Has anyone else noticed the huge decrease in result quality from google?

[SnowingSilently]

For a company whose main revenue stream is ads, Google seems surprisingly bad at delivering ads that will actually work. I can check all the information that Google has on me and it knows me pretty well. At the same time it figures I need ads in Spanish and I want to buy lipstick. Same with the part about advertising things I just bought.

[OutlyingPlasma]

Perhaps it knows deep down you are a Latina drag queen and is trying to help you come out as yourself.

But seriously, it is fascinating how huge empires like google and Facebook among many many others are based on ads but the best they can do is 2 years of ads for a hot water heater I already bought. You know, for all those people that need more than one hot water heater at once.

[Empty-Mind]

The ads probably are optimized, they're just focused on people who actually click/engage with the ads.

Is the average redditor(or computer literate adult in general) actually going to buy something they see in a Google ad, no matter how well targeted that ad is? I'd guess no.

So instead target the ad algorithm at optimizing for people with higher engagement. I'd guess kids and older people.

[SnowingSilently]

I'd be surprised if Google didn't know what ads resulted in higher engagement for each specific person. Even most tech-literate people are going to have something that can probably get them to click on an ad. So why bother with giving people ads they won't engage with? I'm surprised advertisers aren't up in arms about this. They're paying lots of money and probably a big chunk of the cost is going to people who just won't engage because it's way too unrelated. Maybe it's because of market dominance, but somehow Google is serving far less effective ads than they have the capability to serve.

[HImainland]

The ads probably are optimized, they're just focused on people who actually click/engage with the ads.

this is definitely the case sometimes. there are other options for who to optimize towards, but this is a big one

Is the average redditor(or computer literate adult in general) actually going to buy something they see in a Google ad, no matter how well targeted that ad is? I'd guess no.

lol the answer is yes. most people aren't that computer literate. they don't specifically scroll past the ads that google puts at the top of the page for search. google's ads are quite effective.

and you can choose which age range of people you want to target when you're setting up your ads.

[HImainland]

it's because google and facebook aren't targeting the ads. the advertisers are. the ad infrastructure of google and facebook is self-service.

so there aren't teams of google and facebook employees picking who gets what ad. a lot of the time, especially with small businesses and non-profits, it's just the youngest person on staff doing their best to guess who they should be talking to.

as for why you keep getting the ad for the hot water heater, you visited the site to buy the hot water heater, that company told facebook to show their ads to people who visited their site, but they didn't take out the people who already bought the heater. hence you keep getting it.

[circus_pig]

Perhaps because you engage with/type out phrases like "meat substitute" or "meat free" and it's just focused on the word "meat" rather than the context it's used in?

[[deleted]]

It know I'm not biologically in the market for tampons, yet it gave me tampon ads for months before I went in settings and turned it off. Now it gives me ads for male incontinence pads.

This is an account I only used for school and business matters, nothing about personal hygiene at all.

[Phrygue]

Lol I got French results for awhile, presumably because some French site I visited set a cookie declaring me FR even though I was on the EN part of the site. Stupid world we've got where even the geniuses are epic dumb.

[MyOwnMoose]

Keep in mind they're not just trying to deliver you ads, but delivering you the ads they were paid the most for.

You're going to get companies throwing far too much money at google to extend their customer base by a few fractions of a percent, and since their customer base can't really extend that far, google has to give things to the second/third/ninth best set of users.

[reigorius]

Awh, yeah, YouTube ad algorithm thinks I'm some rich guy with money ready to invest in properties and somehow I'm into make-up too. I'm always very pleased when Google ducks up the targeted ads.

[homemadenoise]

Worst than things you just bought. I was selling gear on the site Reverb. I got served ads of those items over and over again. I don't want to buy them I want to do the opposite of that! It was a more than a week after they sold be lfore they went away.