Wired [unpaywalled]- How Advertising Broke the World. “The internet is a cesspool of misinformation, and the biggest blue-chip brands and their ad agencies are the ones funding it—by stuffing money into a Rube Goldberg machine called programmatic advertising…You Are the Product Being Sold. Spending on programmatic advertising globally is estimated to reach more than $300… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: E-Commerce
A Devil’s Bargain With OpenAI
The Atlantic via MSN: The Atlantic’s CEO, Nicholas Thompson, announced in an internal email that the company has entered into a business partnership with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. (The news was made public via a press release shortly thereafter.) Editorial content from this publication will soon be directly referenced in response to queries in… Continue Reading
Huge Google Search document leak reveals inner workings of ranking algorithm
Search Engine Land: “A trove of leaked Google documents has given us an unprecedented look inside Google Search and revealed some of the most important elements Google uses to rank content. What happened. Thousands of documents, which appear to come from Google’s internal Content API Warehouse, were released March 13 on Github by an automated… Continue Reading
PayPal is building an ad network based on your Venmo data
The Verge: “PayPal is launching an advertising platform built on a trove of customer transaction data. The company’s new advertising business will encompass purchase information and customer spending habits from PayPal and its sister app Venmo, according to The Wall Street Journal. PayPal has brought on Mark Grether, the former vice president and general manager… Continue Reading
What are location services and how do they work?
Proton: “Location services refer to a combination of technologies used in devices like smartphones and computers that use data from your device’s GPS, WiFi, mobile (cellular networks), and sometimes even Bluetooth connections to determine and track your geographic location. This information can be accessed by your operating system (OS) and the apps installed on your… Continue Reading
How to Clear Your Browser’s Cache, and Why You Should
Wired: “Every web browser has what’s called a cache: a temporary storage space for web pages that syncs online content to your computer or mobile device. This syncing is designed to help websites load up faster and put less strain on your internet bandwidth. It’s a good idea, and it works well most of the… Continue Reading
Dataset containing detailed purchase histories from 5027 US Amazon.com consumers
Data is Plural: “The MIT Media Lab’s Alex Berke et al. have compiled “a first-of-its-kind dataset containing detailed purchase histories from 5027 U.S. Amazon.com consumers, spanning 2018 through 2022, with more than 1.8 million purchases […] crowdsourced through an online survey and shared with participants’ informed consent.” The published data include “order date, product code,… Continue Reading
Even if you think AI search could be good, it won’t be good
Pluralistic: “The big news in search this week is that Google is continuing its transition to “AI search” – instead of typing in search terms and getting links to websites, you’ll ask Google a question and an AI will compose an answer based on things it finds on the web: https://blog.google/products/search/generative-ai-google-search-may-2024/ – Google bills this as… Continue Reading
Google now offers ‘web’ search and an AI opt-out button
The Verge: “This is not a joke: Google will now let you perform a “web” search. It’s rolling out “web” searches now, and in my early tests on desktop, it’s looking like it could be an incredibly popular change to Google’s search engine. The optional setting filters out almost all the other blocks of content… Continue Reading
Web publishers brace for carnage as Google adds AI answers
Washington Post [read free via MSN]: “As the tech giant gears up for Google I/O, its annual developer conference, this week, creators like Matherne are worried about the expanding reach of its new search tool that incorporates artificial intelligence. The product, dubbed “Search Generative Experience,” or SGE, directly answers queries with complex, multi-paragraph replies that… Continue Reading
How to Block Companies From Tracking You Online
Lifehacker: “…Currently, there are two major methods of data-tracking online: The first, cookies, is on the way out, but pixel trackers are a bit more complicated. You’ve probably heard the term cookies before. These are little packets of information that allow websites to store data like your password, so you don’t need to log in… Continue Reading
AI-generated images have become the latest form of social media spam
Nieman Lab: “…Our team of researchers from the Stanford Internet Observatory and Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology investigated over 100 Facebook pages that posted high volumes of AI-generated content. We published the results in March 2024 as a preprint paper, meaning the findings have not yet gone through peer review. We explored patterns of images,… Continue Reading
