Speaker 1: Get in technology with tech Stuff from half stuff dot com. Hayle,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: Joining me again today is Ben Bolin. Then, Hey, thanks
Speaker 1: for having me back for the second part of our
Speaker 1: series on targeted advertising. I didn't know if you were
Speaker 1: going to do a like a mid season switch like that, Like,
Speaker 1: how what was it previously on stuff? Right? Ben? You ignorant? No,
Speaker 1: no it's not. First of all, Ben and I have
Speaker 1: been sitting into this room for like an hour and
Speaker 1: a half now. Um, we recorded that very long episode
Speaker 1: which we broke up in half. You probably heard the
Speaker 1: part one of it. If you haven't, go and listen
Speaker 1: to it, because we're gonna pick up right where we
Speaker 1: left off for part two, and we're really going to
Speaker 1: talk about lots of stuff, including the problems with malware
Speaker 1: and ads and just some other general thoughts about targeted advertising,
Speaker 1: ad blockers and how can we fix the advertising system
Speaker 1: that's out there online so that everyone actually gets something
Speaker 1: of value out of it, and we you know, spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: we don't have all the answers yet, So enjoy the
Speaker 1: second half and I'll see you on the other side
Speaker 1: of this episode for the outro that I've already recorded.
Speaker 1: When this was originally gonna be one episode. This is
Speaker 1: like weird, this is this is strange. We're outside of
Speaker 1: time and space right now. Let's let's listen to to
Speaker 1: past us talk about stuff. So one of the other
Speaker 1: things I wanted to bring up, so not all people
Speaker 1: who design ad blockers necessarily feel great about it either.
Speaker 1: That's another another element. So we've got like the publishers,
Speaker 1: some of the publishers and authors admitting to the use
Speaker 1: of ad blockers despite the fact that they're business model
Speaker 1: depends at least in part on advertising revenues. That's complicated.
Speaker 1: But then you also have ad blockers who start to
Speaker 1: feel that perhaps what they're doing might be more might
Speaker 1: be doing more harm than good of this. Yeah. Marco
Speaker 1: Armant who created an ad blocker for the iOS store
Speaker 1: for the for iPhones. Uh. It was one of several
Speaker 1: ad blocker apps that became available as soon as Apple
Speaker 1: allowed for that in the app store. It's very popular.
Speaker 1: It got downloaded by a lot of people. It was
Speaker 1: a pay app, so you had to actually purchase it,
Speaker 1: and after essentially like a weekend of thinking about it,
Speaker 1: he began to reconsider the fact that he had made
Speaker 1: and made available this app and decided to remove it
Speaker 1: from the app Store and offered refunds to anyone who
Speaker 1: had purchased it up to that point. And he said
Speaker 1: the reason for it was that while he advertising still
Speaker 1: is kind of broken online or at least is not
Speaker 1: a ideal experience for most people, it ultimately could really
Speaker 1: hurt small businesses that really depend on that web advertising.
Speaker 1: And if that, if that avenue of revenue is gone,
Speaker 1: those businesses could go away. He says. Once I start
Speaker 1: thinking about something I made could literally put a person
Speaker 1: out of business, it changed things for me and I
Speaker 1: could not let that be something I had contributed to
Speaker 1: a Yeah, so, um, you know he decided. He says
Speaker 1: that specifically says, I've learned over the last few crazy
Speaker 1: days that I don't feel good making one and being
Speaker 1: the arbiter of what's blocked making one being an ad blocker.
Speaker 1: Ad blockers come with an important asterisk. While they do
Speaker 1: benefit a ton of people in major ways, they also
Speaker 1: hurt some, including many who don't deserve the hit. And um,
Speaker 1: there's an article and Wired which again Wired is one
Speaker 1: of those companies that says Hey, we know, if you're
Speaker 1: watching using an ad blocker, would you consider possibly turning
Speaker 1: it off while you're here? You can still visit our website.
Speaker 1: I mean, what are we Forbes? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: down the snark No, but we're gonna get back to
Speaker 1: former just because I gotta I gotta talk about that. So,
Speaker 1: um so whyed you know they say, like, this is
Speaker 1: how we make money, you can police consider turning it off.
Speaker 1: It worked for me. I turned it off because the
Speaker 1: ads I come across unwired don't tend to be obnoxious
Speaker 1: or intrusive or take away my experience. They don't completely
Speaker 1: cloud my view of whatever it is I'm looking at. Um.
Speaker 1: They are responsible with their advertising and I I respect that.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Wired has this article about our ment and
Speaker 1: his experience, and one of the things they point out
Speaker 1: is that ad blockers are too blunt of an instrument,
Speaker 1: meaning they punish everyone equally. They punish the people who
Speaker 1: are running tons of ads on their page with very
Speaker 1: little content. I'm sure you've come across one of those
Speaker 1: in the past, where like, is there anything here that's
Speaker 1: not an ad? They punish those where you would argue
Speaker 1: it's very there's very little value for your visit. But
Speaker 1: they also punish the upstanding folks who are just they're
Speaker 1: doing their best to make a living doing what they love,
Speaker 1: but they find it very difficult because of this hit
Speaker 1: they're taking with AD revenue. Um, so yeah, very interesting.
Speaker 1: Now they get back to Forbes. Forbes has this approach
Speaker 1: where if they detect an AD blocker, they say turn
Speaker 1: it off or you're not going any further right, uh,
Speaker 1: And they even say, hey, if you turn it off,
Speaker 1: you can have thirty days to experience the ad light
Speaker 1: experience with Forbes. And I thought, you know what, that's fair.
Speaker 1: I will I will see what this ad light experiences.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's gonna be like wired, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: have a pleasant experience. I turn off my ad lugger,
Speaker 1: I go on in and the first thing that happens
Speaker 1: is a float over pop up window playing video automatically
Speaker 1: scrolls over what I'm trying to read. And I think
Speaker 1: this is ad light. What does ADD heavy look like?
Speaker 1: Add heavy? They send someone to your house and they're
Speaker 1: just like, hey, I couldn't help, but notice you don't
Speaker 1: have rugs over here, and uh, we'd like to sell
Speaker 1: you some rucks and we're right outside. It's only gonna
Speaker 1: take like, uh minutes to one hour for me to
Speaker 1: tell you about all these rugs. And you hear the sound. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you close the door and all you hear listen, you
Speaker 1: close the door. But I'm still here, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: talk about the rugs through your door for the next
Speaker 1: five minutes. You can't block this ad I mean, it's good.
Speaker 1: It's It's a good point though, because if the ad
Speaker 1: light experience is still intrusive, then what is the difference?
Speaker 1: Is it again, a hierarchy of types? Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: a good question. I don't know the answer to. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's and and I know I'm slamming Forbes a bit
Speaker 1: with this discussion, but I under again, I understand the
Speaker 1: position they're in. It's not like I don't appreciate that,
Speaker 1: of course I do. I just feel like the whole
Speaker 1: approach to ads online has been broken since day one,
Speaker 1: and one of the things I keep hoping for is
Speaker 1: that the ad block issue will force companies, including really
Speaker 1: advertising companies, into coming up with ways where advertising works.
Speaker 1: Not that we're advertising sneaks in that's not working. That
Speaker 1: just creates more resentment. You've got to find a way
Speaker 1: to make it work, or you have to find a
Speaker 1: different way to make money. So you could go the
Speaker 1: route of like a paywall that some sites have gone to,
Speaker 1: where you have to pay to get access to the
Speaker 1: full site, or you could go with something like a
Speaker 1: Patreon approach where you develop a loyal audience and then
Speaker 1: you say, hey, I love making the stuff for you.
Speaker 1: I hope you love the stuff that I'm making. It's
Speaker 1: a model, right, help me make the stuff you love
Speaker 1: by giving me a little bit of money each month
Speaker 1: that will cover my costs and I can keep doing this,
Speaker 1: and I can give you some perks. Yeah, and there's
Speaker 1: somewhere it will be parks as well. And honestly, I
Speaker 1: I I'm a Patreon for like three or four different
Speaker 1: things recurring monthly, and in every case I don't care
Speaker 1: about the perks. The perks were not the reason why
Speaker 1: I did it. I did it because I appreciated and
Speaker 1: respected the content I was getting and I wanted to
Speaker 1: support the stuff I love. And I'm in a position
Speaker 1: where I can afford to do that. Obviously, not everyone is,
Speaker 1: and in fact, there's some people out there. Tom Merritt
Speaker 1: great example, Tom Merritt stand up guy does the daily
Speaker 1: tech news show Amazing program, and he says, look, I
Speaker 1: get it. Some of you. You know your your every
Speaker 1: dollar counts and I totally understand that, and I appreciate
Speaker 1: that you listen to so thank you. You are just
Speaker 1: as important to me. But for people who can afford
Speaker 1: to maybe throw a dollar or five dollars a month
Speaker 1: to help me produce the show, uh do that. And
Speaker 1: the more people who do, the more shows I can produce.
Speaker 1: I can go to six days a week, which is
Speaker 1: what he's trying to do right now. The stuff too
Speaker 1: higher production value. You get what you get what you
Speaker 1: people exactly and it and again it keeps the show
Speaker 1: ad free, so uh, you know, he might have a
Speaker 1: sponsor for an episode or two, but generally speaking, the
Speaker 1: shows are pretty much had free um, which is very
Speaker 1: refreshing compared to some other shows online where you're like,
Speaker 1: they've been talking about this ad for three minutes, remember
Speaker 1: how do you? And this goes to other video as
Speaker 1: well that's not necessarily personality driven. Do you remember the
Speaker 1: uproar that Hulu created when people would pay for a
Speaker 1: subscription what was it nine ten dollars or whatever paper
Speaker 1: a subscription that also still had ads in the video.
Speaker 1: People were saying, why am I paying to watch to
Speaker 1: watch these ads? I thought that the paying was so
Speaker 1: that I wouldn't have to watch ads anymore. Hulu also
Speaker 1: has the AD blocker detector, so that says, like, you
Speaker 1: have an AD blocker on, you want to watch an episode,
Speaker 1: turn it off. We are unable to provide the ad
Speaker 1: viewing experience due to your applock. You can wait him out, though,
Speaker 1: you can play the poker game with them the screen
Speaker 1: long enough and it starts to play. Yes, doesn't really. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you just leave it alone long enough because I'm busy,
Speaker 1: I would have it on in the background or something,
Speaker 1: you just like suddenly you just hear like an episode
Speaker 1: of a Sudden And to be honest, it frightened me
Speaker 1: and my cat. Yeah. Uh, it's It's strange though, when
Speaker 1: we see these different strategies used to address targeted advertising,
Speaker 1: I have a question for you regarding this. So one
Speaker 1: of the big concerns of privacy advocates is that targeted
Speaker 1: advertising takes this user, uh, this user generated data, and
Speaker 1: builds a profile off of that we have in the past,
Speaker 1: or you have specifically on tech Stuff explored the search
Speaker 1: bubble that that past results predict what you were shown
Speaker 1: when you ask a question, and it's supposed to be
Speaker 1: stuff that rather than the objective truth. The more of
Speaker 1: a profile you build, the more likely that you're going
Speaker 1: to find it's going to give you stuff that it
Speaker 1: thinks you like. It's essentially a stepping stone to the
Speaker 1: semantic web, where the web anticipates what you want and
Speaker 1: gives you your version of what it is you. Uh.
Speaker 1: The downside of that being that you could create an
Speaker 1: Internet version of the Echo Chamber and you only see
Speaker 1: the stuff that reinforces what you already think absolutely. And
Speaker 1: I think that this is I think the dangerous thing
Speaker 1: about targeted advertising like that is, especially because it is
Speaker 1: automated and it's based on this precedent set. What can
Speaker 1: happen is that eventually, through some error in the code,
Speaker 1: through some misinterpreted series of visits to some other website,
Speaker 1: it could just decide that Jonathan Strickland must like diapers,
Speaker 1: and because he hasn't bought them yet, is only an
Speaker 1: indication that Jonathan Strickland needs more advertisements for diapers until
Speaker 1: he gets it, And that that can happen that can
Speaker 1: happen to people. So I, um, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the most I think you used this example before, one
Speaker 1: of the most in my mind, egregious examples of how
Speaker 1: to do targeted advertising in the worst possible way is Facebook. Yeah. Yeah, Facebook.
Speaker 1: The way it works is that you'll end up seeing
Speaker 1: stuff inserted into your feed that can end up being
Speaker 1: kind of creepy, especially, like you said, if it's something
Speaker 1: that pops up where it's related to a search that
Speaker 1: you did when you weren't even part of Facebook in
Speaker 1: the first place. Yeah, you get these promoted uh entries
Speaker 1: into your feed that looked like the same sort of
Speaker 1: stuff that a friend might have left, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: left by any of your friends. It was just left
Speaker 1: by your friends at Facebook and whatever advertising agency they're
Speaker 1: working with. And then, of course there's all the stuff
Speaker 1: that appears in the right rail that looks like it's
Speaker 1: news articles but it's not. It's more advertising. Um. And
Speaker 1: and in fact, all of the clickbait stuff that shows
Speaker 1: up on Facebook. Not that this is Facebook's fault, but
Speaker 1: a lot of the clickbait stuff that ends up getting
Speaker 1: shared to Facebook and then re shared by tons of
Speaker 1: people who aren't necessarily thinking critically, it's really just thinly
Speaker 1: veiled advertorial content, or it links to a site that
Speaker 1: has ridiculous advertising space on it, and it's a tiny
Speaker 1: bit of content. And also, you know, this goes to
Speaker 1: a bigger thing. This is the first instance in human
Speaker 1: civilization of the capability to block advertisement, right, so it's
Speaker 1: something that we forget. We tried a very daunting and
Speaker 1: ambitious task on stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: My co host Matt and Nolan I said, you know what,
Speaker 1: let's pick a day and let's count every advertisement we
Speaker 1: see from waking to sleep. None of us could do
Speaker 1: it successfully because our day to day physical lives are
Speaker 1: so embedded with advertising already to your point, you know,
Speaker 1: and it makes me wonder, what if there were some
Speaker 1: sort of physical analog to that, would people do it?
Speaker 1: I think the answer is, of course, because people want
Speaker 1: to feel like they're not being continually pitched to, right,
Speaker 1: and in fact we've um you know, this kind of
Speaker 1: brings us the whole idea about privacy and and using
Speaker 1: an ad blocker to protect yourself, and then the counter
Speaker 1: to ad blockers, where you you get the ad blocker
Speaker 1: detectors essentially what they're detecting, by the way, is they're
Speaker 1: just saying was the ad served to the browser? And
Speaker 1: if the answer is no, then the assumption is the
Speaker 1: person has an ad blocker program running on their machine.
Speaker 1: That leads us to the discussion in Europe where there
Speaker 1: is this, uh, this ongoing battle about whether or not
Speaker 1: ad blocker detectors are in fact illegal or um at
Speaker 1: least violating a policy about privacy. Uh. And it's it's
Speaker 1: a pretty interesting and weird kind of um uh story.
Speaker 1: So there's a guy named Alexander Haunt who has put
Speaker 1: forth this argument saying that because a website is capable
Speaker 1: of telling you have an ad blocker on it, that
Speaker 1: violates your sense of privacy, therefore is illegal to have
Speaker 1: an ad blocker detector on a service. Uh. And ad
Speaker 1: blockers should not be punished or there should not be
Speaker 1: this this detection system. Uh. And it was because of
Speaker 1: a pretty broad reading of the the European privacy law,
Speaker 1: which says that that a company cannot record information about
Speaker 1: you without your consent. And the argument was that is
Speaker 1: the ad blocker is the detection of that is that
Speaker 1: actually recording information about a person? Because if so, then
Speaker 1: there should first pop up a little message saying, this
Speaker 1: website wants to find out if you're using an ad blocker,
Speaker 1: do you allow it to do so? Uh? And it
Speaker 1: gets really to a question of practicality, like does the
Speaker 1: Internet work in such a way that it would be
Speaker 1: possible to implement a policy that's akin to that or
Speaker 1: would it just mean that we have to rethink the
Speaker 1: way these laws are framed because they don't take into
Speaker 1: account the way the Internet works, and because of that,
Speaker 1: they are passing laws that are hm counter productive or
Speaker 1: in some cases just would never work. They'd be they'd
Speaker 1: be unenforceable, and they would be they would just cause
Speaker 1: a massive mess um. And so that's an ongoing discussion
Speaker 1: as we're recording this podcast that has not been decide
Speaker 1: did yet, but there are arguments on both sides about
Speaker 1: whether or not these ad block or detectors are against
Speaker 1: the law or if they're totally illegal, and if if
Speaker 1: they are legal, that people can that a company can say, hey,
Speaker 1: turn your ad blocker off. Yeah, you know, you vandal
Speaker 1: physigoth trying to think of trying to think of European
Speaker 1: marauders at this point, you're viking um and uh, and
Speaker 1: so it's that's an interesting thing to see. Now. We
Speaker 1: don't have anything like that in the US because privacy
Speaker 1: is something we long since give up on. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're still doing the song and dance every so often. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's one of those we we make
Speaker 1: hallmark card level statements about privacy republic sphere. And I
Speaker 1: guess I guess the really the place to kind of
Speaker 1: end this discussion. The really the kicker, the reason why
Speaker 1: it would be very difficult for me to argue with
Speaker 1: any sincerity against someone's to vision to use an ad
Speaker 1: blocker is the safety issue, the malware issue. So earlier
Speaker 1: this year, UM, there was a story about how this uh,
Speaker 1: this malware group managed to infiltrate advertising companies that served
Speaker 1: ads two places like uh, the BBC and other major
Speaker 1: outlets like MSN, a O L like the New York Times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these are huge outlets that are to have advertising on them.
Speaker 1: And what the malware designers had done was they had
Speaker 1: injected malware into ads that were being served on these
Speaker 1: so they didn't have to they didn't have to hack
Speaker 1: into the New York Times or the BBC. They had
Speaker 1: to hack into the actual advertising server and insert some
Speaker 1: malware and disguise it really well so it's not easy
Speaker 1: to pick out. That malware gets served up as if
Speaker 1: it's a legitimate ad, and then it could convince one
Speaker 1: to install some code that ends up encrypting their hard drive.
Speaker 1: This is called ransomware. So this is when, uh, you
Speaker 1: get a message out of the blue and it says, hey,
Speaker 1: guess what, sucker, your computer is encrypted, and we've got
Speaker 1: an encryption key and we'll sell it to you. So
Speaker 1: you've got to pay us and we'll give you the
Speaker 1: key so that you can get back into your computer.
Speaker 1: If you don't pay us at such and such a time,
Speaker 1: we will destroy your encryption key and your computer will
Speaker 1: permanently be encrypted. And there's nothing you can do about it.
Speaker 1: Ha ha ha. It's essentially the way the message goes
Speaker 1: and and so your your computer is held hostage and
Speaker 1: unless you pay for it, then you're kind of stuck.
Speaker 1: And because it was it was the malware attacks were
Speaker 1: coming from these major trusted outlets. That's a huge problem, right,
Speaker 1: It's not like it's not like the people were going to,
Speaker 1: you know, some back alley website that has already got
Speaker 1: a terrible reputation like freeze an x and adderall dot biz.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. They were going to the New York Times
Speaker 1: for goodness six and so uh, if you have an
Speaker 1: ad blocker, it blocks that stuff because it identifies it
Speaker 1: as an AD and you never get it, so you
Speaker 1: are safe from that kind of a malware attack. So
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to argue, hey, ad blockers are wrong
Speaker 1: when people who don't use them are potentially going to
Speaker 1: fall victim to this ransomware attack. And this was a
Speaker 1: very specific incident. It's not necessarily ever going to repeat,
Speaker 1: or it may not repeat on a scale as large
Speaker 1: as it did before. But it drives home that fact
Speaker 1: that ad blockers are not just for people who are
Speaker 1: tired of being sold to. It's for people who are like, no,
Speaker 1: I want to be able to surf the web, like
Speaker 1: I'm very careful with the way I surf the web.
Speaker 1: I want to make sure that I don't get hit
Speaker 1: by something despite how careful I am. And I'm getting
Speaker 1: it from what I thought was a trusted source. Um,
Speaker 1: so you know, it's it's hard to make any kind
Speaker 1: of argument against that. In fact, one of the things
Speaker 1: I read about was about Forbes being one of those
Speaker 1: sites that you go to Forbes dot com and you
Speaker 1: get the message, hey, you need to turn off your
Speaker 1: ad blocker if you want to have access to it.
Speaker 1: But Forbes was also victim to a ransomware attack, which
Speaker 1: means that you know, you're like, well, I want to
Speaker 1: read that thing on Forbes, but then you make yourself
Speaker 1: vulnerable to being attacked by malware. Great work they do,
Speaker 1: and that's the thing is that you know, we're again
Speaker 1: it sounds like we're really bashing on Forbes, uh, but
Speaker 1: it's largely due to the problem with advertising, not the
Speaker 1: problem that Forbes wants to get paid. I totally respect that,
Speaker 1: of course, and I know I've said it multiple times,
Speaker 1: but I just want to drive that home is that
Speaker 1: as someone who I make a living off this, I
Speaker 1: want to continue to do so. And part of that
Speaker 1: means that I have to be you know that my
Speaker 1: work is going up pages that have advertising served against it,
Speaker 1: and I want those pages to do well, and I
Speaker 1: want those advertisers to do well. But it requires that
Speaker 1: we have an advertising system that works and that isn't
Speaker 1: predatory or damaging. And currently we're still trying to we
Speaker 1: as a species are still trying to find what that
Speaker 1: thing is. We're we're kind of in a pioneering wild
Speaker 1: West state right now. Well, and it's weird because advertising
Speaker 1: has been around for ages. Ages. Some of the earliest
Speaker 1: advertising actually goes back to Greco Roman times. Did you
Speaker 1: hear about this? There were so? Well, I might actually
Speaker 1: I think you you know what I'm gonna say. So,
Speaker 1: are you talking about houses of ill repute? Yes? Archaeologists
Speaker 1: found that prostitutes would wear sandals with arrows imprinted in
Speaker 1: the soul of the sandal, so that they would a
Speaker 1: series of arrows as they walked to as you so
Speaker 1: fittingly put at the house of ill repute. Advertising is ancient.
Speaker 1: I can do you one better than that. Pompeii, the
Speaker 1: city of Pompeii. They're still paving stones and Pompeii that
Speaker 1: have the image of a fallus raised raised like it's
Speaker 1: actually carved in the stone like a relief. Yeah, pointing
Speaker 1: in the direction of the brothels and and if you
Speaker 1: get the tour guide I get for Pompeii, he delights
Speaker 1: in pointing all of them out and explaining this and
Speaker 1: uses the pronunciation of peose pose has a peose on it.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're doing me one better though,
Speaker 1: because these are just these are clearly like it sounds
Speaker 1: like prostitution advertisements are the pepsi and coke of early ads. Well,
Speaker 1: and to be fair, like you know you were saying
Speaker 1: making tracks in the dirt, I'm talking about putting forth
Speaker 1: the effort. Yeah, I guess there is that. Well, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe they're brought Those were just more stable places, well
Speaker 1: at least until the volcano erupted. Sorry sorry, well that
Speaker 1: that volcano though, one hell of an ad blocker, So
Speaker 1: too soon, Yeah, yeah, I should have wait a couple
Speaker 1: more millennium. We're having a lot of fun now. This
Speaker 1: is when when we're like, hey guys, it's fright afternoon.
Speaker 1: I guess who's getting loopy? Um. But no getting back
Speaker 1: into the modern day discussion of this and and and
Speaker 1: and the concerns that are there. Um, you know. I
Speaker 1: I've also read a piece, uh that was written I
Speaker 1: think in zd net about how you should not The
Speaker 1: author said you shouldn't give sites that uh require you
Speaker 1: to disabled ad blockers your clicks because of the safety
Speaker 1: issue is that if they say that they value money
Speaker 1: more than they value your safety as a customer. Then
Speaker 1: that's a message that tells you you should not be
Speaker 1: a customer of that company. And I thought, well, that's
Speaker 1: a very hard argument to oppose, right, Like, I don't
Speaker 1: want to go to a store where they're like, listen,
Speaker 1: buy some of our stuff. And then I look up
Speaker 1: and I see that ceiling tiles are about to fall down,
Speaker 1: or there's a sparking wire that's just laying on the ground.
Speaker 1: There's a kid by himself in a puddle, just screaming.
Speaker 1: There's a guy in a hockey mask just pacing back
Speaker 1: and forth. And in the shadows back in the section
Speaker 1: that I need to go in, there's there are a
Speaker 1: lot of like there's a lot of warning flags that
Speaker 1: are popping up, and I'm thinking, clearly, this this shop
Speaker 1: proprietor doesn't care about my safety and just wants me
Speaker 1: to buy something out and I don't. I don't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean that websites or shop proprietors for that matter, need
Speaker 1: to fall over themselves and say, listen, you're welfare is
Speaker 1: our chief concern, but at least show some concern, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly exactly, because the audience, the audience ultimately should be
Speaker 1: the primary concern, right yeah, And and again, if your
Speaker 1: goal is to make money by selling to those people,
Speaker 1: or if your goal is to make money so that
Speaker 1: you can continue creating content and you're doing it through
Speaker 1: a partnership with an advertiser, then part of that means
Speaker 1: you definitely want that audience to be well because otherwise
Speaker 1: you don't have someone to sell to. Right. So it
Speaker 1: makes it's so easy to see how it makes sense
Speaker 1: that the best possible approach is to find the one
Speaker 1: that is not going to irritate your viewer base. Because
Speaker 1: if you can figure that out, then you are good
Speaker 1: to go. If if you are uh, if you're able
Speaker 1: to do it with pushing away your audience, then things
Speaker 1: are working. The weird thing and I know where I
Speaker 1: was going with before I talked about the ancient the
Speaker 1: ancient advertisement. The weird thing is we've had advertisement for
Speaker 1: so long, but no real way of seeing how effective
Speaker 1: it was, right right, yeah, no, no metric so television, radio, newspaper, magazines.
Speaker 1: I mean, you could see after an ad campaign if
Speaker 1: sales increased, and you could argue, well, some of that
Speaker 1: sales increase must be due to the advertising, and you're
Speaker 1: probably right, But you can't get to the point where
Speaker 1: you can say how much of that increase was due
Speaker 1: to the advertising. Uh it may be that advertising had
Speaker 1: a small but ultimately not tremendous impact on sales and
Speaker 1: something else was responsible for the spike. It's it was
Speaker 1: impossible to say. The real weird thing about the Internet
Speaker 1: is you can track all that, right, You can track
Speaker 1: if people click on an AD, and once you get
Speaker 1: that information, instead of making it more value, double it
Speaker 1: somehow made it less valuable. And possibly they made it
Speaker 1: less valuable by people saying, you know, advertising not as
Speaker 1: powerful as I thought it was, which meant all the
Speaker 1: advertising companies in the world said, oh, all the Don
Speaker 1: Draper's of the world said that that opening part of
Speaker 1: the credits, where a silhouette is falling from a building
Speaker 1: is starting to look pretty prophetic. Right now, of course,
Speaker 1: we all know that's not how it turned out. I
Speaker 1: have never seen that, neither of I have just read
Speaker 1: a lot about it. It's a lot like, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a lot of it's exactly like Looper. Uh So, anyway,
Speaker 1: that kind of wraps up our discussion, and and uh, again,
Speaker 1: this is a weird thing to talk about on a podcast.
Speaker 1: That occasionally has sponsors. That also again as part of
Speaker 1: a company that does web that well, that makes money
Speaker 1: at least in part through web advertising. But we thought
Speaker 1: it was an important one to talk about because as
Speaker 1: as people who create content, we want to see this work.
Speaker 1: We want, we want to have a job. Then I
Speaker 1: I don't want to put words in your mouth, but
Speaker 1: I like what I do for a living. I'm here
Speaker 1: for community service. Actually I got you. Yeah, that explains
Speaker 1: the orange vest that you just have to wait. Yes,
Speaker 1: but then we have to report you because we're told
Speaker 1: you yeah. So yeah. We love our jobs and we
Speaker 1: want to keep doing them. But as consumers ourselves, we
Speaker 1: completely understand the plight of people who are tired of
Speaker 1: these bad experiences. So if I were to leave you
Speaker 1: with anything, dear listeners, it would be put all the
Speaker 1: house stuff works domains on your white list so that
Speaker 1: I can continue to have a job. But also if
Speaker 1: anyone out there is in the advertising world to really
Speaker 1: give hard thought like how can we create a better
Speaker 1: system that serves everyone more effectively? Because we we do.
Speaker 1: We need that, we want it. We need it for
Speaker 1: multiple reasons. The content providers needed, the viewers needed, the
Speaker 1: advertising companies needed, the the vendors needed. We just have
Speaker 1: to figure that out in a way that has not
Speaker 1: really worked yet. With some exceptions. There's some online ads
Speaker 1: that may be extremely effective, and we need to study
Speaker 1: how those work and what was it that made them
Speaker 1: special and perhaps create more appropriate best practices stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's way more effective currently. It seems to
Speaker 1: be our our Twitter accounts from uh companies. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: talked directly to it with a sense of humor and
Speaker 1: uh in these weird rivalries like fast food company twitters
Speaker 1: are hilarious. I don't know who they put in charge
Speaker 1: of it, and I don't know great well. And and
Speaker 1: for me, like, I subscribe to quite a few services
Speaker 1: as well, including YouTube Bread is one. And because I
Speaker 1: subscribe to YouTube Bread, I don't I don't worry about
Speaker 1: ads that doesn't happen, but um, it means I'm paying
Speaker 1: a certain amount per month to have access to that.
Speaker 1: And in fact, I didn't even subscribe to YouTube Bread.
Speaker 1: Technically I subscribed to Google Music, which then converted into
Speaker 1: a YouTube Bread subscribe, which is awesome. I don't have
Speaker 1: to subscribe to two different things now, Um, but that
Speaker 1: approach I also like, like I like the choice saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, you can go the route of watching the
Speaker 1: AD supported content, or if you pay a little to
Speaker 1: us each month, you can get the AD free version. Um.
Speaker 1: And I'm fine with that too, because it does give
Speaker 1: you a choice. But but even better than that is
Speaker 1: to find this responsible way to serve up adverage rising
Speaker 1: where the viewers are safe, the audience is safe rather
Speaker 1: and that you know, no one feels like they're being
Speaker 1: attacked or no one's actually getting attacked case ransomware. Ben,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us. Please let my
Speaker 1: listeners know where they can find all of the things
Speaker 1: that Ben Bowland does. Yes, all of the safer work things.
Speaker 1: Absolutely will always Thanks for having me on board the show,
Speaker 1: Jonathan and listeners. You can check out some uh, some
Speaker 1: conspiratorial or darker sides of tech on our show Stuff
Speaker 1: They Don't Want You to Know, which comes out in
Speaker 1: audio and video each week we have a new episode
Speaker 1: on both of those platforms, and you can catch your
Speaker 1: host here, Jonathan on several of those, uh, several of
Speaker 1: the shows we've we've had some different cameos. You can
Speaker 1: also see Jonathan and I on our video show brain
Speaker 1: Stuff and We're also on a show called What the
Speaker 1: Stuff yep, and Uh, there's another show of yours that
Speaker 1: I always want to mention because I'm a personal fan
Speaker 1: of it. If somebody wants to know more about future tech,
Speaker 1: where can they go fw thinking dot com or go
Speaker 1: to YouTube dot com and search for fw thinking that's
Speaker 1: forward thinking. Uh. It's a show that's gone on for
Speaker 1: four seasons so far, and really proud of it done
Speaker 1: some great work with Joe and Lauren have been writers
Speaker 1: on that series as well. I've been writer and host.
Speaker 1: They have written for it. We also have an audio
Speaker 1: podcast that goes along with that, so you can check
Speaker 1: that out. If you weren't already aware of it, you
Speaker 1: are now, so yeah, thanks so much guys. If you
Speaker 1: have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, please let
Speaker 1: me know. Once again, I finally figured out that all
Speaker 1: of my listener mail was going to the helpful clutter
Speaker 1: folder Microsoft heltbook, and now that I know that, I
Speaker 1: fixed it, So feel free to write to me that
Speaker 1: email addresses text at how stuff Works dot com, or
Speaker 1: you can drop me a line on Twitter or Facebook.
Speaker 1: The handle at both of those is text Stuff H
Speaker 1: s W and I will talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: For more on this and bathands of other topics. Is
Speaker 1: that how stuff works dot com