I remember looking to host their ads and it was more like they would call you not the other way around. Was this always the case?
The Deck ad network is shutting down
61–70 of 108 posts
Re: The Deck ad network is shutting down
#62Whenever I noticed that a site I'm visiting is "powered" by DECK, I was whitelisting it in the adblock. I hate ads, but I totally get that they keep things going in the Net, and so if there have to be ads they should be like the DECK: no tracking, no profiling, no being invasive. It's really a shame that an opposite of that triumphs today. In the long term it's gonna be painful for the users, for publishers, for the…
I'm just about to buy a software whose ad I just saw on this blog post from Deck.
That was probably the first time in recent memory that I've clicked on an ad
So hey, the model at least works.
Re: The Deck ad network is shutting down
#63The Deck consistently presented the most sensible ads I've seen out there. Sorry to see it go.
Re: The Deck ad network is shutting down
#64Re: The Deck ad network is shutting down
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm confused. What aren't you pleased about? An ad network shutting down? Hopefully they all shut down.
The Deck was one of the few clean players. I still fundamentally think advertising is slime, a form of mind control, and a symptom of excess consumption in society, but that's not changing anytime soon. In the meantime, I'd be very happy if everyone were like The Deck.
Advertising is a symptom not of excess consumption but of excess production. And all communication is a form of mind control.
Re: The Deck ad network is shutting down
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Network effects are unnatural online. I find this line ironic since the Network Effect (or Metcalfe's Law) was created to describe literal computer networks. Network effects don't happen in the physical world nearly as easily because the bar, grocery store, or whatever is limited by geography. They can only address a population within a certain radius and can't grow beyond it. Transportation hubs - like airports -…
>I find this line ironic since the Network Effect (or Metcalfe's Law) was created to describe literal computer networks. The distinction is that it refers to physical networks (and iirc, referred initially to phone systems, not computer systems per se). At layer 1, the network effect is still very much valid and caused by the capabilities of the physical hardware. This is forgotten because today everyone is plugged i…
I appreciate your thinking, but your understanding and application of networks, as well as your decidedly wishful thinking that they don't apply online, is simply wrong.
Mind: I'd much rather this not be the case, but it simply is.
Metcalfe's function is, by the way, also incorrect. Very few networks are comprised of nodes of equal value, instead the nodal (and inter-nodal) value tends to follow a power function (Zipf's Law), with one suggestion being that the value function of a network with peer-to-peer connections then be:
V = n * log(n) (Tilly-Odlyzko).
C = k * n^2
What you're failing to consider is that the members of a network, including both the users and advertisers, are themselves components of that network, and have their own value and cost calculations to be applied. For large advertising networks, the fact that 1) larger markets with 2) more customers can be approached with 3) fixed costs for the advertiser and 4) efficiencies of scale for the network operator (e.g., Facebook or Google, approximately 2/3 of all online advertising), then there will automatically be an advantage to larger networks, provided k is sufficiently small.
There's nothing artificial about those barriers.
Incidentally, you can find network or dendritic structures in any system in which you have nodes or elements, and links or relationships: transport and communications systems, cities, even knowledge or information itself (think of the terms "knowledge web" or "information web").
I've never cared for Facebook and am finding Google increasingly evil and/or incompetent (and am torn as to whether that last is a good or bad thing on balance), but there's very little validity in claiming that the dynamics which have benefitted them are artificially imposed.
Re: The Deck ad network is shutting down
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Carbon is still there… owned by BuySellAds who also bought Fusion and absorbed it into Carbon, or something. (Fusion's website redirects to Carbon.)
We're very much alive! Thriving, even. And yes, we merged AdPacks, Yoggrt, Fusion, and Carbon into just Carbon. Been growing the network ~20-30% or so year over year. The simplicity of the model still works well. Where we deviated from The Deck's model is that we made some changes a few years ago that are working quite well. On the advertiser side we started selling on a cost per thousand impression basis vs a fixed…
Interesting. It appears you guys had seen the writing on the wall and had adapted your business model accordingly.
Thanks for your insider's take but who was the originator of the old business model? The Deck or Carbon?
Re: The Deck ad network is shutting down
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm curious.... is there some sort of crazy image recognition tech going on here or does the website owner need to somehow identify what's in the image for the ads to work? If it's the former then this is seriously impressive.
Unfortunately (in terms of programming credibility), it's done manually. The process is extremely fast though -- just seconds to do a highlight, and a built-in search that hooks into all affiliate networks (Commission Junction, Linkshare, Affiliate Window, Share-a-sale, etc.) along with allowing custom links.
Huh, the startups who tried to do this before you (and died) didn't do it manually. Some crowdsourced it, some did recognition. Do you think your timing is better?
Re: The Deck ad network is shutting down
#69This seems to fit the narrative of a broader wave of consolidation hitting the old-school web. Like it or not, there are real advantages to walled gardens like facebook. To ad buyers, it's a single platform where one can target the entire world person-by-person -- even across multiple devices (iPad, phone, laptop), with hyper-accurate segmentation and user tracking, strong identity services with all the abuse/spam pr…
You don't need a walled garden for that. You would need some client-side listeners. Walled gardens arise because our legal system incentivizes it. Network effects are unnatural online. There is no barrier to access or information flow here -- put simply, there are no real walls to protect the garden. They're all artificially imposed barriers. With improved laws, no one would be able to hold the web-accessible data ho…
> With improved laws, no one would be able to hold the web-accessible data hostage
Could you explain this statement further? The way I'm interpreting it, it doesn't make any sense at all.
Re: The Deck ad network is shutting down
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Deck was one of the few clean players. I still fundamentally think advertising is slime, a form of mind control, and a symptom of excess consumption in society, but that's not changing anytime soon. In the meantime, I'd be very happy if everyone were like The Deck.
Advertising is a symptom not of excess consumption but of excess production. And all communication is a form of mind control.
Advertising is the propaganda of capitalism.