... for no reason , to no effect, except the destruction of the entire eu online advertising industry
You'd call a person wearing a tinfoil hat a crazy, yet we are tolerating what effectively could be considered an effort at mass scale, targeted mind control. It's obnoxious on the less competent end of the spectrum, and an outright violation on the other.
I used to consider advertisements an intellectual equivalent of fast-food; I think it's gone far worse than that, and as individuals, we are poorly equipped to stand up to it. I do understand businesses rely on advertising to stay alive, but without regulation, there just seems to be no end to how much abuse adtech is ready to inflict upon us.
The reason is that the user's data privacy rights come first. If interests collide, privacy must come out on top. I'm curious on how you could have missed this ideological position that powers those regulations after years of headlines after headlines about the topic.
instead they go to the streets because of the awful economy, unemployment, inaccessible housing. Still waiting for a pan-european affordable housing regulation (not gonna happen because EU is run by the boomers)
and communications was not among its mandates either
As it is, the law says "You, company, must give users a service for free even if they choose not to give you the data."
Some things are above the concept of "market". Personal data is one of those things. That's the ideology behind these laws.
When people say "Google isn't free, they provide it in exchange for your data" that is precisely saying that there's a market and a trade involved. You may not like that trade, in which case, don't use Google services...
I should be an easy person to target -- I buy techy stuff that fits into pretty neat categories.
Yet Amazon seems to be completely unable to figure out some very simple patterns, like that if you're not a company, you're probably not looking to start a collection of printers, cell phones, UPSes or monitors, and that buying one is a sign of that you're done with the product category for a while.
Smaller companies aren't somehow inherently virtuous, if they can only exist by violating user privacy even more so than large companies, I'd rather deal with large companies. Small companies aren't an end in itself. Banking is another good example of this. Canada has five big, heavily regulated banks and has not had one bank failure in a century. In the US tax payers bail out SV bank
So having many firms positioning themselves differently is better than having a couple in that you’re more likely to find a good best solution.
We need some rules, but we need to err on the side of fewer not more rules.
My point is that mass ads requires massed capital. There will be few, huge, entrenched players. It’s much better to have a dynamic economy with piles of mom and pops as well as a couple of huge companies. This can only happen if mom and pop can afford to advertise. This can only work with targeted ads.
Let's say you develop a new product/service aimed at a thin slice of the population - say, dentists in Chicago, or 19 y.o. females across the US, or beginner coders, or people with older dogs in the state of Utah.
How do you reach these people?
Not through a national/regional ad campaign - your ad budget is likely $10-$100/day. This is why we all need targeted ads.
All dentists is Cervelo market :) Even if you really really want to target specifically Chicago dentists, you’re probably better off doing a presentation at local dentists’ union or something along those lines. Or just doing old good cold calls.
As for 19 year olds, just advertise in whatever is popular among such crowd? If 18 or 20 y/o sees it, it’s probably not far off, eh?
If you ever do, I hope you have an unlimited budget and time horizon to make your ideas work.
Yes, but what are the negative effects?
You've mentioned multiple times the "it's good at extracting huge sums of money out of people making decisions against their own interests, which goes on to fund other endeavors" argument, but I don't think that's a good thing on the whole.
If you can forgive a huge exaggeration from my part, to me it sounds similar to saying that criminal activities are great because the money earned from those activities can go on to spur economic activity in the region (I'm not saying advertising is a criminal activity, but I think you get my point).
But my question was geared towards the value of advertising itself, in general (if there is any).
I am aware of the unknown unknown problem you mentioned (I think), but in my experience as a layman, very very rarely (if ever) was I introduced to a great product or service through advertising that I wouldn't be aware of in other ways.
Conversely, the amount of ads for substandard products and services (i.e. those which I know for sure there are better alternatives, at least for me and others around me) is infinitely greater.
And I don't think it's just because the ads are not targeted enough. I'm pretty sure I am a hugely interesting target for many, many companies, but I am simply not interested in them (and never will) because other companies have much better products/services (many of which I already use).
I am assuming, of course, that the only reason they're interested in targeting ads to me, is to influence me to make a buying decision that I wouldn't do otherwise, and not just because I wasn't aware of the product/service. Because if it wasn't for influencing me making a buying decision, why would they spend the money to show me an ad?
That's why I always try to ignore (and block) ads as much as possible, even though that's not always possible (e.g. street ads). Yet, I am still being bombarded with non-stop ads and I have no question that I'm being negatively influenced by them, especially in those areas I know very little about (e.g. cleaning products) or am susceptible to being influenced against my own interests (e.g. fast food or other crappy, addictive food products).
In my experience, the success rate of my own research (when looking for a product/service) or even word-of-mouth recommendations has far, far outweighed the success rate of all the ad campaigns I've ever been a target of, from my own perspective (not from the companies' perspectives, of course).
So it's not that I don't see any value in advertising, which I don't (unless you're the advertiser), it's that I think it's actively damaging to society (due to leading people to make bad buying decisions) and the economy in general (due to increased inefficiency).
Regarding your experience, a lot of advertising is retargeting or keeping the brand alive in the minds of buyers or remind them constantly (since humans are forgetful). This statistically increases the probability of purchases made amongst a cohort (very measurable). Personally, I think this is user-hostile and is a strong case for having more control over the kinds of ads we're exposed to or limit/penalise harmful ones. Taken to the extreme (going on a slight tangent here), if we really owned/controlled our devices and software, which means having control over consumption, we'd block all ads which would incentivise platforms to remove the distinction between content and ads and we'd do more content filtering on the client (This is however computationally inefficient, a sort of arms race).
Regarding influencing behaviour, it's a lot more efficient to match the right seller to the right buyer rather than influence buyer behaviour (which is hard). However, to achieve that extra marginal gains/returns on ad spend, advertisers often do attempt to change buyer behaviour (through building brand associations, retargeting etc). Again, better user control would help here.
Agree on street ads and other public real world ads as there is no consent here (Real world movement is a need, not a choice).
Regarding ads vs word-of-mouth, Ads really are very effective for many people, in a measurable way, both quantitative and qualitative. It of course will differ from person to person.
Regarding increased inefficiency and effect on the economy more generally, ads actually increase efficiency in the system as long as they are not rent-seeking (i.e. pay to jump the queue) or user-hostile. Eg: It helps many niche businesses reach customers which are otherwise very hard to reach (due to geographical or novelty constraints). Taken to the extreme, all value gained from advertising will ultimately flow to the ad platforms. Even in this extreme case, overall consumption increases (due to buyers buying more) as well as competition (due to many more competitive small businesses, innovators dilemma theory) which is good for a capitalist economy (i.e. makes it more dynamic in both choice and inequality) and increases GDP (a poor metric).
As an aside, it's also a progressive tax (I.e rich and poor both consume the same good but advertisers pay more to reach the rich, thus funding the good for the poor).
Some extreme opinions below on the fundamentals:
<Rant>
Even in localist/anarchist/decentralised utopias, ads won't die (especially personalised). It's a fundamental need of humans and the only other form of payment (apart from paying for compute itself) that doesn't depend on a system of violence to enforce it. As long as there exists economies of scale, there will be marketing (to increase consumption and hence cheapening it per capita i.e. use less labor), and hence advertising (to solve the unknown-unknown problem or presenting/impressing).
i.e. Even when we eliminate competitive enterprise, build localised production of needs, and have full control of our devices, if we want to build something cheaply or spread an idea, we'd have to advertise. It would look a lot more like "advertising on the merits" with full user control though considering human nature, there will also be a lot of "advertising focused on presentation".
</Rant>
I think your answer made me realize something which might explain some of the different viewpoints we have.
You seem to have the general idea that, with some exceptions, ads are useful. This reminds me of my experience of doing a coast-to-coast road trip in the US and being amazed at how many more signs with ads I would see by the road and inside towns, compared to Europe. I was also fascinated by the radio ads, as everything was so different than what I was used to. The amount, creativity and sheer diversity of ads was astounding and something to behold.
As a tourist, I associate these ads positively in my mind because in many cases, I would have no idea of all the different things that there were around me if I didn't see those ads, like restaurants, museums, supermarkets, local attractions, etc. A few of these ads were extremely useful, but many were also interesting because it made me experience a part of American culture that I wouldn't experience otherwise, including its great capitalistic nature (I love capitalism itself) and all the variety of businesses that there were. Perhaps with the occasional exception, I don't recall these ads being obnoxious.
My experience with ads as a European citizen is the polar opposite. Here, I don't find them useful at all. I always see all the same ads, all the time. They're repetitive, loud, obnoxious, with no creativity, no diversity and transmit no useful information.
It's mostly large, multinational companies, with the occasional local or national company whose ad you see or hear over and over again, thousands of times, to the point of exhaustion. This is especially true in TV, radio (including online radio) and also the same outdoor signs which you always encounter when driving to the same spots.
If you've seen one Coca Cola ad, you've seen all the other thousand of them, basically. Especially when they are exactly the same ad. But I can't turn them off. It can get quite maddening when your favorite local radio only has 3 ad spots and they're always the exact same obnoxious ads, for months on end. Or when you're watching TV and it goes to commercials and you always see exactly the same $huge_company ads, in the same exact order, over and over again.
Online ads, such as in Youtube or social platforms, can in most cases be a similar experience. In my subjective experience, it seems like I've been exposed to 1000x more Coca Cola, Burger King, and $giant_car_brand type ads than things which could actually be useful to me.
Really, the only memorable experiences which begin to approach your arguments in favor of useful ads is if, say, I'm watching some video or podcast about some really niche topic and most or all the ads are related to that topic. The vast majority of these are still completely useless to me, but at least I don't find these as obnoxious as the generic ones as long as they're not too repetitive or in-your-face (which unfortunately is also common).
I also have the anecdotal experience of buying many different types of ads for a local business of an acquaintance, for extended periods of time, to see what worked and what didn't. This includes times when it was just physical ads (geographically constrained), or just online ads, in different ad platforms, at first somewhat generic but later increasingly targeted ads, to the point where in the end we were only showing ads to people we thought would definitely be interested in the service. We also tried a company that specializes in online ads. Perhaps our experience was not representative, but I can tell you without a doubt that it was a complete waste of time and money, as the acquired customers were very few and very low quality. What really worked, by far, was simply stopping the ads and relying on word-of-mouth recommendations. That's how the business really got going. This is not a niche business, it is something that is occasionally needed by most people, either by going to the business physically or online. The competition was only small, mostly local businesses, there are exactly zero large national or multinational businesses in this market.
So I don't know, maybe the ad market here where I live is crap or maybe it's simply that it's completely dominated by all the giant companies, but all I can tell you is that I would praise the Gods if all ads magically disappeared tomorrow.
(It is also worth pointing out that Ali G’s American drugs sketch simply used word-for-word the same jokes as the original sketch with a British policeman, and most fans regard the original British version as superior.)
And there are plenty of reasons.
You say that like it's a good thing.
Computers were already common household items before massive online advertising even existed.
So forgive me if I don't find your arguments convincing (and it's not just because of this specific argument).
I rather suspect that's incorrect, for two reasons. We had plenty of online media before online advertising existed at all, and there are many ways of doing advertising without it being behavioral.
edit: but to add some substance:
If you (yes you, OP) are in the online advertising sphere, surely you're at the losing end of many battles, not just this lil EU thing? I'm thinking the ever-growing prevalence of adblockers, tracker-blocking, e-mail trackers being blocked etc.?
For you it must be like a game of whack-a-mole, except your mallet is increasingly smaller, and the moles' velocity is approaching lightspeed
Didn't know I was using USSR internet in the '90s-'00s before the advent of user targeted advertising.
In fact most websites and products were way better back then compared to the mess of today.
> At least 3 of the trillion-dollar tech companies depend on advertising
Boo-hoo, let me play you and them the world's smallest violin.
The world does not turn around content (over)consumption.
Sounds like a good start to me.
Waiting for someone to tell you why "the destruction of the entire eu online advertising industry" is actually a good thing in their view.
Online != behavioral
Quantitative changes enabled by technology can present qualitative problems.
As someone who spent five years doing advertising market research, and whose parents each spent 30+ years doing the same prior to ubiquitous internet use, I call bullshit on that statement.
While there certainly were efforts (with millions spent collecting data) to identify market segments and emotional triggers to better target market products/services (cf. BSB GlobalScan as an example), the idea that it was the right of ad sellers to monitor everyone's activities as their right in order to "target" advertising was never an option, nor was there ever any push to do so.
Convincing folks to participate in telephone/mall intercept/door-to-door surveys was used to identify consumer preferences and advertising efficacy.
No one ever asked (or did so without asking) to go through a consumer's mail, personal communications or effects as a method to determine how to target ads.
Since all those things are pretty much de rigueur these days, I'd say that's not a just difference of degree, but a completely different mechanism for gathering information about consumers.
And just because it wasn't possible to snoop through (without a potential breaking/entering and/or burglary charge) the private documents and communications of consumers, doesn't mean those folks would have done so if they could.
So yes, there's a big difference between the market research (surveys, focus groups, etc.) done in the past and the blatant spying/snooping on people's private documents and communications we see now.
You're making an assertion which doesn't match the facts.
Feel free to disagree, but I was there, and that business paid for my housing, food, clothes and everything else for more than twenty-five years -- both as the child of marketers and as a marketer myself.
I'd also point out that the Advertising Market Research industry was a very small group of people (perhaps a thousand employed by ad agencies/large corporations and a few thousand more employed by market research supply houses and interviewing/focus group companies.) and, as such, if there was a market for breaking into people's houses and rifling through their papers/mail, wiretapping their phones, etc., I'd know about it.
Advertising negatively affects markets because it leads people to make decisions based on things that are not necessarily in their interests, i.e. it leads people to make more uninformed (or misinformed) decisions.
In effect, it's basically exploiting a market externality: vulnerabilities in human psychology.
I mean, this is not always true. Sometimes, you might become aware of a great product or service due to advertising. But I am entirely convinced that, in general, the negative effects hugely, hugely outweigh the occasional benefit, just by observing how people usually make their buying decisions in their day-to-day lives (including me, I'm not immune to that!).
Like anti smoking posters in a phillip morris factory