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Ask HN: Why are personalised ads bad?

29 points by theaeolist ↗ HN
The fact that targetteed ads are bad seems to be accepted as a given. However, in my naivité I struggle to grasp the rationale of this obvious truth. I hate all ads, but I kind of hate random, useless ads worse than potentially useful suggestions for products or services. Can someone help me please?

53 comments

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phillipseamore
Targeted ads require tracking and profiling users. That profiling is usually of poor quality. I've actually never seen a targeted ad that interests me, they are usually just trying to sell me something I've already looked at or even bought (re-targeting). From an advertiser standpoint I'm pretty certain that they are an absolute waste of money. In G̶e̶r̶m̶a̶n̶y̶ the Netherlands (following the GDRP) some publishers have switched to the old model of direct-sold ads where advertisers bid on placement next to relevant content instead of bidding on users. That has increased publisher ad revenue and those ads actually get more clicks.
schwartzworld
On its surface, I don't mind basic ad targeting. You're right, I'm a 38-year old male with two small daughters. I'd rather see ads for things that market towards 38 year old men and 3 year old girls over random ads for products marketed towards other demographics.

Privacy concerns aside (only because other people here will articulate them better), one of my big issues with targeted advertising is that it sucks at its job. I don't see ads for things I want. I see ads for things I researched once and then decided against. I see ads for things I purchased a month ago.

Targeted ads as described above almost sounds like a service for me: here's some curated things you might be interested in. But that's not what targeted ads actually do, and consumers are not meant to benefit from them.

bobkrusty
Do you mind share your location , age. What do ya mean basic ad targeting.?
schwartzworld
I just mean the fundamental idea that I would be receiving ads for things I might actually be interesting seems fine on its surface.
braz3n
During the 2016 US Election, undecided voters were targeted and bombarded with negative Clinton (much of which was false) and pro trump political ads. Studies show that this played a significant role in DJT's victory, and that Russia had a hand in it.

If Facebook did not allow such deep personalized ad targeting then this strategy would not have been effective.

Look into: Cambridge Analytica Scandal

DanBC
The targetting doesn't seem to work. I get bombarded with car ads. I don't drive. I'm never going to drive. I don't own a car. I'm never going to own a car. I have no interest in cars (other than my general anti-car views). I think most (but not all) car use is dumb and the ads don't persuade me otherwise.

Or I'm bombarded with ads for something I've already bought. You bought a rug? Here are 300 ads for other different rugs.

Sometimes the ad placement is terrible. I work in patient safety in English NHS mental health settings. This means I'm frequently searching using the word "suicide". One time I was searching a newspaper website to try to find a report they'd done. Here's the ad that was placed: https://imgur.com/hhOYUJb

But then as well as that I'm also worried about the privacy implications. People share computers and people share accounts, and the ad network has no way of knowing who's looking at the screen at any time.

emteycz
Do you use adblockers? Nothing wrong with that, but don't be surprised targeting doesn't work if you do...
DanBC
No, I don't use any adblocker.
nojito
They don’t work and only exist to make ad networks money.
oneeyedpigeon
a) They're never good enough. One form of targeted ad appears to be 'if they've bought this once, they'll buy it again', failing to take into account how likely a repeat purchase might be, which is all sorts of wrongheadedness. It's similar to an uncanny valley effect - genuinely perfect targeted ads could be very useful, but below a very high level of accuracy, they just become even more annoying than random ads

b) The data required for ads to be sufficiently targeted is beyond what many of us feel comfortable having companies sharing with each other

c) Targeted ads are typically delivered dynamically, raising all sorts of security and efficiency drawbacks

g_p
I think one root of negative sentiment comes from the real-time bidding (RTB) system.

Under RTB, there's outward information exchange of a granular personal profile to an uncontrolled number of third parties, based around a taxonomy that contains what EU/UK law defines to be sensitive health information.

This happens behind the scenes, invisible to the user. The end result is that incredibly granular, highly sensitive data points are being shared alongside persistent unique identifiers for users. Examples of this include inferred HIV positive status etc [0]. All being passed around thousands of intermediaries in real-time.

Some more info on this is at https://www.iccl.ie/human-rights/info-privacy/real-time-bidd... (former Brave guy is now at ICCL leading their campaign work against RTB)

[0] https://www.iccl.ie/human-rights/info-privacy/rtb-data-breac...

mindvirus
Ads are designed to change your behavior. In broad strokes that's not bad - advertising is a form of education and there are a lot of great products and services out there you wouldn't otherwise know about.

The more I know about you though, the more I can change that into direct manipulation. Imagine someone hired a team of top psychologists who had access to everything about you, and wanted you to do something for their own benefit. They'd probably do pretty well at convincing you to do it - but what are the chances they're acting in your best interest?

anoncake
> Ads are designed to change your behavior. In broad strokes that's not bad - advertising is a form of education and there are a lot of great products and services out there you wouldn't otherwise know about.

The vast majority of ads don't tell you anything you don't already know. And those that do are still inherently slanted. If ads are a form of education, they're an incredibly inefficient one.

dontchooseanick
At least one famous example

- A young - under 18 - woman aborted. She didn't want her family to know

- Her father received a "Congratulations for the newborn, grandpa" spam

This is wrong - perfectly - just because an ad database secretly knows/deduces/infer/collects/steals that you're a "star wars sex toys" fan does NOT mean it should be allowed to propose you some or to yell it at the face of the earth

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libertine
This is a ridiculous example.

I don't have to mention that it's simply illegal, yet...

You're talking about mixing data, like you have to know that someone under 18 was pregnant and for how many days, as well as that a specific man was her father and soon to be grandfather, all because some advertiser wanted to surprise grandfathers after their grandchildren was born - if the advertiser has access to this amount of data granularity, it might just know that she aborted anyway either because she searched for some symptoms that had strong correlation with abortion, or because she vented about it in some forum.

ethanbond
The ads themselves are not the problem (for most people). Rather, the data collection required to gain a competitive edge on ad targeting makes these services increasingly intrusive. They simply have to suck up and store as much data as possible and any failure to do that will cripple their business.
theaeolist
Not a single answer explain why targeted ads, legally and competently used, are in principle bad. Of course, like any technology it is not perfect and can be used for bad purposes or straightforwardly abused. That is obviously not the issue.
mac01021
No one ever explains why despotism, justly and competently executed, is in principle bad. Because the benevolent despot is not the one people find undesirable.
RockIslandLine
Several people have given several reasons, many of which alone are enough to demonstrate awfulness.

The biggest reason they are bad is that they don't work. I would happily subscribe to a concierge service that showed me genuinely useful information. However, the advertising systems we have got are not built for my use case, they are built for someone else's which is adversarial to mine. I could not possibly care less about your quest to build brand loyalty and awareness.

As noted, people often get shown ads for products which they have already bought. When I buy a car, it's a safe bet that I don't need another car for several years. Every car advertisement that I see in that time is wasted effort for both the advertiser and myself. I also notice that nobody is advertising along the lines that might influence my choice. As a single, eco-conscious male, I don't need "three rows of seating" and I need "low zero to sixty" times even less. Automobile advertising is heavily devoted to the highly profitable SUV segment. Eliminate the Chicken Tax and promote decarbonized and efficient vehicles. Stop basing advertising campaigns around stoking even more antisocial behavior.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax

And the flip side, people getting shown advertisements for products they have rejected is also wasted effort. I don't need penis pills, and every advertisement I have ever seen for them has always been wasted effort.

Stop polluting my information streams with awful crap I don't need.

Nobody likes being watched. Instrumenting the interaction that I need so that you can make wrong inferences about my preferences is pretty galling. Undermining my control over what information I do give out is worse.

https://proprivacy.com/guides/super-cookies-flash-cookies

Further, not specific to targeted advertising is the method of advertising. Advertisements in popup windows are a terrible idea. Forcing me to take an action before giving me useful information is a terrible interaction model. And that's not designed to make me want to buy your product. Advertising when it exists should be as unobtrusive possible. Obnoxious behavior sucks.

LocalH
It's not the ads themselves for me, it's the entire tracking infrastructure necessary to make that type of personalized ads possible. I could accept it on a purely opt-in basis, but that'd be too easy when you're facing parasites whose only goal is to worm their way into your mind despite your solid efforts to keep them out.
factorialboy
What's worse? - Personalized ads - or, Monopolistic ecosystem lock-in
bluesign
System is optimized not to show you things you will engage/like, but expected value:

Expected value = your engagement chance x revenue from engagement

This formula making it to run in more ‘exploit’ state then ‘explore

sloaken
No one likes to be manipulated. The data they gather is used purely to manipulate you. In the wrong hands could be very dangerous.
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theaeolist
Is this different in principle from non-targeted advertising? Isn't all advertising trying to manipulate you?
ttjjtt
I don’t want ads that remind me that I’m being tracked online and my estimated persona becomes more detailed with every link I click. I don’t want the track-and-profile phenomenon to exist at all. It’s a horrorshow.
ttjjtt
The practicalities are bad too. I get incessantly, monotonously followed by bad versions of what I’m interested in, which I cannot shake off. It’s a galling imposition not only to be shown that I am being tracked , but that the narrow cluster of products I am bombarded with are bad, ugly versions of the things I particularly like. I dislike them more intensely than products I have no interest in. It’s an unusual flavor of a mild dystopia.

Very affirming to read that Dutch non-tracking ads seem to yield more value (wired mag link elsewhere in thread)

theaeolist
That is begging the question: WHY is it a "horror-show"? What bad things will happen to you when the 'estimated persona becomes more detailed'?
ricardo81
As others have said, for me it's more about the methods used or whether they're using data about me I specifically gave them or they've inferred from me.

Targeting me on a keyword search is fine, also location.

Targeting me because of pages I've viewed in the past several weeks, a verbal conversation I've had, people I know, via the contents of my email- not so good.

Bakary
It's not even the ads themselves that are to be deplored, but just that a large chunk of the smartest people of our generation are incentivized to spend their lives' work getting people to click on them.
theaeolist
Agreed. But sort of besides the point.
throwaway29303
Regulation, probably. Also, because even the smallest amount of information about a certain user is enough. And since everyone and their mother in the market shares their info between themselves there's really no incentive to "fix" it.
friendlybus
I checked my youtube search history one day. It goes back to 2010 and most of the time I search for the same stuff. Particular songs I remember, specific topics. Really nothing new or interesting.

I want new info and to be connected to the world in my media. Personalised ads and media kills the sense that the media is confirming your worldview. We all know it's a tiny isolated bubble of information and rarely do recommended feeds or ads suggest something I want.

Personalised ads attune themselves to my past and I don't need to solve the same problem repeatedly.

Someone
Your complaint isn’t about the idea of personalized ads, per se, but about current implementations or, possibly, about the data you feed them. How would any system know you want new interesting stuff if you keep searching for not-new, uninteresting stuff?
friendlybus
I keep overthinking my reply. How can ad data divine the future of what I want? It can't really.
tobylane
Targeted ads are harder to tune out. I'd rather spend minimal effort on discarding those parts of the screen.

I think the greater harm done is in the information collected for it to be called personalised. Once it's accurately personalised and you're willing to consider buying something, then ads could be more justifiable. That's the path of excessive consumption.

TheOtherHobbes
In general? Many reasons, which are listed already.

Specifically? Do you want political organisations weaponising your preferences and interests in an attempt to manipulate your vote? Even if that means flat-out lying to you and others in an attempt to manipulate your behaviour by targeting your personal hot-button issues?

Because this has happened a number of times already, and will continue to happen on ever-larger scales until the practice is banned.

softwaredoug
It’s not the ads it’s the lack of transparency on data collection and sharing.

If I want personalized ads, recommendations, etc, make it clear what data you’re collecting and for what purposes:

- Have me opt in

- let me see who you intend to share it with

- tell me what it’s used for

- let me inspect and delete the data as if I own it

ankit_it09
There is nothing bad showing relevant ads, but thats not the point, this data can be used to manipulate you in many ways.

To get an idea how bad it is watch this Documentary on Netflix - The Social Dilemma

richajak
food for thought. what is the intention of showing relevant ads? to help user find solution or abuse it? As much as I feel that I am smart or strong not to be manipulated, I think I cannot resist if the ads relates to me. feels like google try to hack my brain and emotion, find loophole in weak human soul.
ramphastidae
Because advertisers are bad faith actors and what I do on the internet is none of their business.

I have depression. Last night I did 60m of scientific research on ways to improve it, including new advancements in psychedelic treatments.

I closed my laptop, went to bed, and opened my phone for some late night reading (yes, bad habit). Practically any site I visited spammed me with ads for SAFE AND CHEAP 100% GUARANTEED MEDICALLY SUPERVISED KETAMINE INJECTIONS IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ads are bad because: (1) It felt disgusting to know advertisers were spying on me when I was trying to get better. (2) Advertisers have no incentive to show me an ad for a safe or appropriate product — just one that I will click on. They are in the business of exploiting my psyche for profit. (3) Advertisers build profiles and resell them in the long term. Somewhere, there is a DB linking my IP with my identity, and now they’ve added the fact that I have mental health issues to that profile. Because of the lack of regulations in the US, I have no way of making sure that data doesn’t fall into the wrong hands (such as insurance companies, recruitment agencies, hackers, or just asshole ad agency employees who don’t care about PII).

theaeolist
Is there any circumstance in which "SAFE AND CHEAP 100% GUARANTEED MEDICALLY SUPERVISED KETAMINE INJECTIONS IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!" are acceptable to advertise? Is this a problem with targeting or with the product itself?