5 years later, the system (not just GAdds) remains broken. The same kind of ads that Ground Up refers to, everywhere.
MS Edge's launch page is riddled with these ads, they appear on otherwise high profile news outlets.
The other irritating thing with the tracking. You could look for a fridge, find, buy, receive it. But you'll remain getting ads about fridges for a week. Repeated ads, go to the speedcheck website, I sometimes get the same thing plastered all over the page.
As long as the listicle websites receive traffic, there'll be buyers for these nonsense and scammy ads.
> The other irritating thing with the tracking. You could look for a fridge, find, buy, receive it. But you'll remain getting ads about fridges for a week. Repeated ads, go to the speedcheck website, I sometimes get the same thing plastered all over the page.
Most people who buy fridges have recently bought a fridge. Having done so is the single strongest signal for “will buy a fridge“ in existence.
The reason for this is that sometimes fridges immediately malfunction and the customer goes looking for another one, which happens far more often than buying one in the first place. Not that this makes it look any less strange.
Not to speak for OP, but the fridge is just one example of millions. If the product involves me doing any research on it ahead of time, or trying to debate the merits of competing products, it's almost always advertised to me ad nauseam post-purchase. One example of many, I bought a subwoofer in August for my studio and have been bombarded with ads for the very same sub ever since, even just this morning.
Edit: I'd also like to see a statistic, re: "Most people who buy fridges have recently bought a fridge". If that's the case, then the fail rate for fridges on the market is egregiously high. You say "sometimes fridges malfunction", but I can't square away that "sometimes" with the phrase "most people" used earlier.
Yep, a few years ago I bought a drone. Months of ads for the same drone that I’d bought. A year ago I bought a high end upgrade monitor and I’m still getting spammed with similar models. Meanwhile over the last year I’ve consistently been buying end mills and work holding stuff for the CNC router I bought at the same time and… nothing. You’d think they’d focus on consumables related to recent big purchases.
Counterpoint (true story): A few years ago I bought a drone, it turned out to be crap, so I sent it back and bought a DJI instead. Just like they track "people who bought A also bought B" I can imagine them tracking "people who bought A are likely to learn from their mistake and buy B".
Fair call if I didn't buy a DJI Spark and then get ads for months for the base DJI Spark drone. Sell me batteries (of which I bought a couple), sell me the R/C unit with the beefy access point and joysticks built in, sell me a long range kit, sell me a headset, sell me whatever other addons! But how many damn baseline Sparks do I need?
I wonder if it’s kind of a scam as products think they are buying ads for people looking for a subwoofer or fridge but the advertiser is purposely grouping them together or is just incompetent.
Maybe it’s just wastage that they can’t avoid.
I’m still getting political letters in my mailbox even though I’ve already voted.
> The reason for this is that sometimes fridges immediately malfunction and the customer goes looking for another one, which happens far more often than buying one in the first place.
I don’t think this is true. First, I’m aware of probably 50 fridge purchases and none have immediate failed. Definitely an anecdote but better than your unsourced claim.
Second, if I bought a fridge that immediately failed it would be under warranty and it would be repaired or replaced with the same model.
Third, ConsumerReports.org rates fridges and none of the top brands report this problem.
> The reason for this is that sometimes fridges immediately malfunction and the customer goes looking for another one…
Probably time to buy fridges with warranty coverage. Which should be basically all of them, as long as you’re not buying stuff that “fell off the back of the truck”.
Maybe it’s just hard for Google/advertisers to distinguish between “recently searched for a fridge”, and “recently purchased a fridge” - and people seeing these ads after they already bought one are just false positives?
I think it's helpful for viewers to put the year in the title, which is an important signal in that this site was able to survive for 5 years without ads.
Display Ads from ads network are the some of the worst. Since they’re around the content you care about, they try to be as attention grabbing as possible to make you look away. Hence, you get pictures of famous people, weird looking things and sexually suggestive images…
I know money is nice, but I can’t imagine being so disrespectful to my users as to put unvetted display network ads like this. Don’t get me started on Taboola.
I'd like to aimlessly comment that I tried very hard and could not remember the last time I clicked in an google AD.
I suppose that the last time that happened should be _at least_ 5 years, because that was when started using ad blockers. Before that, I was just annoyed by them, so I suppose the last click was years before that, when maybe they made any sense.
They’re a way for us to read articles, watch videos, see images, etc. without paying with our credit cards. Plus they’re a way for us to learn about new products and services we might be interested in.
I’m not saying that ads have no positive value. I’m saying that their positive value is lower than their negative value and that they are a net detriment to society and technology.
I’m not for banning them. Like I don’t want to ban added sugar or drugs. I just wish we’d use them less. And I would never advise a friend to work on ad tech. It’s not quite as bad as working for a spam company, but maybe up there with making weapons of war or something.
I do not pay for ads with money. I pay for ads with my attention and personal data.
Please do not make the argument that I technically pay for my internet connection and so do in fact pay for ads. Please also do not make the argument that my time is money. It isn’t. I’m not interested in trading my time for money (outside of my day job).
There is literally no difference between that, and selling your time for money and then buying the thing of value. Well, the latter takes two transactions to accomplish the same thing
I'm making the argument that consumers pay for ads, because if the company didn't make any ads, it'd cost them less so they could decrease the price of the product?
MS Edge's launch page is riddled with these ads, they appear on otherwise high profile news outlets.
The other irritating thing with the tracking. You could look for a fridge, find, buy, receive it. But you'll remain getting ads about fridges for a week. Repeated ads, go to the speedcheck website, I sometimes get the same thing plastered all over the page.
As long as the listicle websites receive traffic, there'll be buyers for these nonsense and scammy ads.