this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2023
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They could just run contextual ads for much less effort and privacy violations, and still get the same or better result.
why do you think that would get "the same or better result"?
It's how advertising worked for literally the entire history of advertising before the modern internet. You put ads for car stuff on the cars website. You don't need to build an entire dossier on me. If I'm looking at the star wars wiki, you can be pretty confident that I'm interested in sci-fi and fantasy. You don't need to spend billions of dollars tracking me to know that.
This is not an expert opinion so I could be wrong, but I think it would be a better system. Simpler to implement, less stalking, less "oops we didn't show any house ads to black people" potential.
these companies spend a lot of money and computation power on intelligent targeting systems because they are in fact better from a capitalist perspective
Maybe. I guess it makes it easier for Google to sell many different ads in the same time/space. Still sucks for everyone else though.
the companies optimize for profit and nothing else. you do not matter.
But people advertise with Google precisely because they know the ads will be targeted at relevent people. If Google just sell loads of ad slots that just show to random users then that's just a waste of money. If I'm selling motorbike helmets I don't want to waste my money having Google show those ads to 60 year old men who only travel by bus or golfers or people who use wheelchairs.
Google won't just sell loads of ads here, they'll totally change their business model to something closer to the targetting approach.
You target the ads based on the content of the page rather than the identity of the viewer. That's how tv radio and print ads work.