Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics [LWN.net]

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 26, 2022 22:39 UTC (Wed) by Rigrig (subscriber, #105346)
Parent article: Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

> While it is sometimes comical to see Google ads recommending the book you just purchased, or the hotel/flight/rental car you already reserved, it hardly seems like it leads to increased sales for the advertisers.

It is my understanding this happens because ad-networks are simply interested in showing a high conversion rate, measured as "products bought after seeing them advertised". It turns out that predicting purchases is much easier than actually convincing people to buy something, and they don't have (real-time) access to sales data, so it pays off to show a few too-late ads if it increases the chance of having shown the ad just before a purchase.

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Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 27, 2022 2:37 UTC (Thu) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (4 responses)

That sounds like fraud to me, I wonder why the people placing advertisements with Google aren't suing over this. I guess it is pretty hard to prove though? Google ads are supposed to be helping create new purchases, not helping predict purchases that would have happened anyway.

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 27, 2022 9:01 UTC (Thu) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]

Fraud is extremely common in the advertising space, traditional ads cost enough money customers do check they are effective, the web ad space is something else.

Cookies and topics exist, to reassure the people that bid for micro ads their money may produce some effect. It’s a belief system.

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 27, 2022 16:17 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (1 responses)

> Google ads are supposed to be helping create new purchases, not helping predict purchases that would have happened anyway.

Who told you that?

It's really hard to convince someone to buy something new.

It's much easier to convince someone who is already planning a purchase to choose your shop rather than someone's else shop.

Of course Google ads were targeted on the latter auditory rather then former one. From the day one when ads were served only near search results.

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 27, 2022 23:57 UTC (Thu) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]

Predicting purchases is a different to redirecting purchases from one vendor to another vendor.

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 28, 2022 0:47 UTC (Fri) by Rigrig (subscriber, #105346) [Link]

What would they sue over? You order ads to be shown to interested people, they show ads to interested people. And then you work out how you are going to pay for those ads: per click, per view, per click-conversion, or per view-conversion.

And if you pay per view-conversion, obviously the algorithm will optimize for that, resulting in this effect.
Even if ad networks wanted to, I doubt the AI could be trained to "maximize conversion rate, but by creating new purchases, not predicting them". (They would if they could, because customers will notice a 30% conversion rate with ad broker A resulting in higher sales than 30% with broker B.)