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LA Times and ads

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Re: LA Times and ads

#171

Post by zkms »

artursapek wrote: post #170
kristianc wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're decrying the amount of crap on the internet and then saying that it impedes your ability to set up a 'passive income' site whose sole purpose is to make money through Adsense?

Yeah, Adsense ads are generally very tolerable, but they are blocked by adblockers that are adopted by people to get rid of "Chumboxes". There's a big difference.

I frankly don't mind ads as long as they don't use up more CPU/network as the content i'm already viewing (battery isn't free) -- so no video ads if i'm reading text.

Proper honest advertisements for actual products and services is something I have no issue with -- hell, I've actually managed to save money on car insurance because of a bloody online car insurance ad.

I despise stuff that autoplays video/audio, or moves around on the page, or displays creepy, pseudo-anatomical images engineered to trigger revulsion/fascination (trypophobia stuff or shit like those weird toenail images in those "heart attack" ads or whatever else).

My browser blocks JS by default because I don't enjoy seeing those kinds of shock images. Hell, goatse is less distressing for me to look at than the images in your average chumbox.

Re: LA Times and ads

#172

Post by watt »

rinze wrote: post #15
alrs wrote: post #13

Browse with w3m or elinks, problem solved.

Now that you mention elinks, do you know if development continues? I had a question the other day that I couldn't find answered anywhere, but it looks like the main mailing list is entirely lost (I tried to follow these links: http://elinks.or.cz/community.html ).

Just check their git activity. http://repo.or.cz/elinks.git/shortlog

Re: LA Times and ads

#173

Post by anigbrowl »

danbruc wrote: post #120
anigbrowl wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots would if it weren't so inconvenient. I read articles from maybe 100 different news sources in a typical month but realistically I don't want 100 newspaper and magazine subscriptions, or 100 different subscription offers or website accounts. Why isn't there something like a Netflix for News that just gives me news free of visual cruft and takes care of distributing the revenue from what I read in approximately ac…

Lots would if it weren't so inconvenient. I am not really sure about that. About 10 % of all Internet users are currently using an ad blocker. So 90 % are okay with ads or don't care or whatever. Further I would estimate that users would have to pay between $5 and $10 per month to pay for the content they consume to provide an income for sites comparable to that of ads. Maybe 1 % of the ad blocker users - number pull…

That's exactly what people said about Netflix, so I'm gonna disagree without bothering to support my argument further.

Re: LA Times and ads

#174

Post by anigbrowl »

pfranz wrote: post #138
anigbrowl wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots would if it weren't so inconvenient. I read articles from maybe 100 different news sources in a typical month but realistically I don't want 100 newspaper and magazine subscriptions, or 100 different subscription offers or website accounts. Why isn't there something like a Netflix for News that just gives me news free of visual cruft and takes care of distributing the revenue from what I read in approximately ac…

I saw https://blendle.com mentioned on here a few weeks ago. I haven't tried them, but it sounds like what you're looking for.

Thanks for the reminder. I had signed up for that and forgotten about it, just activated my beta account so I'll see how it works out. First impressions: nice, but still too heavily branded for my taste.

It's awful that I'm an artist but want to put most graphic designers out of work XD

Re: LA Times and ads

#175

Post by kelnos »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #164
padseeker wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in IT for TRONC (parent company of LA Times), and can vouch for this. Some of the ad scripts are horrendously bad. Open firebug or chrome dev tools and load the page, watch all those errors pour in. We pay very close attention to our own code, but all those js bugs that are happening are related to external ad networks with terrible javascript. We have something in the neighborhood of 30+ ad partners. Some of…

Thank you for replying. I'm the author of the article and have felt bad sniping at the engineers at the LA Times. It helps to know you understand the technical problem. It must be very frustrating to see the ad networks' code wrecking your website. Your ad sales and IT team are killing your company. They are taking your good product, the journalism and your well written Javascript, and they are smearing a thick paste…

> They will stop going to your website.

Exactly. Ever since the LA Times started blocking ad blockers, I do not visit it. If I accidentally click on a LAT link, I'm quickly reminded that I don't want to be there and close the tab.

Re: LA Times and ads

#176

Post by danbruc »

anigbrowl wrote: post #173
danbruc wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots would if it weren't so inconvenient. I am not really sure about that. About 10 % of all Internet users are currently using an ad blocker. So 90 % are okay with ads or don't care or whatever. Further I would estimate that users would have to pay between $5 and $10 per month to pay for the content they consume to provide an income for sites comparable to that of ads. Maybe 1 % of the ad blocker users - number pull…

That's exactly what people said about Netflix, so I'm gonna disagree without bothering to support my argument further.

I actually tend to believe that it could work but I also have some remaining doubts. In my comments I explicitly focused on dismissive arguments and points where I have doubts, hoping that someone would either back those doubts up or refute them. You should definitely not draw the conclusion that I think I could never work from the way I argued.

Re: LA Times and ads

#177

Post by good_vibes »

andai wrote: post #157
good_vibes wrote: post #67

The data points for my hypothesis just keep connecting. edit: so I know, why does something this innocent get downvoted? I don't understand what I did wrong.

I think it's more like, you didn't do anything right! It sounds mysterious and all, but does not really benefit anybody else.

In that case, HN should brighten up. Cynicism for it's own sake rarely leads to innovation. Thinking based upon First Principles and original insight does correlate with innovation.

This will get downvoted probably because it hurt someone's ego but it's true if you look the history of science and technology.

Re: LA Times and ads

#179

Post by nojvek »

matt4077 wrote: post #169
bigbugbag wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other parts of the world they would find who is making those ads and who is in charge of those and burn their houses down or chop them with machetes. Suddenly the number of people willing to produce ads for clients and said clients is dramatically reduced. I'm not suggesting this kind of extreme response, my point is there's no punishment for putting up those ads so there's no incentive to behave correctly and we'…

Those are some pretty racist stereotypes you have of wherever you think people are going around chopping each other with machetes.

I don't think he singled out a specific race. I would say that it's not too far put though. The world is a pretty ugly place in some parts.

I think we in the tech community need to work on smarter ad blocker. The history goes that ad folks abused window.popup and then browser vendors blocked that. Then came chrome who is supported by world's largest ad engine, but they were nice to give us extensions. So we had adblock extensions that gave us a ton of CSS injected in every page. Now need smart js to fool the page thinking it has ads.

I would love to see browser support showing a big fat red icon when you're being tracked and page is misbehaving.

Re: LA Times and ads

#180

Post by chiefalchemist »

SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #76
andai wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They do know you don't click on ads. They just show you ads for people who are going for exposure rather than clicks, because you count as an impression even if you can't be used to generate clicks.

True. But if you've never clicked doesn't that mean something? Even if the goal is impressions wouldn't you prefer someone who has shown to be influence-able over someone who isn't? (Hint: I would de-target non clickers.)
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