You don’t necessarily need to implement bidding on a dedicated slot—-the TV comparison assumes you’re sending the same thing to each user. This isn’t TV though, you can display different ads to different people of you wanted.

How about a system where probability of seeing an ad is weighted by how much money an advertiser pays? Then you just normalize across bidders and choose on that curve. Then perhaps the time slots just serve as a bucket to allow advertisers to approximate their target audience, perhaps there are additional buckets for things like geolocation.

If you're bringing in those buckets, you are already in the slippery slope bringing you to the current system. Why not a bucket for people who visit the site often? A bucket for people using advanced site feature A, feature B? A bucket for people who subscribe to /r/teen?

I don't see any issue with a site using their own data to provide targeted advertisement on that one site. As long as data isn't being aggregated between sites and users aren't being tracked between sites, the privacy risk seems minimal.

Fair enough. Although if that site is Reddit, that includes a lot of information about my preferences for many things.

Because the buckets are only time slots. If you can predict what time your highly focused market is to be online the most, good on you, but it doesn’t involve collecting any additional data.

The problem with any model where ad performance is based on how much cash you can throw down is that scams are much more profitable typically than legitimate services. A scam page can afford $5/click if it's scamming 1% of its clicks for $5000. Bidding on clicks is just a race to the bottom in terms of quality.

We should instead be using user metrics to evaluate and punish ads that lead to pages users regret navigating to.

The solution to that is right at the start of this thread:

> "Never allow dynamic ad content! Ads should be individually approved by publishers and not subject to change after approval."

In that case it's just in the hands of individual publishers, so results will vary. Plus publishers will make more money if they _don't_ do the right thing and police out the bad ads (at least in the short term).

That does not prevent scams

Traditionally, publishers didn’t mind publishing ads for scams like sea monkeys or x-ray specs, but they found it embarrassing and put them in the back of the book in small print. The bizarre part of the internet is that the scams go on the homepages of sites.

But, then we'd need to track users even more deeply, right?

We would need to model regret which is a questionable request to agree to “solve”.

Not really imo -- like I said upvotes and downvotes can do this just as well. Just have to have good anti-bot protections on that

I think you're conflating two points - the granularity of targeting and the auction method. Everything will get simpler if you reduce the number of targeting variables. The auction method seems less relevant to me, that's simply a financial matter.

> I don't want to, ever, see online ads transform into TV ads. Targeting would be okay if it was done properly.

What's so awful about TV ads? I'd be fine with seeing more "mainstream" ads if the tradeoff was no targeting/tracking.

>the entire selling point of online ads, which is giving a chance to smaller players a chance at the game.

Aunt Mae's cookie shop will never be able to compete with Pepsi for airtime

> Aunt Mae's cookie shop will never be able to compete with Pepsi for airtime

It still can’t compete with CPM

Getting 100 or 1000 impressions vs millions of impression is not really competing for air time.

If there's no user information/tracking, what are the chances that any of those ads will be served to a potential customer for the small business? The GP's bottom line is that nobody except large consumer brands should bother advertising.

This is a theoretical interesting point. But it does not withstand even cursory empirical research.

Open a newspaper. Look at page two. What do you see? Ads for local businesses. Watch local TV. More ads for small businesses.

Okay, now go to the websites for those newspapers and TV stations. No local businesses. Literally all scam ads.

>No local businesses. Literally all scam ads.

I was like "ok, is that really true" so I went and checked, and by golly, you're right. And it's 50-50 the "scam ad" I got is a direct result of a doctor leaking my medical records.

The whole online ad industry should be regulated out of existence.

It sounds like your doctor was a big source of trouble; shouldn’t they be the one regulated out of existence?

Actually it was their accountant.

In any case, it's not them who are exploiting the information. The ad industry is like a fence for stolen goods.

It's not that my medical information is top secret; it's that I don't want to see ads about earwax. And I think Google execs should be forced to watch them until they repent and become monks or something.

If you allow for location based ads (eg: city level), there may be a chance.

Except 1000 impressions for a smaller company might still be impactful.

she will just have to buy ads on smaller websites, maybe during lesser traffic time periods.

Small publishing sites are all but dead. The internet used to be a lovely village where everyone was on about the same playing field and now it's a handful of skyscrapers surrounded by slums.

sure, but its only been that way for a little over a decade, it could change back just as quicky.

i would actually consider those towering skyscrapers to be the slums, and the smaller sites to be potential hidden gems.

That's a lovely theory, but the money is in Youtube and its pretty obvious.

Nearly all the major tech reporting sites have died: TechReport, Hardware Canucks, Linux Journal, etc. etc. When you look at who can actually sustain a modern tech reporting site, its the Youtubers: Linus Tech Tips, Gamers Nexus, etc. etc.

Even then: when the tech reporting sites were around, they were mostly on Google Adsense. The others are on Facebook Ads.

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The sites that are making it possible for small-style discussion to thrive again are new "networks" like Patreon. A lesser evil for sure, but a "Skyscraper" nonetheless.

Why advertise on TechReport when you can just profile users and show them tech ads wherever they go? Tracking is poison for niche publishers.

The problem is that opening up the market to "Aunt Mae" will also open up the market to malicious players.

The financial barrier of entry of TV & print advertising is a very effective filter against scams. I have yet to see scam ads for fake tech support or "win an iPhone by filling a survey" or some "free" trial which uses unreadable fine print to sign you up for something very expensive, but those are commonplace online.

So the answer to preventing scam ads is only allowing the richest companies have a chance to advertise?

Surely there’s a better way.

I worked at a local TV station a while back, and I programmed the commercials. You would be surprised at how little those slots go for. Off prime time, a 15 or 30 second add spot might sell for a couple dollars. At night they’re only a few cents. It was a mid-sized metropolitan area, so I don’t think this would be so out of the ordinary.

To this day, I have no idea how any TV stations are financially solvent.

Well, higher prices not only allow for people to be paid decent money to review the ads manually but are also a bigger risk for any scam operation as not only is it more difficult to obtain & move that amount fraudulently (you're not going to be able to buy a TV ad with a stolen credit card) but they also have much more to lose should their entire operation be discovered (presumably, a TV network discovering a fraudulent attempt will report it to the relevant authorities and will not just give the money back).

NordVPN's ads have made it onto TV, and a lot of TV ads nowadays are for gambling. Nevertheless it certainly is easier to regulate advertising if it isn't dynamic.

Everyone sits around and talks about their favorite TV ads. It’s the “best part of the Super Bowl” according to common wisdom.

No one has ever had a favorite internet banner ad.

Nobody talks about their favorite TV ads.

The Super Bowl specticle is just that, a one-off event where the ads are more like short films and talked about for maybe a day before entirely forgotten.

> Advertisers shouldn't know what I like, they should only know that a certain device with a certain ID likes X,Y topics.

This is well-meaning but unfortunately it's also naive.

That kind of information, in aggregate, is trivial to de-anonymize at scale.

I'd like to see secondary markets for PID banned outright, personally. If you want that, go on the dark web and risk criminal sanctions. I'm sure there are some positive effects which would get thrown out with the enormous moral hazard, but I'd have to be convinced that it isn't worth it: as it stands, keeping personal user data should be a cost center for most businesses, something which exposes them to liability with no means to monetize other than providing whatever service they nominally exist for.

>I'd like to see secondary markets for PID banned outright, personally.

I totally agree with this, but I think it'd be terribly hard to implement in practice. How would you eliminate the rise of a single large body that partners with everyone during data consent forms? Sort of like a VISA for personal data. The result is the same, or arguably worse, but wouldn't be banned under your scheme.

Regulatory capture, which is the broad umbrella I'd put that under, is a problem with any attempt at regulation, I agree.

We can imagine a better regime, which could say "if you attempt to cheat or skirt around on this, we're going to hammer you harder than if you just break the rules", but how to actually get it is pretty murky. Easy to aim for that, and land in a situation where shadowy individuals wield great and capricious power.

You are what you like, given enough information, the ID becomes pointless.

If I allowed tracking, which I don't, the ad companies wouldn't know what to make of me. Middle age white guy devops nerd into manga, anime, fishing, ramen, lo-fi, and coding. Yet, I wear Wrangler jeans, boots, and drink wine. Even my wife thinks I'm an oddball. My kids think I'm cool until it's bed time on a school night and then howls of "Dad, what about Gundam! It's almost over. We promise!"

They offer that information as criteria the ad campaigns can select for. The criteria could be pieces of specific datum or analyzed conclusions (e.g. predicted sexual orientation, political affiliation). Those conclusions may be inaccurate but they are still more accurate then trying to make those conclusions in a tv/print campaign. So it's still effective.

There may well be a company selling big-ass belt buckles with anime themes that is trying to reach you. When designing their ad campaign they could say they want people with an interest in anime/manga AND interest in westerns, trucks, boots or jeans. They would have no way to do that with a traditional media campaign.

I think you've put too focus on the things that you think make you special. And an advertiser may not even care that much. They would be looking at what ads are you a good match for, which means the things that you've posted.

No one human has to be capable of putting you in a box, there's this cottage industry devoted to making machines do it for us.

True, true. I didn't think it that way.

As long as you could still target based on:

- location of ip address

- article/page the ad is placed on

You could get targetting down to a very small number of people, and consequently make advertising very cheap.

Because of the degree to which paid advertising us about creating common knowledge that a product exists, ads of this sort are likely more useful to the advertiser anyways, at least in the long run. If you merely want to inform people that your product exists, there are usually cheaper forms of marketting.

You don't need to own a time slot completely. You could still split impressions based on a time slot, eg. you pay for 80% of the impression in a slot and I pay for 20%. You can still target "all sports fans form 10am to 2pm" or something as well.

This would still remove the incentive for fake clicks.

> they should only know that a certain device with a certain ID likes X,Y topics

They shouldn't know any ID, not even one that gets sent only to that one advertiser and is reset after 30 days.[0] Even that much data shouldn't be stored, because it's not needed unless you want to do shady tracking-related stuff (e.g. run statistics that determine who gets a special offer with a lower price).

The way it's ‘done properly’ right now is that advertisers can subscribe to a segment of consumers who recently looked at X-type products from stores A, B, or C, in region Y. Then they make bids on how much an ad impression is worth to them when a match shows up. Kind of like auto-bidding on eBay, except more meta. The problem with this is that there still needs to be some ad platform that tracks user IDs. The better ones have a reputation to uphold, so they'll make some effort to protect consumers … from finding out what's really being tracked and when there was a leak.

I like the idea of giving smaller players a chance, but:

You don't need any tracking for targeted ads.

A lot of the most relevant ads I see are on Youtube, where I have personalisation turned off. Composer explains music theory? Music store. Chef explains recipe? Cooking classes from lecture video site. Formula 1? Expensive car brand. And energy drinks. E-sports? Gaming peripherals. And different energy drinks. Half the time, no meaningful match could be made and I get something generic. Neighbouring Swamponia is beautiful in toad season. These douche-bros will give me totally legit financial advice for free. The insurance I already use has a great product for people twice my age. Founder of local thimble manufactory rambles incoherently for five minutes.

In aggregate, that's way more relevant to me than ”you recently bought that power bank you needed, so here's another power bank”. I skipped 9/10 ads after 5 seconds, but now I know which brand makes a 6-string bass that's affordable for a guitarist who'd just like to give it a go for a bit. And I did see offerings from smaller players. So I also learned that the local neo-nazi party is pretty good at folk dancing. Homeland, sweet auto-tuned homeland.

I don't blindly assume that Google aren't tracking anything I don't want them to store. But they show me a lot of targeted ads and there's never any indication that they know what I did last summer.

[0] Oh, and obviously even that kind of ID shouldn't identify an entire device. When your offspring borrows your tablet to play Candycraft, do you want them to see ads meant for you? Do they want to see those ads?

Meanwhile, newspaper/magazine publishers are like: Oh hi there! You're completely new here, so let's play the spyware opt-out game! Well done, no cookies for you; here's a pop-up about push notifications and here's another pop-up informing you that you're running out of free articles this month.

(Wait, what? You just said I'm completely new here.)

Click here to continue reading the article. We promised no cookies, so there's no reason to worry about why Firefox/Privacy Badger/Ghostery just blocked connections to 20 different service providers. It's not our fault; far too few people are willing to pay for high-quality journalism nowadays. Before you continue reading the article, would you like to know which Spice Girl Slim Shady wanted to impregnate? Number 5 will shock you! OK, OK, back to the article. Here's an embedded video. If you can't see it, it's definitely your browser acting up; surely we're not supposed to know about youtube-nocookie.com. Of course you can scroll to the previous paragraph to have another look, but did you know you can subscribe to our e-mail newsletter? Where were we … right, so now you should see this relevant picture, but it ain't gonna happen unless Facebook can join the conversation. Was it good for you, too? Don't forget to feign engagement, boost share-holder value and spam all your friends!

Alright, Black Mirror, I'll grant you that. But apart from How TV Ruined Your Life, Newswipe, Black Mirror, and Weekly Wipe … what has Charlie Brooker ever done for us?

Fair enough, Antiviral Wipe. But apart from How TV Ruined Your Life, Newswipe, Black Mirror, Black Mirror, Black Mirror, Black Mirror, Black Mirror …

> Advertisers shouldn't know what I like, they should only know that a certain device with a certain ID likes X,Y topics.

That is in fact what advertisers know. It’s the aggregators that know who you are, not the advertisers.

How is this different from knowing what “you” like?

Targeting is always harmful. Even if it had no unintended side effects, it would make ads more effective and thus more harmful.