There's an interesting breakdown of factors determining a profile's ad value, and "parent or not" is a big one. The article includes a list of top ten most/least ad value cities, and the common...
Proton analyzed over 54,000 demographic profiles using 2025 ad auction data to estimate what advertisers pay to reach different types of Americans. The range is much wider than you might expect.
The average American generates about $1,605 a year in advertising value. A 35- to 44-year-old man in Bozeman, MT, without children, using a desktop and making high-value corporate searches, generates an estimated $17,929.30. An 18- to 24-year-old father in Fort Smith, AR, using an Android phone and making low-value searches, generates $31.05.
That’s a 577x difference between two people using the same free service.
There's an interesting breakdown of factors determining a profile's ad value, and "parent or not" is a big one. The article includes a list of top ten most/least ad value cities, and the common thread as far as my wife and I can tell is "how child-free is this place?".
Also the whole thing is an ad for Proton services, because of course it is.
What is the consensus around Proton services now? Your last sentence seems to potentially indicate a negative sentiment. Ive been using proton services for awhile and it's always been pretty...
What is the consensus around Proton services now? Your last sentence seems to potentially indicate a negative sentiment. Ive been using proton services for awhile and it's always been pretty great.
If I had any issue with Proton it would be feature creep. Lol
Some took offense to the inflammatory rightwing politics the Proton CEO posted on Twitter. It's up to you to decide if that's worth your patronage or not.
Some took offense to the inflammatory rightwing politics the Proton CEO posted on Twitter.
It's up to you to decide if that's worth your patronage or not.
Showing his support towards the Republican president inflamed people to the point it spilled over here on Tildes. I specifically tried to be as vague as possible because I don't want to poison the...
Showing his support towards the Republican president inflamed people to the point it spilled over here on Tildes.
I specifically tried to be as vague as possible because I don't want to poison the well of someone trying to form their own opinion about this.
I personally don't use Twitter, so if you'd ask me what he said I don't entirely know, hence the vague wording. The word "inflammatory" was entirely based on the.. heated opinionated responses.. I've seen thrown around about this both here and elsewhere on the web.
Edit to add: I also remember some backlash against supposed ties to Russian corporations. Yandex in particular if I'm not mistaken. This was Kagi. I should not have mentioned this off handedly without at least a cursory check.
Not only does proton not have any discoverable ties to yandex, but Russia blocks the Proton domain as a whole and has for about a year and a half now. I did find that a guy on LinkedIn made a...
Edit to add: I also remember some backlash against supposed ties to Russian corporations. Yandex in particular if I'm not mistaken.
Not only does proton not have any discoverable ties to yandex, but Russia blocks the Proton domain as a whole and has for about a year and a half now. I did find that a guy on LinkedIn made a (clearly spurious allegation), so maybe that's what you saw someone mention?
But: I don't know how else to say this. Sorry in advance for being blunt. You just noted that you don't actually have any idea what the proton CEO said -- just saw some people talk about it -- and now you're again bringing up backlash that you half-remember. Checking the primary sources would be ideal. At the very least, including a couple caveats would be good. Unfortunately, the quality of the posts in most parts of the Internet isn't high enough that you can trust them enough to refer to them without checking a bit yourself.
Correct, that was Kagi. Mentioning Proton in the same breath was flippant of mine. I apologize, I had a pretty serious lack of sleep for the past couple of days. However, not knowing the specific...
Correct, that was Kagi. Mentioning Proton in the same breath was flippant of mine. I apologize, I had a pretty serious lack of sleep for the past couple of days.
However, not knowing the specific words of the CEO doesn't mean it wasn't enough for me to see the heated debate about their politics. The fact they're supportive of the Republican party is enough for some. I don't think I was in the wrong for mentioning it in the absolute vaguest terms in order to point someone in the direction of looking it up after they directly asked what the current stance is towards Proton. I know that they lost customers over this, that's enough for me to mention it's worth looking into for some.
They're not supportive of the Republican party!!!!!!! My friend, that was my entire point. Mentioning that you remember seeing some controversy? Sure. But you specifically said that they were...
The fact they're supportive of the Republican party is enough for some.
Mentioning that you remember seeing some controversy? Sure. But you specifically said that they were posting inflammatory right wing rhetoric, which would only be the vaguest possible terms if it was true. Now this.
I'm not calling you a bad person or anything like that. I recognize that the original thread you remember was also completely devoid of nuance and you're not completely making stuff up. I just would like everyone to be more careful.
I was being careful. The post was tantamount to "there's some political controversy you should look into if you care about that", with my understanding being that their CEO received some ire from...
I was being careful. The post was tantamount to "there's some political controversy you should look into if you care about that", with my understanding being that their CEO received some ire from people opposing a perceived rightwing slant. I proposed to the OP to look into it.
What they would have found is your exact point: the controversy is overblown. Or, they would've found they disagreed with that stance regardless and made a choice based on those findings.
Whether or not the minutiae end up being that they're not endorsing the Republican party is moot, that's how people interpreted it at the time.
Nevertheless, point taken. I'll do my due diligence and respond with a more balanced take in the future.
To me the worst part wasn't the initial tweet (although I definitely do not appreciate any bone thrown to Trump et. al.), it was his language on Reddit surrounding the backlash. He tried to...
To me the worst part wasn't the initial tweet (although I definitely do not appreciate any bone thrown to Trump et. al.), it was his language on Reddit surrounding the backlash. He tried to minimize, deflect, and used misleading language instead of clearly making a statement of "That's not what I meant, it was poorly worded, Trump is fascist and I do not support him".
I don't understand what your last sentence is supposed to imply. Are you surprised Proton mentioned their products in their own blog post? I don't know what you were expecting.
I don't understand what your last sentence is supposed to imply. Are you surprised Proton mentioned their products in their own blog post? I don't know what you were expecting.
One thing these ad profiles do that I absolutely hate (among the million other things I hate) are merging my personal and professional lives. I try to keep those separate as much as possible. I...
One thing these ad profiles do that I absolutely hate (among the million other things I hate) are merging my personal and professional lives. I try to keep those separate as much as possible. I have different cell phones, different computers, different laptops, different logins for everything that do not cross between personal and work machines. I don't talk in detail about my work in personal contexts and vice versa.
Still, I get things like vendors calling my personal cell phone number trying to sell me things because of my position constantly. I've asked them where they got them, and I've gotten mostly lies like "linkedin" (I don't, and have never had any phone number on linked in, let alone my personal cell phone number).
I know they bought it from a data broker who aggregated it with my ad profile, so they very likely have a merged portfolio of the broad strokes of everything I've ever visited or searched for, in both professional and personal contexts. I can't stand that.
Thankfully I don’t get vendor calls, but I also have issues with my personal and professional life merging in my ad profile. I also now seem to strangely have my previous career popping back into...
Thankfully I don’t get vendor calls, but I also have issues with my personal and professional life merging in my ad profile. I also now seem to strangely have my previous career popping back into my ad feed in strange ways. This is most noticeable by the number of YouTube ads for very expensive lab equipment I have been getting despite the fact that I no longer work in a lab setting. If it wasn’t for the fact that I find the existence of commercials for super high end lab equipment hilarious on face value it would likely bother me as well.
I wonder what the effect of adblockers have on these costs. I'm technically in the sweet spot, according to that article - mid 40s, male, primary computer is a desktop (I hate using phones for...
I wonder what the effect of adblockers have on these costs.
I'm technically in the sweet spot, according to that article - mid 40s, male, primary computer is a desktop (I hate using phones for anything but reading), single, no children... but I go out of my way to avoid ads. I don't have a TV, I block all ads on the Internet, I turn off location services on my phone (mainly because it eats battery like a mofo and I have yet to find a use for location services in the first place), I refuse to download any apps on my phone that contains ads, and I subscribe to the higher tiers in streaming services.
Sure, I'm one data point blip on the larger ocean of people but I can't help but think that I'm not the only one and that perhaps even though I fit the profile, people like me would hold significantly lower value because of the difficulty of reaching us.
I've used navigation maybe three times in my life and all of those was because I was lost. If I'm going to a new location, I generally look up the directions beforehand on Google Maps (on my...
I've used navigation maybe three times in my life and all of those was because I was lost. If I'm going to a new location, I generally look up the directions beforehand on Google Maps (on my desktop, mind you) and memorize the direction. Since those journeys involve some freeways and some side streets, I can navigate the freeways without much issues and focus on learning the side streets. If there are more than 4 of them, I write them down but I otherwise commit them to memory.
Not op but I keep mine off by default and then only turn it on when I need it. Been doing that for probably 15 years now across different phones. I block ads everywhere so I have no idea what...
Not op but I keep mine off by default and then only turn it on when I need it. Been doing that for probably 15 years now across different phones.
I block ads everywhere so I have no idea what effect it has, but it does save battery life. I notice my battery drains faster when Ive accidentally left it on.
The interesting thing to me is how high the average value is, it makes me suspect that opting out of this ecosystem as far as possible, through aggressive ad blocking, not using ad supported...
The interesting thing to me is how high the average value is, it makes me suspect that opting out of this ecosystem as far as possible, through aggressive ad blocking, not using ad supported services, making an effort to reduce tracking, etc, is actually a significant act, depriving google et el of significant revenue.
We're not talking $4.50 here and if more people pushed back things would get interesting (and more mercenary I suspect).
Nothing too surprising if you've used to the ad space. rich areas spend more, single middle aged people (middle of career and peak spenders) spend more, certain devices indicate you may spend...
Nothing too surprising if you've used to the ad space. rich areas spend more, single middle aged people (middle of career and peak spenders) spend more, certain devices indicate you may spend more.
But then this:
The two highest-value individual profiles in the dataset both come from the top of the market list: Bozeman, MT and Edmond, OK. In Bozeman, the influx of remote tech workers and outdoor recreation spending has made it one of the most fiercely contested local ad markets in the country, despite its size. Edmond’s density of high-CPC professional services makes it the top-ranked market overall.
Hearing Montana be the most competitve means of ad rev is interesting. Heck, the entire top 10 list is unexpected:
Edmond, OK
Bozeman, MT
Naperville, IL
Santa Fe, NM
Durham, NC
Bellevue, WA
Silver Spring, MD
Baton Rouge, LA
Washington, DC
Colorado Springs, CO
outside of DC and Bellevue, those typically aren't places I'd think to have a ravenous heat-seeking CPC crosshairs on.
I was kind of surprised to see Naperville, IL on there, but it kind of makes sense. Demographically, it's a high-income area and lots of parents. Most single people are probably in the neighboring...
I was kind of surprised to see Naperville, IL on there, but it kind of makes sense. Demographically, it's a high-income area and lots of parents. Most single people are probably in the neighboring towns like Aurora where it's more affordable, so this means the city itself has the highest congregation of high ad-value demographics.
Well, that cuts against my guess then. Parents' ad profiles are worth 1/3 of non-parents by Proton's analysis, so I'd guessed there were comparatively fewer families in Naperville.
Well, that cuts against my guess then. Parents' ad profiles are worth 1/3 of non-parents by Proton's analysis, so I'd guessed there were comparatively fewer families in Naperville.
I wish there was other internet monetization strategy available just generally. Right now it is usually either data harvesting and ads or subscription nearly guaranteed to be supplemented by data...
I wish there was other internet monetization strategy available just generally. Right now it is usually either data harvesting and ads or subscription nearly guaranteed to be supplemented by data harvesting and occasionally ads.
There are entire fields of anti consumer behavior that either would not exists or would not be profitable if data harvesting was not somehow universally accepted.
If they make their 760 on someone it costs that someone and the society a lot more than that.
There's an interesting breakdown of factors determining a profile's ad value, and "parent or not" is a big one. The article includes a list of top ten most/least ad value cities, and the common thread as far as my wife and I can tell is "how child-free is this place?".
Also the whole thing is an ad for Proton services, because of course it is.
What is the consensus around Proton services now? Your last sentence seems to potentially indicate a negative sentiment. Ive been using proton services for awhile and it's always been pretty great.
If I had any issue with Proton it would be feature creep. Lol
Some took offense to the inflammatory rightwing politics the Proton CEO posted on Twitter.
It's up to you to decide if that's worth your patronage or not.
Ah, I wasn't aware. I'll look into that.
i found a relevent medium blog i feel covers both sides; Could be useful
I'm not seeing any "inflammatory rightwing politics" in any of that.
Yeah, there weren't any. The whole thing was basically people reacting to reddit reactions to bluesky reactions to a tweet they didn't read.
@cptbluebear, what are the "inflammatory rightwing politics" that you mention?
Showing his support towards the Republican president inflamed people to the point it spilled over here on Tildes.
I specifically tried to be as vague as possible because I don't want to poison the well of someone trying to form their own opinion about this.
I personally don't use Twitter, so if you'd ask me what he said I don't entirely know, hence the vague wording. The word "inflammatory" was entirely based on the.. heated opinionated responses.. I've seen thrown around about this both here and elsewhere on the web.
Edit to add:
I also remember some backlash against supposed ties to Russian corporations. Yandex in particular if I'm not mistaken.This was Kagi. I should not have mentioned this off handedly without at least a cursory check.Not only does proton not have any discoverable ties to yandex, but Russia blocks the Proton domain as a whole and has for about a year and a half now. I did find that a guy on LinkedIn made a (clearly spurious allegation), so maybe that's what you saw someone mention?
But: I don't know how else to say this. Sorry in advance for being blunt. You just noted that you don't actually have any idea what the proton CEO said -- just saw some people talk about it -- and now you're again bringing up backlash that you half-remember. Checking the primary sources would be ideal. At the very least, including a couple caveats would be good. Unfortunately, the quality of the posts in most parts of the Internet isn't high enough that you can trust them enough to refer to them without checking a bit yourself.
Correct, that was Kagi. Mentioning Proton in the same breath was flippant of mine. I apologize, I had a pretty serious lack of sleep for the past couple of days.
However, not knowing the specific words of the CEO doesn't mean it wasn't enough for me to see the heated debate about their politics. The fact they're supportive of the Republican party is enough for some. I don't think I was in the wrong for mentioning it in the absolute vaguest terms in order to point someone in the direction of looking it up after they directly asked what the current stance is towards Proton. I know that they lost customers over this, that's enough for me to mention it's worth looking into for some.
They're not supportive of the Republican party!!!!!!! My friend, that was my entire point.
Mentioning that you remember seeing some controversy? Sure. But you specifically said that they were posting inflammatory right wing rhetoric, which would only be the vaguest possible terms if it was true. Now this.
I'm not calling you a bad person or anything like that. I recognize that the original thread you remember was also completely devoid of nuance and you're not completely making stuff up. I just would like everyone to be more careful.
I was being careful. The post was tantamount to "there's some political controversy you should look into if you care about that", with my understanding being that their CEO received some ire from people opposing a perceived rightwing slant. I proposed to the OP to look into it.
What they would have found is your exact point: the controversy is overblown. Or, they would've found they disagreed with that stance regardless and made a choice based on those findings.
Whether or not the minutiae end up being that they're not endorsing the Republican party is moot, that's how people interpreted it at the time.
Nevertheless, point taken. I'll do my due diligence and respond with a more balanced take in the future.
Cool :)
To me the worst part wasn't the initial tweet (although I definitely do not appreciate any bone thrown to Trump et. al.), it was his language on Reddit surrounding the backlash. He tried to minimize, deflect, and used misleading language instead of clearly making a statement of "That's not what I meant, it was poorly worded, Trump is fascist and I do not support him".
Ah yes, the internet's requirement that all things be black and white with zero nuance.
I find it a bit ironic that you are making a black and white statement about the lack of nuance on the internet.
I'm glad you picked up on that, it was laid purposefully thick.
Okiedokie
Only a Sith deals in absolutes
Not in all things. But in this thing, I do have that requirement, yes.
There actually was a thread about this a little while ago
I don't understand what your last sentence is supposed to imply. Are you surprised Proton mentioned their products in their own blog post? I don't know what you were expecting.
Is it showing that people with higher capacity for discretionary spending provide more ad value?
One thing these ad profiles do that I absolutely hate (among the million other things I hate) are merging my personal and professional lives. I try to keep those separate as much as possible. I have different cell phones, different computers, different laptops, different logins for everything that do not cross between personal and work machines. I don't talk in detail about my work in personal contexts and vice versa.
Still, I get things like vendors calling my personal cell phone number trying to sell me things because of my position constantly. I've asked them where they got them, and I've gotten mostly lies like "linkedin" (I don't, and have never had any phone number on linked in, let alone my personal cell phone number).
I know they bought it from a data broker who aggregated it with my ad profile, so they very likely have a merged portfolio of the broad strokes of everything I've ever visited or searched for, in both professional and personal contexts. I can't stand that.
Thankfully I don’t get vendor calls, but I also have issues with my personal and professional life merging in my ad profile. I also now seem to strangely have my previous career popping back into my ad feed in strange ways. This is most noticeable by the number of YouTube ads for very expensive lab equipment I have been getting despite the fact that I no longer work in a lab setting. If it wasn’t for the fact that I find the existence of commercials for super high end lab equipment hilarious on face value it would likely bother me as well.
Half off topic, why don’t you block ads? I can’t think of the last time I saw an ad for something
Laziness mostly.
I wonder what the effect of adblockers have on these costs.
I'm technically in the sweet spot, according to that article - mid 40s, male, primary computer is a desktop (I hate using phones for anything but reading), single, no children... but I go out of my way to avoid ads. I don't have a TV, I block all ads on the Internet, I turn off location services on my phone (mainly because it eats battery like a mofo and I have yet to find a use for location services in the first place), I refuse to download any apps on my phone that contains ads, and I subscribe to the higher tiers in streaming services.
Sure, I'm one data point blip on the larger ocean of people but I can't help but think that I'm not the only one and that perhaps even though I fit the profile, people like me would hold significantly lower value because of the difficulty of reaching us.
Huh, do you not use it for navigation? That's the one thing keeping me from having location always off.
I've used navigation maybe three times in my life and all of those was because I was lost. If I'm going to a new location, I generally look up the directions beforehand on Google Maps (on my desktop, mind you) and memorize the direction. Since those journeys involve some freeways and some side streets, I can navigate the freeways without much issues and focus on learning the side streets. If there are more than 4 of them, I write them down but I otherwise commit them to memory.
Wow, props to you. Part of the 1% of people who haven't fallen victim to geographic awareness offloading.
Not op but I keep mine off by default and then only turn it on when I need it. Been doing that for probably 15 years now across different phones.
I block ads everywhere so I have no idea what effect it has, but it does save battery life. I notice my battery drains faster when Ive accidentally left it on.
The interesting thing to me is how high the average value is, it makes me suspect that opting out of this ecosystem as far as possible, through aggressive ad blocking, not using ad supported services, making an effort to reduce tracking, etc, is actually a significant act, depriving google et el of significant revenue.
We're not talking $4.50 here and if more people pushed back things would get interesting (and more mercenary I suspect).
Most people don't realise how much they're worth.
It's bracing to see. Maybe all the effort I've gone to to poison data and leave little else will have been worth it.
Nothing too surprising if you've used to the ad space. rich areas spend more, single middle aged people (middle of career and peak spenders) spend more, certain devices indicate you may spend more.
But then this:
Hearing Montana be the most competitve means of ad rev is interesting. Heck, the entire top 10 list is unexpected:
outside of DC and Bellevue, those typically aren't places I'd think to have a ravenous heat-seeking CPC crosshairs on.
Silver Spring is essentially DC fwiw
I was kind of surprised to see Naperville, IL on there, but it kind of makes sense. Demographically, it's a high-income area and lots of parents. Most single people are probably in the neighboring towns like Aurora where it's more affordable, so this means the city itself has the highest congregation of high ad-value demographics.
Well, that cuts against my guess then. Parents' ad profiles are worth 1/3 of non-parents by Proton's analysis, so I'd guessed there were comparatively fewer families in Naperville.
I wish there was other internet monetization strategy available just generally. Right now it is usually either data harvesting and ads or subscription nearly guaranteed to be supplemented by data harvesting and occasionally ads.
There are entire fields of anti consumer behavior that either would not exists or would not be profitable if data harvesting was not somehow universally accepted.
If they make their 760 on someone it costs that someone and the society a lot more than that.