Posting this because it’s relatively big news in privacy and advertising and has seemingly gone under the radar here. My personal thoughts are that Google wants to position itself as being out...
Posting this because it’s relatively big news in privacy and advertising and has seemingly gone under the radar here.
My personal thoughts are that Google wants to position itself as being out between a rock and a hard place due to potential antitrust enforcement which limited their actions, but their move to push the question of cookies onto the users is a feckless shirking of responsibility.
In general I’m opposed to placing systemic issues at the hands of individual to solve, but in this case it’s worse because the main beneficiary of this move is Google.
When Apple implemented their App Tracking Transparency, opt-in rates were 10-30% in general. If we assume similar opt-in rates for Chrome’s new consent prompt, then the following things would likely happen:
Adtech’s house of cards crumbles for smaller companies who didn’t have the resources to test with the Privacy Sandbox.
Ads on the web for the majority of users become contextual, which means smaller advertisers generally lose out to big brands with marketing budgets that can cover the lack of targeting.
Users who are convinced by Google’s consent prompt that they want to retain third-party cookies will still have their privacy invaded and tracked, sustaining the shady ecosystem off of the less informed/easily swindled.
Google continues to rake in the lion’s share of advertising revenue and remains an industry leader because of its monopolistic position and ability to create its own rules. By hiding behind user choice it can pretend to be impartial while it leaches off the decay in the rest of the advertising industry.
Does privacy improve for the users that opt-out completely? Sure, but that was always an option for the privacy-conscious. Are users who opt-in to Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox better off than those using third-party cookies? Maybe, although I’m not sure the Privacy Sandbox is even necessary to provide untargeted/contextual ads, so it’s certainly not better than those completely opting out.
Is the improvement in privacy for some portion of users worth the changes in adtech? Long term, I doubt it. I believe we’re witnessing the beginnings of another great consolidation of the web, which has broad implications for capitalism and democracy. I don’t think privacy for a privileged few can justify letting our information sources be controlled by so few players.
Maybe I’m just overreacting because I don’t trust Google’s intentions, but perhaps some other Tilderinos have different perspectives.
This seems like a large logical leap to me. I'm skeptical of the effectiveness of targeted ads in general; contextual, IMO, seems easier for niche products: buy ads on a website that has strong...
Ads on the web for the majority of users become contextual, which means smaller advertisers generally lose out to big brands with marketing budgets that can cover the lack of targeting.
This seems like a large logical leap to me. I'm skeptical of the effectiveness of targeted ads in general; contextual, IMO, seems easier for niche products: buy ads on a website that has strong overlap with your target audience. Of course, once you're talking about hundreds of millions of customers, it doesn't scale. But once you get that large, lets admit, you're more of a bureaucracy machine than a company that makes products anyway.
The crazy thing is AdSense used to be contextual. It was the whole selling point: Google's entire ad strategy, on the search engine and on sites that used AdSense, was cost-per-click text links in...
The crazy thing is AdSense used to be contextual. It was the whole selling point: Google's entire ad strategy, on the search engine and on sites that used AdSense, was cost-per-click text links in delineated blocks, which were placed based on keywords in the page text. (There would then be an instantaneous "auction" to select the highest cost per click.) They also limited sites to three ad units per page. It was easily the least obnoxious time period for Internet advertising, bookended by now and pop-up hell on the 90s side.
This started changing after the DoubleClick acquisition.
If advertisements online were contextual, I'd be less likely to block them. Advertisements in many print publications are actually useful and often a benefit to the reader in some sense. I recall...
This seems like a large logical leap to me. I'm skeptical of the effectiveness of targeted ads in general; contextual, IMO, seems easier for niche products: buy ads on a website that has strong overlap with your target audience.
If advertisements online were contextual, I'd be less likely to block them. Advertisements in many print publications are actually useful and often a benefit to the reader in some sense.
I recall the frustrating difference for a literary journal, where the print advertisements were for new books, conferences, art openings, etc, and at least reasonably vetted (and the occasional self-published eccentric pushing their own work with small advertisements was somewhat endearing), while the advertising attached to their podcast, being data-based and having little context other than location based on my IP address, would play advertisements for a car dealership.
Re:taregted ads - my Instagram ads are amaxingly relevant and often for products I want or would want if I was in the market. There is a lot of trash and scams as well, wee, but I’m always...
Re:taregted ads - my Instagram ads are amaxingly relevant and often for products I want or would want if I was in the market. There is a lot of trash and scams as well, wee, but I’m always impressed at the number of things I actually am interested in.
Generic ads on other sites always are a hit rate of zero.
From an end user perspective, it feels like stronger data and privacy protection laws would be the best of both worlds with strong penalties. But none of this matters as that ship has sailed alas.
I suppose that'd be me and others who enjoy uBlock or AdNauseum. Several thoughts on that article: I wonder if the 60% drop would persist if the entire industry was forced into privacy sandboxes....
Does privacy improve for the users that opt-out completely? Sure, but that was always an option for the privacy-conscious.
I suppose that'd be me and others who enjoy uBlock or AdNauseum.
60% of ad revenue link
Several thoughts on that article:
I wonder if the 60% drop would persist if the entire industry was forced into privacy sandboxes. Would it persist as an industry-wide drop due to reduced fundamental effectiveness, or is there merely a 60% drop when regular targeted ads are an alternative?
When they mentioned Consumer audiences that are desired by advertisers as one of the key drivers of ad revenue, much of what is called "enshitification" made sense. Power users are great at seeding a new website with content and evangalizing it. However, the owners will eventually want to drive them away once it's time to turn a profit. Antisocial nerds are not good for general market ad clicks. Not only are we the ones running adblockers, but our niche interests also ice out mass market campaigns. We also take pride in being advertizer-unfriendly.
Adtech’s house of cards crumbles for smaller companies who didn’t have the resources to test with the Privacy Sandbox.
This feels more like the ending of zero interest rates, where businesses suddenly had to make money. Instead of shifting from being bankrolled by investments to having to run a profitable business (thus ruining employee perks and customer satisfaction alike), it's shifting from ad-funded websites to member-funded subscriptions (meaning even fewer people will actually read beyond the headline).
Ahh, I had been waiting during the week for a post to show up and then late last night decided I would just post it myself to generate discussion, so I must have missed that post. I do think that...
Ahh, I had been waiting during the week for a post to show up and then late last night decided I would just post it myself to generate discussion, so I must have missed that post.
I do think that the Ars Technica article I shared provides more context on the whole saga of Google and cookies. Google's prior missteps are relevant since it demonstrates fallibility in their decisions, which is what give me concern that this latest move is not done with user interests/benefit at heart.
Posting this because it’s relatively big news in privacy and advertising and has seemingly gone under the radar here.
My personal thoughts are that Google wants to position itself as being out between a rock and a hard place due to potential antitrust enforcement which limited their actions, but their move to push the question of cookies onto the users is a feckless shirking of responsibility.
In general I’m opposed to placing systemic issues at the hands of individual to solve, but in this case it’s worse because the main beneficiary of this move is Google.
When Apple implemented their App Tracking Transparency, opt-in rates were 10-30% in general. If we assume similar opt-in rates for Chrome’s new consent prompt, then the following things would likely happen:
Does privacy improve for the users that opt-out completely? Sure, but that was always an option for the privacy-conscious. Are users who opt-in to Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox better off than those using third-party cookies? Maybe, although I’m not sure the Privacy Sandbox is even necessary to provide untargeted/contextual ads, so it’s certainly not better than those completely opting out.
Is the improvement in privacy for some portion of users worth the changes in adtech? Long term, I doubt it. I believe we’re witnessing the beginnings of another great consolidation of the web, which has broad implications for capitalism and democracy. I don’t think privacy for a privileged few can justify letting our information sources be controlled by so few players.
Maybe I’m just overreacting because I don’t trust Google’s intentions, but perhaps some other Tilderinos have different perspectives.
This seems like a large logical leap to me. I'm skeptical of the effectiveness of targeted ads in general; contextual, IMO, seems easier for niche products: buy ads on a website that has strong overlap with your target audience. Of course, once you're talking about hundreds of millions of customers, it doesn't scale. But once you get that large, lets admit, you're more of a bureaucracy machine than a company that makes products anyway.
The crazy thing is AdSense used to be contextual. It was the whole selling point: Google's entire ad strategy, on the search engine and on sites that used AdSense, was cost-per-click text links in delineated blocks, which were placed based on keywords in the page text. (There would then be an instantaneous "auction" to select the highest cost per click.) They also limited sites to three ad units per page. It was easily the least obnoxious time period for Internet advertising, bookended by now and pop-up hell on the 90s side.
This started changing after the DoubleClick acquisition.
If advertisements online were contextual, I'd be less likely to block them. Advertisements in many print publications are actually useful and often a benefit to the reader in some sense.
I recall the frustrating difference for a literary journal, where the print advertisements were for new books, conferences, art openings, etc, and at least reasonably vetted (and the occasional self-published eccentric pushing their own work with small advertisements was somewhat endearing), while the advertising attached to their podcast, being data-based and having little context other than location based on my IP address, would play advertisements for a car dealership.
Re:taregted ads - my Instagram ads are amaxingly relevant and often for products I want or would want if I was in the market. There is a lot of trash and scams as well, wee, but I’m always impressed at the number of things I actually am interested in.
Generic ads on other sites always are a hit rate of zero.
From an end user perspective, it feels like stronger data and privacy protection laws would be the best of both worlds with strong penalties. But none of this matters as that ship has sailed alas.
I suppose that'd be me and others who enjoy uBlock or AdNauseum.
Several thoughts on that article:
Consumer audiences that are desired by advertisersas one of the key drivers of ad revenue, much of what is called "enshitification" made sense. Power users are great at seeding a new website with content and evangalizing it. However, the owners will eventually want to drive them away once it's time to turn a profit. Antisocial nerds are not good for general market ad clicks. Not only are we the ones running adblockers, but our niche interests also ice out mass market campaigns. We also take pride in being advertizer-unfriendly.This feels more like the ending of zero interest rates, where businesses suddenly had to make money. Instead of shifting from being bankrolled by investments to having to run a profitable business (thus ruining employee perks and customer satisfaction alike), it's shifting from ad-funded websites to member-funded subscriptions (meaning even fewer people will actually read beyond the headline).
Something similar was posted about 5 hours ago:
https://tildes.net/~tech/1htn/google_dropping_plan_to_remove_ad_tracking_cookies_on_chrome
Ahh, I had been waiting during the week for a post to show up and then late last night decided I would just post it myself to generate discussion, so I must have missed that post.
I do think that the Ars Technica article I shared provides more context on the whole saga of Google and cookies. Google's prior missteps are relevant since it demonstrates fallibility in their decisions, which is what give me concern that this latest move is not done with user interests/benefit at heart.