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 Ye. It is time for a classic episode. It's
Speaker 1: time for us to conclude a conversation we started with
Speaker 1: last week's classic episode. This is called The Problem with
Speaker 1: Ads Part two. It originally published on May twenty fifth,
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, and Ben Bollen joined the show to talk
Speaker 1: about the issues with ads because there are a lot
Speaker 1: of them, and boy howdy, we just get more and
Speaker 1: more issues as time goes on. I'll touch on that
Speaker 1: a little bit at the very end of this episode,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I should probably ask Ben if he would
Speaker 1: like to do a second go at this topic now
Speaker 1: that we're several years down the road and we have
Speaker 1: yet more ways for ads to be served and exploited
Speaker 1: since twenty sixteen. But let's sit back and listen to
Speaker 1: this episode. Not all people who design ad blockers necessarily
Speaker 1: feel great about it either. That's another element. So we've
Speaker 1: got like the publishers, some of the publishers and authors
Speaker 1: admitting to the use of ad blockers despite the fact
Speaker 1: that their business model depends at least in part on
Speaker 1: advertising revenues. That's complicated. But then you also have ad
Speaker 1: blockers who start to feel that perhaps what they're doing
Speaker 1: might be more might be doing more harm than good.
Speaker 2: We have an example of this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Marco Armant, who created an ad blocker for the
Speaker 1: iOS store for iPhones. It was one of several ad
Speaker 1: blocker apps that became available as soon as Apple allowed
Speaker 1: for that in the app store. It's very popular. I
Speaker 1: got downloaded by a lot of people. Was a pay app,
Speaker 1: so you had to actually purchase it, And after essentially
Speaker 1: like a weekend of thinking about it, he began to
Speaker 1: reconsider the fact that he had made and made available
Speaker 1: this app and decided to remove it from the app
Speaker 1: Store and offered refunds to anyone who had purchased it
Speaker 1: up to that point. And he said the reason for
Speaker 1: it was that while he thought advertising still is kind
Speaker 1: of broken online or at least is not an ideal
Speaker 1: experience for most people, it ultimately could really hurt small
Speaker 1: businesses that really depend on that web advertising, and if
Speaker 1: that avenue of revenue is gone, those businesses could go away.
Speaker 1: He says, Once I start thinking about something I made
Speaker 1: could literally put a person out of business. It changed
Speaker 1: things for me, and I could not let that be
Speaker 1: something I had contributed.
Speaker 2: Crisis of conscience.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know he decided.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: He says this specifically says, I've learned over the last
Speaker 1: few crazy days that I don't feel good making one
Speaker 1: and being the arbiter of what's blocked making one, being
Speaker 1: an ad blocker. Ad blockers come with an important asterisk.
Speaker 1: While they do benefit a ton of people in major ways,
Speaker 1: they also hurt some, including many who don't deserve the hit.
Speaker 1: And there's an article in Wired, which again Wired is
Speaker 1: one of those companies that says, hey, we noticed you're
Speaker 1: watching using an ad blocker. Would you consider possibly turning
Speaker 1: it off while you're here?
Speaker 2: You can still visit our website. I mean, what are
Speaker 2: we Forbes? Yeah yeah, yeah, sorry, I'm going to tone
Speaker 2: down the snart.
Speaker 1: No, but We're gonna get back to Forbes, say, because
Speaker 1: I gotta I gotta talk about that. So so Wired,
Speaker 1: you know, they say, like, this is how we make money.
Speaker 1: You can police consider turning it off. It worked for me.
Speaker 1: I turned it off because the ads I come across
Speaker 1: on Wired don't tend to be obnoxious or intrusive or
Speaker 1: take away my experience. They don't completely cloud my view
Speaker 1: of whatever it is I'm looking at. They are responsible
Speaker 1: with their advertising and I respect that. So anyway, Wired
Speaker 1: has this article about Arment and his experience, and one
Speaker 1: of the things they point out is that ad blockers
Speaker 1: are too blunt of an instrument, meaning they punish everyone equally.
Speaker 1: They punish the people who are running tons of ads
Speaker 1: on their page with very little content. I'm sure you've
Speaker 1: come across one of those in the past where you're like,
Speaker 1: is there anything here that's not an ad? They punish
Speaker 1: those where you would argue, there's very little value for
Speaker 1: your visit. But they also punish the upstanding folks who
Speaker 1: are just they're doing their best to make a living
Speaker 1: doing what they love, but they find it very difficult
Speaker 1: because of this hit they're taking with ad revenue. So yeah,
Speaker 1: very interesting. Now to get back to Forbes. Forbes has
Speaker 1: this approach where if they detect an ad blocker, they
Speaker 1: say turn it off or you're not going any further right, right,
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 experience is.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's gonna be like wired, and I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: a pleasant experience. I turn off my AD blugger, I
Speaker 1: go on in and the first thing that happens is
Speaker 1: a float over pop up window playing video automatically scrolls
Speaker 1: over what I'm trying to read. And I think this
Speaker 1: is AD light. What does AD heavy look like?
Speaker 2: Add heavy? They send someone to.
Speaker 1: Your house and they're just like, hey, I couldn't help,
Speaker 1: but notice you don't have all rugs over here.
Speaker 3: We like to sell you some rugs, and we're right outside.
Speaker 3: It's only gonna take like forty five minutes to an
Speaker 3: hour for me to tell you about all these rugs.
Speaker 2: And the sound.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you close the door and all your ears listen.
Speaker 3: You close the door, but I'm still here and I'm
Speaker 3: gonna talk about the rugs through your.
Speaker 1: Door for the next forty five minutes. You can't walk
Speaker 1: this ad.
Speaker 2: I mean it's good. It's it's a good point though,
Speaker 2: because if the AD light experience is still intrusive, Yeah,
Speaker 2: then what is the difference is it? Again? A hierarchy
Speaker 2: of types.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's a good question that I don't know
Speaker 1: the answer to. I mean, it's and I know I'm
Speaker 1: slamming Forbes a bit with this discussion, but I under again,
Speaker 1: I understand the position they're in. It's not like I
Speaker 1: don't appreciate that, of course I do. I just feel
Speaker 1: like the whole approach to ads online has been broken
Speaker 1: since day one. And one of the things I keep
Speaker 1: hoping for is that the ad block issue will force companies,
Speaker 1: including really advertising companies, into coming up with ways where
Speaker 1: advertising works. Not that we're advertising sneaks in that's not working. No,
Speaker 1: that just creates more resentment. You've got to find a
Speaker 1: way to make it work, or you have to find
Speaker 1: a different way to make money. So you could go
Speaker 1: the route of like a paywall that some sites have
Speaker 1: gone to, where you have to pay to get access
Speaker 1: to the full site, or you could go with something
Speaker 1: like a Patreon approach, where you develop a loyal audience
Speaker 1: and then you say, hey, I love making this stuff
Speaker 1: for you. I hope you love the stuff that I'm making.
Speaker 1: It's kind of an NPR model, right, Help me make
Speaker 1: the stuff you love by giving me a little bit
Speaker 1: of money each month. That will cover my costs and
Speaker 1: I can keep doing.
Speaker 2: This and I can give you some perks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's somewhere it will be perks as well.
Speaker 1: And honestly, I'm a Patreon for like three or four
Speaker 1: different things recurring monthly, and in every case I don't
Speaker 1: care about the perks. The perks were not the reason
Speaker 1: why I did it. I did it because I appreciated
Speaker 1: and respected the content I was getting and I wanted
Speaker 1: to support the stuff I love. And I'm in a
Speaker 1: position where I can afford to do that. Obviously, not
Speaker 1: everyone is, and in fact, there's some people out there.
Speaker 1: Tom Merritt, great example. Tom Merritt's stand up guy does
Speaker 1: the daily tech news show Amazing Program, and he says, look,
Speaker 1: I get it. Some of you. You know 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, do that. And the
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: Cooler stuff too. You have a higher production value, You
Speaker 2: get what you.
Speaker 1: Pay for exactly. And again, it keeps the show ad free,
Speaker 1: so you know, he might have a sponsor for an
Speaker 1: episode or two, but generally speaking, the shows are pretty
Speaker 1: much had free, which is very refreshing compared to some
Speaker 1: other shows online where you're like, they've been talking about
Speaker 1: this ad for three minutes.
Speaker 2: Do you remember how? And this goes to other video
Speaker 2: as well, that's not necessarily personality driven. Do you remember
Speaker 2: the uproar that Hulu created when people would pay for
Speaker 2: a subscription what was it, nine, ten dollars whatever? Pay
Speaker 2: for a subscription that also still had ads in the video?
Speaker 1: Come yeah? People were saying, why am I paying to
Speaker 1: watch these to watch these ads? I thought that the
Speaker 1: paying was so that I wouldn't have to watch ads anymore.
Speaker 1: Hulu also has the AD blocker detector, so that says, like,
Speaker 1: you have an AD blocker on, you want to watch
Speaker 1: an episode, turn it off.
Speaker 2: We are unable to provide the ad viewing experience due
Speaker 2: to your applock. You can wait them out, though, you
Speaker 2: could play the the poker game with them.
Speaker 1: The screen long enough and it starts to play. Yes,
Speaker 1: does it really?
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you just leave it alone long enough because
Speaker 2: I'm busy, I would have it on in the background
Speaker 2: or something.
Speaker 1: You just like suddenly you just hear like an episode
Speaker 1: all of.
Speaker 2: A sudden, And to be honest, it brightened me and
Speaker 2: my cat. It's it's strange though, when we see these
Speaker 2: different strategies used to address targeted advertising. I have a
Speaker 2: question for you guarding this. So one of the big
Speaker 2: concerns of privacy advocates is that targeted advertising takes this user,
Speaker 2: this user generated data, and builds a profile off of
Speaker 2: that we have in the past, or you have specifically
Speaker 2: on tex stuff explored the search bubble, that past results
Speaker 2: predict what you were shown when you ask a question,
Speaker 2: and yeah, it's supposed to be stuff that rather than
Speaker 2: the objective truth. The more of a profile you build,
Speaker 2: the more likely that you're going to find it's going
Speaker 2: to give you stuff that it thinks you like.
Speaker 1: It's essentially a stepping stone to the semantic web, where
Speaker 1: the web anticipates what you want and gives you your
Speaker 1: version of what it is you want. The downside of
Speaker 1: that being that you could create an Internet version of
Speaker 1: the Echo chamber and you only see the stuff that
Speaker 1: reinforces what you already think.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and I think that this is I think the
Speaker 2: dangerous thing about targeted advertising like that is especially because
Speaker 2: it is automated, right, and it's based on this precedent set.
Speaker 2: What can happen is that eventually, through some error in
Speaker 2: the code, through some misinterpreted series of visits to some
Speaker 2: other website, it could just decide that Jonathan Strickland must
Speaker 2: like diapers, and because he hasn't bought them yet, is
Speaker 2: only an indication that Jonathan Strickland needs more advertisements for
Speaker 2: diapers until he gets it. And that that can happen,
Speaker 2: That can happen to people. So I you know, one
Speaker 2: of the most I think he used this example before,
Speaker 2: one of the most in my mind, egregious examples of
Speaker 2: how to do targeted advertising in the worst possible way is.
Speaker 1: Facebook, Ben and I will be back to talk more
Speaker 1: about the perils of advertising after this quick break. Facebook.
Speaker 1: The way it works is that you'll end up seeing
Speaker 1: stuff and started into your feed that can end up
Speaker 1: being kind of creepy, especially like you said, if it's
Speaker 1: something that pops up where it's related to a search
Speaker 1: that you did when you weren't even part of Facebook
Speaker 1: in the first place. Yeah, you get these promoted entries
Speaker 1: into your feed that look 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 this 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. And in fact,
Speaker 1: a lot of the clickbait stuff that shows up on Facebook.
Speaker 1: Not that this is Facebook's fault, but a lot of
Speaker 1: the clickbait stuff that ends up getting shared to Facebook
Speaker 1: and then re shared by tons of people who aren't
Speaker 1: necessarily thinking critically, is really just thinly veiled advertorial content, right,
Speaker 1: or it links to a site that has ridiculous advertising
Speaker 1: space on it and just a tiny bit of content.
Speaker 2: And also this goes to a bigger thing. This is
Speaker 2: the first instance in human civilization of the capability to
Speaker 2: block advertisement. Right. So it's something that we forget. We
Speaker 2: tried a very a daunting and ambitious task on stuff
Speaker 2: they don't want you to know. My co hosts Matt
Speaker 2: and Nola and I said, you know what, let's pick
Speaker 2: a day and let's count every advertisement we see from
Speaker 2: waking to sleep. None of us could do it successfully
Speaker 2: because our day to day physical lives are so embedded
Speaker 2: with advertising already. To your point, yeah, you know, and
Speaker 2: it makes me wonder, what if there were some sort
Speaker 2: of physical analog to that, would people do it? I
Speaker 2: think the answer is, of course, because people want to
Speaker 2: feel like they're not being continually pitched to.
Speaker 1: Right, and in fact we've you know, this kind of
Speaker 1: brings us the whole idea about privacy and using an
Speaker 1: ad blocker to protect yourself, and then the counter two
Speaker 1: ad blockers, where you get the ad blocker detectors. Essentially,
Speaker 1: what they're detecting, by the way, is they're just saying
Speaker 1: was the ad served to the browser? And if the
Speaker 1: answer is no, then the assumption is the person has
Speaker 1: an ad blocker program running on their machine. That leads
Speaker 1: us to the discussion in Europe where there is this
Speaker 1: ongoing battle about whether or not ad blocker detectors are
Speaker 1: in fact illegal or at least violating a policy about privacy.
Speaker 1: And it's a pretty interesting and weird kind of story.
Speaker 1: So there's a guy named Alexander Hant 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, and ad blockers
Speaker 1: should not be punished or there should not be this
Speaker 1: detection system. And it was because of a pretty broad
Speaker 1: reading of the European privacy law, which says that a
Speaker 1: company cannot record information about you without your consent right,
Speaker 1: and the argument was that is the ad blocker is
Speaker 1: the detection of that, is that actually recording information about
Speaker 1: a person? Because if so, then there should first pop
Speaker 1: up a little message saying this website wants to find
Speaker 1: out if you're using an ad blocker do you allow
Speaker 1: it to do so? And it gets really to a
Speaker 1: question of practicality, like does the Internet work in such
Speaker 1: a way that it would be possible to implement a
Speaker 1: policy that's akin to that or would it just mean
Speaker 1: that we have to rethink the way these laws are
Speaker 1: framed because they don't take into account the way the
Speaker 1: Internet works, and because of that they are passing laws
Speaker 1: that are counterproductive or in some cases just would never work,
Speaker 1: they'd be unenforceable, and they would be they would just
Speaker 1: cause a massive mess. And so that's an ongoing discussion
Speaker 1: as we're recording this podcast that has not been decided yet,
Speaker 1: but there are arguments on both sides about whether or
Speaker 1: not these ad blocker detectors are against the law or
Speaker 1: if they're totally legal, and if they are legal, that
Speaker 1: people can that a company can say, hey, turn your
Speaker 1: ad blocker off, you vandal your visigoths trying to think
Speaker 1: of trying to think of European marauders at this point,
Speaker 1: you're Viking, and so it's that's an interesting thing to see.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: We don't have anything like that in the US because
Speaker 1: privacy is something we long since gave up on.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we're still doing the song and
Speaker 2: dance every so often, you know. It's it's one of
Speaker 2: those we make hallmark card level statements about privacy in
Speaker 2: the public sphere.
Speaker 1: And I guess, I guess really the place to kind
Speaker 1: of end this discussion to really the kicker. The reason
Speaker 1: why it would be very difficult for me to argue
Speaker 1: with any sincerity against someone's decision to use an ad
Speaker 1: blocker is the safety issue. The malware issue. So earlier
Speaker 1: this year there was a story about how this this
Speaker 1: malware group managed to infiltrate advertising companies that served ads
Speaker 1: to places like the BBC and other major outlets like
Speaker 1: msn A, like The New York Times.
Speaker 2: Big Fish.
Speaker 1: Yeah, these are huge outlets that are had to have
Speaker 1: advertising on them, And what the malware designers had done
Speaker 1: was they had injected malware into ads that were being
Speaker 1: served on these so they didn't have to they didn't
Speaker 1: have to hack into the New York Times or the BBC.
Speaker 1: They had to hack into the actual advertising server and
Speaker 1: insert some malware and disguise it really well, so it's
Speaker 1: not easy to pick out that malware gets served up
Speaker 1: as if it's a legitimate ad, and they could convince
Speaker 1: someone to install some code that ends up encrypting their
Speaker 1: hard drive. This is called ransomware. So this is when
Speaker 1: you get a message out of the blue and it says, hey,
Speaker 1: guess what, sucker, your computer's encrypted, and we've got an
Speaker 1: encryption key and we'll sell it to you. So you've
Speaker 1: got to pay us and we'll give you the key
Speaker 1: so that you can get back into your computer. If
Speaker 1: 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 and
Speaker 1: and so your your computer is held hostage and unless
Speaker 1: you pay for it, then you're kind of stuck. And
Speaker 1: because it was it was the malware attacks were coming
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: to you know, some back alley website that was already
Speaker 1: got a terrible reputation. They were malware.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they weren't going to like freeezannexinadderall dot biz.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. They were going to the New York Times,
Speaker 1: for goodness sakes. And so if you have an ad blocker,
Speaker 1: it blocks that stuff because it identifies it as an
Speaker 1: AD and you never get it, so you are safe
Speaker 1: from that kind of a malware attack. So it's very
Speaker 1: difficult to argue, hey, ad blockers are wrong when people
Speaker 1: who don't use them are potentially going to fall victim
Speaker 1: to this ransomware attack. And this was a very specific incident.
Speaker 1: It's not necessarily ever going to repeat or it may
Speaker 1: not repeat on a scale as large as it did before,
Speaker 1: but it drives home that fact that ad blockers are
Speaker 1: not just for people who are tired of being sold to.
Speaker 1: It's for people who are like, no, I want to
Speaker 1: be able to surf the web. I'm very careful with
Speaker 1: the way I surf the web. I want to make
Speaker 1: sure that I don't get hit by something despite how
Speaker 1: careful I am, and I'm getting it from what I
Speaker 1: thought was a trusted source. Look y'all, it's not lost
Speaker 1: on me that it is somewhat ironic for me to
Speaker 1: interrupt a conversation about the problems with ads so that
Speaker 1: we can go listen to some ads. But you got
Speaker 1: to pay the bills, y'all. Here we go. So one
Speaker 1: of the things I read about was about Forbes being
Speaker 1: one of those sites that you go to Forbes dot
Speaker 1: com and you get the message, hey, you need to
Speaker 1: turn off your ad blogger if you want to have
Speaker 1: access to it. But Forbes was also victim to a
Speaker 1: ransomware attack, which means that you know, you're like, well,
Speaker 1: I want to read that thing on Forbes, but then
Speaker 1: you make yourself vulnerable to being attacked by malware.
Speaker 2: And Forbes is such 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, but it's
Speaker 1: largely due to the problem with advertising, not the problem
Speaker 1: 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 on pages that have advertising served
Speaker 1: against it, and I want those pages to do well,
Speaker 1: and I want those advertisers to do well. But it
Speaker 1: requires that we have an advertising system that works and
Speaker 1: that isn't predatory or damaging.
Speaker 2: And currently we're still trying to we as a species
Speaker 2: are still trying to find what that thing is. We're
Speaker 2: we're kind of in a pioneering wild West state right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, and it's weird because advertising has been around
Speaker 1: for ages. Ages.
Speaker 2: Some of the earliest advertising actually goes back to Greco
Speaker 2: Roman times. Did you hear about this? No? There were so, well,
Speaker 2: I might I think you know what I'm going to say, So.
Speaker 1: Are you talking about houses of ill repute?
Speaker 2: Yes, Archaeologists found that prostitutes would wear sandals with arrows
Speaker 2: imprinted in the soul of the sandal, so that they
Speaker 2: would leave a series of arrows as they walked to
Speaker 2: As you so fittingly put it, the house of ill
Speaker 2: repute advertising is ancient.
Speaker 1: Can do you one better than that?
Speaker 2: All right? Laid on me.
Speaker 1: Pompeii, the city of Pompeii. They're still paving stones in
Speaker 1: Pompeii that have the image of a phallus raised a
Speaker 1: raised like it's actually carved in the stones, pointing in
Speaker 1: the direction of the brothels and and if you get
Speaker 1: the tour guide I get for Pompeii, he delights in
Speaker 1: pointing all of them out and explaining this and uses
Speaker 1: the the pronunciation of pos posse has a pose on it.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you're doing me one better, though,
Speaker 2: because these are just these are clearly like it sounds
Speaker 2: like prostitution. Advertisements are the pepsi and coke of early ads.
Speaker 1: Well, and to be fair, like you know you were
Speaker 1: saying making tracks in the dirt, I'm talking about putting
Speaker 1: forth the effort.
Speaker 2: I guess there is I guess there is that. Well
Speaker 2: maybe that maybe they're brought those were just more stable places.
Speaker 1: Well at least until the volcano erupted. Sorry, sorry man, Okay,
Speaker 1: well that that volcano though, Yeah, one hell of an
Speaker 1: AD blocker, so too soon? Yeah, yeah, I should have
Speaker 1: waited a couple more millennia. Yeah, we're having a lot
Speaker 1: of fun now. This is when we're like, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: it's Friday afternoon. Guess who's getting loopy? But no, getting
Speaker 1: back into the modern day discussion of this, and and
Speaker 1: and and the concerns that are there. You know. I've
Speaker 1: also read a piece that was written, I think in
Speaker 1: zd net about how you should not The author said,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't give sites that require you to disable ad
Speaker 1: blockers your clicks because of the safety issue is that
Speaker 1: if they say that they value money more than they
Speaker 1: value your safety as a customer, then that's a message
Speaker 1: that tells you you should not be a customer of
Speaker 1: that company. And I thought that's a very hard argument
Speaker 1: to oppose, right, Like, I don't want to go to
Speaker 1: a store where they're like, listen, buy some of our stuff.
Speaker 1: And then I look up and I see that ceiling
Speaker 1: tiles are about to fall down, or there's a sparking
Speaker 1: wire that's just laying on the ground.
Speaker 2: There's a hid 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.
Speaker 2: A bird hits the glass. Right.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of like there a lot of
Speaker 1: warning flags that are popping up, and I'm thinking, clearly,
Speaker 1: this this shot proprietor doesn't care about my safety and
Speaker 1: just wants me to buy something. I'm out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily mean that websites or shot proprietors for
Speaker 1: that matter, need to fall over themselves and say, listen,
Speaker 1: your welfare is our chief concern, but at least shows
Speaker 1: some concern, right right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly exactly, because the audience, the audience ultimately should
Speaker 2: be the primary concern, yes, right, yeah.
Speaker 1: And again, if your goal is to make money by
Speaker 1: selling to those people, or if your goal is to
Speaker 1: make money so that you can continue creating content and
Speaker 1: you're doing it through a partnership with an advertiser, then
Speaker 1: part of that means you definitely want that audience to
Speaker 1: be well because otherwise you don't have someone to sell to, right,
Speaker 1: So it makes it's so easy to see how it
Speaker 1: makes sense that the best possible approach is to find
Speaker 1: the one that is not going to irritate your viewer base.
Speaker 1: Because if you can figure that out, then you are
Speaker 1: good to go. If you are if you're able to
Speaker 1: do it without pushing away your audience, then things are working.
Speaker 1: The weird thing, and I know where I was going
Speaker 1: with before I talked about the ancient the ancient advertisement.
Speaker 1: The weird thing is we've had advertisement for so long,
Speaker 1: but no real way of seeing how effective it was.
Speaker 2: Right right, Yeah, no metric?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so television, radio, newspaper magazines. I mean, you could
Speaker 1: see after an ad campaign if sales increased, and you
Speaker 1: could argue, well, some of that sales increase must be
Speaker 1: due to the advertising, and you're probably right, But you
Speaker 1: can't get to the point where you can say how
Speaker 1: much of that increase was due to the advertising. It
Speaker 1: may be that advertising had a small but ultimately not
Speaker 1: a tremendous impact on sales and something else was responsible
Speaker 1: for the spike. It was impossible to say. The real
Speaker 1: weird thing about the Internet is you can track all that, right,
Speaker 1: you can track if people click on an AD, and
Speaker 1: once you get that information, instead of making it more valuable,
Speaker 1: it somehow made it less valuable. And possibly they made
Speaker 1: it less valuable by people saying, you know, advertising not
Speaker 1: as powerful as I thought it was, which meant all
Speaker 1: the advertising companies in the world said, uh oh, all
Speaker 1: the Don drapers of the world said, and that that
Speaker 1: opening part of the credits, where a silhouette is falling
Speaker 1: from a building, is starting to look pretty prophetic. Right now,
Speaker 1: of course, we all know that's not how it turned out.
Speaker 2: I have never seen Math, neither of I have just
Speaker 2: read a lot about it.
Speaker 1: I hear it's a lot like Yeah, it's a lot
Speaker 1: like Slooper. It's exactly like Looper. Uh So, anyway, that
Speaker 1: kind of wraps up our discussion. And again, this is
Speaker 1: a weird thing to talk about on a podcast that
Speaker 1: occasionally has sponsors that also again is part of a
Speaker 1: company that does web that well, that makes money at
Speaker 1: least in part through web advertising. But we thought it
Speaker 1: was an important one to talk about because as as
Speaker 1: people who create content, we want to see this work.
Speaker 1: We want we want to have a job. Ben I
Speaker 1: don't want to put words in your mouth. But I
Speaker 1: like what I do for a living.
Speaker 2: I'm here for community service.
Speaker 1: Actually I got you. Yeah, that explains the orange vest
Speaker 1: that you have to weigh. Yes, but then we have
Speaker 1: to report you because we were told you have to
Speaker 1: wait a time.
Speaker 2: So yeah, this is absolutely right. We love our jobs.
Speaker 1: We love our jobs, and we want to keep doing them.
Speaker 1: But as consumers ourselves, we completely understand the plight of
Speaker 1: people who are tired of these bad experiences. So if
Speaker 1: I were to leave you with anything, dear listeners, it
Speaker 1: would be but all the house stuff works domains on
Speaker 1: your white list, so that I can continue to have
Speaker 1: a job. But also, if anyone out there is in
Speaker 1: the advertising world to really give hard thought, like how
Speaker 1: can we create a better system that serves everyone more effectively?
Speaker 1: Because we we do. We need that, we want it,
Speaker 1: We need it from multiple reasons. The content providers needed,
Speaker 1: the viewers needed, the advertising companies needed, the vendors need it.
Speaker 1: We just have to figure that out in a way
Speaker 1: that has not really worked yet. With some exceptions. There's
Speaker 1: some online ads that may be extremely effective, and we
Speaker 1: need to study how those work and what was it
Speaker 1: that made them special? And perhaps create more appropriate best
Speaker 1: practices of stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's way more effective. Currently it seems
Speaker 2: to be or Twitter accounts from companies that talk directly
Speaker 2: to it with a sense of humor, and in these
Speaker 2: weird rivalries like fast food company twitters are hilarious. I
Speaker 2: don't know who they put in charge of it, and
Speaker 2: I don't know when they sober up. Right for now,
Speaker 2: the ride is great well, and for.
Speaker 1: Me, like, I subscribe to quite a few services as well,
Speaker 1: including YouTube Bread is one. And because I subscribe to
Speaker 1: YouTube Bread, I don't worry about ads that doesn't happen,
Speaker 1: but it means I'm paying a certain amount per month
Speaker 1: to have access to that. And in fact, I didn't
Speaker 1: even subscribe to YouTube Bread. Technically A subscribed to Google Music,
Speaker 1: which then converted into a YouTube Bread subscription, which is awesome.
Speaker 1: I don't have to subscribe to two different things now.
Speaker 1: But that approach I also like, like, I like the
Speaker 1: choice saying, hey, you know, you can go the route
Speaker 1: of watching the ads supported content, or if you pay
Speaker 1: a little to us each month, you can get the
Speaker 1: ad free version. And I'm fine with that too. And
Speaker 1: that concludes the conversation I had with Ben Bollin way
Speaker 1: back in twenty sixteen about the problem with ads. Again,
Speaker 1: like I said, we could do an update to this, because,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, there are multiple new ways for
Speaker 1: ads to be served to us. The targeted advertising field
Speaker 1: has gotten way more complicated since twenty sixteen. We're starting
Speaker 1: to see companies like Meta get serious pushback on the
Speaker 1: way that they have used targeted advertising, particularly in places
Speaker 1: like the European Union. With the development of virtual reality
Speaker 1: and augmented reality, we've got a lot of companies out
Speaker 1: there just sort of champing at the bit in order
Speaker 1: to find new ways to serve ads to us. And
Speaker 1: those are ways that could be far more intrusive, right,
Speaker 1: Like if you've got eye tracking hardware and software that
Speaker 1: are incorporated into a headset, then advertising can end up
Speaker 1: getting even more intrusive. And that's concerning the whole concept
Speaker 1: of the metaverse. Brings up lots more questions about advertising
Speaker 1: and privacy and security. So yeah, Ben should probably come
Speaker 1: back on the show and we should talk more about
Speaker 1: the current and future concerns we have with the way
Speaker 1: advertising is handled. We hear it, I heart, at least
Speaker 1: I'll speak for myself, but most of my co workers
Speaker 1: I feel fall into this category too. We take this seriously.
Speaker 1: We want to make sure that we monetize our shows
Speaker 1: or else, you know, we can't do them anymore because
Speaker 1: you know, you can't just do this and have yourself
Speaker 1: get paid for it and not have any way to
Speaker 1: generate revenue. But we want to make sure we do
Speaker 1: it in a responsible way, so I know that my
Speaker 1: coworkers take this as seriously as I do. Where we
Speaker 1: try our best to make sure that the ads that
Speaker 1: are paired with our shows are ones that we don't
Speaker 1: object to, that we feel are a good fit for
Speaker 1: our programs, and that aren't predatory in nature. Occasionally we
Speaker 1: are tricked ourselves or we miss something and we allow
Speaker 1: something to slip through, but we do our best. I
Speaker 1: know that I've done that a couple times in the
Speaker 1: past where in retrospect I'm like, ooh, I should have
Speaker 1: done a little more research to make sure that this
Speaker 1: was something that I was comfortable having play on the show.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we do our best on that because we
Speaker 1: do understand that advertising is a double edged sword. On
Speaker 1: the positive side, you might introduce people into a product
Speaker 1: or service that they really genuinely could use that could
Speaker 1: be helpful for them. The other side is you could
Speaker 1: end up perpetuating a predatory relationship that you definitely don't want.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the challenges continue. If you have suggestions for
Speaker 1: future topics I could cover here on tech Stuff, please
Speaker 1: let me know. You can reach out to me a
Speaker 1: couple different ways. You can download the iHeartRadio app. It's
Speaker 1: free to download and use. You can navigate over to
Speaker 1: tech Stuff using that little search bar. You'll see that
Speaker 1: there's a microphone icon on the tech stuff page. If
Speaker 1: you click on that, you can leave me a voice
Speaker 1: message up to thirty seconds in length. If you prefer
Speaker 1: to write to me, you can head on over to Twitter.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming Twitter still exists, So I'm recording all of
Speaker 1: these intros and outros in January of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: and it's months later now. I don't know if Twitter
Speaker 1: is still a thing. I can't tell the future. I
Speaker 1: know that it's in real trouble right now, but hopefully
Speaker 1: it's still around. If it is, go there and send
Speaker 1: me a message. The handle for the show is tech
Speaker 1: Stuff HSW and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production for more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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