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I've removed all ad network code from my blog

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Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#41

Post by bazillion »

fiatjaf wrote: post #4

Ok, you have a sponsorship model that works because you're probably very famous. That doesn't solve anyone's problem, because almost no one is famous. How can we replace ad networks with something better and saner?

I built what I believe to be the most sane way to "advertise" something: Let people buy directly from an image. This solves the problem of people not interested in the content, because of its unobtrusive nature -- if they don't hover over an item within the image, it's as if the "advertisement" isn't there.

Check out my demo (desktop only) at http://www.worldlifestyle.com/testpost

My website which you can sign up for the (free) beta at: http://pleenq.com

Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#42

Post by StavrosK »

r1ch wrote: post #12

You'll be surprised how much faster pages feel without ad scripts - I noticed significant improvements after implementing a no-ads premium option on our website. Even with an ad blocker, things just feel snappier if the scripts simply aren't there in the first place. I decided to go one step further with my personal site and eliminate all JS completely. I don't get enough traffic to make any kind of analytics or ad c…

> I don't get enough traffic to make any kind of analytics or ad code worthwhile.

On a related note, does anyone else see GA being wildly inaccurate? My blog was on the HN front page a while ago, and CloudFront got ~600k hits, which should translate to about ~100k uniques (I cache), yet GA only showed 8k uniques.

I'm guessing the HN crowd runs uBlock or some other blocker in its vast majority, so JS-based analytics are completely untrustworthy.

Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#43

Post by imagist »

fiatjaf wrote: post #4

Ok, you have a sponsorship model that works because you're probably very famous. That doesn't solve anyone's problem, because almost no one is famous. How can we replace ad networks with something better and saner?

Almost no one makes money off ads either. Sure, a lot of the people you can think of with websites make their money off ads, but that works because they're probably very famous.

Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#44

Post by yoz-y »

blauditore wrote: post #18
yoz-y wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an idea at some point, but I do not know it if would be feasible. For me it seems that sponsorships/native ads are better than the usual banner style intrusive ads. Would it be possible to still have a syndicated ad network, but that it would feed you articles in some structured format, that you would get on your backend, and then insert as articles into your blog/website? This way you could format them any way…

What you describe sounds similar to affiliate marketing [1]: Post a link to external services and get commission for clicks (maybe depending on conversion). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_marketing

But in the case of affiliate marketing you get the links and as content creator you create the ad copy. What I was thinking was kind of an automation of these kind of posts: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/12/23/storyworth

Or some other way to deliver ads with copy and images, but through the backend. (that way the website author has complete power on what an ad actually can do on their website)

Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#45

Post by dbg31415 »

ambirex wrote: post #10

Except that he is still using Disqus, which is free to use because they have moved to ad supported model (for the most part). Even if he isn't running the ads, they are using the script to track users across sites and then feeding that into ad networks.

An alternative to Disqus.

* Discourse || https://www.discourse.org/

* Embedding Discourse Comments via Javascript - howto - Discourse Meta || https://meta.discourse.org/t/embedding-discourse-comments-vi...

EDIT: Love the instant downvotes without any comments on why. Downvotes are totally helpful and not the least bit petty and stupid. I have 2 client using Discourse on their production sites and it works great.

Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#46

Post by kaybe »

Here is another argument for curated ads or ads that are matching the page content, not the viewer:

Seeing ads that are for something very different than the page content give me a high mental overhead, such as ads for games when I search for programming, or ads for food when I look for games. They are highjacking my though processes and I have to extend effort to manage all these things in my head.

On the other hand, if the ads match what I'm trying to do, such as programming ressources for programming, games for games etc, I even find them helpful sometimes, and there is very little mental overhead.

Not all ads are the same level of annoying. I wish we could go back to tracking-free advertisement, not just because tracking is bad in itself.

Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#47

Post by croon »

mrweasel wrote: post #15
fiatjaf wrote: post #4

Ok, you have a sponsorship model that works because you're probably very famous. That doesn't solve anyone's problem, because almost no one is famous. How can we replace ad networks with something better and saner?

It also doesn't solve the issues for most advertisers. I can't imagine that a large e-commerce site would want to make thousands of individual deals with sites that may or may not generate the desired traffic. His solution doesn't really scale, for the advertisers, which is why the ad networks exists. My main issue with ad networks is that they simply aren't technically competent enough to run an internet facing busi…

> It also doesn't solve the issues for most advertisers. I can't imagine that a large e-commerce site would want to make thousands of individual deals with sites that may or may not generate the desired traffic.

Agreed.

Idea: Is it possible to replace ad networks with ad brokers? The broker keeps a ledger of interested parties on both sides. Someone looking to buy ad space specifies relevant market segments (data analysts, single moms, golfers, etc), and the broker connects them to relevant sites.

Metrics could be solved by passing a token when linking back to ad space buyer, or the broker still embedding, but much less intrusively than an ad network, both the blog/site and the ad space buyer tracking independently and reporting back to broker for backwards statistics, etc.

I'm sure there are other issues, but this is just off the top of my head.

Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#48

Post by tapirl »

yuvadam wrote: post #2

Kudos for removing all 3rd party scripts, not only ad networks. As builders of web systems, we need to be conscious of which 3rd parties are gaining access to private user data. There's no reason in hell any Google or Facebook widget should be embedded in my health care providers website, yet somehow that's a thing. Any other website is usually even worse. I personally use NoScript with whitelisted scripts when I kno…

> we need to be conscious of which 3rd parties are gaining access to private user data.

Many big websites are hosted on IaaS services, such as AWS. The IaaS providers know most of your activities, without your awareness.

Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#49

Post by mark_l_watson »

ambirex wrote: post #10

Except that he is still using Disqus, which is free to use because they have moved to ad supported model (for the most part). Even if he isn't running the ads, they are using the script to track users across sites and then feeding that into ad networks.

I noticed the use of Discus also. Handling comments is a pain. I converted my entire blog to Jekyll as static content a few years ago and used Jekyll with Discus, but after a few months decided to just keep using blogger.com for my blog since Discus itself was a little intrusive. I thought about doing without comments, but that seems like a bad idea.

Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#50

Post by JStanton617 »

croon wrote: post #47
mrweasel wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also doesn't solve the issues for most advertisers. I can't imagine that a large e-commerce site would want to make thousands of individual deals with sites that may or may not generate the desired traffic. His solution doesn't really scale, for the advertisers, which is why the ad networks exists. My main issue with ad networks is that they simply aren't technically competent enough to run an internet facing busi…

> It also doesn't solve the issues for most advertisers. I can't imagine that a large e-commerce site would want to make thousands of individual deals with sites that may or may not generate the desired traffic. Agreed. Idea: Is it possible to replace ad networks with ad brokers? The broker keeps a ledger of interested parties on both sides. Someone looking to buy ad space specifies relevant market segments (data ana…

This is exactly what an ad network is
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