Re:Only 17% of consumers believe personalized ads are ethica...
by TeMPOraL on Monday November 16, 2020 @03:32AM
(#25109439)
Key word being, "more likely". An unfortunate effect of scale and cheapness of digital ads is that even if the effect of retargeting on any given visitor is very tiny, it still makes economical sense to deploy it, as it'll add up. The extra marginal annoyance and frustration inflicted on everyone who views those ads is, of course, just an externality.
Re:Only 17% of consumers believe personalized ads are ethica...
by JoshTriplett on Monday November 16, 2020 @04:36PM
(#25117268)
That's absolutely true.
In particular, there's an interesting distorting effect caused by large-scale ad vendors and sites that want ad revenue. They always show an ad, and the only question is which ad. While I think ads should just not exist (and people should universally block them), it would be an interestingly different world if the alternatives were "useful ad" versus "no ad".
(Disclaimer: this is a description of an advertising technique as currently used, not advocacy for that technique. All ads should go away whether personalized or not.)
This kind of ad is called "retargeting", and it turns out to be somewhat effective. If you're looking at a product, and you're debating whether to buy it, seeing it again makes it more likely you'll come back and make the purchase. (And, for that matter, makes it more likely you'll make the purchase there, rather than somewhere else.)