alt Hacker NewsCommon topic amongst friends on online advertising: feels like it would be reasonable for platforms like Meta, TikTok, etc to explain why they've served you the ad you're seeing. Imagine an "explain why I'm seeing this" button.
The adtech of today feels very opaque to me; I often have no clue why I see what I do. If platforms had to disclose why you're seeing what you are, you could plug the holes in your privacy. (Fully aware this will never happen, but it's the type of regulation I wish we were proactive about.)
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YouTube has this! It usually gives a vague reason like "Time of day" and "Your general location". Though I wonder if it's extra vague because I turned off some of the more creepy advertising sertings.
While I agree with the sentiment, any answer would likely be vague (unless it is only interests based) since the models used to choose specific ads to be displayed can be rather complex.
It's a great idea too because it would force the companies to disclose the downright creepy extent of the data they've collected on you.
"We're showing you ads for diapers because we find it highly likely that you are pregnant. Oh, you didn't know that?"
The few cases where it was clear to me why I was seeing a certain ad was after I had ordered that product online. Which is kind of useless for the advertiser, but at least it's slightly reassuring that the tracking doesn't go that far...
Instagram does have a "Why you're seeing this ad" button. Clicking it for an ad on my feed, I see:
- "chasetravel wants to reach people like you" (clicking through reveals that this is because I am 18 years of age or older and based in the US) - "Your activity" which includes interacting with "ads about travel, fine arts and music" and "posts, stories, reels and pages about food & drinks, fine arts and cameras"
So, basically, the button reveals nothing. But with regulation maybe it would. I don't see how this would make things worse (for users - of course Meta would fight it).
EDIT: As another commenter has noted, I have also turned off every possible bit of tracking. Maybe if I hadn't I'd see more here. But I'm sure Meta is doing all sorts of fingerprinting along with tracking pixels across websites that's informing the auction, but they're not telling me about that.
You are seeing and ad because someone won the bid on the ad exchange. Why they bid to show you their ad? That answer lies not with the platform, but with the advertiser. Good luck getting an answer from them (and _all_ of them).
They’d have to tell you directly that they’ve been pulling info on you from other sites/sources, effectively spying on your activity even when you aren’t on their platforms, which would be a PR nightmare.
Meta had such feature but was bullshit: it always showed extremely generic reasons for extremely specific ads.
I don't think there's even a technical way to do this anymore. Digital ads are not actually audiences anymore (bundles of people labeled a certain way).
IMO the regulation needs to be at the data collection side: advertisers should only be able to collect data on a defined set of dimensions and each dimension should have a defined maximum specificity. Then beyond those, advertising platforms need to compete on making their actual products more compelling rather than making them better at sucking up data.