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

The Digital Advertising Duopoly

avc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 111 posts

Re: The Digital Advertising Duopoly

#81

Post by rhizome »

manigandham wrote: post #70
herodotus wrote: post #29

The problem with subscriptions is not the cost, its the sheer number of them - and some come up almost accidentally. I pay a lot to my ISP every month. I would like to see a company that charges me monthly to eliminate all adware by micro-paying the participating websites for my actual page visits. In fact, if my ISP added such a service for a fee, I would sign up.

We tried this - there's a lot of political and business issues that basically mean you can't pull it off unless you're a major player (like Verizon or Google) already. Selling the data (of which one of the uses is advertising) is more lucrative than letting users pay direct, and that's before overcoming the hurdle of most consumers who think that they already pay for "the internet" including all the content. Google's…

Forgive me if this is naïve, but how does Joe Random site owner participate in the selling of data? My impression is that that's an area of commerce with a pretty closed membership.

I'm not asking in order to do something like this, just that I think it's an interesting question about exactly who is able to profit from activities that are somewhat assumed to be occurring everywhere, and not by and within the ad networks that everybody is using.

Re: The Digital Advertising Duopoly

#82

Post by nerdponx »

alexryan wrote: post #53
erikpukinskis wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead of capital flowing to those who are best able to convert it into the most happiness for the most people This isn’t the natural progression of free market capitalism though. The money will flow to those who are best able to use it to control the behavior of their customers spending. Making someone happy is just one way of controlling their spending, but there are many, many others.

That's an interesting point. Are there any examples of "alternatives ways of controlling the behavior of their customers spending" which do not result in the customer feeling motivated to withdraw from the relationship?

FOMO

Re: The Digital Advertising Duopoly

#83

Post by rhizome »

herodotus wrote: post #44
andschwa wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of the idea behind ORCHID: https://orchidprotocol.com/ .

Thanks for the link. Orchid looks interesting.

It looks interesting, but that list of investors reads to me like a timebomb to pivot back toward surveillance.

Re: The Digital Advertising Duopoly

#85

Post by white-flame »

wan23 wrote: post #28
brndnmtthws wrote: post #4

All the more reason we need adblockers and private-by-default browsing. It worries me that I can't use something like Privoxy on Android without rooting the device. An alternative would be a good privacy VPN with blocking/filtering of ads and trackers.

I think you're missing the main point here. What we really need is a better way to pay for the web. If everyone blocks all ads without solving this problem first there won't be any content left to block ads on.

For certain there wouldn't be content whose only purpose is to maximize ad revenue. That would easily be a net positive for overall quality of online content.

Re: The Digital Advertising Duopoly

#86

Post by PebblesHD »

f00_ wrote: post #45
shubhamjain wrote: post #9

There are only two ways to break the duopoly: create your own massive medium like Facebook or work with publishers. Having worked in this industry, I think working with publishers is an impossible battle. The whole publishing world is rife with fraud and desperate attempts to increase page views. Most publishers cram their websites with ads. The number of low-content, click-baity websites is just staggering. Sometime…

just a couple counter examples I wanted to point out: giantbomb.com (ads + subscription only content) 4chan (I would like someone to explain it more deeply to me, but I think they run their own ads, do they use an outside service?)

4Chan’s ads are purchased mostly by users of the site and generally end up pointing back at other boards on 4Chan itself, accompanied by some site relevant image. For a long time there were also occasionally ads for J-List (an importer and seller of Japanese drinks, foods, toys etc.) which was a direct purchaser of ad space from the site itself.

Having users pay for ads instead of third parties keeps it quite neat and generally quite safe, but I don’t think 4Chan itself is profitable.

Re: The Digital Advertising Duopoly

#87

Post by majani »

rhizome wrote: post #79
shubhamjain wrote: post #9

There are only two ways to break the duopoly: create your own massive medium like Facebook or work with publishers. Having worked in this industry, I think working with publishers is an impossible battle. The whole publishing world is rife with fraud and desperate attempts to increase page views. Most publishers cram their websites with ads. The number of low-content, click-baity websites is just staggering. Sometime…

I'd like to see an industry by which companies or their advertising reps engage with sites in a subscription-like mechanism for direct advertising. Cutting out the middleman seems like a logical step in this day and age.

Subscription to ads would mean a lot of waste in the budget. Very few advertisers would go for that over CPC/CPA pricing

Re: The Digital Advertising Duopoly

#88

Post by majani »

herodotus wrote: post #29

The problem with subscriptions is not the cost, its the sheer number of them - and some come up almost accidentally. I pay a lot to my ISP every month. I would like to see a company that charges me monthly to eliminate all adware by micro-paying the participating websites for my actual page visits. In fact, if my ISP added such a service for a fee, I would sign up.

The only company that could manage these subscriptions effectively is one that owns either:

1. The browser 2. The app store or 3. The OS

Oh, wait...

Re: The Digital Advertising Duopoly

#89

Post by hatmagic456 »

rhizome wrote: post #81
manigandham wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We tried this - there's a lot of political and business issues that basically mean you can't pull it off unless you're a major player (like Verizon or Google) already. Selling the data (of which one of the uses is advertising) is more lucrative than letting users pay direct, and that's before overcoming the hurdle of most consumers who think that they already pay for "the internet" including all the content. Google's…

Forgive me if this is naïve, but how does Joe Random site owner participate in the selling of data? My impression is that that's an area of commerce with a pretty closed membership. I'm not asking in order to do something like this, just that I think it's an interesting question about exactly who is able to profit from activities that are somewhat assumed to be occurring everywhere, and not by and within the ad netwo…

The only places that buy and sell user data are spammy mailing lists. That's it.

Browser history predicts almost nothing, anyway. There is no market where user data is bought and sold, except for spammy mailing lists to other spammy mailing lists.

Re: The Digital Advertising Duopoly

#90

Post by mrob »

pjc50 wrote: post #39
wan23 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the main point here. What we really need is a better way to pay for the web. If everyone blocks all ads without solving this problem first there won't be any content left to block ads on.

There was content before even advertising. And we're here creating ""content"" without being paid on a site with no ads.

HN has ads, but they're text only, non-tracking, and posted infrequently. They're also not trying to sell you anything, and not trying to manipulate you emotionally. You can identify them by the lack of upvote option. These kinds of ads are tolerable IMO.
Post reply on HN