Re:Adtech is built on a privacy fault line
by skydhash on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @04:25PM
(#36976847)
The whole blu-ray.com website is pretty much ads. But I don't mind and I often visit the site to see what movies has been released and read the review to see if it's worth watching (production wise). Goodreads also is ads, because the description is written to appeal to you. I don't want to see blu-ray ads when I'm shopping for clothes, and I don't want to see books ads when I'm buying electronic gears (unless the book is about the gears). So yeah, ads can be targeted. It's just that companies now feel entitled to your attention 24/7 that the whole adtech spac is what it is now.
When online marketing blew up, marketers were lured in by the belief that they were getting all those previously untrackable impressions. They still aren't, but there is a big segment they can now track. At that point, I feel it became an optimization problem where they cant escape the local optimum. They can't even imagine not having the not-entirely-valid data.
FWIW, I feel that non targeted ads make so much more sense. If I'm reading a tech blog, I actually may want ads from a tech service. I don't need my wife's browsing habits to show me dresses.