it comes to the advertising industry. Advertisers pride themselves on slurping up all the personal information they can get their hands on, telling their customers it will help make their advertisements more effective. But anyone who uses the internet (without an adblocker) can tell just how poorly implemented, targeted, and ineffective those ads often are. On top of it being incredibly difficult to measure advertising effectiveness. It very much feels like a whole multibillion dollar industry (which created several megacorporations) is selling a whole load of bullshit, and causing great harm to a lot of people in order to justify it.

I think a big part of the problem is that the ads you see are the ones that win an auction and not necessarily the ones “most relevant” to your profile. There’s an element of relevancy, but I believe it’s frequently overwhelmed by the simple willingness of a given advertiser to pay, even if they know you may not be a precise match to a given profile. We still end up mostly with ads for products/services/industries where the return on ad spend is better, and it o my matters what your interests are at the margin.

Paramount Plus generally (exclusively?) shows me ads for...other shows on Paramount Plus. Which I'm obviously already paying for.

Most recently, it showed me an advertisement for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. I've already seen every episode of that series, and at least one their systems is well aware of this fact. In fact, Star Trek shows are the ONLY things I've watched on Paramount Plus.

There is clearly no thought going into their ad selection whatsoever.

What's amazing to me is how terrible Amazon's ads, related products and upselling are. There's no adblocker there, they know exactly what you bought. Many / most are probably buying a significant amount of all products from them.

And still their targeting is terrible. Why? Are they just incompetent? Is the tech just not good enough yet? Are they just not showing their true abilities to keep the population calm?

My favourite example of this is when I get ads for something that I’ve just recently purchased and clearly no person would want more than one of. Just bought a waffle maker? Why not buy another identical one? Never know when you’re going to need a backup right?

I'd totally understand that when you're returning the waffle maker and they're like "hey, that one probably sucked, here are 12 others", but yeah, it's weird. And that's coming from a guy who absolutely does buy backups of the things he likes, because how would I survive if my electric foot warmer would die and I had to wait 4 days for a replacement?

Or worse than having to wait for the replacement, by the time you need to replace your favorite foot warmer the product has been discontinoued and all the available alternatives are worse or at least different enough that you have to spend time figuring out which one is best for you.

> And still their targeting is terrible. Why?

Why not? Most Amazon search results for non-branded goods (towels, furniture, appliances) are going to feature identical products from Chinese companies with unmemorable, nonsensical names. They cannot differentiate on anything besides price, and search position, so Amazon may as well give the largest bidders top billing.

They might not be able to differentiate between the products, but they should know you, and they should know what you're most likely to buy. If they show ads but you don't click on them because they weren't relevant to you, they've failed. At least they ought to know whether you'll buy Chinese brands like HNWERZ or will prefer a household name you'll recognize.

Essentially, they should be better than a great sales person in a regular store. You tell them what you're looking for "towels", and they'll show you some and quickly reiterate based on your feedback. Amazon has lots of advantages over a human sales person: they don't see you for the first time today. They have a perfect memory of all your orders of the past 20 years. They'll often even know what family members have bought recently. I don't believe they couldn't make you spend more money if they showed you an ad for the brand name your wife loves.

> products from Chinese companies with unmemorable, nonsensical names

> They cannot differentiate on anything besides price, and search position

I could think of many more things they could differentiate on. Or even let me filter explicitly. I can think of one thing in particular that would greatly improve the product targeting for me.

You should try nextdns, it might make both problems go away (if streaming on an appliance)

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