DISQUS

Richard Azia · 9 months ago

but you're sitting at a computer ;-) what behaviours? Watching tv, fun with the GF, cat sitting on the keyboard? :-)

Joseph Hunkins · 9 months ago

This is a naive post Louis, perhaps reflecting your own reliance on advertising revenues?

..... means I will see fewer banner ads for dancing monkeys and silhouettes offering me low mortgages...

right, you'll see bouncing monkeys juggling cell phones - only the poor schmucks who were surfing for interest rate info will see the "low interest" mortgage ads from both legitimate and dubious lending sources.

I am a beneficiary of the system and a believer in the need for internet advertising but I'm waiting to see what sprouts out before complementing these profiling decisions. I'm getting tired of Google explaining how virtuous the advertising cycle that makes Google billions is for everybody else.

Google does far too little quality control on their ad base. "e.g. try a search for "free ringtones" and look at the laundry list of misleading advertisements, scammy companies, and bs.

Online advertising could easily be cleaned up but it would take revenue cuts that are unacceptable to publishers. Therefore buyers should not rejoice at more targeted advertisments, rather they should continue to be skeptical of naive and foolish claims that their interests will align perfectly with publishers and with Google. They probably *never* will.

On the up side you, I, and Google are going to make more money from this change. Thanks Google!

Matt Cohen · 9 months ago

Louis,

You hit the nail right on the head here. The thing that annoys you and Susan isn't ads, it's low quality ads.

You can think of two different axes for content: commercial/noncommercial, and interesting/uninteresting. Quality is in the eye of the beholder, and largely determined by how well targeted the ad is. Online ads have generally been uninteresting, and thus annoying. The hope is that as targeting improves, the perceived quality (as well as the effectiveness) of the ads will improve as well.

If all you saw were ads for cool Web 2.0 services, you wouldn't find them annoying at all - in fact at some point, it becomes worthwhile to read the ads as content.

Matt @8^1

Keith · 9 months ago

Reminds me of the day they announced getting into Print ad. (I am showing my age now lol). I don't think this will change the fundamentals of proper online ad strategy like talked about at http://www.emarketingmatador.com/online-ads-mov....

Mark Krynsky · 9 months ago

Louis, my thoughts on ads are based on understanding that we get free content because websites make their livelihood selling ads. If we didn't endure and sometimes support their advertisers we run the risk of losing those sites.

I also worked for an ad network a few years back and we were just starting to deploy some behavioral targeting functionality. I think many people don't understand or are naive about privacy concerns and how the targeting works. Our targeting (and I'm guessing most others) was based on storing your surfing history in a cookie for sites that ran our ad code. So basically we could target ads based on recency and frequency along with geo data based on knowing what kind of sites a users visited. It didn't work great but was definitely better than throwing a random dart.

So my guess is that this logic may have more data points and has evolved but basically I'm guessing it's similar to what Google will be doing. I personally like getting better targeted ads and welcome this. It will be interesting to see how well it works. Unfortunately for you Louis I'm pretty sure this won't have any effect on you continuing to get dancing monkey ads as this functionality will be limited to ads served by Google.

coachpalmer · 9 months ago

Relevant ads are good for the consumer and good for the advertiser. Getting to the right customer is what it is all about and makes what is in front of the consumer relevant so they will eventually pay more attention to the placements. This is a win-win!

Magnusdopus · 9 months ago

While I think this will help Google conversions, I don't think it will matter very much. The number one issue affecting online advertising is ad-blindness. People are just conditioned to focus on the content and not on the chrome. Behavioral is already used extensively on display advertising where it's more effective.
I visited a MMORPG game site once and now 50% of my display ads are for that game. The ads are very effective so I notice them, although I admit not to have signed up yet.