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LA Times and ads

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Re: LA Times and ads

#61

Post by jccalhoun »

wjossey wrote: post #57

I have been reflecting on this problem a lot over the past six months since I left the ad tech industry after four and a half years. These posts always sadden me, because I recognize the importance and value that advertising brings to web startups and the level of innovation and growth that it has enabled. I have a hypothesis on how we can reduce the number of these types of ads, while also not harming advertisers or…

Fox tv tried a similar thing a few years ago. Dollhouse and Fringe had fewer commercials. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/business/media/13adco.html After one season they went back to the same amount of commercials as other shows. https://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/fox-scraps...

Re: LA Times and ads

#62

Post by angersock »

greglindahl wrote: post #50
NelsonMinar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi I'm the author. I did the naive extrapolation. 5 * 2 * 1440 = 14,400. Perhaps this number is not entirely accurate. The fact it is any larger than, say, 10 is the problem.

That's a terrible methodology, and makes the headline pretty inaccurate. (Edit: looks like the blog headline isn't inflammatory at the moment: did you change it, or did the HN poster insert the 24-hour figure?) I'm against bad ads as much as everyone else, but I don't think using a terrible methodology to criticize them is a good idea. Making clear what you measured would be much better, and actually leaving the thin…

They made it pretty clear--leaving the browser open just belabors the point.

Re: LA Times and ads

#63

Post by tandr »

bunnybender wrote: post #54
tedunangst wrote: post #31

So in case you were looking for another reason to avoid the LA Times (or probably tronc papers in general), they're very spammy. I get tons of junk "newsletter" mail from them that I definitely didn't subscribe to, although they inevitably claim I did, and you can unsubscribe, but then they just invent new lists. And sell your address to others. Sample from only a few days ago. From: "San Diego Union-Tribune" Subject…

I've used Mailhero in many places, works great! See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11781361 or https://mailhero.io/

https://sneakemail.com (or https://snkmail.com) is something that I use for more than 10 years, I am very happy with it. Allows newsite-mytag@snkmail.com as well as generating completely looking-random addresses. I wish they would have an app, but works as is perfectly fine for me and my family (when they are willing to use it...)

Re: LA Times and ads

#64

Post by tedunangst »

wjossey wrote: post #37
tedunangst wrote: post #31

So in case you were looking for another reason to avoid the LA Times (or probably tronc papers in general), they're very spammy. I get tons of junk "newsletter" mail from them that I definitely didn't subscribe to, although they inevitably claim I did, and you can unsubscribe, but then they just invent new lists. And sell your address to others. Sample from only a few days ago. From: "San Diego Union-Tribune" Subject…

I whipped together https://getcovert.com to help address this problem for me. Currently it's a chrome plugin that allows me to generate a unique obfuscated "proxy" email address for sites I want to sign up for but don't want to expose my real email. If they ever sell it, redistribute it, or I want to shut them down, I just block that proxy email. It's barely an alpha project and needs a ton of work to be functional,…

I mean, I run my own mail server and client, so I can deal with the problem in a variety of ways... I've done novelty addresses in the past. My current approach is to call such companies out and hope that nobody ever gives them another email.

Re: LA Times and ads

#65

Post by andai »

noir_lord wrote: post #39
excalibur wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently (past year) bit the bullet and began ad blocking myself. My primary concern is the recent proliferation of malicious content through the common ad networks. Supporting websites is great, but not at the expense of your own security.

I've been using adblockers since they where a thing (and DNS blocks longer than that) since back then you could rely on the adnetworks feeding your malware at some point. I'm trying to think if I've ever clicked an advert on the internet intentionally and it's probably under half a dozen accidentally.

I wonder sometimes, with the amount these advertisers know about me, how come they don't know I don't click on ads? It would increase their profits to not target me.

Re: LA Times and ads

#66

Post by PhasmaFelis »

zkms wrote: post #33
lobster_johnson wrote: post #22

I develop software used by newspapers. This is a problem with the whole industry. It's amazing how much crap they load. These sites all use a third party "tag manager" (Google Tag Manager, Tealium, Piwik etc.) to manage the scripts they load: ads, analytics, trackers etc. The people who use the tag manager typically aren't techies, so they don't understand that adding another tag will cause the page to slow down. Typ…

The worst type of ad on newspaper sites are the disgusting "chumboxes" (by scumsuckers like "taboola" or "outbrain") that orbit at the bottom of pages and serve up images meant to be as simultaneously repulsive and fascinating as possible: https://theawl.com/a-complete-taxonomy-of-internet-chum-de0b... As long as these pages have ads that display utterly gross images (if you doubt me, click the above link) that make…

The thing that finally made me switch to scorched-earth adblocking was a Taboola ad for "Top 10 Most Gruesome Tortures in History", with illustration.

Re: LA Times and ads

#68

Post by megous »

rinze wrote: post #56
wjossey wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I whipped together https://getcovert.com to help address this problem for me. Currently it's a chrome plugin that allows me to generate a unique obfuscated "proxy" email address for sites I want to sign up for but don't want to expose my real email. If they ever sell it, redistribute it, or I want to shut them down, I just block that proxy email. It's barely an alpha project and needs a ton of work to be functional,…

Isn't this solution similar to putting "+unique_string" before the @ part in (for example) Gmail addresses?

That's no good. You're still sending your primary address, before the +. They can remove or modify anything after +, and you'll still receive the email.

I'm slowly transitioning for having a random 20 char generated alias email for every service/use and there's no chance anyone will hit a real mailbox by chance. If alias leaks, I can either abandon the service and block it, or change the registered email for the service to a new alias and block the old one.

In addition to that, I have a few easy to remember/type emails to give out to people, that I never use on the internet.

The result being no spam even without a spam blocker. (to the new addresses)

Re: LA Times and ads

#69

Post by wjossey »

jccalhoun wrote: post #61
wjossey wrote: post #57

I have been reflecting on this problem a lot over the past six months since I left the ad tech industry after four and a half years. These posts always sadden me, because I recognize the importance and value that advertising brings to web startups and the level of innovation and growth that it has enabled. I have a hypothesis on how we can reduce the number of these types of ads, while also not harming advertisers or…

Fox tv tried a similar thing a few years ago. Dollhouse and Fringe had fewer commercials. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/business/media/13adco.html After one season they went back to the same amount of commercials as other shows. https://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/fox-scraps...

Thanks for the link. That's a good highlight.

The experimenter in me reads that article (and mind you it's very brief), and I actually get encouraged. They were attempting to measure it on a pure 1:1 basis, where all their other shows, as well as all the other shows on broadcast TV, were following the standard model. Educating advertisers is a challenging step in this process, and so it's no surprise they couldn't get the pricing right on the first go around.

Hopefully they decide to try again, test, iterate, and think outside the box.

Re: LA Times and ads

#70

Post by PhasmaFelis »

amluto wrote: post #27
drawkbox wrote: post #8

This is why data caps are bad. Left open all month that could be 400+ GB of data used on your plan. Ad networks are being subsidized by data caps and personal/business broadband costs. Maybe if ad serving went through the main host and their own bandwidth then maybe ad networks would have a reason to control this abuse of transfer.

I'd like to a see, or at least think about, a system in which everyone pays for egress and no one pays for ingress. That way the LA Times is welcome to throw as much crap as they want at you without charging you much. (One issue is that egresss is involved in every request. Some UI work would be needed to make this work well.) Universal egress fees would go a long way to mitigating DDoS, too.

I'm curious what you're thinking of specifically, because I can't imagine any remotely reasonable way to make egress fees work from a technical standpoint, let alone widespread acceptance and adoption. You browse to a site, you can read all the articles you want, but you can't load any other sites until you pay?
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