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I've removed all ad network code from my blog

troyhunt.com

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

#121

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

The sponsorship model is once again becoming popular on the web, something I'm not sure if I'm happy about. On the one hand, it's a lot nicer than ads, but OTOH, it makes me more suspicious any recommendations from people who have been sponsored. Did you recommend that we use that product because you genuinely like it, and thus accepted sponsorship from them, or are you only pretending to like it because you're getting paid? It's hard to tell.

The "sponsored by viewers like you" approach (aka Patreon, the NPR pledge drive, etc) solves this problem, but it's rare that anything has an audience big enough to support it.

But hey, one of the benefits of sponsored content is that at least the ads (if that's how the sponsorship works: it usually is in podcasts and video, which are where this is really taking off, moreso than blogs) are entertaining. I skip ads as quickly as possible for the most part. OTOH, I have repeatedly watched an hour-long compilation of ads for SquareSpace taken from the Co-Optional podcast. Which were compiled by popular demand.

So that's a benefit to sponsorship for companies: if you can get me to willingly watch your ads, because they're that good, you've effectively won.

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

#122

Post by thinkMOAR »

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?

Not only famous, but i assume a 'Microsoft Regional Director' makes enough money to pay for a hosted blog.

Though great to see that there is a site less on the internet leaking their visitor information to ad networks and their affiliates....

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

#123

Post by philliphaydon »

bazillion wrote: post #41
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…

This is very similar (but far better done) to something I did about 8 years ago for a client while I was working in Australia. The idea was they had a photo of a bedroom and they could draw on top of the image to isolate items in the room that could be purchased.

What I wrote was very very basic, but what you've done is far more impressive and awesome.

Edit: This is something I wouldn't block (from what I currently see) unless it attempted to know everything about me. Damn tracking.

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

#124

Post by bazillion »

jameskegel wrote: post #105
bazillion wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! It's not lightweight -- the average script include I have right now is around 280k. I'm going to be able to reduce it in the next few months to around 150k, I believe. Once downloaded, the processing of it itself is not too intensive.

Thank you for taking a moment to respond; if I can get another question in, can you tell me a bit about how this scales with, say 10 or 40 images on a page as far as filesize goes? 150k in the context of modern web pages is not too far off from being realistic as an ad solution, depending on how many pictures it takes to reach the tipping point of page load time.

I have a test page that does 1000 images with 2-4 PLEENQs on each image, and performance is good with an 8-gig of ram mac mini and an iPhone 5 (my test platform for the mobile version).

I do about 10 million impressions a day, and the request to the server is a pretty consistent ~200ms, along with an async load that won't affect overall page load.

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

#125

Post by geocar »

walterbell wrote: post #112
ddebernardy wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is something wrong with this model? Detecting fraudulent ad views and clicks.

Which parties perform fraud / bot detection today?

The advertiser may choose a partner and run it with the ad, or they may choose a partner and require the publishers produce reports from that partner. Some advertisers will simply require some notable anti-fraud vendor, and the publisher is free to choose the cheapest/least effective.

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

#126

Post by jerf »

chriswarbo wrote: post #80
jerf wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That use case seems to have been entirely superceded by Patreon. The fact that it isn't quite identical, well, that's part of why it has been superceded by Patreon. But both Flattr and Patreon miss the relatively involuntary nature of ad networks. Certain things can not count on being supported by eager contributors, and need to more-or-less force themselves in to somehow earn revenue. I'm not all that perturbed by s…

> Mostly we're wandering around hither and yon, not showing any site loyalty. I agree with your main point, but to clarify: Flattr was specifically designed for this sort of one-off usage. Clicking a Flattr button doesn't subscribe to anything, it just adds that person/site to a list on your Flattr account. At the end of the month, your money is divided evenly between those on the list, then the list is cleared . You…

The only problem with Flattr is that it doesn't work.

Other than that it's great.

I mean this both straight and a bit sarcastically. I'm ideologically inclined to want to see it work. But it doesn't, it hasn't, and I see little reason to expect that to change in the future. Patreon doesn't work perfectly, and perhaps there's an even better model waiting for someone to find it, but it does work.

It does strike me as the sort of thing that would be a decent VC candidate. It is plausible to me that Flattr's core problem is an activation-energy one. But I can't run that experiment myself.

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

#127

Post by geocar »

mamcx wrote: post #83
coldpie wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. The problem with current ad networks is twofold. One is advertisers require metrics, metrics require some form of tracking or JS, and advertisers don't trust the ad networks to give accurate metrics, so they require the ability to embed their own JS. This is where you get the app store redirects and malware. Two, ad networks are scummy as shit and don't do any auditing so long as advertisers are willing to pay.…

Let's imagine that not all the advertisers are that shady, and just don't know better. Or if I wish to serve a subset of them, how break into this business? How get the first batch of customers? I have some ideas about build a server-side ad-network, but because I imagine is very hard to get customers I dismiss it, for the same reason: You need to be "famous/large" to attract customer in the ad-space.

Well, who do you think your customers are?

Publishers want someone to handle monetisation of their website. If they get enough traffic, they want that someone to work in-house, but if they don't, they want some one (ad network) to do it for them.

Advertisers want impressions/clicks/performance.

A (successful) ad network needs to do both, so bootstrapping invariably looks something like matchmaking in the very beginning.

If you want to find my email address and reach out, I'm happy to talk to you more about bootstrapping: I've gotten more than one ad network off the ground.

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

#128

Post by empath75 »

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…

My 4 year old ipad is barely usable on even basic pages now because of all the js bullshit.

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

#129

Post by [deleted] »

bazillion wrote: post #41
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…

[deleted]

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

#130

Post by superkuh »

coldtea wrote: post #52
superkuh wrote: post #23

This is about equivalent to saying, "I've stopped beating my wife." only almost everyone beats their wife in the scenario. It's not that you've done good. You've just stopped being bad. Why does your personal website need sponsorship at all? Why should people pay you for it? This commercial mindset is very weird to me.

> Why does your personal website need sponsorship at all? Why should people pay you for it? This commercial mindset is very weird to me. Because personal blogging can also be a business for some? It's not like every personal blog does it -- the huge majority are their for free, with no ads or anything. But if you devote the time and effort, and have an audience, why not? It's like saying pro dancers shouldn't exist,…

So we should applaud pro dancers when they announce on a public forum that they're no longer selling your dance-viewing habits to marketers? Like I said, it's not good. It's just less bad.

This is attention seeking for commercial reasons. After looking around a bit it's clear this is not a personal website. It's a promotional commercial website for this guy's workshop and speaking business that uses the 'blog' format for some of the content.

I'm not denying the effort or the quality content in some of his posts. I just see no reason at all to celebrate him here.

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