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points by AlexandrB 2 days ago | 0 comments
I don't really see how you could solve this problem with a sufficiently complex algorithm. Which ads are shown still depends on how much the vendor is willing to spend on marketing. I may have zero interest in Ford cars, but if Ford is the one spending the big bucks in the "car" category I'll see a lot of Ford ads.

What people seem to be looking for is not targeted advertising but targeted recommendations - where vendor "spend" can't skew the results to show you crap you don't want. But that's a product the consumer and not the vendor would have to pay for, by definition. Unfortunately consumers don't have deep enough pockets to make this kind of thing lucrative over just selling ads.

[–] Anon1096 2 days ago
No, the price that is charged in a specific impression is adjusted by the relevance to the user. If the user relevance is 0.001% a Ford ad would need to spend 100000x more dollars per impression than the same ad for Toyota with a user relevance of 100%. So in practice you might get some amounts of "high cost lower relevance" ads but not to the extent that people think. The advertising broker (as in Google for Google Search) has an active interest in showing good ads relevant ads for the user in order to not negatively impact Google Search metrics, and also maximize clickthroughs or other goal metrics for the advertiser. Poorly matched ads are antithetical to that purpose.

There is a big misconception that ads are just targeted as picking the max(advertiser spend) and it really fuels low quality discussion online.

[–] HWR_14 2 days ago
But isn't relevance just measured as purchasing the product? That is, someone who can be convinced by advertising to by a ford or a Toyota by which shows the next ad would have equal relevance, even if the Toyota is the vehicle they would most prefer?
[–] cowlevel 2 days ago
I don't understand this principle. Why would Google not accept an ad from Ford for just 1 cent more?
[–] AlexandrB 2 days ago
Thanks for the detailed explanation. I'm still not sure this overcomes the marketing budged differences between entities like "AI Slop Co" vs. "Independent Artist" or "Ford" vs. "Independent Mechanic". There's also the fact that the heaviest advertisers are often the brands I'm going to be least interested in regardless of any other factors[1]. Yes, you can get ad relevance to some local maximum where I do see some stuff I'd actually buy, but optimality is forever out of reach because the products I really want to know about probably spend almost nothing on advertising or have direct competition from an entity like Microsoft that will pour $millions into their ad spend.

[1] VPNs are a perfect example here. I would never use NordVPN because they advertise on every square inch of YouTube. This suggests to me that they're either charging too much for what they offer or they're getting money from their actual customers and the users are simply the inventory they sell to those customers.

[–] BizarroLand 2 days ago
Exactly. The ad-revenue companies will show you the ads the advertisers pay for that make the most money for them. Your actual wants, needs, preferences, and specifics are only important in the way that they make you a sellable target to the advertisers.

It's an entirely soulless process, which makes my extensive ad-blocking regime entirely justified the same way that walking off of a beaten path in the woods is justified.