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Users Know Advertisers Watch Them, and Hate It
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Apr 01, 2008 11:50 PM
from the someone-to-watch-over-me dept.
from the someone-to-watch-over-me dept.
Chris Blanc tips an Ars writeup on a survey of consumer attitudes toward targeted advertising. The results of the survey, conducted for TRUSTe, confirm that advertisers are in a tough spot. "[The survey company] randomly selected 1,015 nationally representative adults... Although only 40 percent of the group was familiar with the term 'behavioral targeting,' most users were well aware of the practice. 57 percent reported that they weren't comfortable their activities [were being] tracked for advertising purposes, even if the information couldn't be tied to their names or real-life identities. Simultaneously, 72 percent of those surveyed said that they find online advertising annoying when the ads are not relevant to their needs..."
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Big deal? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
But isn't the advertising to some extent what keeps some websites afloat? Even some services?
As for billboards being less intrusive, that depends on the billboard and where it is, and how often you happen to visit wherever it is...
And as for the postal systems, that is a federal system and it is illegal to open someone else's mail. I'm not sure the same applies to online transactions, depending on how it is sent. If you shout across the room, don't sue me for listening if I'm in the room...
Parent
Re:Big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps. What's that got to do with liking it? Proctoscopy may make me live longer, but that doesn't make me enthusiastic about having a proctoscope jammed up my butt.
As for billboards being less intrusive, that depends on the billboard and where it is, and how often you happen to visit wherever it is.
True. And not all advertising is obnoxious. Just advertising that is ugly, poorly designed, gaudy, moves on my screen, takes up space on my screen to the detriment of the page, makes the page load slower, or is for things I'm not interested in at the moment. So that includes about 75% of the advertising I see on websites ("ads that I see" does not include anything using Flash or most popups). Most of the other 25% is Google's ads, which aren't too obtrusive yet. If I'm shopping, I might even click on them.
TFA says that consumers want to see more relevant ads. It is very important to note that "more" modifies the word "relevant", not the word "ads".
Parent
Re:Big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. The point of advertising is to get me to want something I don't need (because if I needed it, I could not wait around for an advertiser to "educate me about his valuable product/service"). That is, by definition, a waste of my time.
When I do want to buy something, I go looking for it. To find what I want, I use a wonderful invention called the Yellow Pages, and if I want to get high-tech then there's Google. These are more than adequate for me to find what I want without much effort. When I don't want to buy something, I think it's reasonable to ask the sellers to stay out of my face.
Parent
Re:Big deal? (Score:4, Insightful)
It is still obnoxious, though.
Parent
Re:Big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Man, if I had mod points, and I could mod you up with all of them at once, I would.
MOST INTELLIGENT AND INSIGHTFUL POST EVER, EVER!
Seriously. This is why I surf with Firefox using Adblock Plus, Flashblock, and No Script. I HATE HATE HATE ads! I don't care what you are selling, don't care how great it is, and I do NOT want your ad in my face. I know what I want, and can go find it myself, I do not need some marketing guru shoving crap in my face all day long. Heck, I even mute the T.V. during commercials! The only exceptions I make to this are the particularly clever and funny commercials that are entertaining in their own right. Of which there are vanishingly few.
Frankly I don't care that your website is "Ad supported". While I may enjoy your fine content, it's not my responsibility to create and support a good business model for you. That's YOUR job as the website operator. If you go away because your business model depended on me being assaulted by ads and I didn't see them so you made no money and went under, then fine. There are THOUSANDS of other people out there that are just as good as you and just as smart as you, with just as much opportunity as you that will replace you and your website in a heartbeat. To be blunt, neither you nor your website is really all that important to me. Certainly not so important that I would choose to inconvenience myself by being forced to look at annoying ads. Keep in mind that as far as I am concerned, 100% of ads are annoying. If there is an ad it is annoying SIMPLY BY EXISTING. There is no such thing as a "targeted ad" in my universe, unless the ad is targeted for deletion.
So there you have it. Find another way website owners, or go the way of the dodo. Either way, I won't be looking at your ads.
Parent
Re:Big deal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That's not always the case, because you have to know that something, or at least surmise that it might exist before you go seek it out. The iPod is a good example - it was a new type of product that the market was ready for (a portable MP3 player), but without Apple's advertisin
Re:Big deal? (Score:4, Interesting)
People are lately talking more and more about "distracted driving" laws. No cell phones allowed, no changing the radio station, no lighting your cigar, etc.
If distracted drivers are such a problem, then why are people allowed to put up those damned blinking flashing signs? They're FAR more distracting than answering the phone. I hate online ads that do that but at least online ads won't kill me. The flashing sign at the McDonald's at sixth and south grand just may.
Advertisers are shooting themselves in the foot, targeted ads or not. I'm not just annoyed with advertisers that aren't advertising what I might be interested in buying, I'm just as annoyed with advertising for stuff I want - if the ad itself is annoying.
If I'm shopping for a laptop and Dell has a splash page at slashdot (for instance) making me click past the God damned thing to get to the site, I'm more inclined to buy a Gateway YOU HEAR ME, MIKE?). If Burger King has a blinkey flashey ad at the newspaper site I'm more inclined to go to McDonald's.
Rewarding obnoxious behavior is stupid and I refuse to do it. I also refuse to use those incentive cards at the grocery store. "Do you have a MAX card?" the cashier asks. "No" I reply, "I don't like being STALKED by a God damned corporation!"
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Well, this is why it's a big deal (Score:5, Interesting)
1. people change their behaviour when they think they're watched. Doubly so when it's recorded and they're not even sure when it'll be used, how, and in which way it'll bite them in the arse.
My favourite example is about the USSR. Everyone knows the brutality of Stalin's NKVD and about the Gulag, but that got toned down a lot after Stalin. Mostly because it was cheaper and more effective to just give people the impression that everything they say or do goes into some dossier, and they have no idea when it'll be used against them or how. Maybe it'll be the GULAG, but maybe they'll never travel abroad again, or maybe their kid won't ever get a promotion because of what their father said, or God knows what else. Or maybe nothing will ever happen, but there's no way to know.
That uncertainty is actually scarier than immediate repression. It removes the feedback. With Stalin's NKVD, you could know pretty soon whether they have anything against you or not. With something that might, or might not happen, and might take a decade or two to, you just don't know.
The bigger effect is that it made people distrust each other, and thus unlikely to get organized. If comrade Piotr swears at the Party, how do you know if he isn't some agent provocateur trying to get you to say something you'll regret. And even if he isn't, do you want it on your record that you hang out with a disgruntled enemy of the people? Best avoid going drinking with Piotr in the future.
Of course, you could point out, that was only because Big Brother there had not only ears, but also an arm with a whip and an inclination to use it. Well one way or another disincentives exist just as well in a free society, and in the West we're all the more eager to accept them if they're wielded by the private industry instead of the state.
E.g., just like in Soviet Russia you might have feared that you'll never get a well paid job if you have on your record that you're a maladjusted malcontent, the exact same can happen in the west too, in a world where employers routinely google their employees. Even if your current boss doesn't mind it, how do you know if the next job interview doesn't get influenced by something you said or did?
E.g., to get to more mundane western worries, if you're, say, in a particularly bigotted town in the Bible Belt, do you want your next employer to know that you're surfing for gay porn? Most people even if they're not particularly secretive about either being gay or surfing for porn, don't wear "I download gay porn" on a badge at a job interview either.
This whole data collection, and the possibility that it'll get leaked, sold to the highest bidder, or just given as a "gift to the community" like the infamous AOL search data, is enough to make a lot of people think twice about what they do. Even if it's not antisocial per se. Better not trip someone's sensitivities the wrong way, and all that.
(And, yes, I know, maybe _you_ are brave and fearless and never give in, bla, bla, bla. The vast majority of others aren't. That's the problem.)
It can enforce a degree of conformism that's outright scary.
2. Data mining, especially the way Joe Sixpack doesn't even understand it, adds another layer of scariness to it all. You don't know over what inferences they'll get to you, or whether you'll be a bystander casualty of one.
Basically the same as you wouldn't go into a black or jewish boss's office carrying some white supremacist magazine under your arm. Chances are the "pays to read that kind of thing => probably is a racist" inference won't help your career much. So even the real bigoted guys still wouldn't do it.
Data mining promises to make the same kind of inferences from other more mundane things. That even much more innocent things could finger you as something you'd rather not proclaim yourself as, or even genuinely aren't.
E.g., what if some data mining survey says that employees drinking Coca Cola are twice as loyal to the
Parent
Re:Well, this is why it's a big deal (Score:4, Insightful)
When I was living in Southern California and getting my first security clearance, scary men came around the neighborhood asking questions of the neighbors about me (as I was told later). None of them knew me, so much the better.
The situation is much different in the Asian countries I've lived in. Different lifestyle, different culture and it takes some getting used to. After a time, I came to expect that everything I did was watched by someone and gossiped about, getting very twisted by the time it got to my wife at the time which caused a lot of problems.
On a numeric basis, there are more people in the open glass communities in Asia than in the US (perhaps in Europe, I've never been there), where there is some expectation (and reality) of privacy in outdoor day to day activities.
Sure, it adds stress to me, I was born and raised in California, but it doesn't seem to matter to most everyone else.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess the best way to explain it, is via Adlai Stevenson's "A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular." For millenia, even in Western Europe and even early USA it wasn't. From Socrates being executed for making himself unpopular, through the witch
That was... (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
We don't need IPv6 to do this. We just need to get more people to start using current technologies like OTR and PGP
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Bottom line... (Score:5, Insightful)
I see you are having your period... (Score:5, Funny)
At Tampax we understand this and that's why our tampons are designed to suit your body and help you get on with life...
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Bottom line...Not quite (Score:5, Insightful)
advertising is merely publishing the existence of a product.
marketing is the active, dogmatic, flagrant, imposition of a product to a particular target using the most invasive means possible within the boundaries of the law. An advertisement would be a poster for a revlon product in a department store. marketing would be the woman who blocks your path and burns your eyes out with a well placed blast of a perfume bottle.
your typical toy marketing campaign is not about convincing you and your kid to get this toy.. it's about deliberately manipulating your kids into pissing you off until you pay them temper tantrum protection money.
Slashdot's ads are actual advertising, while those seizure inducing flashers, popup windows, and fake system alerts are marketing.
Parent
Re:Bottom line...Not quite (Score:5, Funny)
I always called it "bullshitting."
Parent
Re:Bottom line...Not quite (Score:5, Insightful)
True marketing deals with WHO buys WHAT. After that ADVERTISING takes over.
The slashdot crowd may unilaterally hate "marketing", but thats because they don't understand what it truly does. It is ironic that most people here who hate marketing don't sign their own checks.
Confusing B2C advertising methodologies with true marketing is ignorant. Apple is winning due to marketing, not advertising. Microsoft won due to Marketing, not advertising. Sony pwned for 2 iterations of gaming devices due to marketing, not advertising. Band-Aids, Toyota, Whole Foods, Glock, Clorox, Dyson, BMW, Jones Soda - these entities are winning due to marketing, not advertising.
Marketing is an analysis of data....thats it. Those who choose to use tha data to advertise corruptly are the culprits.
Get a clue.
Parent
Re:Bottom line...Not quite (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bottom line...Not quite (Score:5, Insightful)
jones soda is winning because they actually follow the equation P = MC. They don't skimp on their ingredients like the major bottling houses do, and they don't gouge like they do.
As the saying goes, sell the sizzle, not the steak. p=mc, ingredients, alternative to major bottling houses, not gouging--sizzle. You didn't say a single thing about the flavor! Seems very telling...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I "bought into" a package of a particular flavor of jones soda because it tastes like a drink that's exceedingly expensive to import. (it's sold in the asian district for about 25 cents an OUNCE)
the soda was 40 cents less a can than the pepsi products on the same aisle.
nothing to do with marketing, it's called a competitive product -- something foreign to the US economy for a long time because the vast majority of producers who pull that "capitalism" crap are bought out and shut down by the incumbe
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bottom line... (Score:4, Insightful)
I work for companies that are dependent on advertising to make revenue. I'd prefer to keep those websites free, and advertising is the best way to do this.
I try not to be a hypocrite, so I don't block ads. If a website has horribly obtrusive ads, I simply stop visiting it, but I have pretty high tolerance for it now. I either tune them out or just deal with it, because the comparatively minor inconvenience is often well worth the benefit of having free access to content/services.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd like to agree with you, but I don't believe that's true.
The reason why advertising exists and is prevalent as it is is that we, the great unwashed masses are happy to tolerate it, and obligingly participate in it, all with little or no thought. You could argue, for example, that the blight that exists on a city's buildings and infrastructure saves a few dollars for taxpayers, but hell, we've gotten to the point we erect building and monuments to the stuff. When we're n
Just Don't Look (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Users Prefer Targeted Advertising (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, block them. (Score:5, Insightful)
Every machine has a hosts file in which machines can be locally defined.
So, lets take what we know and make ads gone.. maybe not all of them.. Lets start with the annoying ones first.
First, get Firefox.
Next, we gets some plugins:
Adblock Plus
NoScript
NukeAnythingEnhanced
Flashblock
What, you dont like being watched? Now get TOR from tor.eff.org and install it, along with accompanying firefox plugin for proxy changing
Set up TOR and now you have ad-free browsing, with optional anonymizing surfing when needed (for performance hit).
Re:Well, block them. (Score:4, Informative)
Anyway, if you don't like ads, don't use ad-supported sites. It's that simple. If you like the site, leave the ads on and support the creator. Don't be childish about it.
Parent
Re:Well, block them. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just saying.
Parent
Re:Well, block them. (Score:5, Funny)
or.. "I am a user who is excessively concerned with privacy and knows how to anonymize himself. Statistically speaking, I am probably (though not certainly) a reactionary paramilitary survivalist cult member. Effective ads for me are likely to include ads for weapons, military surplus, canned goods, religious iconography, industrial grade generators, and DIY bomb shelters."
Parent
Re:Well, block them. (Score:5, Interesting)
It is MY choice what images I load, what scripts I render, and what HTML code I accept. You have NO SAY.
I have no qualms to disable ads any way I can, and I will show/set up ad killers so that my clients can surf safer and distraction free.
My setup does not block text ads... You want a way to our eyeballs, make ads like Kuro5hin.org . I recently bought a VPS because of an NON-obtrusive ad I viewed there.
Parent
TrustE isn't a regulatory organization (Score:4, Interesting)
TrustE is more of an apologist than a regulator. TrustE stopped being serious about privacy in 1997, when they "simplified" their seal program. [news.com] A TrustE seal doesn't mean that any standard has been met. All it means now is that the company claims to comply with their own privacy statement, whatever it says. That's it.
Even worse, a site with a TrustE seal is more likely to have badware than one without a seal. [benedelman.org]
TrustE has revoked only two certificates in its ten year history.
Let's see (Score:4, Interesting)
With that said, I don't see how harmful this can be. Browsers do a good job of protecting us from the worst case scenarios, and web sites have a hard time implementing this effectively anyway. The sites best at this are those with real information, like amazon or ebay that have your info and can track what you do. But again, you are on their turf, so its kinda like complaining about being watched by security cameras at Best Buy, or about the membership card that tracks everything you buy at CVS.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Just use superliminal advertising instead (Score:5, Funny)
BUY STUFF!!!
Re:Just use superliminal advertising instead (Score:5, Funny)
Lisa: But you have recruiting ads on TV. Why do you need subliminal messages?
Lt. Smash: It's a three-pronged attack. Subliminal, liminal, and superliminal.
Lisa: Superliminal?
Lt. Smash: I'll show you. [opens the window, and shouts at Lenny and Carl, who are standing on the corner] Hey, you! Join the Navy!
Carl: Uh, yeah, all right.
Lenny: I'm in.
Parent
I disagree with their analysis (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't get that at all from these numbers; personal experience tells me that people don't want to see ads. Relevent ads aren't as bad, and some can be useful, but most just don't want to see ads.
The fact of the matter is that it is the advertisers themselves who want us to see their ads, not the other way around. To do this, they add stuff to their advertisements in order to make you pay attention to them.
People who pay attention to advertisements/commericals are the product to be sold, the advertisers are the real customer, and the content, whether it be magazine, movie, game etc is just the bait to lure us into the 'snare' and pay attention to the advertisement.
When people WANT to view an advertisement, we'll look for a product then. Building brand awareness beforehand might be effective, but that doesn't mean we enjoy being conditioned in such a manner. If we could have the carrot without risking the snare, we would totally take that. When we want the snare, we'll let you know.
Re:I disagree with their analysis (Score:5, Interesting)
ThinkGeek proves you wrong... I didn't know I wanted *half* that stuff! Seriously, targeting a specialist *site* works wonders, while targeting an individual is annoying. It's old technique though; for example, in specialist-enough niche (print) magazines for hobbyists, the ads are actually quite often interesting and useful to their audience.
Parent
I don't see the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Google Love Affair (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Google Love Affair (Score:5, Interesting)
Yay.
At the of the day, Apple charges lamorghini prices for chevette parts in cadillac boxes* and Google promises "don't be evil" while collecting and tracking data at a volume that probably makes the NSA green with envy. I personally find this to be irritating (on the part of apple) and heinously evil shit (on the part of google), but both companies are Best Of Breed, and as long as their products Suck Less than everything else on the market, they'll be loved by the slashdot crowd - and any questionable activity will be rationalized or ignored by the fanbase.
* Yes, an equivalent PC that has every last one of the features a Mac packs will cost more. But I can upgrade the video card on a 400$ Dell. The entry level for upgradeable video in the Apple world is currently 2,799$, and the starting point for a useable (non-intel) video chipset (non-upgradeable) is currently ~1,200$. Oh, and the Intel minis cost more than the PPC minis did, with arguably worse video. Mention any of this in an Apple thread and you'll be modded troll or flamebait.
Parent
Then offer up an alternative (Score:4, Insightful)
False dichotomy (Score:4, Insightful)
TRUSTe notes that this attitude presents a conundrum for advertisers, who are simultaneously being told that consumers want to see more relevant ads but don't want to have their activities tracked in order to make those ads relevant.
Until the web gave advertisers the ability to track individuals (even if anonymously), the standard way of making advertising relevant to consumers was to advertise in media that reach your target audience. Magazines have sold themselves to advertisers for decades by offering the ability to reach tiny slices of the population collected together by shared interests. What advertisers now want is the ability to target you, not "18-29 yo males with an interest in technology."
You can continue to make advertising relevant by placing the ads where the target audience is likely to be found. You don't need to track me to preserve relevance.