Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads • Hacker News Board

Re: Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

#321

Post by LesZedCB » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 7:22 PM UTC

lucideer wrote: post #189

While I do find ads very mildly annoying, I don't tend to visit too many sites that have very intrusive advertising. My primary reason for using an adblocker (I don't use an adblocker actually, I use uBlock which is more general) is to reduce tracking and increase privacy. I would previously have assumed that this was the same motivation most technically proficient adblocker users, but the comments here on HN seem to…

Getting away from tracking is primarily why I use it. I also tend to be surprised by people thinking ad blocking is about blocking ads as well, though. Especially here, maybe it's just a cultural shift towards generally being ok with being tracked. Oh, I hope not, though...

Re: Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

#322

Post by Spivak » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 7:22 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #234

TeMPOraL wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same as Nursie and can give at least one concrete example - I purposefully avoided buying any Groupon ever only because once upon a time they spammed living shit out of the Internet with pink animated ads.

Are you sure it didn't also have to do with the slew of bad press they received for a while, especially here? Do you actually have a memory of avoiding groupon and at that time remembering the ads, or are you now remembering avoiding groupon because you disliked them and now remembering the ads? (I ask because I find perceptions of past actions interesting, not because I specifically doubt you).

It's really just perception of your brand. If you advertise to me I'll think less of you. Maybe that's enough for me to avoid you, maybe not, but it certainly didn't help your cause.

Re: Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

#323

Post by cheald » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 7:23 PM UTC

eli173 wrote: post #276

cheald wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lastly, we hate tracking. I can't overstate that. They kill profiling we kill ad blocking. Simple as that. As a nerdy guy, I'd much rather see video game ads than tampon ads. I get the ideological argument against targeted advertising, but the practical arguments for it are pretty compelling, too.

You don't need to be tracked for this to happen though. If ad networks placed video game-related ads on video game-related websites and tampon-related ads on tampon-related websites, then users of both sites would get ad content relevant to their interests.

Consider contexts like news websites, though, with broadly-applicable audiences. Specialty or niche sites do just fine with site-derived advertising targets. Other things do much less well.

There's also the fact that targeted ads result in better CPMs for publishers (since they'll result in better returns-per-view for advertisers), which means that they don't have to deploy as many of them to meet revenue expectations.

Re: Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

#324

Post by manigandham » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 7:26 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #277

throwaway342526 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people do not behave as you claim to. Advertising really does work. It's rational and has well-demonstrated ROI. You're either an outlier in terms of behavior, or you're not offering an honest representation of how you react to ads.

It's not rational, it's silly. It's a tragedy of commons problem coupled with a feedback loop - companies waste ever increasing amount of money, fuel, and man power, supporting a whole bullshit job industry in oder to compete with each other over a limited pool of attention and wallets AND at the same time they turn whole Internet into a cesspool. If you look at it globally, it's insanity.

It seems like you're just saying that because you don't like them.

The ad industry is not full of idiots, it's got an impressive amount of technology and data behind it proving the ROI on every side.

You have not uncovered some kind of mass conspiracy. I'd strongly recommend you either talk to people in the industry or read up on the technology and results available.

Re: Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

#325

Post by unabridged » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 7:28 PM UTC

This will probably only block the ads that don't bother me, text and banners. The part I hate is the javascript bloat that loads from 1000 domains, the fullscreen popup that asks me to subscribe, and the autoplaying videos.

Re: Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

#326

Post by mangeletti » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 7:30 PM UTC

bkanber wrote: post #16

This is fascinating. Business model: annoy people so much that they pay you to stop annoying them. Everybody's been talking about the death of display ads, and it looks like Google's paying attention and trying to figure out how to marginalize the ad itself, but still take money on the transaction. Eventually, Google could probably marginalize the ad so much that there are only a rare few display ads left online, and…

You're absolutely right. This is essentially a business example of the Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis dialectic.

Re: Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

#327

Post by xorcist » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 7:31 PM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #294

xorcist wrote: post #262

I see a couple of issues with programs like this. First, if this were to take off it would move the industry to impression based pricing wholesale. Reprinted content is already on of the biggest problems today, and with this model there is obvious risk that original creators get nothing as reprinters take everything. Second, given that we can't have a monopoly on this business, a webmaster is incentivized to join eve…

To my knowledge, Contributor uses the same infrastructure and technology as ads, but with a different payload. All 3 problems you mentioned are problems being experienced today: 1. Google is already able to guage 'low quality' pages, co temt farms and pirates. This doesn't change 2. This happenens with ads, Google can add a rule saying you "can't have x amount of ads of you want to be on our network " 3.Likely to sta…

Absolutely, those are problem we know exist and this model risks making worse. The basic arguments is the big move towards cost by impressions if this catches on and becomes a dominant model, and the fact that banners of limited visibility is easier to stack. Huge white, or even invisible, banners littering the page will not disturb the casual user.

Google lost the fight on content farms several years ago. You are more likely to find reprints than original material if you google a breaking story or meme for example, even if there are exceptions.

Re: Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

#328

Post by Steko » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 7:32 PM UTC

Propping up the existing system with money doesn't sound like a solution. If there's a fox in the henhouse, leaving a bowl of fox chow next to the chickens isn't going to fix the problem.

Re: Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

#329

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 7:33 PM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #318

TeMPOraL wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Content creators have to be paid, or much of the web I know and love will cease to exist. YMMV, I suppose we may be browsing different parts of the Internet, but I know content I love would mostly stay intact. From my personal and subjective experience, nearly everything that is actually worth anything on the Internet is made by unpaid volunteers for whom creating content is an end in itself, and not a way to ea…

It's not your call to make on what's harmful to society. So you don't want to read the "bad" stuff? Ok that's fine, just don't go to those sites. But dont impose your ideals on everyone else who is reading that content voluntarily because they clearly enjoy it.

There are some issues which are really simple. Feeding people lies and bullshit to earn money is rather a clear-cut issue. So is encouraging dysrationalia. And yes, as a member of society it is my right to voice my opinion about whether something is endangering it.

It's not just about me not wanting to read the bad stuff. If I dislike a page, I just don't visit it, I usually don't complain. But when talking about mass media, every lie they write gets read by the general population. People still (for some reason, probably because there's no other established alternative) trust them, and most don't have time to evaluate the claims critically. They form beliefs based on lies, and then they act based on those beliefs. In democracies, they go and vote based on those beliefs.

So suddenly, that pile of bullshit I carefully avoid to read gets amplified and hits me anyway, in form of bad policy, bad social projects and, well, bad zeitgeist.

Re: Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads

#330

Post by manigandham » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 7:35 PM UTC

To offer some perspective on the advertiser side:

1) Content costs money. Only way to pay is directly or indirectly (via ads). Ads are the only micropayment system that works at scale so far because it has no overhead of decisions or funds transfer and is monetarily "free". It's also more anonymous than direct payments.

2) Ads do work. Very well. Billions of dollars, millions of work-hours and petabytes of data prove this daily.

3) Ads aren't going anywhere and the industry will not disappear. It's bigger and stronger than ever with billions of clicks, pageviews, video views, tweets, likes, posts, snapchats, etc being sent every day. The technology for delivering ads will change along with more embedded/sponsored content but this model will always be valid.

4) What we're seeing is a reset in the industry to finally care more about the user experience (because they have more control now). Best case scenario - we have better ads, revenue and consumer experiences. Worse case - we're right back where we started or even a whole lot worse with more data tracking. Either scenarios are equally possible.