The ads should have an easy to use way of giving feedback that actually does something the viewer wants. For instance, it could allow the viewer to say (with a couple clicks, and without leaving the page):

I already purchased this

I already purchased a competing product

I am not interested in this anymore

I was never interested in this

I don't want this displayed because it might reveal something private to an onlooker (example: gift purchase for spouse)

I'm not interested in this product but I might be interested in competing products

I'm in the market for ______________ and I don't mind getting ads for them

Thanks for the reminder, not now but maybe later

Ads that track me really annoy me

This would allow the viewer to feel more in control (assuming the advertiser actually attempts to respect their wishes) as well as giving them valuable feedback (that they can decide for themselves how meaningful it is). It might reduce the number of people that install ad blockers.

I'm one of those that these ads are likely to be effective on: I often browse Amazon or Ebay and don't make a purchase, but will purchase it later when I'm reminded and am in the right mood to spend a bit of money. I don't mind them tracking me....most of the time. Right now I'm seeing a lot of ads for skateboard wheels, digital pianos and Dremel bits.... and I actually kind of like those ads because those are things that make me happy, and I have no ill will whatsoever for people that manufacture those things. I also have no ill will for the site I am on and would like them to have a revenue model.

But I don't want them constantly trying to sell me women's bikinis just because, in a moment of weakness or boredom, I clicked on a picture of a cute girl because I wanted to see it bigger....and they won't simply let me tell them that.

Ads are not something that benefits me, the Ad viewer. I do not want to spend time training your marketing department. Your product is not entitled to my eyeballs. I will (personally) always strive to ignore your existence and minimize your advertising's impact on any of my decisions because your marketing department does not have my best interests at heart.

Advertisements were something we grudgingly accepted for reduced service costs, IMO they have reduced their own value so far that the quantity we are expected to consume is ridiculous. I would really appreciate the whole industry getting regulated out of existence.

So I realize that this is going to be an unpopular opinion but I'm going to go out on a limb and hope for the best.

I have a small business, and it's a business that people love.

When I first opened my business I was getting almost no customers because I had no way of informing people about my business.

With advertising, I'm getting clients and my business is doing well. I don't use manipulative tactics or remarketing, but I do use targeted ads to find out what kind of people are looking for my services and market to them by including a short direct blurb about what I do.

As a result, people who need my services can get it at a price they can afford. Another happy result of advertising is I am able to have my own business and bring greater competition to a market place that is dominated by old boys type businesses. The only down side is that some people who didn't want to see a blurb had to see it.

Why is this bad?

Maybe manipulative advertising tactics are bad, maybe advertising that relies on building brand recognition rather than stating value is bad. But I really don't understand why paying to inform people that my business exists and tell them what I do is a bad thing. I think it's a great thing.

I can say this, without modern affordable advertising my business wouldn't exist. Not because I don't provide value, not because there are better more competitive businesses but because people would have no way of finding out that I exist. I don't have the money for a fancy storefront with a fancy sign. I don't have the money to be at the front of the yellow pages. I don't have the age and established connections to get people through referral. All I have is a good idea, and the only way to communicate that idea to the public is advertising.

Maybe there is bad advertising and abuses of advertising. But please let's think twice before throwing out the baby with the bath water.

There was that famous study by Lee Benham who found that eye glasses were 20% cheaper in places that allowed for advertising. I don't know how much we can generalize that finding but I do think that a strong argument can be made that information is big component of the competitive marketplace. Meaning basically I have to be able to inform people about my product. If only huge businesses that can advertise on TV or get sports endorsements or have politicians or celebrities mention them have the capacity to inform people about their products, then they will dominate the market. Internet marketing is the great equalizer that gives little guys like me a chance.

Instead of unsolicited ads why would it not work with targeting people actively looking for things only?

Right now I’m researching a product I’m about to buy, because I have an actual need. In the process I consult various sources listing and comparing products of that category. Allthough most of those sources can’t be trusted to provide unbiased information, I’m pretty confident the sum will give me a pretty good overview of the search space.

Well that isn't going to happen, because most people don't feel that way.

I disagree that every single entity that has a product they want me to know about doesn't have my best interests at heart. At the very least, my interests are aligned with companies that produce things that bring me value. In what sense does a company that produces that the skateboard wheels that go on my daughter's skateboard and my skateboard not have my interests at heart? The existence of that product (and the other necessary parts) brings the two us immense joy, disproportionate with the $20 a set they cost.

I also don't really wish for the web sites that put ads on them to either go out of business or put up a paywall or something.

I do, however support the idea of there being an easy way for you to pay a fair and reasonable subscription fee to see sites ad free. It would be great if all the biggest advertising companies (Google, Amazon, etc) came up with a plan for that, and individual web sites didn't have to deal with it beyond what they already do to show the ads.

In the world we live in we have imperfect knowledge of the market, this is pretty much innate to having a world as big as ours is - thus for some purchases less money/effort/neosheckles could be potentially expended if you put some of that money into discovering a better deal. Part of what marketing does is to absorb that cost - were you paying 179.99$/mo to get cable so you can watch TV? Well, Netflix wants you to know that for just a fraction of that cost they can make your TV work as well.

This portion of marketing is the portion I feel sad for because this is where people who are trying to (actually) offload excess inventory or to unseat an entrenched business fall. I object less (personally) to marketing that is trying to provide information, BUT, this sort of marketing can be passive - if you are selling a new type of device to clean carpets that is going to obsolete the vacuum cleaner, set up a website for anyone interested in cleaning products.

Most advertising isn't of this sort and is instead trying to shift your decision making. If you really want good wheels for your daughter's skateboard does the fact that some crazy cartoon tiger thinks they're grrreat make them better wheels? Would you prefer to just have access to real information on the different wheels available to compare them by quality and price?

This is a very difficult thing to solve because imparting knowledge neutrally is either impossible or something that we in the modern world have entirely unlearned, but I do believe the majority of customers do feel this way - we'd prefer to have access to that information when we want it and we'd really hope that it's being processed by a neutral third party that can cut all the BS out of the pitch.

"If you really want good wheels for your daughter's skateboard does the fact that some crazy cartoon tiger thinks they're grrreat make them better wheels?"

No, I haven't seen a crazy cartoon tiger used to advertise skateboard wheels. I just saw amazon ads on web pages, showing the wheels.

I don't agree with all marketing tactics and I doubt many do. But I don't see the world in black and white. I see the benefits of having online companies that I can order from, and the benefits of having a way for web sites that provide useful services to make some revenue without requiring subscription plans.

As I said, though, I think people like you who hate ads but who wants those services (I assume you use some free web sites that aren't Hacker News) should be able to subscribe easily to something that lets you opt out of ads. I even could support legislation that requires companies that advertise and track people across sites to offer such plans for a fee that approximates what they'd make by showing you ads.

This is a cynical take and sadly one I'd mostly agree with. Google results seem to be getting worse and tending more towards clickbait material when I'm trying to search for a good comparison and/or review, which is really a shame.

The main issue with retargeting is that most advertiser go all-in with it.

Instead of being a (friendly?) reminder that "hey, want to check us out again?", it's more like "hi, you've seen this 25 times at least, you sure you don't want to click me?"

So they spend an awful lot of money on what is visual spam rather than being a bit more measured in their frequency cap.

I think another issue is that aside from the cost of sending the advertisement (usually negligible) there is no risk cost associated with the volume of advertisements being too heavy. The user in question is one who has discontinued your service willfully, so if a heavy volume campaign converts 2% back into active users and permanently fatigues the other 98% then it's not unreasonable to see a gain of 2% of users for free - assuming you were ready to write off that full volume as potential customers prior to the campaign.

I also would be absolutely unsurprised to learn that "participating in your service to shut your emails up" is a tactic seen as legitimate by some companies... (facebook, I was talking specifically about facebook because they are terrible)

Most platforms let you choose a frequency cap. Its only the bad/cheap platforms that serve unlimited or high f-caps. For retargeting I typically do 1 ad per 1 hour, with a max of 10 a day and 250/mo.

Sorry are you saying that 10 times per day and 250 times per month is showing restraint?

I personally like retargeting and I'm infinitely more likely to click on it than other things I see in the same box.

The monotony of the channel makes it appear almost like a browser history. Not exactly thrilling, but when the competition is outbrain and snake oil, it's a non-trivial improvement.

Oh sorry that was unclear. That is the hypothetical maximum, pretty much no one ever gets there its just a safeguard. Frequency is something I can optimize to, so if a lower frequency performs better I can hit users less often.

Agreed on outbrain/taboola/etc.. I don't know how tabloid clickbait generates anyone clicks or even revenue.

I agree wholeheartedly on the frequency. One thing I've done in the last year or so is take into consideration the sentiment toward the brand even if the campaigns are doing amazingly well with a high frequency. There's somewhere down the line where people are going to be tired of seeing your ads and either flag them or not want to visit your site as they know what they are in for.

> There's somewhere down the line where people are going to be tired of seeing your ads and either flag them or not want to visit your site as they know what they are in for.

This happens. Personally, I do remember and sometimes blacklist companies that annoy me with ads too much. E.g. way before Groupon got known for being a force of destruction of small businesses, they pissed me off with retargeted ads, and earned a lifetime ban.

> Groupon [...] pissed me off with retargeted ads, and earned a lifetime ban.

You too? Can't believe I'm not the only one. I used to see their crap every single time on Youtube a few years back (before I discovered adblockers).

Their brand was definitely imprinted in my mind so I guess it's a success... just a shame it's imprinted in the "go burn in hell" part of my mind.

I did not know what 're-targeting is'. So found a definition

".. Unlike typical banner ads, retargeting ads are a form of online targeting advertising and are served to people who have already visited your website or are a contact in your database (like a lead or customer). .." [1]

My general feeling is that technology needed for modern advertisement industry, and for law-enforcement/government/political online surveillance -- is almost identical.

No wonder, that companies specialized in technology to enable audience-specific ads, and 're-targeting' -- are the same companies that are looked for to supply/integrate surveillance technology.

I am even now connecting the dots with advancements of Image recognitions, deep neural nets, -- with the drive for better surveillance technology, under the cover of targeted advertisement (as face recognition benefits both).

I am also no wondering if much of much opposition/road-blocks to people using VPN (eg Google.com constantly asked me to choose bunch of pictures before I can use it, with VPN) --- is the negative commercial impact that VPN usage has, on targeted advertisement, and surveillance.

[1]https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/retargeting-campaigns-beg...

If you want to learn more you can Google the top vendors in the DMP space: Krux (now Salesforce DMP), BlueKai, LiveRamp, DataLogix, Acxiom [sic.] A couple of these offer "CRM Onboarding" (matching real names/addresses to anonymous cookies) but it doesn't work very well in practice and the real product is pools of anonymous cookies where even basic demographics like age and gender are unknown and can only be (badly) inferred. As far as I know, none of these companies offer any services in the "law-enforcement/government/political online surveillance" space you mention but I've never really researched that side of it.

Retargeting is an incredibly basic use of tech and is as old as cookies are.

seems like at least some modern 're-targeting' ads do not need cookies.

The 'fingerprinting' is used instead.

"... From Meteora’s personal fingerprinting BETA we have been able to identify 97% of Internet users to date.

…"

https://meteora.co/user-tracking-without-cookies/

Asking consumers what they think is usually a pretty bad way of understanding their behaviour.

Because these things are action oriented, they are fairly measurable, and ad buyers should have a pretty good grip on this, as opposed to say brand advertising.

If you want to gauge effectiveness do an incrementality test with a test and control group to see your lift.

I’ve found retargeting effectiveness to be highly dependent on the inventory, ad units and creative, while also requiring a robust attribution model to gauge the effect.

Without those tools, it is just throwing money at the wall without being able to see if it sticks.

Retargeting ads are intensely cheap compared to acquisition ads for most growing companies.

They’re cheap because the audience size is so limited, but in actuality the CPMs typically are higher while the inventory quality is lower (outside of Facebook)

At small sizes they can indeed drive some value as you have a small audience that needs to know your name, but as you scale it starts to get pretty hit or miss.

I run marketing campaigns and my perspective is that retargeting is effective but you can't believe the actual ROAS shown. Companies that only do retargeting will pitch guaranteed amazing results because it's the easier part of the funnel and all your efforts from all your channels feed it.

Branded SEM is another area that you can't trust the numbers. You'll have an amazing return because people were searching for your brand in the first place.

I know the paid search folk may claim otherwise, but as an organic search practitioner I agree that branded AdWords (bidding on your own brand name) is the biggest crock ever.

If you lump brand keyword and non-brand keyword bidding together, the ROAS/ROI (depending how you measure) looks good, but then when you break out just non-brand, you often see how terrible the return is. Not always, but often.

People who take excessive credit for branded KW bidding, especially agencies, are unethical. Every agency I've encountered loves to subsidize their mediocre non-branded performance with branded campaigns.

Google loves branded KW bidding, because it cannibalizes traffic that 90%+ would go to an organic result. Even with a lower CPC, the high CTR means that on a CPM basis, Google is making more per impression (nevermind the trend of the Chrome omnibox preferring branded queries than direct navigation queries-- Google can't make money if their SERPs aren't shown). Bad marketers will say "it is a low CPC and a high conversion rate", but is that better than no CPC? It is just shifting free traffic to paid. SEM has changed so much over the last 5 years. It is so much more difficult for per unit profitability on search, too many people don't understand their margins and are overpaying. It kind of feels that digital is reaching equilibrium with traditional media, but it is easier to measure that it isn't working.

I love retargeting ads. When you see an ad with pretty colors just click it and then use the back button. As you go about your day the web just gets prettier and prettier. It’s like choose your web adventure. Like blues today click all the blue ads. Maybe feeling red click the red ones.

It's about time, I hate when I mistakenly press an ad, and quickly go back, just to be harassed all day by random stuff that I don't care about

I use ads as a reminder. Wanna checkout something about kubernetes? search on it, click on a few things, I'll get reminded across every device. Wanna book a vacation but not ready, do the same. :D

Retargeting should be renamed: targeted harassment.