Speaker 1: Text Technology with tex Stuff from staff. Hey there, and
Speaker 1: welcome to tex Stuff. I am your adorable host, Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: and sitting in the office with me, my good friend,
Speaker 1: my co worker, Mr Ben Boland joins us again. Welcome Ben, Hey, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for having me on the show. Listeners,
Speaker 1: I hope you are well. I have a question for you. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So have you ever seen an advertisement and thought, yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: this is for me rarely, but it has been known
Speaker 1: to happen. I can tell you right now. I can
Speaker 1: tell you to ralf the top of my head. And
Speaker 1: it's largely because of the tone of the advertising campaign.
Speaker 1: Old Spice theodorant, right right. Dollar shave Club, Okay, what
Speaker 1: about Dollar Shape Shave Club. The commercials for a dollar
Speaker 1: shave Club are kind of in that same tongue in cheek,
Speaker 1: snarky sort of approach, a little not not so in
Speaker 1: your face as to be truly obnoxious, but just barely
Speaker 1: straddling that line between being charming and being arrogant. And
Speaker 1: and I find it entertaining. And I thought, well, I
Speaker 1: I shave quite a bit actually, because because I got
Speaker 1: the head that I have to shave, because nature has
Speaker 1: deprived me of some of my hair, but not all
Speaker 1: of it, so I have to get rid of the rest.
Speaker 1: And um, and I decided to try it out because
Speaker 1: I thought the ads were really entertaining. The idea of
Speaker 1: the subscription model was much more attractive to me than
Speaker 1: having to go to the store and ask to unlock
Speaker 1: the vault of razors. Yeah, and uh, it turned out
Speaker 1: that I loved the products, so um, the ad did
Speaker 1: exactly what it was supposed to do. It got my attention,
Speaker 1: it made me remember the brand, and it it's ultimately
Speaker 1: got me to act, which are That's exactly what ads
Speaker 1: are supposed to do. Let me tell you what ads
Speaker 1: are not supposed to do. What they're not supposed to
Speaker 1: irritate the audience to the point where they no longer
Speaker 1: ever want to buy anything ever again, and then they
Speaker 1: rage quit the internet. Um. So today we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about ads and ad blockers and to kind of go
Speaker 1: into the discussion that's been kind of going around recently
Speaker 1: about ad blockers, including some of the stuff that's going
Speaker 1: on in Europe. Uh, some of the stuff that you
Speaker 1: might have heard about as far as ads and their
Speaker 1: relationship to malware. Um, what exactly is going on and
Speaker 1: where do we stand on this? And then you know,
Speaker 1: you you do a lot of stuff here at how
Speaker 1: stuff works, but I specifically ask you, in your capacity
Speaker 1: as one of the hosts of stuff, they don't want
Speaker 1: you to know because as the host of that show,
Speaker 1: you've covered the topics surrounding privacy pretty extensively, right, and
Speaker 1: privacy is one of the factors that comes into play
Speaker 1: when you're talking about advertising, particularly today when targeted advertising
Speaker 1: has become such a huge part of strategies. Now, to
Speaker 1: start this off, before we jump into all of that,
Speaker 1: I thought I would give kind of a really high
Speaker 1: level explanation of what is going on behind the scenes, uh,
Speaker 1: technically with ads on web pages and thus how ad
Speaker 1: blockers are able to work at all. You might think, well,
Speaker 1: how can an ad blocker recognize and block and add
Speaker 1: but not the content I'm trying to see? So, Ben
Speaker 1: you work? You work on the web? Yes, you you
Speaker 1: you've visited a website or two. You probably know that
Speaker 1: you do so through something called a browser. Yes, uh
Speaker 1: for you know, something like Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Edge and
Speaker 1: if you are using Internet Explorer, I hope it is
Speaker 1: only because some outside authority is making you do so, right, Like,
Speaker 1: there's an intranet that you can only access with Internet Explorer.
Speaker 1: Do you remember those days? Yeah, there was there. That
Speaker 1: was the only reason I had Internet Explorer installed on
Speaker 1: my old computer list so that I could access our
Speaker 1: company's former intranet, which is ridiculous. But here we are
Speaker 1: nonetheless on a browser. Yes. So when you are visiting
Speaker 1: a website using your browser, you type in the r
Speaker 1: L type and you put it in the address bar
Speaker 1: and you hit that inter button. What is happening is
Speaker 1: your browser is sending out a request over the Internet,
Speaker 1: and it's essentially saying, Hey, the jerk on the other
Speaker 1: end of this keyboard wants to see you know. Uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know what's a good website. Let's say a
Speaker 1: Wired dot com. That's a great example, because Wired is
Speaker 1: going to come up and in other parts of this discussion,
Speaker 1: and Wired, by the way, I love Wired. They do
Speaker 1: great work, and I've got a lot of friends who
Speaker 1: have worked for Wired, either in the past or currently
Speaker 1: love their stuff. So you're going to Wired dot com.
Speaker 1: What happens is the uh, this request goes out over
Speaker 1: the Internet and it's routed through a series of connections
Speaker 1: until it gets to the server where wired dot com lives,
Speaker 1: which is like the vault of their information. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a it's an actual physical computer that has
Speaker 1: the instance of that website stored on it. And then
Speaker 1: when the request comes in, it serves, thus living up
Speaker 1: to its name, the information to you, and it goes
Speaker 1: back across the Internet, not necessarily in the same pathway
Speaker 1: that your request came through. That gets into a discussion
Speaker 1: of packets that really is immaterial for this. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: talked about packets in previous episodes. So if you really
Speaker 1: want what packet switching is and how all that works,
Speaker 1: go check out the archives of tech stuff and it's
Speaker 1: out there. But the information comes to you, and your
Speaker 1: browser puts it together and displays it for you, and
Speaker 1: it does so based upon the rules set up by
Speaker 1: the web master rights whoever put it together. There there
Speaker 1: are there's language tags that that explain how it's supposed
Speaker 1: to look when it's displayed on your browser, and that's
Speaker 1: how it works. And so you think, okay, so so
Speaker 1: it's really just a request and then a response. But
Speaker 1: then you have ads. Now with ads, the content for
Speaker 1: the ads comes from a different place than the content
Speaker 1: for the web page itself. So those ads that are
Speaker 1: on Wired dot com, they're actually coming from different servers.
Speaker 1: They're not coming from Wired server, and the web page
Speaker 1: just has a space dedicated or some form of UH
Speaker 1: relationship there that's dedicated to the ad that says this
Speaker 1: is where the ad will go when it's served to
Speaker 1: the the viewer, and that depends on the arrangement between
Speaker 1: the advertiser and the content creator. Yeah, so you could probably,
Speaker 1: I mean, we could really dive down into this and
Speaker 1: say all these different types of ads have different UH rates,
Speaker 1: Like a banner add at this point is almost considered
Speaker 1: to be worthless, and a banner AD is a term
Speaker 1: describing those long horizontal ads you will see the take
Speaker 1: up UH an entire row I guess of a website, right,
Speaker 1: and you can say, like a rail would be UH
Speaker 1: the vertical version of that, either on the left or right.
Speaker 1: And then there are other things like they're pop ups
Speaker 1: under tons of different types and they all have different
Speaker 1: rates depending upon the lots of factors. How popular is
Speaker 1: the website UH and how effective are those ads considered
Speaker 1: to be, Like the least effective are the ones they're
Speaker 1: going to be the least expensive. Uh. And and in
Speaker 1: some cases you will find web pages that have completely
Speaker 1: abandoned some of the cheaper one because they don't really
Speaker 1: work anyway, and you might as well try and command
Speaker 1: a higher price. So those impressions, those those that data
Speaker 1: is actually coming from other servers, and they're the advertisers
Speaker 1: servers are the more likely advertising agencies servers where that
Speaker 1: data lives. So as the page is loading up the
Speaker 1: sections for the ads, that gets another request saying, hey,
Speaker 1: send me the the information that's supposed to go here.
Speaker 1: It's coming from this other server that gets sent to
Speaker 1: your computer and is inserted into the appropriate section by
Speaker 1: your browser when it's constructing the whole thing. Uh. The
Speaker 1: way ad blockers work is essentially it has a filter
Speaker 1: list saying anything coming from these particular servers, don't let
Speaker 1: it show up. Just don't even let it through the door,
Speaker 1: like mad ads dot com, which I just made up, right, So,
Speaker 1: so anything that would come from that server would automatically
Speaker 1: blocked and not be incorporated into the web page as
Speaker 1: you're displaying it. So that's the general way that most
Speaker 1: ad blockers work. There's another way to the ad blockers
Speaker 1: can also look for certain tags that are associated with advertising,
Speaker 1: like there's actually a tag for ad that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: and just block anything that that shows up under that tag.
Speaker 1: But generally speaking, the idea is just kind of a
Speaker 1: bouncer that says anyone from this neighborhood is not allowed
Speaker 1: into the club, and um so checking your checking all
Speaker 1: the I d s and saying I'm sorry, you're from
Speaker 1: a part of the neighborhood where we don't let you in,
Speaker 1: and so discriminatory. That's the way. That's that's how an
Speaker 1: ad blocker has to work, right. It has to discriminate.
Speaker 1: Otherwise you don't get You either get everything or you
Speaker 1: get nothing. So it has to discriminate. And we should
Speaker 1: do a disclaimer, yeah, which is what Oh, okay, I'll
Speaker 1: do it, yea. So we are fully aware, ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: that we do work for an internet company how stuff works.
Speaker 1: It's our parent company for our range of podcasts, and
Speaker 1: it is AD supported, and it is AD supported, and
Speaker 1: quite a few things online are AD supported. However, I
Speaker 1: will confess to my hypocrisy because I am an enormous
Speaker 1: fan of certain ad blockers, and I completely understand why
Speaker 1: another person would use an ad blocker, especially given as
Speaker 1: you mentioned, the privacy concerns that will get to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's a whole lot of stuff going on for
Speaker 1: reasons why people would consider using an ad blocker, and
Speaker 1: to your point, but not to leave you hanging out there.
Speaker 1: I use ad blockers too sometimes. I sometimes I will
Speaker 1: set exemptions for websites that I think are handling advertising
Speaker 1: in a responsible way, in a non invasive, non uh
Speaker 1: potentially harmful kind of way. So you can you can
Speaker 1: with most ad blockers set filters and say anything on
Speaker 1: this page, go ahead and show me the ad. It's fine.
Speaker 1: White list stuff exactly. So wire dot Com there's an example,
Speaker 1: uh that's on my white list. A couple of others too.
Speaker 1: There's some that want to be on my white list
Speaker 1: that I have not put on there. Cough Forbes cough. Um.
Speaker 1: But we'll get into that too. So there are a
Speaker 1: lot of different reasons, and some of them you could
Speaker 1: argue are more valid than others for people to want
Speaker 1: to use ad blockers. So I'm gonna run through a
Speaker 1: few of those. And also I could say that there
Speaker 1: there's other things you can do, like through your browser itself,
Speaker 1: that that don't necessarily block ads, but block elements of
Speaker 1: ads that you might find particularly irritating. Like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like you can disable video or audio or flash animation,
Speaker 1: or you can not even have flash installed, So that
Speaker 1: also helps. That's tough. That I don't know is, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of content out there that is dependent
Speaker 1: upon flash and without it, without flash, it makes it harder.
Speaker 1: Another some things have definitely helped by moving to h
Speaker 1: g mL five. Um So, uh, at any rate, let's
Speaker 1: talk about some of the reasons folks block ads. Uh.
Speaker 1: Some of them, like we said, are just obnoxious. They're intrusive.
Speaker 1: They ruin the experience you're trying to have. If you
Speaker 1: are trying to read an article and as you scrolled down,
Speaker 1: a window slides into view, covering up the text you're
Speaker 1: trying to read, and his auto playing some commercial that
Speaker 1: has no bearing on your life whatsoever, that's a bad experience,
Speaker 1: right Like if if I were going on a page
Speaker 1: about a technical gadget and I'm reading and as I
Speaker 1: scrolled down, an ad for diapers comes on, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be irritated. I don't have a baby, I don't need
Speaker 1: diapers myself. Yet you're not reading about something related to diaper. No,
Speaker 1: I'm not reading about the latest in diaper tracking software,
Speaker 1: you know, getting that notification on your app that's time
Speaker 1: to change the diaper. I'm not reading any of that.
Speaker 1: That would be a very bad experience. It could be
Speaker 1: I poop, I mean I do. That's I don't want
Speaker 1: to get into it. Yeah, that's uh, probably one that
Speaker 1: we will not pitch that show. Yeah. Uh so that's
Speaker 1: one reason. Just just because it's an it can be
Speaker 1: an unpleasant experience, depending upon the way the ad is presented.
Speaker 1: It's disruptive, it is, it is disruptive. Another is that
Speaker 1: it slows downloading time, right because there is this additional
Speaker 1: uh communication that has to happen to pull that information
Speaker 1: in while the page is loading. And we all know
Speaker 1: that we have very little patients to wait around when
Speaker 1: loading website. If you've ever had one of those days
Speaker 1: that here at work where occasionally our network gets a
Speaker 1: little sludgy pandemonium, Oh yeah, you're like you're like typeing
Speaker 1: in even if you're just typing in something like I
Speaker 1: just need to Google something and you're typing in your
Speaker 1: Google search and you hit inner and it's not that
Speaker 1: Point three second response and it takes like a couple
Speaker 1: of seconds. You go nuts. You're like, what is happening? Bandmonium?
Speaker 1: We're one slow internet connection from Sie away from a
Speaker 1: series of knife fights. Yeah no, I mean we have
Speaker 1: the knives here in the office. Right. Um, I personally
Speaker 1: plan on hiding because there's some crazy people in this Yeah, Scott,
Speaker 1: Benjamin's got some moves. He's got to reach to man,
Speaker 1: he's got he's got that armspan. So ads also can
Speaker 1: can take up a lot of bandwidth. Right. That's another
Speaker 1: huge problem because a lot of I s p s
Speaker 1: are using bandwidth caps, especially in the mobile world. So
Speaker 1: both in mobile and my home I s P technically
Speaker 1: have a data cap. Now I have paid extra to
Speaker 1: get out of the cap on both sides, but that's
Speaker 1: because I make enough money where I can pay a
Speaker 1: little extra to do that. That should not be something
Speaker 1: I don't think that should be encouraged. I think that
Speaker 1: that there's no real good reason for data caps, particularly
Speaker 1: for home networks. Um, but if you have ads activated,
Speaker 1: that's more data that's coming through. That means that not
Speaker 1: only do you not want to see these things, but
Speaker 1: it's taking away your opportunity to see other stuff exactly. Also, also,
Speaker 1: are have you done a data caps episode, Jonathan, I
Speaker 1: haven't because I probably would be frothing at the mouth
Speaker 1: about that the Emperor has no clothes. Yeah, let's just
Speaker 1: say that. Uh, I think some companies can be a
Speaker 1: little bombastic, which rhymes a lot with a certain I
Speaker 1: sp that I'm not happy about. Right, But as you're
Speaker 1: saying that's that's an excellent point because you know, let's
Speaker 1: say you see this ad for diapers and it's a video, right,
Speaker 1: it's an AutoPlay video while you're reading about your latest
Speaker 1: gadget that you're doing research on, and then the chance
Speaker 1: instans of this happening we're very small. But what if
Speaker 1: it's the proverbial feather on your Internet camel back, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like, if that's the thing that
Speaker 1: happens and then the camel just collapses and you get
Speaker 1: the pop up warning, and if it's a video based advertisement,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff, I mean, that takes up a
Speaker 1: more data and and I mean you think about how
Speaker 1: much browsing you do in in a typical month. If
Speaker 1: you are already bumping up against that data cap towards
Speaker 1: the end of the month, like in that last week.
Speaker 1: Ads could be accumulatively across the rest of the month
Speaker 1: be enough to make that happen in the middle of
Speaker 1: the month, a problem magnified or exacerbated for mobile users exactly.
Speaker 1: So that's a reason some people use ad blockers. They say, listen,
Speaker 1: I have a limited amount of data I am allowed
Speaker 1: to access, and I'm bumping up against it, and I
Speaker 1: don't have other options, I mean, other other than just stopping.
Speaker 1: But that's crazy talk, is what that is. And also, finally, well,
Speaker 1: two other things. One is that targeted advertising some people
Speaker 1: find it very off putting, right the idea that let's
Speaker 1: say that's the it's not an ad for diapers that's
Speaker 1: completely irrelevant to my life. Let's say it's an AD
Speaker 1: that's very relevant. Maybe it's I don't know, head wax
Speaker 1: so that I can get my head up to a
Speaker 1: nice glossy finish um. Or maybe it's Hamilton's conversation about Hamilton.
Speaker 1: It could be that, yeah, Hamilton is coming to Atlanta,
Speaker 1: the musical Hamilton's coming to Atlanta, buy your tickets. That's
Speaker 1: an AD that would be precisely targeted to me, and
Speaker 1: I would freak out. I'd say yes, yes, yes, and
Speaker 1: that would be an ad that would work on me
Speaker 1: because I would love to see that show. Um uh,
Speaker 1: if you have Hamilton's tickets, I will happily take them,
Speaker 1: all right. So, uh, that's a great example. But there
Speaker 1: are other targeted dads that can be a little scary, right,
Speaker 1: especially for people who are trying to research something that's
Speaker 1: really sensitive. The example that we have given many times
Speaker 1: on this show is the one about Target, where a
Speaker 1: young woman had been browsing Target ended up sending information
Speaker 1: to the young lady about coupons related to being pregnant.
Speaker 1: Her father, uh intercepted essentially the coupons and got very
Speaker 1: mad at Target, saying, how dare you insinuate that my
Speaker 1: daughter is pregnant, and then later contacted Target again and said,
Speaker 1: I would like to apologize to you. I had a
Speaker 1: conversation with my daughter and it turns out that I
Speaker 1: didn't know about it, but turns out my daughter is pregnant.
Speaker 1: But that was one of those instances where you know
Speaker 1: your your online activity might indicate something you're not comfortable
Speaker 1: sharing with the world at large, and even if your
Speaker 1: personal identity is not part of that, it that almost
Speaker 1: doesn't matter, right, Like your name is the least important
Speaker 1: thing about your personal data. What it is you want
Speaker 1: and need that's way more important to advertisers, right, And
Speaker 1: your your habits, your frequency of wanting, needing, and acquiring
Speaker 1: those things. And sometimes that's helpful. Like if you go
Speaker 1: onto a shopping site like Amazon and you it starts
Speaker 1: giving you suggestions based upon things you bought in the past,
Speaker 1: and you might see something it's like, oh, you know what,
Speaker 1: I do need that or I didn't even know that
Speaker 1: existed and now I want it. Like based on your
Speaker 1: preferences for the following science fiction stories, we think these
Speaker 1: are novels that you will find of interest. Right Hamilton's space,
Speaker 1: that would be right up there. Um. But but there
Speaker 1: are other cases where targeted advertising you might feel that
Speaker 1: that's too much of a threat to your privacy. And
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't I can't fault anyone for feeling
Speaker 1: that way. And you might say, look, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't allow cookies. I don't allow any of that stuff
Speaker 1: to kind of trace my my my online behaviors because
Speaker 1: I want it to be just me. Whatever I need
Speaker 1: to research or access, that's it. And that would be
Speaker 1: a reason to install an ad blockers so that you
Speaker 1: don't have that following you around. And then finally, ads
Speaker 1: can sometimes be a vector from malware, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that specifically in just a little bit. So that's
Speaker 1: to me, like, those are the reasons a lot of
Speaker 1: people give for why they install ad blockers, and I think,
Speaker 1: you know, again to varying degrees, they're valid. Uh. And
Speaker 1: there's some interesting arguments about why ad blockers shouldn't be
Speaker 1: condemned or outlawed, why they they serve a purpose and
Speaker 1: content providers should not make a big deal out of this. Now,
Speaker 1: the reason we bring this up is that more and
Speaker 1: more content providers are using means to detect when an
Speaker 1: AD blockers in place, right, and you'll get a notification
Speaker 1: uh that says we see that you're using an ad
Speaker 1: blocking service, right. And this this notification from the website
Speaker 1: has has a range of responses, so you may see
Speaker 1: something that says we see your using an app blocker.
Speaker 1: We get it. Ads are annoying, but this is our
Speaker 1: business and this is how we make money. To the
Speaker 1: furthest extreme, which which I think we already alluded to Forbes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where the website is crippled or restricted unless you turn
Speaker 1: off an app block And I get it again. We
Speaker 1: work for a company that makes money through advertising, and
Speaker 1: I I get the need to say, look, I gotta
Speaker 1: protect my business. I can't just let people quote unquote
Speaker 1: steal stuff, right. I can't let people walk in take things.
Speaker 1: And there's no means for me to generate revenue because
Speaker 1: then I can't pay the people who work for me.
Speaker 1: If I can't pay the people who work for me,
Speaker 1: I go out of business. And then you don't have
Speaker 1: the content in the first place. That is a valid argument, right,
Speaker 1: that's valid to say, Look, I have to be able
Speaker 1: to generate revenue in order to do the thing you want.
Speaker 1: You came to me buster, you put in my address
Speaker 1: in your little U r L bar, or you did
Speaker 1: a search and followed the link. So I have something
Speaker 1: you want, but you want it for free, and I
Speaker 1: can't perpetually give it away for free because then I
Speaker 1: can't pay the rent, I can't buy food. I we
Speaker 1: have to have this exchange for this to work. I
Speaker 1: get that. But some people say, listen, condemning the ad
Speaker 1: blockers is the wrong way to go. And here is
Speaker 1: the reasoning it sounds a lot like the same reasons
Speaker 1: people say piracy doesn't ultimately matter that much online. What okay,
Speaker 1: I'm scooting to the edge of So here's the argument.
Speaker 1: The argument is that the people who install ad blockers
Speaker 1: are the people who would otherwise be ignoring your ads
Speaker 1: anyway a self selecting sample. Yeah, they would be. They
Speaker 1: would be the ones that ads would not be effective
Speaker 1: on them. They don't want the ads, they don't see
Speaker 1: the ads. They're blocking the ads mainly because they just
Speaker 1: don't even want the distraction there. So these are these
Speaker 1: are lost revenue. They're never going their impressions don't matter.
Speaker 1: They are never going to buy those diapers. Yes, and
Speaker 1: so the argument is that if you factor in their impressions,
Speaker 1: if you were to say, okay, no ad blockers, then
Speaker 1: the people who figure out the rates for advertising, the
Speaker 1: ones who say, here's how much it's worth to display
Speaker 1: an AD on your site. If they say, well, you
Speaker 1: don't allow ad blockers, and you've got exper you know,
Speaker 1: X number of visitors per month, we estimate that a
Speaker 1: certain percentage of those let's say thirty would normally use
Speaker 1: ad blockers if you allowed it, that is worthless to us.
Speaker 1: So it dilutes the value of advertising on your web
Speaker 1: page because you're forcing them to look at something that
Speaker 1: doesn't work for them, which means it's it's a lost
Speaker 1: cause you can't count those numbers and say that's a success.
Speaker 1: You can't say these This thirty percent of people who
Speaker 1: saw your ad means that it's worth x amount because
Speaker 1: they're worthless and so uh to to see the analog
Speaker 1: in the piracy argument there, assume it would be the
Speaker 1: same thing that such a person who pirates torrents downloads
Speaker 1: illegally streams some sort of video. Let's let's go with
Speaker 1: Game of Thrones. Sure, okay, so someone who is stealing
Speaker 1: Game of Thrones, which I believe still holds the record
Speaker 1: for the most torrented. I'm pretty sure that every time
Speaker 1: that a new season debuts that breaks the record. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so people around the world are stealing the holy heck
Speaker 1: out of this thing. But would they have uh, would
Speaker 1: they have paid for an HBO subscription? Would or HBO
Speaker 1: now right? Would they have gone through a regular channel anyway?
Speaker 1: And the answer is it's impossible to say, but it
Speaker 1: appears that there are lots of people out there who
Speaker 1: will pirate something. Uh. And the really easy examples are
Speaker 1: the ones that like movies that a lot of people
Speaker 1: aren't feeling very strongly about beforehand, Like like there was
Speaker 1: the Wolverine film, Wolverine the Origins film, and it was
Speaker 1: getting panned by critics, and it got pirate it like crazy,
Speaker 1: and then you had the studios say, hey, you've stolen
Speaker 1: revenue from us, and the private said, we weren't going
Speaker 1: to pay to see your movie at all. So really
Speaker 1: the option was we steal your movie and watch it,
Speaker 1: which granted for you, stinks, or or we don't see
Speaker 1: the movie at all, but either way you don't get
Speaker 1: any money. Like so, so, uh, that's that's a I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a weird argument to make saying like, well, you're
Speaker 1: not losing revenue because you wouldn't have made it anyway.
Speaker 1: You would not have made those sales, So saying that
Speaker 1: the piracy cost you sales is disingenuous. But saying that
Speaker 1: people are accessing your content without paying for it fairly,
Speaker 1: that's a that's totally legitimate. That's a completely legitimate argument.
Speaker 1: So it's a little bit of a perspective issue, right,
Speaker 1: It depends on what you're arguing for. If you're saying
Speaker 1: you're costing me because otherwise you would have bought this thing.
Speaker 1: That may not hold true. But if you're saying you're
Speaker 1: stealing something I made and really you should pay for it,
Speaker 1: that's that's a different argument. So those are that's kind
Speaker 1: of laying the groundwork for the rest of our conversation here.
Speaker 1: Let's start with, um, well, let's start with some just
Speaker 1: some thoughts, like when when I talked about that targeted advertising,
Speaker 1: we mentioned the example, Um, have you ever really looked
Speaker 1: into that at all for stuff they don't want you
Speaker 1: to know or anything related to that. Yes, yeah, the
Speaker 1: example of your you're talking about the kid right, predicting
Speaker 1: the birth. Yes, we have looked at this in a
Speaker 1: couple of different ways, and one of the one of
Speaker 1: the ways that we looked into it most often would
Speaker 1: be the concerns of big big data. Big data, the
Speaker 1: information that people just emanate or create through their passage online.
Speaker 1: Picture your average day on the internet, like one of
Speaker 1: those old family circuits comic strips with the map and
Speaker 1: the little dotted line and those accumulated Billy goes running
Speaker 1: around the neighbor exactly, God, Billy walking a straight line.
Speaker 1: You know what, I mean right. But but this is
Speaker 1: a good comparison because those breadcrumbs, those accumulated dashes of
Speaker 1: our secuitous lines in our day to day traffic, establish
Speaker 1: a precedent, establish a pattern, and most people, most Internet users,
Speaker 1: are astonished when they see how accurate or how sophisticated
Speaker 1: the profile painted of them can become. You know you
Speaker 1: may say I have a collection of different passwords. You
Speaker 1: may say you know you. And I earlier did an
Speaker 1: episode on whether it's possible to be anonymous on the Internet,
Speaker 1: and it is possible, but it is such a pain
Speaker 1: in the key start right, and and the more activity
Speaker 1: you do, the less possible it becomes. Exactly because while
Speaker 1: again like when I said, your name is the least
Speaker 1: important piece of information about you, it really is. People
Speaker 1: don't need to know your name to know who you
Speaker 1: are based upon the things that are important to them,
Speaker 1: which is why it is again I love to use
Speaker 1: the word disingenuous, which is it's disingenuous as well to
Speaker 1: say this data is uh is anonymous? You know yeah?
Speaker 1: Because all sorts of little data points point to who
Speaker 1: you are as a person, even if it doesn't give
Speaker 1: you a first and last name, right, it's like saying
Speaker 1: these fingerprints are anonymous, there's still somebody's fingerprints exactly, And
Speaker 1: and the stuff we leave behind, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: a digital fingerprint, and uh. And some of that information
Speaker 1: might be stuff that a lot of people know about us,
Speaker 1: like the Hamilton's thing. Ben clearly knows about it. Of
Speaker 1: course we talked about it before video. But but that's
Speaker 1: something that you know, people know who know me, they
Speaker 1: know that I'm a big fan of musicals. But then
Speaker 1: there may be other stuff that you don't want people
Speaker 1: to know. Let's see, there's a let's say you have
Speaker 1: you are someone close to you as a medical dishes, right, right,
Speaker 1: and you don't want people to you know, you don't
Speaker 1: want people to know, for instance, that let's just say
Speaker 1: your partner or your spouse is being tested for some
Speaker 1: sort of cancer, right that that's none of anyone else's
Speaker 1: business but me and my spouse. Right. That's a that's
Speaker 1: an example that is perfectly cromulent in this case, right.
Speaker 1: And I know it's an extreme one, right right, But
Speaker 1: it's it's anything like that, right, anything where it's like
Speaker 1: it's not that I'm ashamed of something that I've done
Speaker 1: something wrong far from it. It's just that it's a
Speaker 1: piece of information I don't want to share with the
Speaker 1: rest of the world. Our activities online can inadvertently, in
Speaker 1: some cases give that information to third parties which may
Speaker 1: use it in order to try and profit from it.
Speaker 1: Not necessarily maliciously either. It's that's where the targeted advertising
Speaker 1: comes in, and you get this targeted ad that is
Speaker 1: again not milicious, it's necessarily we'll talk about malicious ads
Speaker 1: in a minute. Um, not malicious in intent, but it
Speaker 1: could have a negative impact on your experience of being
Speaker 1: online because then you think I thought I was being careful.
Speaker 1: I thought no one knew, but now someone knows. Now
Speaker 1: I logged into Facebook after I was logged out of Facebook,
Speaker 1: by the way, those are some pernicious cookies. After I
Speaker 1: was logged out of Facebook ostensibly and checked on uh,
Speaker 1: learned about the specific type of cancer my spouse might
Speaker 1: have came logged in, And now I see an ad
Speaker 1: for a cancer clinic and hoping with cancer And that's etrusive.
Speaker 1: That is offensive. Yeah, it's it is to a point
Speaker 1: where like that is not the direction that I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people we're thinking about when they started
Speaker 1: thinking about the potential or targeted ads like absolutely not.
Speaker 1: The ideal situation is that the ads you see are
Speaker 1: the ones that are relevant to you in your situation
Speaker 1: and ones that would be effective in getting you to
Speaker 1: purchase a product or service. And because that's ultimately what
Speaker 1: ads are for. Ads are there to inform you and
Speaker 1: convince you need this thing or service or whatever it
Speaker 1: may be. And and if it's done well, then everyone's
Speaker 1: happy because we all get access to the stuff we want.
Speaker 1: We see things that we want to purchase. UH. The
Speaker 1: advertisers succeed in what they're doing, their clients succeed, everyone
Speaker 1: is happy. The problem is that that's a very narrow
Speaker 1: band of the overall experience that people have had with
Speaker 1: targeted advertising. UH, and again has led to this realm
Speaker 1: of this this this culture where ad blockers are seen
Speaker 1: as being a UH perfectly legitimate response to that. And
Speaker 1: it's funny because you know, we've both talked about how
Speaker 1: we admitted to UH using ad blockers. I was amazed
Speaker 1: at how many articles I came across us where they're
Speaker 1: written on websites that have advertising by employees of that website,
Speaker 1: and the employees are saying, yeah, I use ad blockers
Speaker 1: to right, like to the point where you're sitting there
Speaker 1: thinking like, wow, this is pretty heavy stuff when you're
Speaker 1: seeing it from other journalists. And in fact, there was
Speaker 1: an editor, Duncan Riley, a publisher, in fact Duncan Riley
Speaker 1: who wrote in Silicon Angle dot com a piece that
Speaker 1: came out today, in fact, April twenty nine is when
Speaker 1: we're recording this two thousand and sixteen, and the the
Speaker 1: title of the pieces confession of a long time publisher.
Speaker 1: I now use an ad blocker and I like it.
Speaker 1: And the piece kind of lays out the same sort
Speaker 1: of things we've been talking about already and mentions that
Speaker 1: there's already a problem here. The big problem is that
Speaker 1: advertising has become so obnoxious that it has it is.
Speaker 1: It is counterproductive, It is doing opposite of what it
Speaker 1: is intended to do. It is driving people away, not
Speaker 1: bringing people in. Right then, and to the point where
Speaker 1: people are looking at advertisement not as a vast series
Speaker 1: of varying cases, but as one monolithic thing. Yeah and yeah,
Speaker 1: and well and really, it doesn't take that many really
Speaker 1: bad experiences to paint with abroad with broad strokes, right,
Speaker 1: because you get something like a truly awful experience. That's
Speaker 1: enough to commence people to say, well, even for the
Speaker 1: ads that are not that bad, I'd rather go ahead
Speaker 1: and use an ad blocker to avoid the ones that
Speaker 1: are that bad, even if I only encounter those rarely.
Speaker 1: And part of the problem there is a question of
Speaker 1: evolution and learning curve because a lot of targeted advertising
Speaker 1: functions in an automated fashion. Yeah, yeah, no, there's no
Speaker 1: person there to apply compassion and judgment. There's no one.
Speaker 1: There's no one saying y'all constricted in day. I feel
Speaker 1: like it's time for some diapers, right right, Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: no diaper's buttons behind the scenes. I wish there were.
Speaker 1: It would be hilarious to see, like there's just some
Speaker 1: some mischievous, impish person sitting behind the scenes with a
Speaker 1: massive panel of button and different buttons for different things on'es,
Speaker 1: Like one's like cheaper razor blades. Jonathan, you've been shifting
Speaker 1: in your seat. Here's an adverse tools softener. I think,
Speaker 1: what the heck is going on? Well, well, gaing him
Speaker 1: up to an eye poop, that's right, we'll be pitching
Speaker 1: that later. So one of the other things that duncan
Speaker 1: Riley pointed out in this piece that I thought was interesting.
Speaker 1: He said that the other big push in online advertising
Speaker 1: right now, apart from video ads, which I mean that
Speaker 1: because a mobile the mobile experience, video ads has become
Speaker 1: a big thing, the other skip this out in five
Speaker 1: yea exactly, the big the big one is um native advertising,
Speaker 1: which uh, to you guys out there may not mean
Speaker 1: very much two people in our position, it means our
Speaker 1: worst nightmare. So what is native advertising for people who
Speaker 1: are not because that's a little bit of an insight
Speaker 1: baseball term. Native advertising is when you get paid by
Speaker 1: a company to produce a specific piece of content, typically
Speaker 1: one that supports that company's products, also known as advertorial. Yes,
Speaker 1: and a lot of like if you do it really
Speaker 1: really well, which is very hard to do. But if
Speaker 1: you do it really really well, it can still be informative,
Speaker 1: it can still be entertaining, and it can still do
Speaker 1: the purpose of advertising whatever the product or services without
Speaker 1: it feeling absolutely creepy on the part of the person
Speaker 1: who had to write it. But it is really hard
Speaker 1: to do that. Yeah, it can feel creepy for the
Speaker 1: people creating this, because native advertising can put someone in
Speaker 1: an ethical dilemma wherein, for instance, let's say Jonathan and
Speaker 1: I have a have a show wherein we are going
Speaker 1: to do a tech stuff about the technology behind strip mining. Alright,
Speaker 1: what I mean? And while we're exploring that, naturally you
Speaker 1: and I would say, well, here are some things you
Speaker 1: need to know about strip mining. Here. Here's like the
Speaker 1: environmental impact of strip mining. Right, here's the historical significance,
Speaker 1: the political battles that have happened over strip mining. Here's
Speaker 1: how it has affected people who live in areas where
Speaker 1: strip mining happened. But if it were a piece of
Speaker 1: native advertising where a mining company had paid for it,
Speaker 1: and they said, all right, you can do pieces on it,
Speaker 1: just don't mention any of those things, right right, and
Speaker 1: don't call it strip mine. We have a new term,
Speaker 1: we call it um mineral hugs. Yeah, then then that
Speaker 1: would be problematic. And as as as Riley points out,
Speaker 1: he says that um that you eventually end up with
Speaker 1: advertising pretending to be editorial. He says, and that not
Speaker 1: only sucks if not labeled properly, it's downright dishonest and
Speaker 1: constitutes deceiving your readers. And we know you guys are smart, right,
Speaker 1: Like the people who are in the writer and editorial departments.
Speaker 1: We know you're smart. We know that you can tell
Speaker 1: when something is something is like that, oh buddy, yeah.
Speaker 1: The anyone on the internet, although you'll hear all these
Speaker 1: stereotypes of people being credulous in general, more so than
Speaker 1: a radio or television audience, people who listen to podcasts,
Speaker 1: people who go online for their news or entertainment are
Speaker 1: very very aware of this. They can sense. They can
Speaker 1: like like Matt Murdoch, well, for one thing, one thing,
Speaker 1: we've been sold to all our lives. We in America,
Speaker 1: we have grown up in a culture of advertising and selling,
Speaker 1: and after a while you get good at recognizing it. Right.
Speaker 1: So that's uh that That's an argument that often comes
Speaker 1: up when it when it gets down to sales versus editorial,
Speaker 1: which not doesn't happen that frequently, but it has happened.
Speaker 1: Then the editorial will say, listen, this is a road
Speaker 1: we don't want to go down because it is a
Speaker 1: bad experience for our audience. They recognize what it is
Speaker 1: right away. It is very hard to do well, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't work for the advertiser right. It doesn't do
Speaker 1: anyone any favors. It tells the audience we don't, we don't,
Speaker 1: we don't value your intelligence. We don't think that you're
Speaker 1: smart enough to realize that this is essentially an advertisement.
Speaker 1: You're reading. Um, and the audience ends up saying, well,
Speaker 1: if you don't value me, I don't value you, let
Speaker 1: alone the products you're trying to sell. So I'm out
Speaker 1: and we knew this and um, and so native advertising
Speaker 1: is one of those things that again, if you do
Speaker 1: it very transparently and if you are very careful, I
Speaker 1: think you can do it well if you have a
Speaker 1: separation of I guess the separation church and state in
Speaker 1: a way. That's a phrase that we've used before wherein
Speaker 1: So let's say, just just for an example, let's say,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen, that Jonathan does a show for just
Speaker 1: your average everyday podcast, right it's text stuff does text stuff.
Speaker 1: Episode is approached and by someone who wants him to
Speaker 1: do some native advertising for let's see a cell phone. Sure, right,
Speaker 1: those are popular and uh then Jonathan, with the editorial oversight,
Speaker 1: would say, well, if we do this, I want it
Speaker 1: to be clear this is brought to you by you
Speaker 1: know whomever, and just say, like, so, people who list
Speaker 1: into it from the very beginning. They know what they're
Speaker 1: getting into and that they trust me to give them
Speaker 1: information that is uh, that is honest. It may be
Speaker 1: that due to that agreement there's certain things I'm not
Speaker 1: allowed to talk about for whatever reason, But as long
Speaker 1: as I'm completely honest upfront and just say, you know,
Speaker 1: this is UH, this this episode is brought to you
Speaker 1: by so and so. We're going to talk about their
Speaker 1: product today. Here's what I have to say about it. Um,
Speaker 1: that's that's okay. It's even better if they give you
Speaker 1: full editorial control where you can, like you you can say, like,
Speaker 1: can I say things that may be a little critical
Speaker 1: of the product, as long as I'm being fair, Like
Speaker 1: I'm not attacking, but I'm I'm bringing up concerns people
Speaker 1: have had because if I don't do it, my listeners
Speaker 1: will being objective being at the forefront of this with
Speaker 1: what I love about the line of argument we're looking
Speaker 1: at here is that the editor the publisher question is
Speaker 1: absolutely correct. It's a new it's a more evolved form
Speaker 1: of targeted advertising, because then the target becomes not just uh,
Speaker 1: someone who looked at someone who googled something three times
Speaker 1: in the past week. It becomes any audience member that
Speaker 1: trusts you and that and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: there there's this prepackaged demographic. Assuming that you have any
Speaker 1: you know, perceived integrity and reputation, then then absolutely know
Speaker 1: your reputation proceeds you. My I'd like to think that
Speaker 1: people believe I have integrity. If you do not think
Speaker 1: I have integrity, please feel free to feel free to
Speaker 1: send an email to stuff you should know with this,
Speaker 1: with this targeting stuff, As you said, it is difficult
Speaker 1: to do, it can be done, It can be done well.
Speaker 1: For example, The Daily Show under John Stewart's regime. Under
Speaker 1: John Stewart's run on the show, Uh, they had Arby's
Speaker 1: as a sponsor, right, And what was hilarious about it
Speaker 1: is every time they brought up Arby's they talked massive
Speaker 1: amounts of trash about Arby's. Yeah, but but to the
Speaker 1: point where Arby's got the joke and they incorporated the
Speaker 1: joke themselves on on on his last episode, there was
Speaker 1: like a statement from arby saying we'll miss you John,
Speaker 1: and I just thought like that's amazing, Like how many
Speaker 1: companies do you know, yeah that would say like look
Speaker 1: this is this. They're having fun. They're not really trying
Speaker 1: to damage our brand. That's not what it's really about.
Speaker 1: Let's just have fun too. I mean that's a hard
Speaker 1: decision to make, because if you feel your brand is
Speaker 1: under attack, then you know you want to go on
Speaker 1: the offenses it as possible. Right. So that's the reason
Speaker 1: why a certain bombastic cable provider hasn't just gone the
Speaker 1: whole nine yards yet and use the monopoly Man in
Speaker 1: Darth Vader as their sponsors, right or as their mascots. Yeah. Ben,
Speaker 1: as it turned out, you and I talked a lot
Speaker 1: more what about ads than we anticipated. I thought this
Speaker 1: was gonna be like a forty minute conversation. It turned
Speaker 1: out to be about an hour and twenty minutes, and
Speaker 1: that's pretty long for an episode of tech Stuff. So
Speaker 1: so in order to preserve the sanity of my listeners,
Speaker 1: I thought we might cut it off here, post the
Speaker 1: recording and pick up where we left off next week.
Speaker 1: So let people know where they can find your work. Ah, Yes,
Speaker 1: what you're waiting for the next episode of our series
Speaker 1: on target advertising here at tech Stuff. Why not visit
Speaker 1: stuff they don't want you to know where and you
Speaker 1: can find tech Stuff host John it Than Strickland exploring
Speaker 1: the darker side of technology in our show, which covers
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories, corruption, allegations of the paranormal and more more more,
Speaker 1: more nice is that cool? I do my own post
Speaker 1: and that's it's good now you know that way we
Speaker 1: decrease the load on the publication side. And guys, if
Speaker 1: you have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: why don't you write them to me because shouting them
Speaker 1: out the window hasn't been helping. The email addresses tech
Speaker 1: Stuff at health stuff works dot com. And remember you
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Speaker 1: message to me, as in, use that one to direct
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Speaker 1: Keep your filthy myths off of it. So until next time,
Speaker 1: I hope. Yeah, guys, have a great one and I
Speaker 1: will talk to you again about ads really send for
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is that
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