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The Dulin Report

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The future is bright Mar 30, 2025 On Amazon Prime Video’s move to a monolith May 14, 2023 One size does not fit all: neither cloud nor on-prem Apr 10, 2023 Some thoughts on the latest LastPass fiasco Mar 5, 2023 Comparing AWS SQS, SNS, and Kinesis: A Technical Breakdown for Enterprise Developers Feb 11, 2023 There is no such thing as one grand unified full-stack programming language May 27, 2022 Which AWS messaging and queuing service to use? Jan 25, 2019 Using Markov Chain Generator to create Donald Trump's state of union speech Jan 20, 2019 Adobe Creative Cloud is an example of iPad replacing a laptop Jan 3, 2019 Facebook is the new Microsoft Apr 14, 2018 Leaving Facebook and Twitter: here are the alternatives Mar 25, 2018 Rather than innovating Walmart bullies their tech vendors to leave AWS Jun 27, 2017 Architecting API ecosystems: my interview with Anthony Brovchenko of R. Culturi Jun 5, 2017 TDWI 2017, Chicago, IL: Architecting Modern Big Data API Ecosystems May 30, 2017 Online grocers have an additional burden to be reliable Jan 5, 2017 Windows 10: a confession from an iOS traitor Jan 4, 2017 What I learned from using Amazon Alexa for a month Sep 7, 2016 Why I switched to Android and Google Project Fi and why should you Aug 28, 2016 Amazon Alexa is eating the retailers alive Jun 22, 2016 In search for the mythical neutrality among top-tier public cloud providers Jun 18, 2016 What can we learn from the last week's salesforce.com outage ? May 15, 2016 Why it makes perfect sense for Dropbox to leave AWS May 7, 2016 Our civilization has a single point of failure Dec 16, 2015 IT departments must transform in the face of the cloud revolution Nov 9, 2015 Setting Up Cross-Region Replication of AWS RDS for PostgreSQL Sep 12, 2015 Top Ten Differences Between ActiveMQ and Amazon SQS Sep 5, 2015 What Every College Computer Science Freshman Should Know Aug 14, 2015 Ten Questions to Consider Before Choosing Cassandra Aug 8, 2015 Big Data Should Be Used To Make Ads More Relevant Jul 29, 2015 Book Review: "Shop Class As Soulcraft" By Matthew B. Crawford Jul 5, 2015 Attracting STEM Graduates to Traditional Enterprise IT Jul 4, 2015 Smart IT Departments Own Their Business API and Take Ownership of Data Governance May 13, 2015 Guaranteeing Delivery of Messages with AWS SQS May 9, 2015 We Need a Cloud Version of Cassandra May 7, 2015 The Clarkson School Class of 2015 Commencement speech May 5, 2015 Building a Supercomputer in AWS: Is it even worth it ? Apr 13, 2015 Ordered Sets and Logs in Cassandra vs SQL Apr 8, 2015 Microsoft and Apple Have Everything to Lose if Chromebooks Succeed Mar 31, 2015 Where AWS Elastic BeanStalk Could be Better Mar 3, 2015 Trying to Replace Cassandra with DynamoDB ? Not so fast Feb 2, 2015 Why I am Tempted to Replace Cassandra With DynamoDB Nov 13, 2014 Infrastructure in the cloud vs on-premise Aug 25, 2014 Cassandra: a key puzzle piece in a design for failure Aug 18, 2014 Cassandra: Lessons Learned Jun 6, 2014 Things I wish Apache Cassandra was better at Feb 12, 2014

Big Data Should Be Used To Make Ads More Relevant

July 29, 2015

[caption id="attachment_181" align="aligncenter" width="584"]"Advertising" -- Photo Credit Mathias Klang "Advertising"
Photo Credit Mathias Klang[/caption]

It is 2015 and by now advertising agencies could have figured out the best way to deliver relevant ads to viewers. They have not. Hulu is the prime illustration of this phenomenon.

We canceled our DirecTV subscription and declined to use Comcast for anything more than Internet access for over three years now. When I watch shows on Hulu I get ads that I never act on because they are so irrelevant.

The most irrelevant ad on Hulu is the one advertising Hulu Plus itself. I am already a subscriber and they should be able to tell. The second most irrelevant ad is the one telling me, repeatedly, that they got their hands on the full collection of “Seinfeld” episodes - which I am already four seasons into!

While watching Hulu it is also not uncommon for me to get advertisements for shows that are only available to cable subscribers. But I am not, and I made it clear that there is no circumstance under which we will subscribe to cable television. Shows not available on Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime might as well not exist. There is not going to be a conversion in response to Xfinity TV ads on Hulu from yours truly.

Hulu product advertisements leave much to be desired as well. Why advertise Microsoft products to someone who uses Apple products and Linux ?

There is so much Hulu could do to create more relevant ads for me. Hulu knows well enough who I am and what my interests are. They know my IP, they can search the Internet for my name. They can give me a way to disable irrelevant or annoying commercials.

The age of Big Data and voluntary surrender of privacy should have brought more meaningful and more relevant advertising. The knowledge the advertisers have about consumers is unprecedented. They should use it.