Ad tech

July 16th, 2024

Back when South by Southwest wasn’t terrible, there used to be an annual panel called Browser Wars populated with representatives from the main browser vendors (except for Apple, obviously, who would never venture onto a stage outside of their own events).

I remember getting into a heated debate with the panelists during the 2010 edition. I was mad about web fonts.

Just to set the scene, web fonts didn’t exist back in 2010. That’s what I was mad about.

There was no technical reason why we couldn’t have web fonts. The reason why we didn’t get web fonts for years and years was because browser makers were concerned about piracy and type foundries.

That’s nice and all, but as I said during that panel, I don’t recall any such concerns being raised for photographers when the img element was shipped. Neither was the original text-only web held back by the legimate fear by writers of plagiarism.

My point was not that these concerns weren’t important, but that it wasn’t the job of web browsers to shore up existing business models. To use standards-speak, these concerns are orthogonal.

I’m reminded of this when I see browser makers shoring up the business of behavioural advertising.

I subscribe to the RSS feed of updates to Chrome. Not all of it is necessarily interesting to me, but all of it is supposedly aimed at developers. And yet, in amongst the posts about APIs and features, there’ll be something about the Orwellianly-titled “privacy sandbox”.

This is only of interest to one specific industry: behavioural online advertising driven by surveillance and tracking. I don’t see any similar efforts being made for teachers, cooks, architects, doctors or lawyers.

It’s a ludicrous situation that I put down to the fact that Google, the company that makes Chrome, is also the company that makes its money from targeted advertising.

But then Mozilla started with the same shit.

Now, it’s one thing to roll out a new so-called “feature” to benefit behavioural advertising. It’s quite another to make it enabled by default. That’s a piece of deceptive design that has no place in Firefox. Defaults matter. Browser makers know this. It’s no accident that this “feature” was enabled by default.

This disgusts me.

It disgusts me all the more that it’s all for nothing. Notice that I’ve repeatly referred to behavioural advertising. That’s the kind that relies on tracking and surveillance to work.

There is another kind of advertising. Contextual advertising is when you show an advertisement related to the content of the page the user is currently on. The advertiser doesn’t need to know anything about the user, just the topic of the page.

Conventional wisdom has it that behavioural advertising is much more effective than contextual advertising. After all, why would there be such a huge industry built on tracking and surveillance if it didn’t work? See, for example, this footnote by John Gruber:

So if contextual ads generate, say, one-tenth the revenue of targeted ads, Meta could show 10 times as many ads to users who opt out of targeting. I don’t think 10× is an outlandish multiplier there — given how remarkably profitable Meta’s advertising business is, it might even need to be higher than that.

Seems obvious, right?

But the idea that behavioural advertising works better than contextual advertising has no basis in reality.

If you think you know otherwise, Jon Bradshaw would like to hear from you:

Bradshaw challenges industry to provide proof that data-driven targeting actually makes advertising more effective – or in fact makes it worse. He’s spoiling for a debate – and has three deep, recent studies that show: broad reach beats targeting for incremental growth; that the cost of targeting outweighs the return; and that second and third party data does not outperform a random sample. First party data does beat the random sample – but contextual ads massively outperform even first party data. And they are much, much cheaper. Now, says Bradshaw, let’s see some counter-evidence from those making a killing.

If targeted advertising is going to get preferential treatment from browser makers, I too would like to see some evidence that it actually works.

Responses

Gabriel N

@adactio unless you own the browser with the largest user base AND one of the largest advertising businesses

Donald Ball

@baldur My conspiracy theory is that behavioral advertising is being driven by propaganda interests, where narrow targeting of messages to certain groups (and outside the gaze of other groups) can be significant, and that commercial advertisers are either being taken for a ride or are aligned with the political goals and enjoying the ride.

Mia (CSS workshops available)

@adactio a good reminder also that capitalism does not in fact work to find the most effective and efficient solutions to a problem. It instead works to maximize profit for people with existing mounds of capital.

(see also ai)

Nick

@adactio banger post, changed my mind a bit as well.

Scott Kellum :typetura:

@adactio Online ads seem like a Braess’s paradox problem (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg73j3QYRJc)

The anti-privacy functionality of online ads is ultimately anti-customer. Results in ads that aren’t relevant to the context of where you are seeing the ads along with showcasing products and services that aren’t aspirational. It further hurts publisher autonomy and readership trust.

But companies who need to sell you that one mattress that you searched for right now are jamming up the ecosystem with crap.

The Spring Paradox

Nick Doty

@adactio measurement and attribution support other kinds of online advertising, not just behavioral advertising. I think one reason that standards groups have taken up measurement-related work over targeting is its broader applicability and utility.

And to your closing point about evidence, in order to get good data on which forms of advertising are most effective, privacy-preserving measurement of the efficacy of advertising — including contextual advertising — would be especially helpful.

Don Marti

@scott @adactio the online ad business is also possibly the world’s tallest stack of principal-agent problems. Customers and owners of a legit company would both be better off with a simpler ad system that gives honest sellers a sustainable advantage over deceptive sellers in the market, but most of the decision-makers in the middle have incentives to add complexity—and in a more complex system it’s harder to tell honest and dishonest advertisers apart

Nick Doty

@adactio I work on privacy across Web standards and a lot of that is currently related to advertising either directly or indirectly — exactly because it’s one of the industry areas that most urgently needs better privacy practices.

For what it’s worth, I’m also working on two privacy standards focused on gender-based violence and survivors of domestic violence. And there’s a push for digital credentials online driven by other industry needs, with privacy risks (some ad-related, some not).

Robin Whittleton

@npdoty @adactio we had extremely developed non-attributed advertising for over a hundred years before attribution somehow became a necessity.

Nick Doty

@robinwhittleton @adactio I don’t believe attribution is a necessity, and I’ve publicly pushed back in every standards meeting where someone has said that, even in passing. But measurement and attribution are useful and widely used, by advertisers and publishers, and can be useful for answering questions about efficacy.

Robin Whittleton

@npdoty @adactio sure, it makes advertisers’ lives easier. But a user agent is an agent for the user, not for the ad tech companies.

Nick Doty

@robinwhittleton @adactio private measurement could provide functionality to the advertiser and publisher in a way that’s safer and more private for the user, compared to what most ad tech companies prefer (where they surveil and profile every user’s online activity, with fingerprinting, cookies or email-based identifiers). The Web provides lots of functionality for sites as well as directly for users, and should keep a priority of constituencies where user benefit and safety is highest.

Timo Tijhof

@adactio @russss

I speculate three mechanisms at play:

A. Unsupported mgmt more likely to fund tech (incrementally yet infinitely) having seemingly-detailed data as subst for expertise, logic, and most of all: responsibility. Even when the question being asked of data is biased/flawed, and merely reflecting a semi-random assumption. Illusion of data-driven. Deniability. Line go up. Local maximum.

B. Resume-driven development. Sunkcost. We have all this infra.

1/3

Timo Tijhof

@adactio @russss

C. Self-fulfilling prophecy. Sell expensive option as only option (Google/Meta). Small/medium business will sacrifice ever more revenue to pay the mob for ever less access and distribution in return. It “works”, but only when you don’t compare it to anything. It doesn’t prove anything. But it does create Stockholm syndrome. “Nobody fired for choosing IBM.”

Timo Tijhof

@adactio @russss

A more human framing of point A above: Given a choice between thinking and turning dials, people are likely to turn dials (more data, more dials).

It’s easy to start believing that you’re improving something. You connect dots, see pockets where things work better, demand narrower ways to emphasise those pockets. You won’t know why, won’t create a uniform direction, and things may suddenly change. Yet gives confidence.

It’s got a bit of Dunning-Kruger too it.

3/3

firebreathingduck

@adactio Google makes its money from behavioral advertising, so they have a vested interest in lying about it’s effectiveness.

Mozilla has no excuse.

Cuban's Bullspit

@adactio although I wouldn’t need it (as not invasion of privacy and it can be done via site content) I genuinely do think if I had a “Allow contextual advertising” option, I’d have it checked. I’m not against advertising generally, I just don’t want to be tracked, nor do I see a valid reason for it… now, if there was only some kind of option for that in a browser?! (that advertising networks complied with)

Cuban's Bullspit

@adactio I do believe there was a massive missed opportunity here when the EU did GDPR and cookie consent… If they had gone with “do not track” track compliance and fines, we’d all have a better internet without the need for blockers or crazy popups designed to achieve the “allow all” option

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Previously on this day

4 years ago I wrote Hey now

Hey! Been tryin’ to meet you.

5 years ago I wrote Trad time

From the west coast of Clare to the World Wide Web.

9 years ago I wrote Quakepunk

The best writer on the web.

10 years ago I wrote Overcast and Huffduffer

Two great tastes that go great together.

10 years ago I wrote Cory Doctorow at dConstruct 2014

The wheel turns full circle.

12 years ago I wrote Brighton SF

I’m gathering together some sci-fi authors the evening before dConstruct.

16 years ago I wrote Sound and vision

Data visualisation killed the video star.

20 years ago I wrote Picture perfect

Tim Bray points to a great collection of photographs by Richard Friedman.

Ad tech

July 16th, 2024

Responses

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Previously on this day

4 years ago I wrote Hey now

5 years ago I wrote Trad time

9 years ago I wrote Quakepunk

10 years ago I wrote Overcast and Huffduffer

10 years ago I wrote Cory Doctorow at dConstruct 2014

12 years ago I wrote Brighton SF

16 years ago I wrote Sound and vision

20 years ago I wrote Picture perfect