PayPal is planning an ad network built off your purchase history PayPal will use data from billions of customer transactions to supercharge its nascent ad business. And it sounds as though it'll work like this: PayPal will provide ways for businesses to advertise online – on websites and in apps – and use the information PayPal knows about people – their transactions, purchasing histories, …
Surely that is ebay who do that. They are aware of what was bought and sold so can let HMRC know that
All Paypal NEED to know is that I (customer) and paying the supplier x amount and for a particular reference code - beit order, ebay transaction code. and return a success/fail and transaction code
There is no reason why Paypal should know any more than that.
Where GDPR or similar in effect - so UK, EU. California they can just fuck off as … it breaches several of these.
GDPR sets out seven key principles:
Lawfulness, fairness and transparency
Purpose limitation
Data minimisation
Accuracy
Storage limitation
Integrity and confidentiality (security)
Accountability
These principles should lie at the heart of your approach to processing personal data.
IANAL, but surely, even apart from that, doesn't it fundamentally break the privacy rules?
They are regulated in the UK as a bank - Can you imagine if Barclays did similar with our current accounts?
You just bought a kettle, that must mean you want to see adverts for kettles. I've been told by people who see adverts that this is often how it works.
Is there any proof that targeted advertising works any better than a blanket campaign? People find it creepy, click-fraud is rampant, anti-tracking technology and legislation is increasing, might be a bad time to get into this field.
Literally the only time I'd click on an ad is by mistake. A mistaken click-through isn't worth the electrons used to transmit it.
If fewer pointless ads are shown, fewer pointless ads are clicked on by mistake. This could probably be proven by running an ad campaign for something nobody would possibly want, and still counting click-throughs on it. Left-handed screwdrivers, vegan slaughterhouse tools, or Rishi Sunak, for example.
Wow yes, that was a good read. My laymans takeaway from it that the targetted algorithms a great at doing their job, but the final results need to be inverted just before the ad targetting happens. It seems vast majority of "targetted ads" are being directed at regular customers and/or those intending to buy there anyway. Inverting that means you target everyone *other* than those people. The click throughs will probably drop like a rock, but the actual *new* customer click throughs leading to a purchase will almost certainly rise. The numbers in the results will be much lower and look far worse in most graphs, but the real ROI ought to be better since now you are not counting the wasted ads on people going there anyway. But as the article states, marketeers are great at marketing themselves and need the big numbers for job preservation :-)
But I’m sure their ad income dried up so back on…
I’m sure there are metrics and data by Google and other ad grubbing scum etc but
- does anyone actually watch them
- how can you tell
- there is some random and inappropriate ad placement esp. on some Facebook reels. I’m sure Suzuki will be delighted to know the Vitara is being offered on porn-star ‘day off’ jiggle reels.
That's the dirty secret -- the primary beneficiaries of targeted adverts are the brokers. There have been several quite rigorous pieces of research on this and they all come to that conclusion. Sadly, both advertisers and publishers are still being fooled.
The only reasonably reliable advert placement from the perspective of the two primary parties is based on relevance to page content (for quite obvious reasons), but that cuts out the real time auction, which is what inflates placement prices and thus broker profit.
Yes, in my company we do digital marketing, and there's overwhelming evidence that targeted advertising has a way higher ROAS compared to traditional "spray and pray" marketing campaigns. If you're seeing ads for kettles after just buying a kettle, the site / app you're on is likely using outdated targeted advertising technology (or switched off targeted ads for you). For 10+ years, leading websites and apps have used cutting-edge targeted advertising technologies to display ads for "related products" i.e. products related to primary product purchased, products purchased by people related to purchaser, etc. To take an example closest to PayPal, many banks in USA have implemented Cardlytics technology to make targeted offers off of credit card purchase history. If your credit card statement for a certain month has many hotel charges, you might receive an ad for "40% discount on your next stay at AirBnB". More at https://gtm360.com/blog/2019/12/13/your-personal-data-is-not-sold-just-used/, https://gtm360.com/blog/2021/12/01/digital-ads-whose-preference-is-it-anyway/, https://gtm360.com/blog/2021/12/15/just-because-you-can-show-digital-ads-doesnt-mean-you-should/.
I don't personally use PayPal but I mentioned it at dinner last night to my partner, who sells tat on eBay and thus pretty much has to use PayPal.
Her reaction, sadly, was "Meh. They're already tracking us anyway."
Make of that what you will.
As for me, it's too early to start drinking. Or perhaps too late.
They can still sell your historical transaction data, or access to it, or however they try to play down the breach in privacy and trust.
I've just requested my PayPal account be closed and my data deleted. I honestly feel a bit betrayed and at the same time disappointed by my own naivety.
I closed my PayPal account when they updated the terms that allowed them to seize your funds if you made social media posts they don't like and also because they no longer refund the 3% processing fee if the other party requested a refund. Soon after PayPal did that, other credit card processors soon copied them and called it industry standard. To me, it is the principle of the matter.
I mean I know the ISPs claim they don’t sell your data but Google ad tracking on every website known to man fixed that years ago… now you don’t even question if it was Google or your
And then: Venmo… it’s a Facebook live feeds of everyone you know paying everyone they know, just there, on a timeline… with hard to disable controls for privacy… and more importantly, one of very few options to send random folks money (can the US just get EFTs already -_-)
Not surprised PayPal is doing this - I’m actually surprised it took them this long seeing they own Venmo.
Time to find a new online payment provider me thinks… once a company starts down this path, at best they will have regional exclusions (if the country can muster the willpower to object)
If I've just bought a washing machine, I don't need to see adverts for a dozen more.
Ebay's logging of submitted searches is far more accurate.
But I don't actually care. They can process data on my purchases as much as they want, to direct ads. It really doesn't bother me. I don't consider my privacy to be impinged. It shouldn't bother other people on here either, as most of them run ad blockers anyway.
An invasion of privacy? That would be having my e-mail address and phone number appear on parcels sent to me. That's stipulated by governments, not tech companies. If you want to be a stalker, delivering parcels is probably your best career option.
That's a pretty naïve take. Advertising is only a portion of the revenue generated from selling data. A large – and growing – portion comes from selling to data brokers, who will sell the profiles they build to anyone with an expense account. Employers, insurance companies, banks, landlords, etc...
Where exactly are Paypal planning to put these ads? on the paypal website and in the app?
I use Paypal regularly for buying online but the amount of time i spend on the Paypal website is minimal as its just a few seconds to confirm payment details then im taken back to the merchants website. So are they going to try and squeeze in ads during that payment processing? As im sure store owners are going to love that they are paying Paypal a % fee for the transaction and when their customer goes to pay their shopping cart that they are being shown an advert for another website or service.
More likely you'll see ads on the store owner's website that are based on your data. Data that PayPal (and other data miners) have collected from you and are being paid by the advertiser to access. And yes, they could well be for a competitor that pays more in advertising than the store you are visiting, assuming it is something you buy regularly using PayPal, or perhaps searched for on Google or Amazon, or liked in social media. All great sources of (in my view irrelevant) data that can be purchased.
As others have mentioned, I don't see the point of targeted ads. I'd much rather learn about things I don't already own or have researched. However, the absence of all ads (install a good ad blocker) is still preferred to the absence of just targeted ads.
Dear Mark Grether.
Please take a moment out of your busy schedule to first apply a goodly coating of superglue to the inside surfaces of both your buttocks then shove your head sideways up your arse.
That way you will have something to occupy your mind instead of excreting:
Ads for stuff I've just bought and have no further interest in buying more.
Ads for stuff I've looked at in passing and decided I didn't want.
Ads for stuff a bit like what I've just bought but in reality nothing like it - and in which I utterly disinterested anyway.
Ads for what other people bought next - as if I give a rats arse
Ads for what other people bought along with what I just bought - again, like I give a shit.
Ads for what's "trending" - as if that is somehow relevant to anyone.
Dear PayPal: Just fuck off.
Yours with all the ill will I can find in the bottom of my septic tank
If one were old enough to recall the 1920's and '30's mail order houses and their tie ups with newspapers postal services and delivery companies etc. History tells one about the trade routes.
Nothing in the commercial world changes just as the advertising the marketing of products has always relied on cooperation between the seller and the delivery person. Islam was founded by a trader who co-operated with the bankers and the transporters of good from China to the Middle East,Africa and Europe. The transporters of the goods have always been the the middle man and the biggest sharks. They know what the customer wants and the wholesalers,retailer relies on them.
A noticeably large amount of data was observed, via Pi Hole, making its way out to Paypal under a variety of aliases. Not just when I was interacting with Paypal (which is rarely), but constantly.
So I added filters to the Pi Hole blacklist to stop that - which I have to undo every time I actually want to use Paypal.
.*paypal.*\.net
.*paypal\.com
Royal Kingdom / Royal Match comes up frequently for me on ads, about 75% of ads I see are this game
I have no interest in it, and the ad algorithm presumes that I will suddenly become interested after already having ignored it a hundred times. It's very persistent, but not as persistent as I am determined to continue to ignore it.
Mobile ads are the worst:
Please sit through this 2 minute long unskippable ad with loud and annoying sound that you have to scramble to mute via a tiny button hidden in a random corner of the ad, for the fifth time in the last ten minutes, because perhaps you haven't quite yet vowed to never do business with whatever company is spewing this shite into your face. If you don't then respond by pressing the tiny X in the corner in time (after pressing it once already, being taken to the Play Store download for whatever app/game it is, closing that, waiting five more seconds and pressing the X again), whatever app it is that contains that ad in the first place will decide you didn't see it, and force you to watch it again.
I get that a lot of apps are funded by advertising, but advertising that appears to have been devised as one of Dante's circles of Hell simply is not necessary, and can't be effective.
We all deal with tech companies many many times over a month... lets say a 100 or so... How can there possibly be in any value in these 100 companies each trying to sell ads to each person. its simply not possible for anybody to buy any everything from each one, and its more likely to be less than in 1 / 100 if it even comes that close.
So when will there simply be too much advertising that its just background noise, like clouds are background noise in the REAL blue sky.
There would be a mailshot, the many tens of thousands of targets identified through profiling and screening then a message went out from one company. A single email or postal mail to each target.
This made enough money for the outsource profiling company to do very well, so the economics are there somewhere.
The joke is on you, if you think the US government will protect YOU over a BIG CORP. You seem to forget that america has been built on only putting rich people first. Take the south, they at least had the honesty to make it clear that slavery was acceptable. THe american west was conquered by killing millions of natives, countless immigrants died building the railroad, and so on. Times change, but America has always been the same, money talks.
Apparently it was actually said about Barnum, by David Hannum, in reference to Barnum's part in the Cardiff Giant hoax. Or so the story goes.
Thomas Tusser wrote a variation on this theme. Specifically "A foole and his monie be soone at debate, which after with sorrow repents him too late.[0]
My gut feeling is that one variation or another of the phrase has been in widespread use longer than humans have understood the concept of writing. It probably goes back to the thoughts of the first proto-shaman, separating the ignorant from their meager scavenged food because his cave or hollow tree looked scary. Cushiest job in Africa a couple million years ago, I'm sure.
[0] From: FIUE HUNDRED POINTES OF GOOD HUSBANDRIE. —Tusser, 1573 ... If you haven't read the works of Tusser, I highly recommend it. Makes you realize how very little Humans have changed in 500 years.
My PayPal history is confined to a subset of my purchases where I cannot use one of my other preferred ways of paying. These days, that is quite rare.
If PayPal analyse me for advertising, they will see a very odd and biased view. And if they sell that onwards it will mislead potential advertisers.
I am still hoping that my bank will offer an anonymised payment mechanism where the payee doesn't get to know anything about me and my account like card numbers, expiry, even bank name! Something like Apple Pay but better.
Over a single transaction. I was purchasing a rare lifetime premium membership only requiring a single payment. The service used paypal for payment processing. I had a paypal account and it was linked to a checking account as they had insisted back then. I was paying with a credit card. Paypal processed the payment as an ACH transaction against the checking account which did not have funds to cover the transaction. I knew full well it did not and did not expect paypal to attempt the ACH transaction. I disputed the transaction with the bank. They attempted to present the transaction again. I disputed again and requested a standing dispute of any and all paypal transactions on the bank account. I then closed my paypal account with a message stating why. I firmly believe that when a form of payment is presented at the point of transaction, only that form should be used even if other forms' details are known by the processor.
I had to call the service provider to purchase the membership over the phone. The lifetime turned out to be lifetime of the service. It was assimilated by IBM.
Well that's the last straw PayPal is already useless as in the fact that the make it impossible for claims which is the only reason I used it for protection they now told me to contact the police/ RCMP because of lost and damaged shipments What a Joke any excuse not to pay claim so now they are going to broadcast my private information
There is only one thing to do is say GOODBYE PayPal the useless
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