Google and Facebook's top execs allegedly approved dividing ad market among themselves The alleged 2017 deal between Google and Facebook to kill header bidding, a way for multiple ad exchanges to compete fairly in automated ad auctions, was negotiated by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, and endorsed by both Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (now with Meta) and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, according to an updated complaint …
I kind of get a chuckle out of it all.
I no longer use any ad-filters, blocks, etc. to stop the advertising. Most of the sites I visit were on exception lists, so all they did was force me to add a site to the exception list. Pointless and futile.
I found the key is enough bandwidth to keep up with the pernicious garbage, and I have more than adequate bandwidth now. Though I am awfully tired of video ads and ads with sound - take a hike, already, spammers! (And I do consider internet advertising to be spam because they never got MY permission to shove it in my face other than through website "agreement" legalese you have no real choice about.)
Bandwidth is cheap nowadays. Compared to the latest games and software, what is a couple or few megs of advertising in the course of a day?
When I worry about being tracked, I worry about whether my meds need adjusting. I knew in the '80s there was no "anonymous" internet.
I want to point out that one thing that is expected from customers and that internet users almost never do is pay. There's a large quantity of websites, not only Google/Facebook but also news and content creators, that only survive thanks to the ads. I don't know how much users would be willing to pay these websites for an ad-free experience, but I don't think it would be much.
On the rare occasions that I see advertisements, I'm shocked by how really tacky most of them seem to be and they seriously detract from any sense of authority the hosting publication might aspire to. But perhaps I have so little recorded history that noone wants to bid for my attention.
I don't know why the bigger publishers don't sell their own advertising - but I suppose the advertisers then don't get to aggregate their sucker data across multiple outlets.
The advertisers don't, in general, get to aggregate the sucker data. It's the ad-tech platforms that do that* and then sell the supposed benefits to advertisers.
-A.
*I don't think it controversial to point out that they, um, exaggerate their abilities in this respect.
They used to, but it's considerably easier for display marketers to set up ads on Google, throw in some targeting criteria and let the algorithms work it out.
It lacks the craftmanship of the old days where you would specifically choose which sites your ad would go on based upon supposed interests of whoever is likely to see that page.
There are other advantages like how Google only attributes an impression after the user actually sees 50% (iirc) of the ad rather than just loading a tracking pixel on page load and saying that the ad got an impression even if the user never saw it. Another advantage is that while you don't hand pick where you want the ads to appear, you can do a whole hell of a lot more volume with one person managing a GDN account than keeping relationships up with a host of individual content publishers.
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One of my favourite comedians, Stewart Lee, often refers to himself as a content provider. I guess, in no small part, because bootleg videos of his performances are regularly uploaded to you-tube where they generate wealth for all except himself.
I hope to see him do a gig locally, and I have designed a T shirt that suitably rips his merchandise off, which has a silhouette of him labelled "Content Provider", but on the back of mine will be the unmistakable visage of Boris Johnson, labelled "Discontent Provider"
Problem is, by the time he shows up around my neck of the woods to do his stand-up, I think Boris might be history and the joke fall flat.
I'm going to see him next week, so fingers crossed, Boris is still resident in number 10, swigging wine and swapping infections with all the party goers, instead of in his retirement post, smoothing the way through the corridors of power for any company that is willing to pay him in blondes and bags of silver.
The best defense is apparently a good spin of deny, refute, and object - with little to no evidence to support the "opinion" that the charges should be dismissed.
Court theatre really is amusing. Even when they settle this thing, it will probably be behind closed doors and with a sealed case file. :(
Having a large market share, by itself, isn't illegal. But this action by Facebook and Google, that's a problem and I'm now all for some antitrust action being taken against them.
Chose a title "expletive deleted" partially to make fun of the redactions -- I mean, what's the point of redacting the name of the CEO and COO, when anyone can google who it was in 30 seconds? A tad silly.
Yeah, it's a farce but there are legal technicalities that need to be adhered to.
It reminds me of a farce not long ago when [REDACTED] obtained a "super injunction" against someone else which included that [REDACTED] couldn't be named. Everyone knew who it was as it was plastered all over the internet on sites outside of the UK; and [REDACTED] was named when an MP said the name during a debate in the house - using parliamentary privilege. The farcical thing was that it was legal to report the proceedings of the house including what the MP had said, but still contempt of court to name [REDACTED].
IIRC I think [REDACTED] got such backlash that they themselves had to 'fess up and retract the super-injunction.
That reminds me of a truly farcical event.
Some years ago, a tutor took his student (under age at the time) on a jaunt to Spain (IIRC). Reportedly, they had been engaging in (underage) sex for some time prior to the event.
After the couple were traced and retuned to the UK, the female's name could not be used.
The farcical part is that for the days from the youngster being reported missing until they were brought back to the UK, both the names had been plastered across virtually every daily newspaper front page (so easily found with a web search if you know the man's name) but the name of the female can't be published.
You get a good feeling after a large fine has been levied, but as others have pointed out these are often small relative to turnover and in any case are just absorbed by the corporate blob, or at least their customers.
A more effective solution would be to fine the CEO, CFO, CLO and CTO 10% of their salary in the year preceding the Jugement.
Google has been getting worse lately. I use uMatrix as part of my tracking blocking strategy. I see even here googletagmanager.com, google-analytics.com and doubleclick.net are part of the comments page. Captchas have been getting more pervasive and most provided by google. I am really trying to wean from google but they are finding ways to be everywhere. Some sites are unusable unless I allow some or all of google interaction. I would like to just say no, but I need to use many of these sites.
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