By: sukru
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/140047/mozilla-acquires-ad-analytics-company-for-some-reason/#comment-10441029">sukru</a>.
Alfman,
The reason some publishers are overwhelming their sites with ads is they have too little traffic.
If you have staff writers, or even freelancers, and you cannot bring enough revenues, you won't be able to pay them. However when your readership dwindles, you enter what is essentially a death spiral.
Say, your ad revenue with a reasonable layout is no longer paying your bills. You have two choices.
1) Enact a paywall
2) Increase ad density
None of them works, but the second one is usually preferred as it "prolongs the misery".
(And "non personalized ads would make the situation even worse, as revenue will significantly decrease).
By: worsehappens
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/140047/mozilla-acquires-ad-analytics-company-for-some-reason/#comment-10441041">TheClue</a>.
My point, and I don't see a response to it in your post, is that advertising costs money, someone has to pay for it, and in order for companies to need advertising, the advertisers have to bring so much more customer their own paycheck can be added to the base product cost. So, yes, the incentive to manipulate people into buying barely useful (or completely useless) stuff is there, and indeed, as an industry, advertisers have developed means to do that with boatloads of behavioural data. And this has nothing to do with a "secret order" or anything of the conspiracy sort: advertisers are certainly not ALL doing this, but they have that incentive as a collective of individual entities, even without a coordinated effort. This is not an opinion, we've had several blatant occasions to see it these last few years.
I'm not criticising capitalism as an idea either, just how in real life and mixed with advertisement, particularly on social media, it has created the means for anyone with a bit of money to sway public opinion. You can hide behind the idea the problem is society, but then, let's take action as a society and legally ban personalised ads (among many other changes, which would be off-topic).
By: Alfman
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/140047/mozilla-acquires-ad-analytics-company-for-some-reason/#comment-10441010">TheClue</a>.
TheClue,
<blockquote>The point is: there’s nothing wrong with (internet) advertising _per se_.
Advertising is just the way for the brands to be reached by the (potential) consumers.</blockquote>
Let me ask you, in your view does the person being advertised to get a say in this or not? I know legally those being advertised to generally don't get a say, but what about morally? Obviously we're not talking about direct physical harm, but we're absolutely talking about advertisers that effectively polluting our environments with more and more distractions and annoyances that ever before. Do advertisers have any accountability for forcing themselves on our senses or are they totally entitled in doing this? I suspect that, given what you are arguing for, that you believe those who aren't part of the financial transaction don't deserve a say in spite of the fact that it's their senses being bombarded with unsolicited advertising. Right?
<blockquote>And this is not for free: in exchange for advertising, lot of stuff on the Internet is free. So even those who cannot afford nor want to pay for content can consume it. I’m not saying that advertising is democracy ofc – it’s just marketing, not human rights. But paywalls are definitively less.</blockquote>
There seems to be a motive to justify unwanted web spam after the fact, but honestly it's not what the advertisers were ever thinking. They really do not care if you are paying for the service or not. They just want to put their ads everywhere, and as long as advertisers are willing to pay for it, this trend of advertising in paid products and spaces is in all likelihood going to keep increasing. There's already precedent for all of this, like $1 movies with no ads when I was growing up to movies today with 15 minutes of ads before the main feature despite costing about 1900% more. For better or worse, this is where advertisers are headed not because it's necessary, but because there's money to be had.
By: TheClue
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/140047/mozilla-acquires-ad-analytics-company-for-some-reason/#comment-10441013">worsehappens</a>.
You are criticizing capitalism. No, wait, let me use better words. You are "regurgitating"against capitalism (yes, i didn't like this choice of words). This is fine, capitalism has a huge set of flaws and it's not by far the best way to drive the world, expecially for the environment and expecially because this doesn't redistribuite wealth equally. To be clear: _I'm not endorsing capitalism_. Expecially american capitalism.
But assuming that there is a secret order of nazi advertisers, aimed to manipulate masses, becauses masses by definition cannot think on their own is just conspiracy theories. The same is when assuming that advertisers "collect data to manipulate masses". Why for the hell should they do?
Companies are not __evil__ by definitions. Companies make profit. This could be unethical, and certainly it is sometimes/often/very often. But, again, it's politics, not marketing.
There is a brand that eventually wants to sell a product and there are potential customers which, for a very different set of reasons which are intimely personal, will decide they need it. Judging these reasons is disrespectful on their regards. Ppl are different. Some of them feel themselves good while having the latest iPhone in the pocket. One should ask himself why this happens in the modern society, instead of blaming a consent screen.
Advertising is perhaps a consequence of capitalism, not the cause. As I said already, advertising is just marketing. And marketing are the techniques that brands use to sell products. End of story.
Advertising doesn't create the need. Society does.
By: Alfman
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/140047/mozilla-acquires-ad-analytics-company-for-some-reason/#comment-10441029">sukru</a>.
sukru,
<blockquote>We have gone through basically three generation of Internet ads:
1. The “Wild West”. In early days sites signed up with ad networks with almost no consideration wrt. the content, nor the user. Porn and other inappropriate ads were common.</blockquote>
What makes ads more appropriate than porn? Yeah yeah society labels porn as taboo, but I'd bet you that porn generates a much higher click through rate than "normal" advertising spam. If we weren't looking through the lens of social biases then I think maybe the porn might genuinely be more relevant to users than the commercial spam that's socially accepted. (Not that I like to be interrupted by either of them)
<blockquote>2. “AdSense”, where the page content was used to generate relevant ads. So for example, when you landed on a page of an author like Stephen King, you’d most likely see ads for books or Amazon</blockquote>
If you are on a site about X, and the site has ads about X, that makes sense. Companies have mostly stopped direct advertising to websites, but it's too bad because IMHO this is the least invasive and offensive form of advertising.
<blockquote>3. “Personalized”, where the ads not only depended on the content, but more so on the user’s profile. This could be basic like “they are into video games” to more specific “they are shopping for a wedding, already bought a dress, probably searching for a cake”.
Obviously each one of these are producing much more relevant, and more profitable results compared to the priors. So, there is probably no going back to “unpersonalized” ads, unless you want to see much more of them (or have paywalls everywhere).</blockquote>
Most people still hate these ads as much as ever. Not only is the very nature of these "personalized ads" intrusive, but ads being injected and being interrupted at every makes the web much less pleasant for almost all of us. When advertisers talk about personalized/relevant ads, it is not the <i>user's interests</i> that ad platforms are optimizing for but rather the <i>advertiser's money</i>. This is significant! Of course the assumption is that advertisers will limit the users who see their campaigns. But in reality a more "relevant" advertiser that bids too little money for a spot will get overlooked for a wealthier advertiser paying much more. Similarly organic results that are most likely what the user wants are typically displaced by spam. It's normal to see completely irrelevant ads on youtube simply because a company like Burger King is running a big advertising campaign and their campaign goal is to spam everybody with their ads. For it's part Google are more than happy to oblige them in exchange for the money.
I realize advertisers don't like the reputation they have amongst the public, but it comes with the territory. As much as they might like to sugarcoat what they do, they will never get away from the association with spamming the web. It's fundamentally what they do. Of course as long as businesses keep paying ad platforms, the business model will continue to flourish. If I were forced to pick an upside, it's that advertising pays for services that would otherwise struggle to get revenue. But at the same time, running paid services has gotten harder now that it has to compete with ad based services.
By: sukru
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/140047/mozilla-acquires-ad-analytics-company-for-some-reason/#comment-10441000">dsmogor</a>.
dsmogor,
We have gone through basically three generation of Internet ads:
1. The "Wild West". In early days sites signed up with ad networks with almost no consideration wrt. the content, nor the user. Porn and other inappropriate ads were common.
2. "AdSense", where the page content was used to generate relevant ads. So for example, when you landed on a page of an author like Stephen King, you'd most likely see ads for books or Amazon
3. "Personalized", where the ads not only depended on the content, but more so on the user's profile. This could be basic like "they are into video games" to more specific "they are shopping for a wedding, already bought a dress, probably searching for a cake".
Obviously each one of these are producing much more relevant, and more profitable results compared to the priors. So, there is probably no going back to "unpersonalized" ads, unless you want to see much more of them (or have paywalls everywhere).
That might not be what you want to hear, but this is basically what the web economics has forced on us.
By: Alfman
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/140047/mozilla-acquires-ad-analytics-company-for-some-reason/#comment-10441005">Alfman</a>.
Adurbe,
<blockquote>The question is why do they need to increase revenue. Not users. If 1/2 billion a year isn’t enough to build a modern browser then having that money from a diversified source won’t change that.</blockquote>
I'm not disagreeing with you that maybe they could tighten their belts. But keep in mind most of that revenue is google money, not independent money. If mozilla wants to focus more on user's privacy, most of that revenue disappears and potentially leads to more layoffs. Making money without google has proven to be very difficult for mozilla. I don't know how to fix that. Acquiring for profit ad businesses would not have been my first choice, but it may be a path towards long term independence. I can't say that I have better ideas.
By: spiderdroid
On the surface, this does not look good. From a business standpoint, this just might save the foundation. Aside from bringing in ad revenue, and the collapse of privacy in the browser, althewhile, Google may invest more into them as before. What if the purchase was just to acquire their IP and the mission is to open up their IP as FOSS, in order to allow for better ad blocking tech, thus preserving their original mission? Just thoughts that came to my mind when I read the article.
By: Adurbe
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/140047/mozilla-acquires-ad-analytics-company-for-some-reason/#comment-10441005">Alfman</a>.
The question is why do they need to increase revenue. Not users. If 1/2 billion a year isn't enough to build a modern browser then having that money from a diversified source won't change that.
I'd suggest if you put out a new OSS project with a 1/2 billion budget you'd have to a viable alternative in a couple of years (probably written in rust knowing current trends). Remember all blink/webkit are are a fork of khtml a decade ago.
Open source can and has developed these platforms with Far smaller budgets avaliable
By: sukru
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/140047/mozilla-acquires-ad-analytics-company-for-some-reason/#comment-10440993">Alfman</a>.
Alfman,
<blockquote>
I’d kind of like to see what a browser could do with local AI
</blockquote>
Local AI is a very fast moving platform, and might be difficult to pin down long term APIs for the browsers. There are already some, like speech synthesis for accessibility, but we have speech recognition, image recognition, image synthesis, image segmentation, text analysis, text summarization, text generation, and of course "chat".
But yes, eventually we might have APIs in the browser space.
By: sukru
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/140047/mozilla-acquires-ad-analytics-company-for-some-reason/#comment-10441005">Alfman</a>.
Adurbe,
<blockquote>
Under the current model they can remain self-sustaining...
</blockquote>
Being self sustaining is probably, or rather, definitely not enough. Alfman touched a few topics, however there is also the issue of web being significantly more complex compared to older times.
It is no longer just rendering HTML and having a good score on Acid CSS tests. Web now is an entire application platform, with offline storage, caching, network protocols, image rendering, 3d rendering, access to sensors like accelerometers, memory management, game optimization, and whatnot.
They can't just stay idle as the workload required to just "catch up" is increasing parabolically.
By: worsehappens
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/140047/mozilla-acquires-ad-analytics-company-for-some-reason/#comment-10441010">TheClue</a>.
Well, it's nice to read you realise you're biased, but you don't seem to realise how that affects your judgement... because this reads just like a regurgitation of everything the ad industry wants the general public to believe.
I still haven't figured how to properly quote comments on here, so I won't try and reply to everything you've written. Just that I believe a lot of people are working in good faith in trying to make advertising more responsible. Just as I'm trying to make capitalism more ethical in my workline. The end goal of capitalism is to amass more capital, which accentuates the imbalance between the higher ups and the practical slaves at the bottom (think outside of your own country, if you believe there are none). The end goal of advertisement is to manipulate people into buying something, whether they need it or not. There's no amount of privacy protection or seemingly "free lunch" that will make that ethical. What makes the industry profitable is that the data amassed is not only used to sell stuff, but also to sell power over the masses. The idea that most of the ad industry is acting to profit the ad viewers is just preposterous. It might try to be more ethical, but it will always serve interests that are completely foreign to ours.
Yes, the powerful became powerful because the masses allowed them to. However the masses let them because they were manipulated into it. You might find this perfectly acceptable, and be entitled to that opinion. But it's also perfectly fine to despise an industry that happily helps people with money gaining more power through their knowledge of how to stir opinions, even if it generates a lot of money and salaries (because, yes, that money hat to be spent by some poor lad in a way or another before it was paid to your employer).
If you want an ethical way to help poor people access information and other services and goods, it's called redistribution, but that is quite frowned upon in our day and age. In my country, this is notably because the media companies are now more interested in having guest editorialists that please their announcers than real journalists that actually work for their audience.
By: Alfman
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/140047/mozilla-acquires-ad-analytics-company-for-some-reason/#comment-10441009">Bill Shooter of Bul</a>.
Bill Shooter of Bul,
<blockquote>Its not bad per se, if they accomplish their mission and stay true to it. However, Its really just bringing back the old web which many here miss dearly, I get that. However, as time goes on I miss the advertising that worked on a local level better.
...
Not only was it more privacy focused, but the funds helped foster healthy city governments from the smallest up to the largest.</blockquote>
I agree with everything you are saying. Smaller & local are more competitive and can better represent our needs, and ultimately less abusive. But I don't think these things can come back. Like all the mom and pops that got replaced by big chains, they are gone forever. Like all the local news departments, they've consolidated over and over again and the little guys are gone forever. Like the rise of small ecommerce websites being replaced by the likes of amazon, the little guys are getting crushed. Whether we like it or not, this is what capitalism gets us. Like the laws of entropy, there's no going backwards. Unless we administratively decide to break apart the giants and restart the game.
By: Alfman
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/140047/mozilla-acquires-ad-analytics-company-for-some-reason/#comment-10441005">Alfman</a>.
Adurbe,
<blockquote>I’ll flip that round. Why do they Need to?</blockquote>
Why do they need to increase their numbers?
1) Without a critical mass of users, fewer websites will support alternative browsers. This is already starting to be a problem with some companies telling users to switch browsers. Having a larger user base gives us (as web developers, users, etc) a much stronger case for convince project managers that it's important to support FF, whereas a niche browser is very easy for them to ignore. This is what happened with IE.
2) Without a strong user base, it becomes much easier to lock mozilla out of future web standards. Without users mozilla becomes irrelevant and their open web advocacy will be taken much less seriously. When alt-browser users become so niche that they become irrelevant, it significantly increases the likelihood that future attempts at web DRM and crippled browser extensions become the new norm. Compliant browsers may become prerequisite to accessing the web. Even if mozilla are invited to comply with google's standards, it could very likely compromise mozilla's mission.
<blockquote>There is this perverse concept that Mozzila Foundation (a non-profit) needs to earn more and more to be competitive. It doesn’t. It simply needs to spend the money it has on the core product it was created for.</blockquote>
You can argue they're not spending their resources well, and that's fair enough. But I do think they are desperate for a revenue stream that isn't google and that's been a challenge.
By: TheClue
Spoiler alert: I'm biased
This is somewhat disappointing to see how the advertising on the Internet is subtly demonized here, and in other articles explicitely depicted as "wrong", or "disrespectful" or "abusing" by definition. I work in the advertising business and, believe me or not, we don't spend our life always seeking for new ways to abuse of users' good faith, nor to find a way to distruct users' privacy or to break the laws. I don't even wear monocoles eheh.
The point is: there's nothing wrong with (internet) advertising _per se_.
Advertising is just the way for the brands to be reached by the (potential) consumers. And assuming that data are collected accordingly to the privacy consents (which happens in the pratically totality of the cases, expecially in Europe. And, please, provide me evidence that I'm lying), targeted audience is just a way to push up potentially most interesting content for a given user among the huge mass of stimulus and irrelevant content for him.
And this is not for free: in exchange for advertising, lot of stuff on the Internet is free. So even those who cannot afford nor want to pay for content can consume it. I'm not saying that advertising is democracy ofc - it's just marketing, not human rights. But paywalls are definitively less.
You may say that some publishers are abusive, because they sell an exaggerate amount of space in their inventory, or slap in your face invasive formats, disrupting your experience. This is true. Shame on the publisher, then, not the industry. And switch to another publisher, then, so they will learn the lesson. But please keep also in mind that very often the publisher sell the exact amount of inventory he needs to keep their business profitable.
You may also say that adverising is ruled by those GAMMA guys. This is true. But it's not because of advertising that these companies became what they are. To fight this dominant position, start diversificating your experience, instead. Go to different communities, social networks, websites and forums to scramble the eggs.
Let me crystal clear: Adblocking is a PRIMARY right for any digital user of the 21st century and I will fight for this right until the grave. I also often do! :)
But pls consider for just 5 seconds if blocking every single banner you get, even those of the websites you trust, even those that seem relevant to your behaviours or interests, or simply those that seems just well-crafted, is the cure or it's just part of the problem.
By: Bill Shooter of Bul
Its not bad per se, if they accomplish their mission and stay true to it. However, Its really just bringing back the old web which many here miss dearly, I get that. However, as time goes on I miss the advertising that worked on a local level better. I wonder how to get that back. The local shoe store advertises in a local newspaper, that then uses those funds to send a reporters to the zoning committee meetings, school board meetings, city council meetings, parks board meetings, waste water commission meetings. The reporters not only report on what's going on, but serve as a check against corruption or mismanagement of those public bodies. Which kept many small towns on the level. What's left now is just a unpaid blogger going in and trying to do everything themselves, and getting a platform for people to care about them. Not only was it more privacy focused, but the funds helped foster healthy city governments from the smallest up to the largest.