241–250 of 336 posts
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I'm having the same issue. My add blocker is turned off and I don't see anything when hovering over the images on that blog post.
Can confirm. Does not work on Chrome.
Really, really great idea. This would be an absolutely fantastic addition to something like instagram.
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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…
>> My main issue with ad networks is that they simply aren't technically competent enough to run an internet facing business. As someone who works in Ad tech, let me be the first to say that there are a few A-players and a ton of C-players. The problem is, the C-players are so crappy that everyone associates all of ad tech with them. A good analogy is the difference between Black Hat and White Hat SEO. Most of the C-…
So I am certain to suffer from C-players, and my browser may never encounter an A-player.
If there were a way for me to a) believe that ad network X is non-malicious A-player, b) for me on my side of the browser to set and forget whitelisting that A-player, c) to know that the A-player hasn't been acquired by a malicious C-player, and d) that a publisher was only using non-malicious A-players, THEN I would enable (some) ads.
But it's too much work on my side. A-players need to be talking to publishers and C-players, and driving the C-players OUT. Until then, I block indiscriminately.
I'm not against ads, I'm against unnecessary risk.
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?
May I ask: if one is not "famous" (i.e. popular), why should one expect their site to be profitable from ads alone? If my limited edition, 250-prints-per-month 'zine isn't making money, is that the advertising industry's fault, or is there an issue with my expectations? People ask the "how do we fix dwindling ad-based revenue" question all the time. The answer is clear, it's just not what people want to hear: metered…
I agree. Most news sites just regurgitate the same articles with their own click bait title which takes you to some adware bloated page. I think there's plenty of money in online ads but the market is too saturated.
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If you can't make money from it, then it's not an absurd conclusion at all. Of course, it means one needs a day job, but such is life.
Specifically, the day job shouldn't be too enjoyable if you're making money from it. Once it is, you should start doing it for free and find a job you find less enjoyable. That just follows in a straightforward way. Now, this may not seem absurd to you, but I dare say it will to most people.
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If a site wishes to implement a paywall that is their right. If they wish to implement a bypass, that is also just fine. They choose to implement this bypass because they wish to be indexed by Google. So why shouldn't we make use of that intentionally implement bypass?
Do whatever you find ethical. I'm just here to ensure that people are well informed about the fact that paywall vs. ads is actually paywall with no search engine access vs. paywall which people won't pay for vs. ads. I'm all right with the paywall idea succeeding or failing in a well informed marketplace of ideas.
The ability to send interesting articles to non-subscribers with a special link is pretty nice but I understand that it probably wouldn't work as a model for large websites.
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> I'm guessing the HN crowd runs uBlock or some other blocker in its vast majority, so JS-based analytics are completely untrustworthy. Actually, the server based access logs would be more accurate. The "only" things the JS based are giving you are tracking options and user interface data, such as resolution. And yes, due to blocking, JS based will never be the as accurate as the server logs. A long time ago I used a…
What I would like is an analytics service that allows me to give them a CNAME on my own domain, and that uses a tracking pixel, rather than JS (less intrusive and more reliable, plus easier to install than centralized log management).
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.
I don't blog much, it's mainly things that I've fixed on my main linux install. I see the blog as useful for others too, I'm pretty poor and couldn't reasonably afford to do it without at least it covering costs. Advertising has covered my costs for the last 15 years or so, on the best years it's paid for a new [self-built] computer on the worst, this year [see my other comment here], pretty much just covered hosting, domain and backup costs.
Money is primarily how we exchange value, without micro-payments we're left with advertising as the exchange medium online, way inefficient and not good at direct costs nor applying money to value centres but it serves approximately the purpose of paying people for their time and the value they create. Why shouldn't someone pay me a fraction of a penny [eg via advertising] if I can solve their computer problem, or provide entertainment, or education, or whatever?
Personally I'd prefer a communist system, but that relies on those providing value to the web to receive value from others by eg food, housing, repairs and such. Within a capitalist framework that's hard to manage and so we resort to using the exchange medium that is money, but again that's not been formalised and so advertising acts as a proxy.
Maybe we need, before the world becomes one happy commune [!], pico-payments such that a browser will transfer 1/1000th of a GBP to me for every visitor to my blog, say, in order to do away with reliance on advertising?
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May I ask: if one is not "famous" (i.e. popular), why should one expect their site to be profitable from ads alone? If my limited edition, 250-prints-per-month 'zine isn't making money, is that the advertising industry's fault, or is there an issue with my expectations? People ask the "how do we fix dwindling ad-based revenue" question all the time. The answer is clear, it's just not what people want to hear: metered…
On the other hand, this will lead to us only being able to read the blogs and personal websites of people who are able to dip into their own money and time to make and host a blog. I'd be very interested in reading about the life of exactly not that kind of person.
And also it doesn't happen. Turns out people who want to write/paint will write/paint.
The internet was around before advertising. We had free sites back in the day. We've got free sites now. And we can fight for taxes to pay for public libraries, access points, community groups, or even philanthropists to set up free servers.
It was actually a pretty cool place (i thought). I mean, I use adblockers to try to simulate it, and am horrified every time I use the web at work without one, but even my ad blocker can't remove the influence and draw of content and material pumped out by money hungry people vs people actually interested in writing/painting/expressing its opinion for its own sake, and the way that profit motive subtly influences the ratio of content produced, and the content and style of that material as well.
Its much more liberating as an author to just say "fuck them", rather than continually go "well, it slows down the page load/breaks up the article, but it will result in 0.01% more views/might piss off my sponsors/industry".
Not so naive as to say that isn't always an issue, but its pretty clear to me what side of the line advertising is on...
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I find a lot of value in federated login through Google and Facebook. I'd rather have the hardest parts of authentication handled by their services than relying on thousands of different developers rolling their own solutions with varying levels of sanity.
Why do blogs need readers to log in?
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…
Do this with HTML and CSS :hover inline and it will bypass them; it would also make it work on nearly any browser.