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0 pointsEnsorceled5y ago0 comments

This is fundamentally misunderstanding how internet advertising works:

advertises will pay higher CPM for precise targeting and attribution

publishers want the best CPM they can get

adtech uses as many tricks as possible to get as much information as possible about a user so they can maximize the CPM the advertiser will pay

Publishers just end up doing what ever their adtech partners tell them will give them the best CPM.

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4 comments · 1 top-level

morelisp5y ago· 3 in thread

Haha, no. You're falling for the trick, or maybe you're just 10 years behind.

Publishers (and retailers, and anyone with a dataset) seek out adtech partner companies, to justify high CPMs and to sell their audience data. Adtech companies are market-makers, it's been years since the data they can get independently of supply-side partners was worth shit.

The publisher is the one with the cookie warning and consent forms! The publisher is the one who wants you to log in with a stable ID! The publisher is the one with a model of you regardless of your ad or tracker blocker settings! The adtech companies will sell you downstream for sure, but the publishers are the ones deploying as many tricks as possible to gather data.

And yeah, adtech companies will advise them about how to effectively gather data. That's a lot less about "tricks" and more about how to build salable taxonomies instead of data lakes full of garbage. To the extent it's about tricks, it's more often the adtech companies having to patiently but firmly explain, no, you can't just hardcode a single consent state for all visitors and send that to us in lieu of a real CMP. (A purely theoretical example, of course...)

imiric5y ago

You're being very generous to adtech's role in this. Any undisclosed bias?

Adtech is very much instrumental in the race to extract as much value from attention as possible.

Adtech built a market for advertisers to target users based on interest (which may or may not be a scam[1]). Advertisers exploit this and other tools at their disposal (astroturfing, embedded marketing, etc.), but they're certainly not as vicious or out of control as what adtech can produce.

The publisher has my information if I give it to them or if they buy it somewhere. Adtech has it regardless of what I do. Why would a publisher even want a model of me when what they want is for their product to reach me on as many sites as possible, not just their own? An adtech company having as much information on everyone can serve many publishers, so it's no wonder the system is so centralized.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27531714

EnsorceledOP5y ago

> Publishers (and retailers, and anyone with a dataset) seek out adtech partner companies, to justify high CPMs and to sell their audience data. Adtech companies are market-makers, it's been years since the data they can get independently of supply-side partners was worth shit.

You're correct, for large publishers ... I guess we could almost say they are adtech companies now.

mindslight5y ago

IMO it's easier to just call them "surveillance companies" and be done with it. Regardless of whether they're collecting, storing, or processing surveillance data, they're all in the same business as Equifax, Google, Lexis-Nexis, and NSA.

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