

Why don't users want to see adverts they might be interested in? - bussetta
http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/23247/why-dont-users-want-to-see-adverts-relating-to-products-services-they-might-be

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jasonkester
My only real complaint with those ads that follow you around the internet is
that they're nearly always trying to sell you something you already own.

I bought one of those GoPro cameras that you mount on your surfboard a while
back, and was punished with six months of nonstop ads telling me how awesome
my life would be if only I'd purchase a GoPro camera. It was annoying to the
point where I actually dropped down that little menu in the hope that it had
an option for "OK, I bought it already. Please stop now."

It's the same problem with any recommendation engine. Amazon/Netflix/Lovefilm
are constantly recommending things I already own, since my buying history
shows they're related. "Hey, I notice you bought Series 2 through 8 of 24! You
should totally check out Series 1 of 24!"

Thanks. Now stop.

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Tyrannosaurs
I like Amazon's "you bought a SatNav, perhaps you'd be interested in these
other 8 SatNavs"...

Possibly the answer is that the algorithms aren't close to good enough. That
"might be interested in" isn't good enough.

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smcl
Another one of Amazon's which frustrated me was that after a few years of
buying similar items (programming books, computer odds and ends etc) it
started recommending reasonable things. Then I put in an order for two
children's books for my mother (who teaches young kids), and from that moment
on Amazon somehow only recommended kids books to me.

It's never really recovered, however since I bought a blackberry cover a year
or so ago it has started recommending other blackberry covers so I guess it's
sort of improved.

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MrMember
Amazon has an option to remove items you've purchased or looked at from their
recommendation engine. I don't know exactly where it is as I don't use it very
often, but with some poking around you should be able to find it.

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ktsmith
Depending on where the recommendation is being displayed it will typically a
have a "fix this recommendation" button right under the item. Then you can
select that you are't interested, already own it, bought it as a gift, or
simply mark it to not be used for recommendations.

The problem with this is, it seems to take ten or fifteen minutes of effort to
get the system to go back to showing somewhat relevant items after purchasing
a few gifts, or browsing some atypical items. Who wants to spend that kind of
time pruning advertisements. It's easier to just ignore them.

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jlangenauer
Because some of us like to think of ourselves as - oh, I don't know - human
beings and citizens, rather than mere "consumers".

Because some of us would like, just for once, some space (either virtual or
physical) that's not inundated with advertisements.

Because the basis of advertising is manipulation of free will to serve
commercial interests, and is thus inherently degrading.

That's why.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Exactly. And in the example of searching for baseball bat, if I search for
"but baseball bats online", all I care about are organic search results. Yes,
those _are_ different than ads, and yes, even when I have a strong intent to
buy something right now, I still don't want to see ads. They are lying,
bending the truth, or just simply presenting me with suboptimal choices.
Personally, there is no context I found ads useful in. Ever.

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junto
Personally, I'd just be happy to see adverts in the right language.

Every major online advertising engine appears to assume that my geolocation
equates to my preferred language.

My browser passes the Accept-Language request header of en-GB, but they all
ignore it and give me adverts in German or Spanish (or where ever I happen to
be visiting or living) based on an IP-to-geolocation lookup.

What I find interesting is that it firstly makes me actively aggressive
towards the brands, as well as the site. Secondly, it increases my advertising
blindness.

I see this on Google Adsense and Facebook ads.

I assume that in the United States, Spanish speakers are equally ignored? Any
Spanish speakers in the US that can confirm this?

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loceng
I wonder if the issue is resource and/or delivery time based. Is the number of
people affected by this negatively, less than the delivery time or other costs
when trying to facilitate this?

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junto
As you stated, I would imagine that the ad networks see people like me as a
very small minority.

However, there are particularly notable exceptions. There are ~11.5 million
Catalan speakers in the world, and most of them in Spain. While the majority
of Catalan speakers can also speak Spanish, they are extremely defensive of
their language and you will find most road signs, governmental correspondence
and general communication in Catalan as well as Spanish.

Most Ad networks will shoe-horn these users into Spanish ads. I imagine some
Catalonians find that practice offensive. When you compare the number of
Norwegian speakers in the world (~5 million), it puts things into perspective.

In actual fact these ad networks are missing a pretty big slice of the market
when you add everything up. In Europe there are huge migrations of different
nationalities. In a very short time the numbers of Greeks who leave Greece for
other European countries will start to sky rocket. This open migration
throughout Europe means that this problem will only get worse, and the numbers
of people being mistargeted will increase.

That is what I would call a market niche (or unique selling point) that is
potentially up for grabs.

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loceng
Maybe it is on their todo lists.. Perhaps they do serve that Catalan group,
though you mentioned they do in fact get shoe-horned? You'd think someone
would have solved this by now if it was valuable enough to?

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Derbasti
> Why don't users want to see adverts they might be interested in?

Obviously, because they actually are _not_ interested in them.

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archangel_one
Too many negative experiences with overeager matching algorithms. Yes, it's
helpful to show me ads for spades if I'm searching on Google for "buy spade",
but Amazon will not stop suggesting things to me that it thinks I "might" be
interested in. They seem surprisingly bad at it too; I looked at a TV costing
around £500, and subsequently got an e-mail every few days containing a list
of their entire stock of TVs, without any consideration of price. If I'm
looking at one worth £500, I'm probably not interested in a TV that costs £150
or one that costs £1500. They do badly on ebooks too, where the
recommendations just seem to be "other books by the same authors you've
already bought from", which I barely need; what I'd like are suggestions of
similar books from other authors that I don't know about yet.

I feel like I don't mind seeing ads that I'm interested in, but there is a
difference between that and being shown hundreds of ads that I _might_ be
interested in. I guess a sufficiently smart recommendation algorithm could
theoretically overcome that eventually, but it seems to be a pretty hard
problem since it's apparently not been well solved yet.

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johnchristopher
I have the feeling stackexchange-ux isn't the best place to ask this question.
There would be a use for a stackexchange-behaviourial/psychology site.

How many psychologists (or marketers with valid psychology knowledge) are
going to explore stackexchange-ui ? Not everything that happens on a screen
can be explained by a computer engineer, a computer scientist or a coder :)

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Jacqued
I think one of the main reasons is that targeted ads tend to show products you
already know (whether you already own them, researched them, or just because
you are interested in the subject). Then visual recognition (picture or name
of the product) occurs and your focus shifts to the ad for a moment --- when
you can just unconsciously ignore just 97-98% of the ads you see on the
Internet or on the street. And we all know how annoying commercial crap can be
when you are not looking to buy anything

Another thing that applies to older generations and educated people among
younger ones (I don't think the young masses understand this or care about it)
is the privacy invasion argument.

I'll add that, since most people hate ads altogether, adding just a little
annoyance to them can seem like just pushing it too far. I think the only
places where ads are not hated are subway stations, since waiting in gloomy
underground tunnels (most of those in Paris are, anyway) can be a bit
depressing

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geoffw8
"Users don't spend all their time purchasing goods on the internet - often
they are doing different and completely unrelated tasks, sometimes at the same
time."

Its got to make you ask why the only people who purchase space on a screen are
people who are selling goods. How much is a reader worth to someone like NYT?
How valuable is a poll answer? I can think of plenty of valuable things people
would pay to display there that aren't "ads".

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thenomad
Theory: because the NYT can get more reader acquisition for its buck via non-
advertising means. Spend the money on ads or on content marketing, aka
journalism? For a newspaper, that's a pretty simple choice.

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jeffool
For the longest time I avidly clicked answering Hulu's "Is this relevant to
you?" question that came with ads.

After a few months, I began to suspect they were not using the results. They
never learned I didn't want a new car, for starters. Not the kind of purchase
a commercial is going to change my mind about. (And I can't even recall the
brand.)

I'd actually like a decent as network just fine.

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mibbitier
Where's the evidence to suggest they don't want to? A few privacy nuts on
sites like stackexchange/HN/Reddit?

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sohn8
AdBlock, anyone?

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fribblerz
Only reasons I do use AdBlock, Saves bandwidth, data plans are expensive out
here. Also ads that expand/play music or video directly - are annoying. I
don't mind plain and simple ads. AdBlock beta has an option to allow non-
intrusive ads, I do keep it on. Infact it would be great if there were some
sort of guidelines (adblock checklist if I may call it so) which marketers can
follow and pass adblock if this option is on.

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sohn8
That "white list" already exists and comes ON by default on Firefox's AdBlock.

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theoutlander
Embracing targeted ads requires a mind shift that the per-Facebook generation
will not be able to conceive. Most people worried about targeted ads are
merely riding the ill-fated privacy bandwagon without weighing the pros and
cons of such a system. The future generations will prefer targeted ads.

~~~
digitalengineer
I think not. The TARGET case in Forbes ("How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl
Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did") suggests it is best if targeted ads are
surrounded by random ones to stop people from creeping out. More here:
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-
targe...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-
figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/)

