Yes, we can do contextual targeting, but after that, what are the ways to improve upon the outcomes (from an advertisers standpoint) without violating privacy?
Depends on the outcomes/metrics they’re interested in. For instance, I genuinely believe that targeting based on content is less dangerous from brand safety/brand perception perspective.
How about conversions, sweet $$?
I think replacing audiences with a semantic targeting model (nlp) could perform almost as good (if not better). Behavioural Targeting performance is overrated (feel free to look it up, esp. CPM vs. conversions, it’s quite interesting, I’m on holiday and shouldn’t be sitting on HN anyway!).
Another, deeper point-how much advertising do we (or brands) really need? Do alternatives exist, are they expensive/hard? What problem does advertising solve? I know this sounds like a silly question, but I think it’s worth asking given the current technical landscape and the ethical impact.
Well.. I'm totally OK with the efficiency in online-advertising being low. My point was that after a certain point, there is no way to get a better ad-to-viewer match without violating privacy. Google was never on the right side of privacy, and given the business they're in, they never will be.
