Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We’re dropping Google Ads

groundup.org.za

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

571–580 of 617 posts

Re: We’re dropping Google Ads

#571

Post by meatyapp »

omarchowdhury wrote: post #110
reaperducer wrote: post #15

I've been on the fence about this for a while, and after reading what GroundUp wrote, I can't agree with them more. So I think it's time for me to dump Google Ads from my sites, as well. I send Big G three million ad impressions a month, and in return I get $150 and a bunch of visual dreck that makes the site look bad. $200, if I'm lucky. And this is all U.S. traffic on an award-winning news site. I only need to sell…

There's something wrong if you're getting paid $0.05 CPM for AdSense US traffic.

I get similar results: http://i.imgur.com/NDubFOO.png

Please help: https://www.reddit.com/r/reactnative/comments/64wwge/ads_mak...

Re: We’re dropping Google Ads

#572

Post by mthoms »

Retra wrote: post #564
SamBam wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My eyeballs are not being loaned to you; my senses/attention is not for sale. That fine-sounding in theory, but it seems to ignore the fact that your attention has been for sale for as long as billboards, or, heck, carnival barkers have been around. It's great that we can use technology to un-render ads that have been delivered to us via the internet, so I fully support ad blockers, but let's not pretend that we ha…

Yeah, but those billboards and carnival barkers are standing on someone else's property. They're not taking up space on the screen in front of me, which I personally own and administer. If someone wants to buy their own screens and show ads on them, it's fine by me. But you don't have any right to do it on my screens.

The counter argument is that by visiting a website you are then on "their property", or at the very least using their resources.

You went there on your own free will and can leave when you want. No one is "forcing" anything on your screen.

(not saying I agree with this notion necessarily - just that your physical "property" analogy isn't very good).

Re: We’re dropping Google Ads

#573

Post by paul_milovanov »

aws_ls wrote: post #419

I think this speaks for 1000s and 1000s of small(er) website publishers. All squeezed by Google. For example, we run a website having millions of page views a month. And similarly frustrated. If we can divide the slot between 10 advertisers directly, we might make much more. Perhaps even double than what Adsense pays. The only reason, why we don't attempt that is time and effort getting directed in an unwanted direct…

If I ordered the parts individually and read the repair manual, I could replace the starter in my car for much less money than taking it to the mechanic. The only reason why I don't attempt that is time and effort getting directed in an unwanted direction.

Re: We’re dropping Google Ads

#574

Post by mack73 »

I have a solution to the problem of having an ad network (Google) as the dictator of the internet.

1. Create a new browser where the concept of a URL is missing.

2a. Make terms, keywords, concepts first-class citizens. Ban URLs alltogether. Search using keywords to get to the places you want to go, not by typing URLs.

2b. Make it so that the browser gets smarter as you go and accustomed to your prose (the way you formulate your queries).

3. Make it so that the internet index is centralized so that all your browsers use the same "lookup URLS through keywords" service. Also let people use a local index version.

4. Create a buzz around this new browser. Start in the tech community of your choice. They will love using something that has a fair chance of becoming a Google-killer.

5. Your mom and dad already want to use this new browser. URLs are not important to them. Today, they google for "www.facebook.com" before starting their internet session.

6. We are done here. Internet has re-booted. We all profit.

Point 2b makes this perfect for the [random tech incubator], wouldn't you agree?

Re: We’re dropping Google Ads

#575

Post by nbouscal »

matt4077 wrote: post #157
nebabyte wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even about the bits/bytes/data to me. My eyeballs are not being loaned to you; my senses/attention is not for sale. I'm perfectly fine with paywalls - that's the 'correct' approach as far as I'm concerned. You can decide to conceal the information you know; if it's valuable and nonexcludable (usually isn't), then hey, you have a sale. But if you don't, don't expect your deals with third parties to hold up on some…

> if it's valuable and nonexcludable (usually isn't)... That right there is the problem, though. You are right that most information is "non excludable" (if that actually is a word). But that doesn't mean it isn't valuable. That's an illusion, conceptually very much like clean water: almost free, but vital. The stuff the wire services collect and sell (and that everybody republishes) does cost quite a lot to produce,…

> You are right that most information is "non excludable" (if that actually is a word).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excludability

Maybe do a quick search before implying someone is making up words.

Re: We’re dropping Google Ads

#576

Post by jtmcmc »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #348
chrisan wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question: has google ads been responsible for virus/malware in the past? I thought they were, while still annoying, safe from serving such content. So much that if they detect your site has malware they prevent it from serving their ads https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/1308246?hl=e... As such I went along with allowing google ads since it seemed like a good middle ground between not wanting to…

I have gone so far as to suggest a significant portion of Google's revenue is likely serving malicious content, which leaves them very little incentive to do anything about it. Almost every senior citizen I've ever had clean up malware for got it from a malicious search ad. And the tech support scams they continue to list take advantage of tons of people as well. I've pointed out before that Google happily lists phon…

I've known several people on the abuse teams for ad revenue at Google and I can tell you they work very hard and care deeply at preventing malware. It is, however, an extremely non-trivial task.

Re: We’re dropping Google Ads

#577

Post by vit05 »

Antrikshy wrote: post #483
alexchantavy wrote: post #149

Off topic: this is the first time I've heard of GroundUp, and I really like the "Dear Editor" format of the comment page on this site. I'm used to seeing mainstream newspaper websites with downright toxic commenting environments, so seeing "Dear Editor" followed by a thought-out response is very refreshing. Maybe they have a "better" readership/screening process/whatever, but I think this higher quality commenting be…

It's not just the framing. They call their comments "letters". Try clicking the "Write a letter in response to this article" button. The UI is designed to promote constructive comments.

Great observation. I think the UI wants to remember that this article was written by another human being. A simple solution to encourage civil conversation.

Re: We’re dropping Google Ads

#578

Post by Filligree »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #201
Ironchefpython wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the problem turns out to be, people don't want to pay, not even that tiny amount. No, the problem is it didn't work with adblockers. I really want to pay for the content I read, I just am not willing to risk being outbid on the chance to view a page without spam by someone trying to deliver malware. My current solution is to buy pre-paid visa cards to pay for online news subscriptions, which is a huge pain, but nec…

> No, the problem is it didn't work with adblockers. I really want to pay for the content I read, I just am not willing to risk being outbid on the chance to view a page without spam by someone trying to deliver malware. That's a big issue. Another is that I want sites without any ads to be able to get a share of the money too. But it's also that the bidding model is a poor way to allocate the money. I don't want the…

> But it's also that the bidding model is a poor way to allocate the money. I don't want the word "insurance" to randomly trigger a $50 ad slot. It's okay if there's some influence from ad slot prices onto how the money gets allocated, but the main influence should be how much I use each site.

Using the normal bidding process was a clever shortcut to get Contributor working as a 20% project, with minimal manpower. Seriously, it was just two guys at first.

It's not currently just two guys. I'll let you read that how you will.

Re: We’re dropping Google Ads

#579

Post by Filligree »

Baeocystin wrote: post #205
Filligree wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work on that project. I'm sad that this happened, but mostly I'm annoyed at the public -- the problem turns out to be, people don't want to pay, not even that tiny amount. It's definitely coming back, though. Just not in quite the same form.

I was happy to pay, and starting using Contributor the moment I found out about it. Not nearly enough ads were replaced by Contributor. Worse, it was the more innocuous ones that were replaced, while the most obnoxious blared on through. On top of that, it showed me the absolutely paltry amount paid out to the sites running the ads. So back came adblock, and Contributor mostly just helped on my mobile browsing. I bou…

> Not nearly enough ads were replaced by Contributor. Worse, it was the more innocuous ones that were replaced, while the most obnoxious blared on through.

That was a serious problem, I agree, and not one we could do anything about at the time. The problem was, those more-obnoxious ads were mainly not served by Google in the first place.

(There may have been a period when Contributor only worked on a subset of Google's ad products, mostly for technical reasons.)

Re: We’re dropping Google Ads

#580

Post by lazyjones »

hawski wrote: post #320

I had a bit silly idea about financing of web services. Create beautiful, fast and very lean web serivce - "easy" part. It should be very lean - every page at most few hundred kB. Serve the website with useless bytes at front. Example: page weights 100kB - add 500kB of garbage to it at front. You can place them in html or js comment. You can add useless EXIF data to jpegs. You could place small number in every HTTP h…

Why add extra garbage to websites when there's already a whole industry built around serving garbage? Just let users pay for removal of ads for everyone (instead of just for themselves), that would be novel and useful.
Post reply on HN