Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics [LWN.net]

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 26, 2022 22:38 UTC (Wed) by jmaa (guest, #128856)
Parent article: Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Could someone explain why Google stopped with contextual advertisment? Seems like the acceptable sweet spot of usefulness and creepyness, while avoiding the adtech privacy catastrophe.

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 27, 2022 5:38 UTC (Thu) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link] (10 responses)

That has always confused me. The most appropriate ads are for the page you are viewing exactly right now. Reading a hiking blog? Flannel shirts, walking sticks, mountain bikes, all sorts of things come to mind. Nothing is more appropriate. Ads for what I was reading yesterday, pr the page before this one, are less relevant than the page I am reading right now.

I also wish they'd get back to simple text ads. My brain ignores flashing ads, columns of pictures, all that ad stuff. When there were text ads, I used to actually skim them.

It was the same back in the days when I read print newspapers and magazines. I ignored the mass production ads. If I was looking for snowshoes, I looked for snowshoe ads.

Context is everything. Why feed me ads for real estate agencies when I am reading a page with a pot roast recipe?

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 27, 2022 16:13 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (7 responses)

> That has always confused me.

Why?

> The most appropriate ads are for the page you are viewing exactly right now.

Sure. They are most appropriate, but are they most lucrative? Obviously no. And guess what advertisers prefer.

> Reading a hiking blog? Flannel shirts, walking sticks, mountain bikes, all sorts of things come to mind. Nothing is more appropriate.

Sure. But if you are avid fun of hiking you wouldn't spend all your money on these. And if they can, somehow, guess about what you want to buy (as opposed to what you want to read about) the chances of selling you something increases.

> When there were text ads, I used to actually skim them.

Yes, but is it more lucrative to try to sell something to you and not to someone who can barely read two sentences?

> Context is everything. Why feed me ads for real estate agencies when I am reading a page with a pot roast recipe?

Because this brings more money?

What often baffles me on LWN is simultaneous combo of people who are bright and, see many different things — yet, simultaneously, couldn't understand that they are rare minority and something designed to cater to majority, may, in fact, look stupid and crazy to them because majority is different and because if you look on who actually spends money on things situation is even more different.

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 28, 2022 3:33 UTC (Fri) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link] (6 responses)

Advertisers certainly want the most bang for the buck, but how do they know what that is? Google's incentive is to get advertisers to spend as much as possible, and their reporting on how well their own advertising works is suspect. All advertisers really have to go on is Google's reports vs other ad agencies. I don't have any reason to think Google is outright lying to their clients, but incentives work behind the scenes to distort things invisibly. I have no doubt Google analysts routinely come up with many marvelous ways to emphasize their most expensive advertising's benefits without any explicit bias.

Marketing departments also have the wrong incentives. Like all bureaucrats in unmeasurable fields, they operate on hunches backed by selective data. I imagine the old saying "you can't go wrong with IBM" has a Google counterpart today.

Don't get so excited by your own superior imagination. Your idea of majority and minority is just as wonky as what you claim as everyone else's delusions. Follow the money, follow the incentives, and remember that everyone is biased and usually doesn't know what invisible incentives they are following.

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 28, 2022 8:12 UTC (Fri) by JanC_ (subscriber, #34940) [Link] (4 responses)

Interesting data-point: when the GDPR was introduced, the NYT switched from tracking-based ads to context-based & geographical-based advertising for EU visitors… and saw its ad revenue from those visitors increase.

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 28, 2022 11:08 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (3 responses)

But that's only natural: if ads have become less effective them advertisers would need more of them to get the same sales.

It's precisely the same story as with TV ads: TV networks were getting lots of money from ads because they were less effective than ads in the Internet!

Of course after advertisers realized what's happening they moved ads from TV to the Internet. Which made ads in the Internet less lucrative thus some ads remained on TV.

GDPR reversed that trend and turned NYT into TV-of-sorts… of course this should introduce jump in revenues… till advertisers would realize what's happening and move ads elsewhere.

NYT is probably big and important enough to retain some advertisers, but small web sites may end up with no ads (and no income) at all if they would do something like that.

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 28, 2022 12:17 UTC (Fri) by laarmen (subscriber, #63948) [Link] (2 responses)

Can we really draw any conclusion from the available data? An increase in revenue might mean an increase in views, but could also mean an increase in click conversion, as those *can* be measured and billed, contrary to TV-ads which are solely based on views.

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 28, 2022 16:15 UTC (Fri) by JanC_ (subscriber, #34940) [Link]

Also, NYT was then selling those ads directly, instead of through a broker, so they cut out a middle man, I suppose…

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 28, 2022 17:00 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

> as those *can* be measured and billed, contrary to TV-ads which are solely based on views.

Not anymore. They stopped serving targeted ads because they don't want to deal with GDPR requirements. I don't think they would want to bring these [potential] liabilities back just to get these numbers.

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 28, 2022 11:01 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

> Like all bureaucrats in unmeasurable fields, they operate on hunches backed by selective data.

That's where third-party cookies become important. If they are used then you may count all the times ad was shown and even track user from the ads to purchase of goods.

Of course this only shows how lucrative ad is for the advertiser, it's hard to measure how effective is it for the Website.

Google actually shows irrelevant ads to small percentage of users on purpose to see if they would click on them!

And yes, of course it's not a precise science: if people who are visiting the web site were rational then ads would have been completely useless.

> Follow the money, follow the incentives, and remember that everyone is biased and usually doesn't know what invisible incentives they are following.

It's true, to some degree, but it's not as if Google used guns to make people switch from TV ads and newspaper ads to their platform. That part happened before it become an established truth that it's better to go with Google or YouTube ads than spending money on TV ads.

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 28, 2022 2:50 UTC (Fri) by developer122 (guest, #152928) [Link] (1 responses)

"Most appropriate for the page" means nothing. If I'm an auto mechanic I'm most likely to buy tools so you shouldn't show me baking supplies the one time I visit a recipe site. I won't buy them.

The theory goes that google can overall produce an accurate profile of "you" and what you're most interested in buying, or what you're susceptible to that's most willing to pay for ad space. Then they plaster that *everywhere.* The mechanics forum, the baking site, your search results, every website you visit.

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 28, 2022 3:18 UTC (Fri) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link]

On the contrary: an auto mechanic on a recipes page is more likely to already have all the job tools he needs and more unlikely to have the cooking tools.

Auto mechanics use a lot of specialty tools that very few other people will ever know about, let alone use. They are also more likely to already have sources for new tools and not likely to respond to ads for new sources. They are also not likely to google for how to repair pages in the ordinary course of business.

Or to put it another way: the people most likely to google for how to repair pages are the amateurs who don't already have a vast collection of repair tools, not the professionals who do have that vast collection. Similarly, the people most likely to google for recipes are the amateur cooks who might be interested in new pots and pans and implements of cooking, not the professional chefs who already have almost everything they need, and if they do buy something new, it will be from a friend's and/or colleague's recommendation.

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 27, 2022 15:27 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (1 responses)

The timing correlates with when Google bought DoubleClick; from the outside, it looks like DoubleClick's values w.r.t. users and advertisers won out over the native Google attitudes.

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 27, 2022 23:39 UTC (Thu) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link]

That may be right, but it may also be that Google had already started to adopt, or was being pushed in the direction of, DoubleClick's attitudes, and that's what made the purchase seem reasonable. You only buy a company like DoubleClick if you're intending to move into their business.