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humanpropensity alextcone RubSchreurs adamheimlich I think that, by convention, #2 is generally taken to be "data leakage" but it does technically fit the term. But I agree with you that Arbitrage is generally perceived to be bad but is not intrinsically so...
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humanpropensity alextcone RubSchreurs adamheimlich IMO: In ad tech conventionally "arbitrage" means buying traffic from Site A to land on Site B to show ads to. That's the main use almost everywhere in our circles. I don't think that process is intrinsically bad though...
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humanpropensity alextcone RubSchreurs adamheimlich Ad tech people keep talking about how users are a "currency" and the ecosystem is a "market". Well when markets fail to find efficiencies in moving currency arbitrage happens. Arbitrage is a natural result of ad tech being shit and inefficient.
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humanpropensity alextcone RubSchreurs adamheimlich The question buyers should be asking is if the people upstream of them are seeking efficiencies in 1. finding them the users they want to reach 2. taking their money These are the two main things that *could* happen. Legit publishers using legit means are doing 1.
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humanpropensity alextcone RubSchreurs adamheimlich In theory, you could find efficiency in bringing users to ads through content, but the system is very broken, the routing is broken, the search is broken, etc... so if you don't want to launch a new micro-site for every advertiser topic & then wait years patiently building rep...
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humanpropensity alextcone RubSchreurs adamheimlich Instead you acquire users. If the ads are *well targeted* then the users should be interested in both the content and the ads anyway. The core problem is always going to be that users are too easily diluted for the level of precision buyers want...
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humanpropensity alextcone RubSchreurs adamheimlich If buyers don't want arbitrage, they need to have more realistic targeting expectations. But "don't want arbitrage" is dumb. Who cares if buyers get the right users that they are asking for and the traffic is legit? Users are no more engaged when acquired than when organic...
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humanpropensity alextcone RubSchreurs adamheimlich Users are just mostly not engaged, no matter how their eyes end up in front of an ad. Like, by percentage. That's the truth that arbitrage reveals that marketers don't want to acknowledge: precision marketing is a dumb shadow play that means and does nothing at overblown cost.
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humanpropensity alextcone RubSchreurs adamheimlich If buyers don't like the end result then they shouldn't play in the pool.
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humanpropensity alextcone RubSchreurs adamheimlich When I do presentations I usually do a banner blindness test from back in the 00s. Back then only 30% of people saw the part of the UI in the traditional banner position. Now when I present it, almost no one does. The problem buyers really have is that we're not evolving.
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humanpropensity alextcone RubSchreurs adamheimlich The banner ad was not meant to be broadly applied. That wasn't what it was designed for! It was designed for a very specific context on a very specific site that looked like a 90s website. Yet here we are, still using it.
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humanpropensity alextcone RubSchreurs adamheimlich All the precision targeting BS is just there to cover up the fact that digital marketing works like if we had personal flying cars that ran on water vapor but insisted on using high wheel bikes to get everywhere.
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