Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech
Speaker 1: are you? I almost forgot my own tagline there. I've
Speaker 1: been batch recording intros and outros for classic episodes and
Speaker 1: I'm up to number fourteen and I'm starting to get loopy.
Speaker 1: But this is a great time for me to welcome
Speaker 1: you here to listen to this classic episode that originally
Speaker 1: published on May eighteen, twenty sixteen. It is a fun
Speaker 1: two part episode, so we'll get part two next week.
Speaker 1: And Ben joined the show. Ben Bolan of Stuff They
Speaker 1: Don't Want You To Know and Ridiculous History fame, as
Speaker 1: well as a phenomenal writer on some of our narrative
Speaker 1: fictional podcast episodes. He joined the show to talk about
Speaker 1: the problem with ads. So this one is part one.
Speaker 1: Next week we'll get part two, and yeah, man, we
Speaker 1: could probably do a full mini series about the problem
Speaker 1: with ads and the balance between commerce and content or
Speaker 1: art if you will not for me to assume that
Speaker 1: tech Stuff is art, but rather how do you balance
Speaker 1: the desire to create valuable informative content or entertaining content
Speaker 1: against commerce. There have been a lot of missteps in
Speaker 1: that path, and we're going to listen to this episode
Speaker 1: and learn about some of those. So sit back and
Speaker 1: enjoy this classic episode from twenty sixteen. Have you ever
Speaker 1: seen and advertisement and thought, yes, absolutely, this is for
Speaker 1: me rarely, but it has been known to happen, I
Speaker 1: can tell you right now. I can tell you too,
Speaker 1: right off the top of my head, and it's largely
Speaker 1: because of the tone of the advertising campaign. Old spicy odorant,
Speaker 1: right right? Dollar shave Club? Okay, what about Dollar shave Club? Guy?
Speaker 1: The commercials for a dollar shave Club are kind of
Speaker 1: in that same tongue in cheek, snarky sort of approach,
Speaker 1: a little not so in your face as to be
Speaker 1: truly obnoxious, but just barely straddling that line between being
Speaker 1: charming and being arrogant. And I find it entertaining. And
Speaker 1: I thought, well, I shave quite a bit actually, because
Speaker 1: because I got the head that I have to shave
Speaker 1: because nature has deprived me of some of my hair
Speaker 1: but not all of it, so I have to get
Speaker 1: rid of the rest. And I decided to try it
Speaker 1: out because I thought the ads were really entertaining. The
Speaker 1: idea of the subscription model was much more attractive to
Speaker 1: me than having to go to the store and ask
Speaker 1: to unlock the vault of razors. Yeah, and it turned
Speaker 1: out that I loved the products. So 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 its ultimately got
Speaker 1: me to act, which are That's exactly what ads are
Speaker 1: supposed to do. Let me tell you what ads are
Speaker 1: not supposed to do. Whatsosed to do. They're not supposed
Speaker 1: to irritate the audience to the point where they no
Speaker 1: longer ever want to buy anything ever again, and then
Speaker 1: they rage quit the Internet. So today we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about ads and ad blockers and to kind of
Speaker 1: go into the discussion that's been kind of going around
Speaker 1: recently about ad blockers, including some of the stuff that's
Speaker 1: going on in Europe, some of the stuff that you
Speaker 1: might have heard about as far as ads and their
Speaker 1: relationship to malware. What exactly is going on and where
Speaker 1: do we stand on this? And then you know, you
Speaker 1: do a lot of stuff here at how stuff works,
Speaker 1: but I specifically ask you, in your capacity as one
Speaker 1: of the hosts of stuff they don't want you to
Speaker 1: know because as the host of that show, you've covered
Speaker 1: the topics surrounding privacy pretty extensively, right, and privacy is
Speaker 1: one of the factors that comes into play when you're
Speaker 1: talking about advertising, particularly today when targeted advertising has become
Speaker 1: such a huge part of strategies. Now, to start this off,
Speaker 1: before we jump into all of that, I thought I
Speaker 1: would give kind of a really high level explanation of
Speaker 1: what is going on behind the scenes technically with ads
Speaker 1: on web pages and thus how ad blockers are able
Speaker 1: to work at all. You might think, well, how can
Speaker 1: an ad blocker recognize and block and add but not
Speaker 1: the content I'm trying to see? So, Ben Jonathan, you work,
Speaker 1: You work on the web. Yes, you you've visited a
Speaker 1: website or two. You probably know that you do so
Speaker 1: through something called a browser. Yes, yes, for you know,
Speaker 1: something like a Chrome, Firefox, Edge Edge. Yeah. And if
Speaker 1: you are using Internet Explorer, I hope it is only
Speaker 1: 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? I remember, Yeah, there was
Speaker 1: that was the only reason. I had Internet Explorer installed
Speaker 1: on my old computers so that I could access our
Speaker 1: company's former intrnet, which is ridiculous. But here we are
Speaker 1: nonetheless on a browser. Yeah. So when you are visiting
Speaker 1: a website using your browser, you type in the r
Speaker 1: L type of deep deep, and you put it in
Speaker 1: the address bar and you hit that inter button. What
Speaker 1: is happening is your browser is sending out a request
Speaker 1: over the Internet, and it's essentially saying, Hey, the jerk
Speaker 1: on the other end of this keyboard wants to see
Speaker 1: you know. Uh, I don't know what's a good website.
Speaker 1: Let's say Wired dot com. That's a great example, because
Speaker 1: Wired's going to come up in other parts of this discussion. Yeah,
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 the US living
Speaker 1: up to its name, the information to you, and it
Speaker 1: goes back across the Internet, not necessarily in the same
Speaker 1: pathway that your request came through. That gets into a
Speaker 1: discussion of packets that really is immaterial for this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've talked about packets in previous episodes. So if you
Speaker 1: really want to know what packet switching is and how
Speaker 1: all that works, go check out the archives of tech
Speaker 1: stuff and it's out there. But the information comes to you,
Speaker 1: and your browser puts it together and displays it for you,
Speaker 1: and it does so based upon the rules set up
Speaker 1: by the web master rights whoever put it together. There
Speaker 1: are there's language tags that explain how it's supposed to
Speaker 1: look when it's displayed on your browser, and that's how
Speaker 1: it works. And so you think, okay, so so it's
Speaker 1: really just a request and then a response. But then
Speaker 1: you have ads. Now, with ads, the content for the
Speaker 1: ads comes from a different place than the content for
Speaker 1: the web page itself. So those ads that are on
Speaker 1: wired dot com, they're actually coming from different servers. They're
Speaker 1: not coming from wired's server, and the web page just
Speaker 1: has a space dedicated or some form of a relationship
Speaker 1: there that's dedicated to the ad that says this is
Speaker 1: where the ad will go when it's served to the viewer,
Speaker 1: and that depends on the arrangement between the advertiser and
Speaker 1: the content creator. Yeah, so you could probably, I mean,
Speaker 1: we could really dive down into this and say, all
Speaker 1: these different types of ads have different rates. Like a
Speaker 1: banner add at this point is almost considered to be worthless,
Speaker 1: and a banner ad is a term describing those long,
Speaker 1: horizontal ads you will see that take up an entire
Speaker 1: row I guess of a website, right, Yeah, And you
Speaker 1: could say, like a rail would be the vertical version
Speaker 1: of that, either on the left or right. And then
Speaker 1: there are other things like they are pop ups, per
Speaker 1: tons of different types and they all have different rates
Speaker 1: depending upon the lots of factors. How popular is the
Speaker 1: website and how effective are those ads considered to be,
Speaker 1: Like the least effective are the ones, They're going to
Speaker 1: be the least expensive. And in some cases you will
Speaker 1: find web pages that have completely abandoned some of the
Speaker 1: cheaper ones because they don't really work anyway, And you
Speaker 1: might as well try and command a higher price. So
Speaker 1: those impressions those that data is actually coming from other
Speaker 1: servers and they're the advertisers. Servers are the more likely
Speaker 1: advertising agencies servers where that data lives. So as the
Speaker 1: page is loading up the sections for the ads, that
Speaker 1: gets another request saying hey, send me the information that's
Speaker 1: supposed to go here. It's coming from this other server
Speaker 1: that gets sent to your computer and is inserted into
Speaker 1: the appropriate section by your browser when it's constructing the
Speaker 1: whole thing. The way ad blockers work is essentially it
Speaker 1: has a filter list saying anything coming from these particular servers,
Speaker 1: don't let it show up, just don't even let it
Speaker 1: through the door, like mad ads dot com. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: I just made up right right, So so anything that
Speaker 1: would come from that server would automatically get blocked and
Speaker 1: not be incorporated into the web page as you're displaying it.
Speaker 1: So that's the general way that most ad blockers work.
Speaker 1: There's another way too. The ad blockers can also look
Speaker 1: for certain tags that are associated with advertising, like there's
Speaker 1: actually a tag for ad that kind of stuff, and
Speaker 1: just block anything that that shows up under that tag.
Speaker 1: But generally speaking, the idea is just a kind of
Speaker 1: a bouncer that says anyone from this neighborhood is not
Speaker 1: allowed into the club, and so checking your checking all
Speaker 1: the IDs and saying I'm sorry, you're from a part
Speaker 1: of the neighborhood where we don't let you in. It's
Speaker 1: so discriminatory. That's the way. That's that's how an ad
Speaker 1: blocker has to work, right, It has to discriminate, otherwise
Speaker 1: you don't get You either get everything or you get nothing.
Speaker 1: So it has and we should do a disclaimer, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is what Oh, okay, I'll do it. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: we are fully aware, ladies and gentlemen, that we do
Speaker 1: work for an internet company how stuff works. It's our
Speaker 1: parent company for our range of podcasts, and it is
Speaker 1: AD supported, and it is AD supported, and quite a
Speaker 1: few things online are AD supported. Yes. However, I will
Speaker 1: confess to my hypocrisy because I am an enormous fan
Speaker 1: of certain ad blockers. Yeah, 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 we'll 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, be not to leave you hanging out there.
Speaker 1: I use ad blockers too sometimes sometimes I will set
Speaker 1: exemptions for websites that I think are handling advertising in
Speaker 1: a responsible way, in a non invasive, non potentially harmful
Speaker 1: kind of way. So you can you can with most
Speaker 1: ad blockers set filters and say anything on this page,
Speaker 1: go ahead and show me the ad. It's fine. Can
Speaker 1: white list stuff exactly sowire dot com. There's an example
Speaker 1: 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.
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 going to run through
Speaker 1: a few of those. And also I could say that
Speaker 1: there's other things you can do, like through your browser
Speaker 1: itself that don't necessarily block ads, but block elements of
Speaker 1: ads that you might find particularly irritatingly. Yeah. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: you can disable video or audio or flash animation, or
Speaker 1: you can not even have flash installed, So that also
Speaker 1: helps yeah, I don't know. Is Yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of content out there that is dependent upon flash and
Speaker 1: without it. Without flash, it makes it harder. Another some
Speaker 1: things have definitely helped by moving to HTML five. So
Speaker 1: at any rate, let's talk about some of the reasons
Speaker 1: folks block ads. Uh, some of them, like we said,
Speaker 1: are just obnoxious. They're intrusive. They ruin the experience you're
Speaker 1: trying to have. If you are trying to read an
Speaker 1: article and as you scroll down, a window slides into view,
Speaker 1: covering up the text you're trying to read and is
Speaker 1: auto playing some commercial that has no bearing on your
Speaker 1: life whatsoever, that's a bad experience. Right Like if if
Speaker 1: I were going on a page about a technical gadget
Speaker 1: and I'm reading and as I scrolled down, an ad
Speaker 1: for diapers comes on, I'm going to be irritated. I
Speaker 1: don't have a baby, I don't need diapers myself. Yet
Speaker 1: you're not reading about something related to diapers. No, I'm
Speaker 1: not reading about the latest and diaper tracking software, you know,
Speaker 1: getting that notification on your app that's time to change
Speaker 1: the diaper. I'm not reading any of that. That would
Speaker 1: be a very bad experience. It could be I poop.
Speaker 1: I mean I do. That's I don't want to get
Speaker 1: into it. That's probably one that we will not pitch
Speaker 1: on that show. Yeah, so that's one reason. Just just
Speaker 1: because it's an it can be an unpleasant experience. Depending
Speaker 1: upon the way the ad is presented, it's disruptive, it is,
Speaker 1: it is disruptive. Another is that it slows downloading time,
Speaker 1: right because there is this additional uh communication that has
Speaker 1: to happen to pull that information in while the page
Speaker 1: is loading. And we all know that we have very
Speaker 1: little patients to wait around when loading website. If you've
Speaker 1: ever had one of those days that here at work
Speaker 1: where occasionally our network gets a little sludgy, oh pandemonium.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you're like, you're like typing in even if
Speaker 1: you're just typing in something like I just need to
Speaker 1: Google something and you're typing in your Google search and
Speaker 1: you hit in her and it's not that point three
Speaker 1: second response and it takes like a couple of seconds.
Speaker 1: You go nuts, You're like, what is happening? Bandemonium? We're
Speaker 1: one slow internet connection from away from a series of
Speaker 1: knife fights. Yeah no, I mean we have the knives
Speaker 1: here in the office, right, I personally plan on hiding
Speaker 1: because there's some crazy people in this Oh yeah, yeah, Scott,
Speaker 1: Benjamin's got some moves. He's got to reach to man's
Speaker 1: got he's got that armspan. So ads also can take
Speaker 1: up a lot of bandwidth, right, that's another huge problem
Speaker 1: because a lot of I sps are using bandwidth caps,
Speaker 1: especially in the mobile world. Old Ben Boland and I
Speaker 1: will be back in just a moment to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about the problem with ads after this
Speaker 1: quick break. So, both in mobile and my home ISSP
Speaker 1: technically have a data cap. Now I have paid extra
Speaker 1: to get out of the cap on both sides, but
Speaker 1: that's because I make enough money where I can pay
Speaker 1: a little extra to do that. That should not be
Speaker 1: something I don't think that should be encouraged. I think
Speaker 1: that there's no real good reason for data caps, particularly
Speaker 1: for home networks. But if you have ads activated, that's
Speaker 1: more data that's coming through. That means that not only
Speaker 1: do you not want to see these things, but it's
Speaker 1: 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: end of it so angry about that the emperor has
Speaker 1: no clothes. Yeah, let's just say that. Uh, I think
Speaker 1: some companies can be a little bombastic, which rhymes a
Speaker 1: lot with a certain isp that I'm not happy about, right, Right,
Speaker 1: But as you're saying that's that's an excellent point because
Speaker 1: you know, let's say you see this ad for diapers
Speaker 1: and it's a video, right, it's an AutoPlay video while
Speaker 1: you're reading about your latest gadget that you're doing research on, right,
Speaker 1: and then the chances of this happening are very small.
Speaker 1: But what if it's the proverbial feather on your internet's
Speaker 1: camel back, you know what I mean, Like, right, that's
Speaker 1: the thing that happens, and then the camel just collapses
Speaker 1: and you get the pop up warning. Well, then that's
Speaker 1: exceed your data. 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 a typical month. If you
Speaker 1: are already bumping up against that data cap toward the
Speaker 1: end of the month, like in that last week, ads
Speaker 1: could be accumulatively across the rest of the month be
Speaker 1: enough to make that happen in the middle of the month,
Speaker 1: a problem magnified or exacerbated for mobile users exactly. So
Speaker 1: 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 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 it's not an ad for diapers that's completely
Speaker 1: irrelevant to my life. Let's say it's an AD that's
Speaker 1: very relevant. Maybe it's I don't know, head wax so
Speaker 1: that I can get my head up to a nice
Speaker 1: glossy finish. Or maybe it's Hamilton. May have a conversation
Speaker 1: about Hamilton. It could be that, Yeah, Hamilton is coming
Speaker 1: to Atlanta, the musical Hamilton's coming to Atlanta. Buy your tickets.
Speaker 1: That's an AD that would be precisely targeted to me,
Speaker 1: and I would freak out. I'd say yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: And that would be an AD that would work on
Speaker 1: me because I would love to see that show. If
Speaker 1: you have Hamilton tickets, I will happily take them, all right.
Speaker 1: So that's a great example, But there are other targeted
Speaker 1: ads that can be a little scary, right, especially for
Speaker 1: people who are trying to research something that's really sensitive.
Speaker 1: The example that we have given many times on this
Speaker 1: show is the one about Target, where a young woman
Speaker 1: had been browsing Target ended up sending information to the
Speaker 1: young lady about coupons related to being pregnant. Her father
Speaker 1: intercepted essentially the coupons and got very mad at Target, saying,
Speaker 1: how dare you insinuate that my daughter is pregnant, and
Speaker 1: then later contacted Target again and said, I would like
Speaker 1: to apologize to you. I had a conversation with my
Speaker 1: daughter and it turns out that I didn't know about it,
Speaker 1: but it turns out my daughter is pregnant. But that
Speaker 1: was one of those instances where you know your online
Speaker 1: activity might indicate something you're not comfortable sharing with the
Speaker 1: world at large, and even if your personal identity is
Speaker 1: not part of that, that almost doesn't matter, right, Like
Speaker 1: your name is the least important thing about your personal data.
Speaker 1: What it is you want and need that's way more
Speaker 1: important to advertisers right, and your habits, your frequency of wanting, needing,
Speaker 1: and acquiring those things. And sometimes that's helpful, like if
Speaker 1: you go onto a shopping site like Amazon and it
Speaker 1: starts giving you suggestions based upon things you bought in
Speaker 1: the past, and you might see something it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know what, I do need that or I didn't
Speaker 1: even know that existed and now I want it right,
Speaker 1: Like based on your preferences for the following science fiction stories,
Speaker 1: we think these are novels that you will find of interest.
Speaker 1: Right Hamilton in Space that would be right up there.
Speaker 1: But there are other cases where targeted advertising you might
Speaker 1: feel that that's too much of a threat to your privacy.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I can't I can't fault anyone for
Speaker 1: feeling that way. And you might say, look, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't allow cookies. I don't allow any of that
Speaker 1: stuff to kind of trace 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 ad blockers so that you don't
Speaker 1: have that following you around. And then finally, ads can
Speaker 1: sometimes be a vector from malware. We'll talk about that
Speaker 1: specifically in just a little bit. So that's to me, like,
Speaker 1: those are the reasons a lot of people give for
Speaker 1: why they install ad blockers, and I think, you know, again,
Speaker 1: to varying degrees, they're valid. And there's some interesting arguments
Speaker 1: about why ad blockers shouldn't be condemned or outlawed, why
Speaker 1: they they serve a purpose and content providers should not
Speaker 1: make a big deal out of this. Now, the reason
Speaker 1: we bring this up is that more and more content
Speaker 1: providers are using means to detect when an ad blockers
Speaker 1: in place, right, and you'll get a notification that says,
Speaker 1: we see that you're using an ad blocking service, right,
Speaker 1: And this notification from the website has a range of responses,
Speaker 1: so you may see something that says we see you're
Speaker 1: using an app blocker. We get it. That's are annoying,
Speaker 1: but this is our business, right, this is how we
Speaker 1: make money. To the furthest extreme, which which I think
Speaker 1: we already alluded to Forbes, Yeah, where the website is
Speaker 1: crippled or restricted right unless you turn off an app
Speaker 1: block And I get it again, we work for a
Speaker 1: company that makes money through advertising, and I get the
Speaker 1: need to say, look, I got to protect my business.
Speaker 1: I can't just let people quote unquote steal stuff, right,
Speaker 1: I can't let people walk in take things, and there's
Speaker 1: no means for me to generate revenue because then I
Speaker 1: can't pay the people who work for me. If I
Speaker 1: can't pay the people who work for me, I go
Speaker 1: out of business. And then you don't have the content
Speaker 1: 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 URL bar, or you did a search
Speaker 1: and follow the link. So I have something you want,
Speaker 1: but you want it for free, and I can't perpetually
Speaker 1: give it away for free because then I can't pay
Speaker 1: the rent, I can't buy food. We have to have
Speaker 1: this exchange for this to work. I get that. But
Speaker 1: some people say, listen, condemning the ad blockers is the
Speaker 1: wrong way to go, And here is the reasoning. It
Speaker 1: sounds a lot like the same reasons people say piracy
Speaker 1: doesn't ultimately matter that much online. Yeah, okay, I'm scooting
Speaker 1: to the edge of my Yeah. 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 anyway,
Speaker 1: oh 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 the
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 x x number
Speaker 1: of visitors per month, we estimate that a certain percentage
Speaker 1: of those, let's say thirty percent would normally use ad
Speaker 1: blockers if you allowed it. That thirty percent is worthless
Speaker 1: to us. So it dilutes the value of advertising on
Speaker 1: your web page because you're forcing them to look at
Speaker 1: something that doesn't work for them, which means it's a
Speaker 1: lost cause. You can't count those numbers and say that's
Speaker 1: a success. You can't say these this thirty percent of
Speaker 1: people who saw your ad means that it's worth x
Speaker 1: amount because they're worthless. And so to see the analog
Speaker 1: in the piracy argument there, I assume it would be
Speaker 1: the same thing that such a person who pirates torrents,
Speaker 1: downloads illegally streams some sort of videos. 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 hack
Speaker 1: out of this thing. Yeah, but would they have would
Speaker 1: they have paid for an HBO subscription? Would they have
Speaker 1: or HBO now right right? Would they have gone through
Speaker 1: a regular channel anyway? And the answer is it's impossible
Speaker 1: to say. But it appears that there are lots of
Speaker 1: people out there who will pirates something. Uh. And the
Speaker 1: really easy examples are the ones that like movies that
Speaker 1: a lot of people aren't feeling very strongly about beforehand,
Speaker 1: like like there was the Wolverine film Wolverine the Origins film,
Speaker 1: and it was getting panned by critics, and it got
Speaker 1: pirated like crazy, and then you had the studios say, hey,
Speaker 1: you've stolen revenue from us, and the pirates said, we
Speaker 1: weren't going to pay to see your movie at all.
Speaker 1: So really the option was we steal your movie and
Speaker 1: watch it, which, granted for you, stinks, or we don't
Speaker 1: see the movie at all, but either way you don't
Speaker 1: get any money, like right, So 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 legitiment. 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 well, let's start with some just some thoughts,
Speaker 1: Like when I talk about that targeted advertising we mentioned
Speaker 1: the example, have you ever really looked into that at all?
Speaker 1: First stuff they don't want you to know, or anything
Speaker 1: related to that. Yes, yeah, the example of you you're
Speaker 1: talking about the kid, right, yeah, predicting the birth. Yes,
Speaker 1: we have looked at this in a couple of different ways,
Speaker 1: and one of the one of the ways that we
Speaker 1: looked into it most often would be the concerns of
Speaker 1: big big data, big data, the information that people just
Speaker 1: emanate or create through their passage online. Picture your average
Speaker 1: day on the internet, like one of those old family
Speaker 1: circus comic strips with the map and the little dotted line. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those accumulated billy goes running around the neighbors exactly, God,
Speaker 1: billy walk in a straight line, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Come on, kid, right, But this is a good comparison
Speaker 1: because those breadcrumbs, those accumulated dashes of our circuitous lines
Speaker 1: in our day to day traffic, establish a precedent, establish
Speaker 1: a pattern, and most people, most Internet users are astonished
Speaker 1: when they see how accurate or how sophisticated the profile
Speaker 1: pain of them can become. You know, you may say
Speaker 1: I have a collection of different passwords. Right, you may
Speaker 1: say you know you And I earlier did an episode
Speaker 1: on whether it's possible to be anonymous on the Internet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it is possible, but it is such a pain
Speaker 1: in the key start, right, and the more activity you do,
Speaker 1: the less possible it becomes. Exactly because while again, like
Speaker 1: when I said, your name is the least important piece
Speaker 1: of information about you, it really is. People don't need
Speaker 1: to know your name to know who you are based
Speaker 1: upon the things that are important to them, which is
Speaker 1: why it is again I love that you use the
Speaker 1: word disingenuous, which is it's disingenuous as well to say
Speaker 1: this data is anonymous. Yeah, you know, yeah, because all
Speaker 1: sorts of little data points point to who you are
Speaker 1: as a person, even if it doesn't give you a
Speaker 1: first and last name. Right. It's like saying these fingerprints
Speaker 1: are anonymous, Yeah, there's still somebody's fingerprint, exactly. And the
Speaker 1: stuff we leave behind it's kind of like a digital fingerprint,
Speaker 1: and and some of that information might be stuff that
Speaker 1: a lot of people know about us, like the Hamilton thing.
Speaker 1: Ben clearly knows about it. Of course we talked about
Speaker 1: it before a video. Yeah, but that's something that you know,
Speaker 1: people know who know me, they know that I'm a
Speaker 1: big fan of musicals. But then there may be other
Speaker 1: stuff that you don't want people to know. Let's say
Speaker 1: there's a let's say you have you or someone close
Speaker 1: to you has a medical condition, right, right, and you
Speaker 1: don't want people to you know, you don't want people
Speaker 1: to know, for instance, that let's just say your partner
Speaker 1: or your spouse is being tested for some sort of cancer. Right.
Speaker 1: That's none of anyone else's business but me and my spouse. Right.
Speaker 1: That's a that's an example that is perfectly cromulent in
Speaker 1: this case, right. And I know it's an extreme one,
Speaker 1: right right, But it's it's anything like that, right, anything
Speaker 1: where it's like it's not that I'm ashamed of something,
Speaker 1: that I've done something wrong, far from it. It's just
Speaker 1: that it's a piece of information I don't want to
Speaker 1: share with the rest of the world. Ben and I
Speaker 1: will be back to chat a little bit more about
Speaker 1: ads and the thorny situations around them after we come
Speaker 1: back from this break. 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. That's where the targeted advertising comes in,
Speaker 1: and you get this targeted ad that is again not malicious,
Speaker 1: it's necessarily we'll talk about malicious ads in a minute,
Speaker 1: not malicious in intent, but it could have a negative
Speaker 1: impact on your experience variance of being online, because then
Speaker 1: you think I thought I was being careful. I thought
Speaker 1: no one knew, but now someone knows. Now I logged
Speaker 1: into Facebook after I was logged out of Facebook. By
Speaker 1: the way, those are some pernicious cookies. Oh yeah, after
Speaker 1: I was logged out of Facebook ostensibly and checked on
Speaker 1: learned about the specific type of cancer my spouse might
Speaker 1: have came back logged in, and now I see an
Speaker 1: ad for a cancer clinic and hoping with cancer, And
Speaker 1: that's self extrusive. That is offensive. Yeah, it's is to
Speaker 1: a point where like that is not the direction that
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people were thinking about when
Speaker 1: they started thinking about the potential or targeted ads, Like,
Speaker 1: absolutely not the ideal situation is that the ads you
Speaker 1: see are the ones that are relevant to you in
Speaker 1: your situation and ones that would be effective in getting
Speaker 1: you to purchase a product or service. And because that's
Speaker 1: ultimately what ads are for. Ads are there to inform
Speaker 1: you and convince you you need this thing or service
Speaker 1: or whatever it may be. And if it's done well,
Speaker 1: then everyone's happy because we all get access to the
Speaker 1: stuff we want, We see things that we want to purchase.
Speaker 1: The advertisers succeed in what they're doing, their clients succeed,
Speaker 1: everyone is happy. The problem is that that's a very
Speaker 1: narrow band of the overall experience that people have had
Speaker 1: with targeted advertising, and again has led to this realm
Speaker 1: of this this culture where ad blockers are seen as
Speaker 1: being a perfectly legitimate response to that. And it's funny
Speaker 1: because you know, we've both talked about how we admitted
Speaker 1: to using ad blockers. I was amazed at how many
Speaker 1: articles I came across where they're written on websites that
Speaker 1: have advertising by employees of that website, and the employees
Speaker 1: are saying, yeah, I use ad blockers too, right, like
Speaker 1: to the point where you're sitting there thinking like, wow,
Speaker 1: this is pretty heavy stuff when you're seeing it from
Speaker 1: other journalists. And in fact, there was an editor, Duncan Riley,
Speaker 1: a publisher, in fact, Duncan Riley who wrote in Silicon
Speaker 1: Angle dot com a piece that came out today, in fact,
Speaker 1: April twenty nine is when we're recording this twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: and the title of the piece is confession of a
Speaker 1: longtime publisher. I now use an AD blocker and I
Speaker 1: like it. And the piece kind of lays out the
Speaker 1: same sort of things we've been talking about already and
Speaker 1: mentions that there's already a problem here. The big problem
Speaker 1: is that advertising has become so obnoxious that it is counterproductive.
Speaker 1: It is doing the opposite of what it is intended
Speaker 1: to do. It is driving people away, not bringing people in. Right,
Speaker 1: and to the point where people are looking at advertisement
Speaker 1: not as a vast series of varying cases, but as
Speaker 1: one monolithic thing. Yeah and yeah, well really it doesn't
Speaker 1: take that many really bad experiences to paint with abroad
Speaker 1: with broad strokes, right, because you get something like a
Speaker 1: truly awful experience that's enough to convince people to say, well,
Speaker 1: even for the ads that are not that bad, I'd
Speaker 1: rather go ahead and use an ad blocker to avoid
Speaker 1: the ones that are that bad, even if I only
Speaker 1: encounter those rarely. And part of the problem, there is
Speaker 1: a question of evolution and learning curve because a lot
Speaker 1: of targeted advertising functions in an automated fashion. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: there's no person there to apply human compassion and judgment.
Speaker 1: There's no one. There's no one saying, Johnna constricted in day.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's time for some diapers, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's 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 buttons, and different buttons for different things,
Speaker 1: ones like one's like cheaper razor blades. Right, Jonathan, you've
Speaker 1: been shifting in your seat. Here's an adverstool 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 experienced video ads has become
Speaker 1: a big thing, right the other skip this ad in five, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: the big The big one is um native advertising, which
Speaker 1: to you guys out there may not mean very much.
Speaker 1: To people in our position, it means our worst nightmare.
Speaker 1: So what is native advertising for people who are not
Speaker 1: Because that's a little bit of an inside baseball term.
Speaker 1: Native advertising is when you get paid by a company
Speaker 1: to produce a specific piece of content, typically one that
Speaker 1: supports that company's products, also known as advertorial. Yes, and
Speaker 1: a lot of if you do it really really well,
Speaker 1: which is very hard to do. But if you do
Speaker 1: it really really well, it can still be informative, it
Speaker 1: can still be entertaining, and it can still do the
Speaker 1: purpose of advertising whatever the product or services without it
Speaker 1: feeling absolutely creepy on the part of the person who
Speaker 1: had to write it. But it is really hard to
Speaker 1: do that. Yeah, it can feel creepy for the people
Speaker 1: creating this, because native advertising can put someone in an
Speaker 1: ethical dilemma. Yes, 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,
Speaker 1: all right, what I mean? Yeah, And while we're exploring that,
Speaker 1: naturally you and I would say, well, here are some
Speaker 1: things you need to know about strip mining. Here. Here's
Speaker 1: like the environmental impact of strip mining. Right, here's the
Speaker 1: historical significance, the political battles that have happened over strip mining.
Speaker 1: Here's how it has affected people who live in areas
Speaker 1: where strip mining happened. But if it were a piece
Speaker 1: of 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 mining. We have a new term.
Speaker 1: We call it mineral hugs. Yeah, then that would be problematic.
Speaker 1: And as as as Riley points out, he says that
Speaker 1: you eventually end up with advertising pretending to be editorial.
Speaker 1: He says, and that not only sucks if not labeled properly,
Speaker 1: it's downright dishonest and constitutes deceiving your readers. And we
Speaker 1: know you guys are smart, right, like the people who
Speaker 1: are in the writer and editorial departments. We know you're smart.
Speaker 1: We know that you can tell when something is something
Speaker 1: is like that, oh buddy, yeah, anyone on the Internet,
Speaker 1: although you'll hear all these stereotypes of people being credulous
Speaker 1: in general. Yeah, more so than a radio or television audience.
Speaker 1: People who listen to podcasts, people who go online for
Speaker 1: their news or entertainment are very, very aware of this.
Speaker 1: They can sense, they can like they're like Matt Murdoch, Well,
Speaker 1: for one thing, one thing, we've been sold to all
Speaker 1: our lives. We in America, we have grown up in
Speaker 1: a culture of advertising and selling, and after a while,
Speaker 1: you get good at recognizing it. Right. So that's that
Speaker 1: That's an argument that often comes up when it when
Speaker 1: it gets down to sales versus editorial, which not doesn't
Speaker 1: happen that frequently, but it has happened. Then the editorial
Speaker 1: will say, listen, this is a road we don't want
Speaker 1: to go down because it is a bad experience for
Speaker 1: our audience. They recognize what it is right away. It
Speaker 1: is very hard to do well, and it doesn't work
Speaker 1: for the advertising right. It doesn't do anyone in any favors. Right.
Speaker 1: It tells the audience we don't we don't we don't
Speaker 1: value your intelligence. We don't think that you're smart enough
Speaker 1: to realize that this is essentially an advertisement you're reading
Speaker 1: um and audience ends up saying well, if you don't
Speaker 1: value me, I don't value you, let alone the products
Speaker 1: you're trying to sell. So I'm out and we know this,
Speaker 1: and and so native advertising is one of those things
Speaker 1: that again, if you do it very transparently and if
Speaker 1: you are very careful, I think you can do it
Speaker 1: well if you have a separation of I guess a
Speaker 1: separation church and state in a way. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: phrase that we've used before wherein so let's say, just
Speaker 1: for an example, let's say, ladies and gentlemen, that Jonathan
Speaker 1: does a show for just your average everyday podcast, right
Speaker 1: it's tech Stuff. Does a tech Stuff episode is approached
Speaker 1: by someone who wants them to do some native advertising
Speaker 1: for let's see a cell phone? Sure, right, yeah, those
Speaker 1: are popular. And then Jonathan, with the editorial oversight, would say, well,
Speaker 1: if we do this, I want it to be clear,
Speaker 1: this is brought to you by right, you know whomever, right,
Speaker 1: and just say like so, people who listen to it
Speaker 1: from the very beginning, they know what they're getting into
Speaker 1: and that they trust me to give them information that
Speaker 1: is that is honest. It may be that due to
Speaker 1: that agreement, there's certain things I'm not allowed to talk
Speaker 1: about for whatever reason. But as long as I'm completely
Speaker 1: honest upfront and just say, you know, this is this
Speaker 1: episode is brought to you by so and so, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about their product today. Here's what I
Speaker 1: have to say about it. That's that's okay. It's even
Speaker 1: better if they give you full editorial control where you
Speaker 1: can like you can say, like, can I say things
Speaker 1: that may be a little critical of the product, as
Speaker 1: long as I'm being fair, like I'm not attacking, but
Speaker 1: I'm bringing up concerns people have had because if I
Speaker 1: don't do it, my listeners well being objective, being at
Speaker 1: the forefront of this. What I love about the line
Speaker 1: of argument we're looking at here is that the editor
Speaker 1: the publishing question is absolutely correct. It's a new it's
Speaker 1: a more evolved form of targeted advertising, because then the
Speaker 1: target becomes not just someone who looked at someone who
Speaker 1: googled something three times in the past week. It becomes
Speaker 1: any audience member that trusts you yes and that, and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden that there's this prepackaged demographic
Speaker 1: assuming that you have any you know, perceived integrity and reputation,
Speaker 1: then absolutely no, your reputation precedes you. Yeah, I'd like
Speaker 1: to think that people believe I have integrity. If you
Speaker 1: do not think I have integrity, please feel free to
Speaker 1: feel free to send an email to stuff you should
Speaker 1: know with this, with this targeting stuff, as you said,
Speaker 1: it is difficult to do, it can be done, it
Speaker 1: can be done well. For example, the Daily Show under
Speaker 1: John Stewart's regime. Yeah, under John Stewart's run on the show,
Speaker 1: they had Arby's as a sponsor, right, And what was
Speaker 1: hilarious about it is every time they brought up Arby's
Speaker 1: they talked massive amounts of trash about Arby's. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: but to the point where Arby's got the joke. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they incorporated the joke themselves. On his last episode,
Speaker 1: there was like a statement from arby saying we'll miss
Speaker 1: you John. And I just thought like that's amazing, Like,
Speaker 1: how many companies do you know that are that saving Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would say like, look, this is this they're having fun.
Speaker 1: They're not really trying to damage our brand. That's not
Speaker 1: what it's really about. Let's just have fun too. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a hard decision to make because you could. If
Speaker 1: you feel your brand is under attack, right, then you
Speaker 1: know you want to go on the offense as soon
Speaker 1: as possible. Right. So that's the reason why a certain
Speaker 1: bombastic cable provider hasn't just gone the whole nine yards
Speaker 1: yet and use the monopoly man in Darth Bay as
Speaker 1: their sponsored right. Yeah. I hope you enjoyed that conversation
Speaker 1: about the problem with ads, because we're going to continue
Speaker 1: it next week because this is a two parter. But yeah,
Speaker 1: Ben and I ended up talking a lot about that
Speaker 1: back in twenty sixteen, and clearly we could have a
Speaker 1: whole new conversation that's twice as long if we were
Speaker 1: to have it today. And maybe I will see if
Speaker 1: I can get him back on the show to talk
Speaker 1: about this again. It's I mean, he is a busy dude,
Speaker 1: like I'm busy, But man, I don't know how Ben
Speaker 1: gets everything done because that guy, he works on so
Speaker 1: many shows and it's just he's tireless, and it's it's
Speaker 1: inspiring and intimidating. If you have suggestions for topics I
Speaker 1: should cover in future episodes of Tech Stuff, please reach out.
Speaker 1: You can download the iHeartRadio app if you want to
Speaker 1: it's free to download, free to use. You can navigate
Speaker 1: over to tech Stuff using a little search field, and
Speaker 1: there you will see there's a little microphone icon. If
Speaker 1: you click on that, you can leave me a voice
Speaker 1: means and chip to thirty seconds in length. Let me
Speaker 1: know what you would like to hear, or if you prefer,
Speaker 1: you can tweet me. The handle that we use for
Speaker 1: the show is tech Stuff HSW. Let me know what
Speaker 1: I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff and
Speaker 1: I will talk to you again and really soon. Tech
Speaker 1: Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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