An excellent reminder from Don Marti on just why ad tracking is bad on the web:
The tracking is not there to identify the individual (the data doesn’t have to be accurate) but to enable getting the highest-priced ad onto the cheapest possible site
Cross-context tracking puts higher value and lower value sites into competition to cut ad rates and drive up the % that goes to platforms—side effect is that much of the ad money ends up going to places that neither the advertiser nor the user would want to support
https://www.propublica.org/article/google-display-ads-piracy-porn-fraud
In short, it’s there to con advertisers, do publishers out of money, and maximize the profits of the likes of Google.
That in turn kills journalism and, by extension, democracy, but why should Google care?
I say they should deeply care, as not caring might be tantamount to negligence. I think Google has a duty of care to the public, especially with monopoly power, and it has breached this on multiple occasions. The causation is obvious: it could vet the publishers whose media the ads appear on, as every ad network did before them; and the damage is out there for all of us to see.
Bring back contextual ads, I say.
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Yes. Early GMail ads (contextual and relevant and “tracked” by machines reading emails – which they do, regardless of what anyone thinks they want) were actually useful to real people, real customers. When GMail was in beta, a colleague and I tested this by emailing about our need for a vacation: somewhere warm, near a beach, where we hoped to be served drinks by handsome “cabana boys” and learn to surf. But neither of us knew how to surf and of course we’d need gear… and we were a bit budget conscious.
GMail to the rescue, and boy did they do well – we almost forgot we were testing and booked the trip! Airfare to San Diego; the Del Coronado Resort; a surfing school SPECIFICALLY run by and for WOMEN!!; a nearby tog shop and supplier of surfing gear (much of which we could rent rather than buying… Dang, they were GOOD. Once upon a time. Back in the 1990s.
Now, all advertising feels aggressive and adversarial, if not in-your-face and outright fraudulent.
I heard that they were good, and that’s a heck of an example. Back then, I thought, ‘Well, if they’re going to offer it for free, and give that much storage, then fair enough that they make some dollars with those ads.’ It shows how Google had a good product and messed it up. If they vetted at a high standard, then the market-place would be a lot cleaner, in my opinion. Those low-market ads would remain on low-market sites and most of the world need not bother with them.