[ui4jd73bdj]

I prefer random ads. If I plan to buy something I will never do it from an ad. At least with random ads there can be something I didn't even think about buying. Now you might try to argue that tracking can predict these awesome things I want but didn't know about, but in my experience it always leads to the most obvious predictable and boring ads.

[sofixa]

Anecdote here: Old school targeted ads helped me discover something i didn't know i wanted. I was watching a game of football ( soccer for americans), and during the halftime break there were ads I wasn't really paying attention to, and per tradition, they were oriented towards males. There was an add for a decent looking multi-purpose electric razer that came with all sorts of attachments for different body parts, including head. I bought it and use it frequently, including for cutting my hair ( which has saved me hundreds of euros compared to going to a hairdresser) and beard.

So, sometimes a targeted ad can be useful. A contextually targeted ad can be useful too ( e.g. cooking utensils / supplies on a a recipe site).

[anhner]

Sorry, those are not example of targeted ads.

A targeted ad is one that knows more about you than your age range, gender and what you are currently looking at (sports event, cooking site etc.).

A targeted ad knows that you usually buy tickets to a certain sports team, or you prefer baking cookies rather than cakes, and that you prefer the "Mestle" brand of flour etc.

[namlem]

That's a traditional untargeted ad though. Literally just a TV commercial.

[orwin]

And this is a "good" ad. When I'm on a hiking website, I'm interested in ads for tents and hiking utilities. When I'm on a tab website, i might be interested in a guitar selling ad. Those are good ads, I'm never mad when I see those

[maccard]

> If I plan to buy something I will never do it from an ad

How much of your choice in products is based on word of mouth? How do you know those purchases are not as a result of ads. How many purchases are because of "brand familiarity" that is likely influenced by advertising over time (e.g. if you asked me to buy you an energy drink I would likely buy a Red Bull

> in my experience it always leads to the most obvious predictable and boring ads.

Targeted ads are not the same as tracked ads. Shoe HN posts are targeted ads. "You purchased 600 dog poop bags from Amazon, here are 15 other variations of the same product that you might want" in a recipe article is targeted.

[foxfluff]

> Targeted ads are not the same as tracked ads. Shoe HN posts are targeted ads.

I don't believe that's considered targeted advertising under the DSA. If you're not dynamically selecting an ad to display based on data you have on me, it's not a targeted ad. It's just a contextual ad. A shoe HN post is static, can be read by anyone, there's no targeting logic involved, and you have no personal or behavioral data based on which to target.

"An ad that's meant to be appealing to white male software engineers 25-35 years old" isn't a targeted ad unless there's a system that serves it specifically to the target market.

EDIT: To support my point, the first proposal for Article 2b I found in the DSA documents:

    Article 2b

    Targeting of digital advertising

    1. Providers of information society services shall not collect or
    process personal data as defined in Article 4, point (1), of
    Regulation (EU) 2016/679 for the purpose of targeting the
    recipients to whom advertisements are displayed.

    2. By way of derogation from paragraph 1, for the purpose
    of targeting the recipients to whom advertisements for commercial
    purposes are displayed, providers of information society services
    may only collect and use the personal data of recipients who have
    given their consent as defined in Article 4, point (11), of
    Regulation (EU) 2016/679 explicitly to such collection and use.
    [..]

[foxfluff]

> How much of your choice in products is based on word of mouth? How do you know those purchases are not as a result of ads.

So what if they are? GP's point still stands. When buying products, I often want a first hand experience from someone I trust; or at least a demonstration from an independent party that shows all facets of the product and not just what the advertisers want you to see. I don't care how the conveyor of that experience originally stumbled upon the product (although I would like potential conflict of interest or manipulation to be disclosed, including such things as free review samples). Maybe it fell from the sky, maybe they saw an ad for it and bought it, maybe they won it.. I don't care, it doesn't matter. I'm still not buying things from an ad.

[ui4jd73bdj]

Of course nobody is immune to ads. We were talking about the ad being a net positive to ones life.

Yeah I might also buy a redbull but I don't think they need to or should track me online to increase that likelyhood. And I don't think that would be a netpositive to my life. They can do just fine by traditional advertisements(and they do afaik!).

[mananaysiempre]

> How much of your choice in products is based on word of mouth? How do you know those purchases are not as a result of ads.

This is an essentially unsatisfiable burden of proof, isn’t it? In fifteen years on the Web I haven’t once bought or even looked up anything based on an explicit advertisement, even though I find “recommendation engines” occasionally useful. (Then again, I mostly use those as a workaround for crappy catalogues and site search, and the best recommendations I’ve seen were on pirate sites...)

That’s not to say that you’re not bringing up a valid point, it’s just that it’s not a fast dismissal it’s phrased as. I don’t know how one would actually go around proving this kind of hypothesis, or even how it would be phrased: “Ads have had no influence on my life”? Obviously false, given how pervasive they are. Too strong. “Ads have had no influence on which things I’ve used or bought”? Similarly false (I can think of several movies I’ve bought on VHS just to avoid the butchered TV cut). Too strong. “Ads in favour of a certain product line have never made me more favourably disposed towards that line”? Sounds plausible at least, but I’ve no idea how one could even approach proving that, and then there are availability-heuristic issues which are frequently what’s motivating the ads in the first place. Too weak.

Yet the underlying idea doesn’t seem that preposterous in my experience. It might be with more knowledge—economics certainly doesn’t come with a warranty of being unsurprising—but you’re not providing that here.

> Targeted ads are not the same as tracked ads. Sho[w] HN posts are targeted ads.

Then there are two different definitions of “targeted ads” in play: what the EU policy discussion concerned with, and the link’s title calls “targeted ads”, is specifically ads based on user behaviour; ads selected on the base of the page they would be placed on are explicitly OK ...

> "You purchased 600 dog poop bags from Amazon, here are 15 other variations of the same product that you might want" in a recipe article is targeted.

... But these are not (or at least not automatically), and I’d say there’s a distinction between them that is worth maintaining, one that the text under discussion chooses to express with the qualifier “targeted” for the latter but not the former.

There might be an objection that this is not the common meaning of the word “targeted” in the industry, and for all I know it may not be (I’ve certainly seen it used for just about any strategy for ad placement at all), but all in all, when dealing with an industry essentially built around twisting and shifting word meanings in the desired direction, which has already shown a propensity for manipulating the terminology around this particular issue to be as confusing and unappealing as possible (see “legitimate interest” in GDPR popups, which is not “legitimate interest” per the GDPR definition, or it wouldn’t even need an off switch), I’m not inclined to be particularly charitable.

I mean, if reasonable people show up and shout “aargh stupid journos, these are not targeted ads, these are frobnicated ads!”, if in fact every ad person ever mouths “frobnicated” every time the newsman on TV says “targeted”, then sure. We’ve certainly seen enough of that in both IT-related anything and anything-related legislation. But so far I’ve seen nothing that would point in that direction, only attempts (both willing and out of simple lack of attention) to erase, shift, or blur the boundary the EU legislators are trying to draw here. (I’m not idealizing them, and honestly I don’t have high hopes here, but credit where credit is due.)