Comment by libertine | Hacker News Reader

Comment by libertine | Hacker News Reader

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I understand completely your argument, and the article argument - I've used plenty of contextual advertising, and it's better than what we call ROS (Run Of Site), but it's worst than targeting based on interests.

But let me give you a inside view: there's been a war from major media groups to try to take down Facebook and Google (let's see what they come up with for Amazon).

This solution for them is the best solution for news websites, that since 2013 have seen their advertising budgets being siphoned to Google and Facebook.

All because they cannot compete with their level of data granularity - and trust me they tried! Hell some tried to build their own data systems to have more refined targeting.

I can even tell you one of the solutions on the table was to force Google and Facebook to share their data with media groups.

So this "white knight in shinning armor" article, despite showing valid arguments, is most definitely biased, because it's in their best interest that contextual advertising prevails and interest/behavioral falls. For years their agenda is to get back media investment from the big boys.

So bare this in mind when you read these articles.

Sure, it is in the author’s employer best interest for the industry to switch to contextual advertising. But it is also in the best interest of the end user. So why is that a bad thing?

I also don’t believe that behavioural advertising is better by definition. Even the article mentions some research to prove the contrary. I’ve seen it from first-hand experience as well. Which, of course, is anecdotal. But what is not is the fact that the world’s largest and most profitable advertising product, Google Search, is completely reliant on contextual rather than behavioural targeting.

The fact that publishers so far have not been able to do something about FB’s and Google’s duopoly doesn’t necessarily mean they will never be able to. Or at least I certainly hope that it doesn’t.

>But it is also in the best interest of the end user. So why is that a bad thing?

Like said, the bad thing would be more wastage and potentially less relevant advertising.

The problem with advertising is that a campaign success is a multi variable equation that fiddles with human attention/retention of attention/memory and many other factors that makes us humans and regulate our perception.

For example, I don't consider Google Search contextual base. I put it in a category of it's own, because you're tapping into people declaring their intent and interest, and reducing it to context is dangerous - because it's more than that.

I used to say to clients: Facebook knows what you like, Google knows what you're looking for, and Amazon knows what you're buying.

Google does have Contextual Segmentation but it's used mainly for display advertising (GDN - Google Display Network). There was a time you could even select/exclude domains, but I don't know if that's still available.

Also, Facebook tried to leverage their data for display advertising outside of Facebook and they ended up closing Audience Network... so even interest based targeting seems to work within a context itself.

>The fact that publishers so far have not been able to do something about FB’s and Google’s duopoly doesn’t necessarily mean they will never be able to.

This would be a long conversation, but in a brief way, I think they tried to compete by placing themselves next to Facebook and Google, while they should have set themselves apart and leverage their strengths - name content quality wise.

Thank you for the thoughtful comment. I do actually agree with many of your points. And you are right, this could be a much longer discussion. Let me just add this - your last sentence doesn’t have to be in past tense. I believe publishers still can set themselves apart and leverage their strengths. The next couple of years will show if GDPR and the CCPA can actually help to achieve that.

Author of the story here. Just made an account so I could chime in to say how great it is to see such a substantive discussion. On the point about being biased in favor of the media: Yes, absolutely, I believe a democratic society requires a thriving independent press to function, and that public policy should try to help that happen.

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