Use of targeted advertising capabilities

[bigglesworth]

With social media offering companies increasingly sophisticated control over targeted advertising, there are obvious possibilities that are being realised today. Companies can advertise cars only to people of the age that might drive that type of car, for example. However, there are also less-obvious possibilities.

Should companies actively exclude minority groups from their (otherwise widely broadcast) advertising campaigns? E.g. Travel companies deliberately excluding Gay folks from their Facebook ads for Uganda? Or a hiking company deliberately excluding wheel-chair users?

[Newt]

Why not? The advertiser obviously prefers not to spend money(or lower their click-through numbers) targeting people highly unlikely to use their product or service, and those people presumably don't care about not being notified about something they almost certainly aren't interested in.

[CorruptUser]

I don't know of any company that would refuse to sell you something just because you are black or gay or a woman. That's just bad business. But if you can get more sales from a particular demographic, it makes sense to advertise more prevalently to that demographic.

[Diadem]

I don't know of any company that would refuse to sell you something just because you are black or gay or a woman. That's just bad business.

Are you serious? This kind of discrimination is extremely common.

[poxic]

Targeting can be quite creepy. When a friend reached her late 30s/early 40s, she started getting massive amounts of snailmail spam for fertility treatments (she has no children) and cosmetic surgery. Ew.

[CorruptUser]

I don't know of any company that would refuse to sell you something just because you are black or gay or a woman. That's just bad business.

Are you serious? This kind of discrimination is extremely common.

Can you cite a few major examples, not including things like social clubs or stuff that's a result of stupid people outside of the company?

The train companies were among the most vocal opponents of Jim Crow laws; they were the ones who had to bear the cost of lugging around half-full or empty cars all around.

[Kewangji]

I was looking at Youtube videos when a small text told me that this artist would be playing in my town in a week, so I bought tickets. That is the only time I've been okay with targeted advertising: usually I put in as false data as I can when it comes to places that want to advertise to me, so I will get Spotify ads for parachuting in Linköping, for example.

I would like to see a movement of people trying to subvert advertising data-collection.

And I definitely agree with poxic in how creepy the targeting can be. (If you don't have an adblocker – switch your Facebook sex and see what happens. If you can do that, I don't remember. Just change some settings for a less drastic, but still there, creepiness.)

[Chen]

I was looking at Youtube videos when a small text told me that this artist would be playing in my town in a week, so I bought tickets. That is the only time I've been okay with targeted advertising: usually I put in as false data as I can when it comes to places that want to advertise to me, so I will get Spotify ads for parachuting in Linköping, for example.

Wouldn't you prefer to see ads that you might be interested in though? As you said you benefited from the targeted advertising during said Youtube video. If the ads are going to be there anyway I certainly prefer to see ones that might be relevant to me.

[CorruptUser]

It's kind of odd that I get advertisements from the Society of Actuaries for becoming a CERA. Is there a shortage of CERA's or something? I'm struggling just to find work as an actuarial student, there seems to be more actuaries than jobs at the moment.

Also I just realized that advertisements could be rewritten as "adverse men tits".

[philsov]

Should companies actively exclude minority groups from their (otherwise widely broadcast) advertising campaigns?

Certainly. It's a waste of money/time/resources to advertise to groups with a very low response rate. These resources can be reinvested and better spent elsewhere.

I don't see it as much different than refusing to open a high-end business store at a given location where the average income in the area is pathetic and the crime rate is high; it's a flawed business decision that people can clearly see before even starting the venture. So long as it's the denial of advertising instead of outright denial of service I don't see the problem.

[ShortChelsea]

I would like to see a movement of people trying to subvert advertising data-collection.

And I definitely agree with poxic in how creepy the targeting can be. (If you don't have an adblocker – switch your Facebook sex and see what happens. If you can do that, I don't remember. Just change some settings for a less drastic, but still there, creepiness.)

I have a bunch of crazy, unrelated interests on facebook so I won't get advertising that interests me. It's creepy and reminds me of M.T. Anderson's Feed. It makes me smile when I see advertising that I'll never be interested in or products that are the opposite of what I like.

[Kewangji]

Wouldn't you prefer to see ads that you might be interested in though? As you said you benefited from the targeted advertising during said Youtube video. If the ads are going to be there anyway I certainly prefer to see ones that might be relevant to me.

Gosh no. Then I would be supporting capitalism. I don't like that I liked that one example. And I would probably have found out anyway because I follow the artist on Twitter and he mentioned coming to my city like, the day after I bought the tickets. And there were still enough seats when I got there! I would've been fine.

I have a bunch of crazy, unrelated interests on facebook so I won't get advertising that interests me. It's creepy and reminds me of M.T. Anderson's Feed. It makes me smile when I see advertising that I'll never be interested in or products that are the opposite of what I like.

Hah, that's a fantastic idea. Might steal it.

I really don't like the idea that a company would be almost entirely invisible to a certain demographic, but I can't really put my finger on why.

[CorruptUser]

It's the idea that it's a secret from you. That you are on this side of the fence, and you assume the grass is greener on the other side, but the fence is actually a 20 foot high concrete wall and you have no way of seeing what color the grass is but you can only assume it's the most lush green grass in existence since they don't want you to see it.

[Kewangji]

Ah! You are correct. It's too divide and conquer.

[moiraemachy]

I really don't like the idea that a company would be almost entirely invisible to a certain demographic, but I can't really put my finger on why.

Heh, that reminds me of how much I freaked out when I discovered that in the US the average black citizen watches different TV shows than the average white citizen. Targeted advertising reduces the amount of shared experiences people have, and that's less ways for people of different demographics to relate to each other. Although I'd argue that the information age is a huge net positive in this regard.

[CorruptUser]

I really don't like the idea that a company would be almost entirely invisible to a certain demographic, but I can't really put my finger on why.

Heh, that reminds me of how much I freaked out when I discovered that in the US the average black citizen watches different TV shows than the average white citizen.

60% of BET's audience is white. I don't know what specifically "black shows" exist out there. I mean, everyone I knew grew up on Fresh Prince and Family Matters, and I'm not black. Were those actually "white shows" that had all-black casts?

[moiraemachy]

I'm trying to dig up some citations, but it really isn't stuff like BET what the article I read talked about. The focus was, if I recall correctly, on shows that target an older demographic. It was something about adults of different ethnicity groups tuning on different TV channels during prime time, getting news from vastly different sources and watching different soap operas. The news bit is probably also related to political affiliation though, but it still makes the gap scarier.

Also, considering that the white/black people ratio of the US population is of about 5 or 6, BET's audience still is very skewed.

Found this.

[CorruptUser]

Ah, right, Girlfriends. The executive producer was Kelsey Grammer. Frasier. Frasier. AKA, the whitest man on television.

Also, obligatory Mmmm Hmmm. Ummmm em Ummm! Em Um Hmmmmm!

Anyway, Friends was just insulting to black people. "Hey, these 6 white assholes can live in giant apartments in Manhattan! And never once see a black person! Isn't it great to be young and white?" Also, Will and Grace was insulting to gay people, but since it was the first show to even HAVE a gay main character, it gets a pass.

[Chen]

Anyway, Friends was just insulting to black people. "Hey, these 6 white assholes can live in giant apartments in Manhattan! And never once see a black person! Isn't it great to be young and white?"

So are we assuming every sitcom with a white cast is insulting to black people? Like say How I met your Mother? Or say Cheers? Or Frasier? Or Seinfeld (though I do recall an episode where George was trying to make friends with a black family so he could say he wasn't racist or something...)

[CorruptUser]

No, but if it's set in a place with a lot of black people and the cast virtually never sees a black person that gets more than 1 line, then it's insulting. It's not like Manhattan is segregated. Mostly.

It'd be like setting the show in Miami, and rarely seeing a Hispanic person.

[Qaanol]

Anyway, Friends was just insulting to black people. "Hey, these 6 white assholes can live in giant apartments in Manhattan! And never once see a black person! Isn't it great to be young and white?"

So are we assuming every sitcom with a white cast is insulting to black people? Like say How I met your Mother? Or say Cheers? Or Frasier? Or Seinfeld (though I do recall an episode where George was trying to make friends with a black family so he could say he wasn't racist or something...)

Taken collectively, even if no single TV show can be singled out as overtly racist, the fact that so many TV shows exist with negligible diversity, and most people most of the time don’t even realize or think about it as anything other than “normal”, demonstrates the pervasive and systemic racism in American culture.

[philsov]

No, but if it's set in a place with a lot of black people and the cast virtually never sees a black person that gets more than 1 line, then it's insulting. It's not like Manhattan is segregated. Mostly.

It'd be like setting the show in Miami, and rarely seeing a Hispanic person.

And shows with a gender-based quotient (Sex in the City?) are sexist because half the cast isn't male.

With this is mind, I'm perfectly fine with Magic Mike being advertised during The View and not, say, Top Gear. (Yes, the nature of either show doesn't allow for a wide cast like many sitcoms and dramas.) It's insulting to be lumped into a demographic and told I like or dislike certain things and therefore having a limited exposure, but considering the volume for exposure is so very high, there simply isn't enough time in a day to see ads for feminine products, farming equipment, colleges, or a myriad of other things that simply do me no good along with ads that are mathematically likely to attract me to buy for the sake of sharing an experience.

Here in Houston (though things have died down), for the longest time there were ads from agencies about hurricane damage, repairs, filing with the government, fixing tarps on roofs, and whatnot. Why should someone in Kansas be exposed to this? Why would I care about buying severe winter clothing/equipment? I don't really see this as a "This is what First Class flight is like, enjoy economy class you plebian" sort of dividing issue manufactured by the industry to cause one demographic to feel superior to the other because they're getting an ad for an Alaskan cruise instead of one for a community college to get their GED.

[Kewangji]

@philsov: It's not like they pretend men don't exist.

And if we somehow disallowed targeted ads – demographically, not geographically – maybe class differences would be more obvious; maybe more awareness could happen. It's not about the individual who sees the ad, it's about the entire group of people they are in.

[CorruptUser]

No, but if it's set in a place with a lot of black people and the cast virtually never sees a black person that gets more than 1 line, then it's insulting. It's not like Manhattan is segregated. Mostly.

It'd be like setting the show in Miami, and rarely seeing a Hispanic person.

And shows with a gender-based quotient (Sex in the City?) are sexist because half the cast isn't male.

Sex and the City had lots of men. It just focused on the women. And that's OK. The problem with Friends is not that it didn't have black people in the main cast, but that it barely had any black people in places where there were supposed to be black people. It's sort of similar to how Firefly is supposed to take place in a universe that's half Chinese, but the only Chinese people you see are the occasional hooker or criminal.

Edit: ninja'd.

[lutzj]

It's worth noting that disallowing targeted advertising would also reduce the value of advertising, which would in turn slash at the revenue of ad-supported companies, especially those that appeal to specific niches (e.g., most cable TV channels). I think that would be a bad thing in the long run.

[Qaanol]

I think there’s a big difference between saying “Advertisers may not use personal information to decide who sees a certain ad, without the consent of the person being shown the ad”, which I think is a reasonable privacy-retaining measure, and saying “Advertisers may not choose the locations and times of their ads that can be seen by everyone”, which would be unreasonable.

[lutzj]

I think there’s a big difference between saying “Advertisers may not using personal information to decide who sees a certain ad, without the consent of the person being shown the ad”, which I think is a reasonable privacy-retaining measure, and saying “Advertisers may not choose the locations and times of their ads that can be seen by everyone”, which would be unreasonable.

Is there any practical difference between using billboards to target a given neighborhood and getting information from an ISP to target banner ads towards people in that neighborhood?

[BattleMoose]

I don't like having adverts on facebook or anywhere else, but if I have to, I would much rather them be advertising something that I might actually use/want. If there is something out there that I would like/want I would prefer it to be on my facebook adds than say an add about better and improved tampons. This way I get more of what I want without me actually having too look for it.

Very relevant to this topic conversation though. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill ... ather-did/

Through her purchases and studying those purchases, Target was able to guess with a reliatvely high degree of accuracy that a teenage girl pregnant, even before her own father knew. (And it goes a lot further than did she buy a pregnancy test)

[Pole] ran test after test, analyzing the data, and before long some useful patterns emerged. Lotions, for example. Lots of people buy lotion, but one of Pole’s colleagues noticed that women on the baby registry were buying larger quantities of unscented lotion around the beginning of their second trimester. Another analyst noted that sometime in the first 20 weeks, pregnant women loaded up on supplements like calcium, magnesium and zinc. Many shoppers purchase soap and cotton balls, but when someone suddenly starts buying lots of scent-free soap and extra-big bags of cotton balls, in addition to hand sanitizers and washcloths, it signals they could be getting close to their delivery date.

Although as they learned, people get creeped out when a company is able to determine that you are pregnant and you get highly targeted advertising, its well creepy. So apparently, they dilute the pregnancy appropriate sales with unrelated things, so the advertising doesn't feel targeted, you know, with a golf clubs add here and there.

TL/DR People are making advertising more cost effective, deal with it.

[lutzj]

TL/DR People are making advertising more cost effective, deal with it.

This is a good way to put it. One could imagine targeted advertising not as tailoring some special message to target individual people, but cutting out all the advertising they don't care about and saving everybody money/time in the process.

[philsov]

And if we somehow disallowed targeted ads – demographically, not geographically – maybe class differences would be more obvious; maybe more awareness could happen. It's not about the individual who sees the ad, it's about the entire group of people they are in.

Yes, but there are more cost effective ways to broadcast public service announcements about class disparity and increasing awareness than using advertising. When the ads are widely broadcast without a thought to age, income level, race, sex, education level, sexual orientation, religion, taste in movies/music/art/tv/etc, time of activity (sex hotlines during the morning news! yay!), search history, or any other facet of targetted ads, it either means a larger budget for increased ads, or less revenue because the target market (which still exists, regardless of the ads) isn't as aware of the product. Removing targetted ads is more harmful to the business than the public benefit from doing so.

[maybeagnostic]

Automatic recommendation systems are great for helping people sort through the overwhelming number of options and actually get information they care about- in many ways they are critical to the existence of the internet as it is today and they show up all over the place. Some of them do have one big weakness though- they offer you more of some kind of stuff you like, you consume it and reinforce their impression that this and only this is what you like. This approach is inherently bad at introducing you to new types of content and it takes awareness and some effort on the part of the user to go and change their preferences so they can see something really different.

Targeted advertisement is quite similar to recommendation systems with two key differences- there is no clear way to adjust your preferences and the system is centralized. Having a centralized system that can follow and even guide the development of people's interests is strange enough; add to that the fact that very few people have any understanding of how it works and no one knows what effects it will have on society long-term and we have... well, I see fascinating opportunities for doing some serious anthropology, sociology, and economics research with hard data.

Targeting advertisement is a tool too powerful to not develop but I sometimes wish people were more aware of how it works.

[HungryHobo]

I actually find the recommendations on amazon to be really good and they often introduce me to books I never would have bought otherwise.

Which opens up the posibility of advertising as a service: rather than trying to make me want John Smiths products and convince me that his product is the best deal , try to figure out what I actually want or would actually improve my life and to find me the actual best deal.

the difference being that where a traditional advertiser would try to convince me that 1: I want a bed, 2: their client john smith is selling the best beds in the world and 3: I'm not gonna get a better deal than $999.99

An advertiser as a service would figure out from my conversations that I want a bed then point me to the local freecycle page where a good bed is going for free.

I'd pay for a service like that.

[jseah]

This approach is inherently bad at introducing you to new types of content and it takes awareness and some effort on the part of the user to go and change their preferences so they can see something really different.

When you want something different, perhaps it would be prudent for advertisers to have a "widen my scope" button that gives you things with a lower relation score for one time. After all, if a customer is looking for something new, give him something he hasn't seen before!

Perhaps they could emulate wikipedia crawling behaviour, though goodness if I can ever understand why that happens.

Imagine a button that Amazon recommends you a book marginally related to ones you have seen before, only when you click it, because find similar are too similar. Not what you want? Click it again.

[Derek]

there is no clear way to adjust your preferences

Sure there is. Go do a search for the products you want to see, or if you don't want anything specific, look at shopping pages for random products. I've noticed that targetted ads respond really fast to any new product searches I do.

Also, I'm pretty sure most targetted ad system do have an opt out.