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Comment by Joeri | Hacker News Reader

This is the thing I find really weird about online advertising. Every other medium has ads based on the content or demographic that most likely reads that content. Those ads are always contextually relevant, sufficiently diverse (rarely will you see the same ad repeated everywhere) and few people find them invasive. Online, however, ads are tailored to you as a person. They chase you around the web, even for products you already decided you didn’t want, and are always vaguely creepy. Why is it that way? Is it really more profitable, or is personalized advertising google’s long con?

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I worked on a team that did both direct-sold and programmatic ads for a digital publisher and direct-sold was way more profitable. Less headache, too. I'm in the "long con" camp.

It seems to me that programmatic ads are popular mainly because it's easier to measure engagement, not because it's more profitable for publishers, then at some point Google and Facebook got the advantage of network effects.

even for products you already decided you didn’t want

Or even more weird, for products you already bought and are unlikely to buy again.

That's the biggest downside. Showing me ads for products that I have already made a decision about.

I don't fully understand why they continued after seeing clickthrough numbers go down across the board. I guess it's easier to sell the concept; only show this ad to people who have already seen this product but they are usually late with the message. If I'm looking at something today chances are by next week/month I have already decided to buy or move on. How many engagement rings can one buy?

Once I was researching the specs for an item I was selling on EBay.

An ad for it followed me for weeks.

I didn’t have one too few, I had one too many.

I was the worst possible customer for that ad.

After buying a car I was getting actual mail ads to buy another car.

I wish there was a button on Google ads where I could just tell them, “Thanks - I already bought a car... no need to show me more car ads for a while”

I agree. In fact, I would go one better: Give me a button to click when I am actually shopping and interested in ads. I mentioned this before and someone said that Google had a store, but apparently it's pretty risky to try to buy stuff there.

I also thought this is something Duck Duck Go could implement to distinguish itself. It will result in a better experience for advertisers as clicks would be pre-qualified. It's the counter-move to Google's "quality score" which, when you think about it (or actually do advertising), is anti-pre-qualification.

What I mean is this: If people are just looking for information (free) and not wanting to buy, then if I put something in my ad that discourages people from clicking (by putting in a price, for example), then I get less clicks-per-display and my quality score goes down. However, only displaying these ads to people who are looking to buy would negate that.

Did you know that most Google ads have a button you can click in order to tell Google that you don't want to see the ad again. Even advertising videos on YouTube have this option. You can tell them when an advert is not relevant or you've seen it too many times. Oddly Google doesn't publicise this much even though its probably a feature which improves their profitability.

Do you realize that is tangential to the discussion? They shouldn't be invading privacy in the first place!

And what do you mean not publicizing it? It is quite visible on the ads they show it for.

> Why is it that way?

If the other methods could target you technically, they would

> Is it really more profitable, or is personalized advertising google’s long con?

Yes, it helps. Contextual ads help me find new customers to market to, hopefully through relevant content that overlaps with my product, but what do I do with all those visitors that stop by and don't convert? Retargeting lets me capture that interest and incrementally improve my media spend - and on tens of millions a year in media spend, this can be significant.

I wish I had better alternative but unfortunately these are the tools we have to work with, and creepy ads that follow you around the internet are going to last until we figure out better ways of spending investor money without feeling like we're burning cash to the Advertising Gods.

I guess it comes down to having less visitors click on an ad means fewer dollars spent. The few who do click are closer to being customers compared to contexual clicks which get more interest but more the browsing type.

It feels like we are wasting so much page space with ineffective ads and too few clickthroughs.

Which is why targeted advertising became so popular because it increases the chances that you will see an ad that is relevant to you.

I cannot recall an instance of ever discovering something I wanted, through any advertising, except in these exceptions:

- Game recommendations on Steam and other platforms.

- Highlighted apps on the App Store.

- Before the internet, games and apps in magazines.

Everything else that I have ever spent money on, I have discovered through word of mouth (including places like Reddit or HN), searched for it myself, seen it incidentally in the wild (e.g. hearing a song outside or seeing someone using something) or when browsing shops and stores in person.

How often do other people here remember buying something they saw in an ad (that they didn't already know of)?

If you include Amazon book recommendations, I have to confess I have found those to be eerily accurate. Now I buy almost all my books through work, so I don't actually purchase from amazon much, but I still get useful recommendations by adding titles to my shopping cart that I end up buying through another vendor.

Regarding ads on the internet, I really see very few anymore. The ad-blocking and privacy options for browsers seem to be exceedingly good at their job, and I automatically switch to reader view for any page that enables it. These days I am surprised to see an ad online.

> rarely will you see the same ad repeated everywhere

I rarely ever watch cable but I swear cable ads would repeat the same exact video ad multiple times per show but maybe it has changed nowadays.

> Why is it that way? Is it really more profitable,

Probably depends on the product. For google search where your search query is generally highly relevant to what you are looking for and therefore advertisers, probably not much. For facebook when I am scrolling through the news feed and I'm not looking for any product in particular, probably a lot because that is the difference between showing me a generic ad with low click through rates versus one that is tailored towards things I probably want and therefore much more likely that I will click on it.

Companies seem willing to pay more for more targeted advertising and if other mediums could switch over to it they would (the issue is that something like print can't). I'm not sure what other motivation they would have besides profit incentive for it.

> Is it really more profitable

It is. Online, you can use statistics and probability theory to actually test what's more profitable instead of relying on ad-hoc metrics about what "feels good".

> They chase you around the web, even for products you already decided you didn’t want

These are a small minority of online ads. They're displayed in places where nothing more profitable or contextual can be displayed. (I.e., most websites, since most websites are junk.)

The only ads that are ever actually relevant to me are the ones that are there because they're relevant to the page/app content.

If I'm looking at x, selling me something that makes x easier or otherwise compliments x makes a lot more sense than selling me something that I looked at 2 months ago and didn't intend to buy.

I searched Wayfair for nightstands once. They're seven months deep into a campaign to close that sale by any means necessary. I'm half expecting to find a salesperson inside my home someday.

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