Making the rounds
Targeted Advertising Considered
Harmful
is making the rounds.
Doc Searls Weblog
Slashdot interview
(Click "Hide/Show Transcript" for text.) Thanks
to Roblimo
for the opportunity. From the comments: YttriumOxide
is using Facebook ads for a book on
psychedelics,
and Znork makes an interesting
point about temporal targeting of
users.
And an anonymous
comment:
The problem is that most people don't understand how
advertising succeeds. It does not succeed by eliciting
the "Shut up and take my money!" response, as most
people assume. If it did, then targeted ads would be
the way to go. But "banner blindness" has long been
recognized, and click-throughs are generally pathetic.
However, advertising remains successful by subtly,
gently shaping your awareness, tastes and motivation
on every level from lifestyle, to lifestyle
accessories, to brands, to products, to sellers.
Most people resist the notion that they are
manipulated in this way, and thus cling to the "logic"
of targeted advertising and the belief that it can
only benefit them by presenting them with deals for
items that they happen to be on a hair trigger to buy.
That model might work, but it is not the model of
advertising that works now, and the latter is the
point of Marti's argument -- that targeted ads are
undermining the existing successful aspects of
advertising. Worse, they do so by taking the worst
performing facet of advertising, and positing a "fix"
that will allow it to replace the best facets.
It isn't just a choice between direct response or
subtle manipulation, though. Advertising does carry
a signal that it's in your interest to be able to
interpret, and the less that the ad is specific to
you, the more information about the advertiser's
intentions it carries.
In the pre-web media environment, I spent a few
minutes of dealing with direct marketing per day,
sorting my postal mail and handling cold calls. But I
spent a lot more time with the signalful advertising
in newspapers, magazines, and on TV. Somehow the
balance of how much targeted and non-targeted material
I have to deal with has changed a lot. And I get way,
way less value from advertising now.
Adtech proponents
like to quote John Wanamaker's famous
saying,
half the money I spend on advertising is wasted;
the trouble is I don’t know which half
,
and, of course, then add that with the next
generation of adtech, that waste will go away.
But it can't. Advertising is an exchange of value:
the advertiser gives information (not just the content
of the ad, the signal that the ad exists at all,
and where it appears) in exchange for attention.
When targeted advertising tries to change the deal,
and ask for attention without offering anything in
return, users respond by blocking the worthless
ads.
Syndicated 2013-10-11 10:54:09 from Don Marti