Adtech isn't even that successful as far as I can see.
While I block a lot of internet stalkers via PiHole at home and so forth I'm sure a lot about me and my activity gets through to the data hoarders. So then why has a lot of my recent advertising on Facebook in recent days been for feminine health products? For example: why would I, a middle-aged, long single (with no particular plans to change that state), child-less man, be interesting in a device that claims to help reduce period cramps?
Most of the other advertising I see ATM is wall-to-wall Temu. Even if I would ever have ordered something from them I likely won't now as they've successfully got in my nerves.
The only advertising that has worked on me in recent memory is a sponsored segment in a podcast (an event relevant to the subject matter of that podcast that I may book into), and getting that advert in front of me didn't involve tracking my movements wherever I go online & in the real world.
> Adtech isn't even that successful as far as I can see.
And then
> While I block a lot of internet stalkers via PiHole at home
People who don't buy things after clicking on ads, who block all the ads they see, who are completely immune and hate ads, are not really qualified to talk about whether they work or not.
Not only is this pure anecdote, and the billions spent on advertising every year as a glaring counterpoint to your comment, but you are obviously biased against the concept.
This whole site is rabidly anti-advertising. Like we should all still be using terminal BBS and VIM because they are "better." These posts are so tiring.
It takes two to make an argument, and I think both those viewpoints are wrong!
Tabs for indentation, spaces for alignment.
(actually, I have an idea for dynamic tabs which might do both jobs better that I need to throw a demo of together to try to convince code editors that it is worth implementing)
You may be interested in the wunderfull Elastic Tabstops concept which although it has proof of concepts and plugins for most editors sadly never got widespread adoption:
That is almost exactly what I was thinking with "dynamic tabs" (just missing a few extra bits that are probably just me overcomplicating things anyway so wouldn't be in any initial PoC). Thanks for the link, I'll investigate further from there.
You have made some significantly incorrect assumptions there:
1. That I block things everyehere. “PiHole at home” does not cover all my browsing, far from it.
2. That “PiHole at home” blocks everything at home. Again, far from it. Many wish it were that effective.
3. That “PiHole at home” blocks all the data tracked by the likes of Facebook in-app. It is massively ineffective against that, and a few other techniques.
4. That I am, in fact, anti-advert. I'm anti being stalked around most of my life which does not have to be the same thing. Unfortunately blocking the latter also blocks the former because currently they are the same thing, or at least very closely overlapped. I don't use sponsor-block, because the segments that it blocks are not based on stalking but are often relevant to the information being consumed (not always of course: if I'm watching a summary or an IP related legal case the relevance of, for instance, a tank based casual game is at best dubious). I'm also anti-other-irritating patterns (auto-playing audio, auto-playing video, eating CPU and draining my battery when mobile, etc.) which are also endemic to advertising and like the tracking they do not need to be.
5. That companies paying billions for advertising means that the stalking works (as the old joke says: “Eat shit, 136×10¹⁵ flies can't all be wrong!”. The adtech industry is grossly disingenuous in both directions: to us when they tell us they value our privacy and to their customers when they make exaggerated claims about how effective their huge personal data dataset is as getting extra sales for any arbitrary products/services, compared to just advertising in places relevant to the product/service (or just carpet bombing our senses, the method apparently being employed by Temu ATM). The companies paying into this have little choice because the vast majority of adtech is doing exactly the same things and making pretty much the same claims. Everyone in adtech does it because if they didn't they'd lose sales to those who do and convince ad-space buyers that it makes a significant difference.
> are not really qualified to talk about whether they work or not
Some might question whether a person making five incorrect sweeping assumptions in three sentences, is really qualified to talk about whatever it is that they are talking about :)
The ads you see aren't for you. Companies selling devices to reduce cramps bid to get to your eyeball because you (poorly) fit some demographic they want to reach.
The companies you are interested in - well, they already reach your wallet just fine without banner ads.
What gets me is what happens when you try to get a hotel, a plane ticket, a rental car, an emergency plumber, a tow truck or a ride somewhere.
Advertising and ad targeting is a numbers game. Conversion rates for most campaigns are very low. On order of 1%. Running a highly targeted campaign that boosts conversion from 0.9% to 1.4% would be considered a huge win even though it's still invisible to 98.6% of people. And sometimes it's about the ads that don't hit you. Not wasting ad spend on people who aren't in your addressable market at all.
I think us pihole users are a tiny tiny minority! Even in my household my wife doesn't use the pihole I set up since it occasionally (maybe 1%?) does not work with some websites and apps. I have no problem going in and disabling it for a minute but it is a hassle for her and I understand.
Adtech is still very lucrative even with a few of us blockers
While I block a lot of internet stalkers via PiHole at home and so forth I'm sure a lot about me and my activity gets through to the data hoarders. So then why has a lot of my recent advertising on Facebook in recent days been for feminine health products? For example: why would I, a middle-aged, long single (with no particular plans to change that state), child-less man, be interesting in a device that claims to help reduce period cramps?
Most of the other advertising I see ATM is wall-to-wall Temu. Even if I would ever have ordered something from them I likely won't now as they've successfully got in my nerves.
The only advertising that has worked on me in recent memory is a sponsored segment in a podcast (an event relevant to the subject matter of that podcast that I may book into), and getting that advert in front of me didn't involve tracking my movements wherever I go online & in the real world.