Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users
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Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users
#2That would make sense. Ads are designed to be visible and clicked on, but on the other hand you can't go too far without annoying the users. It's a fine line to walk so it's not surprising you'd lose some users as a result. The unblockable ads they had on Facebook at some point is what finally pushed me to close my account.
Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users
#3Only if they are done intrusively. Nobody cares about the ads on CrossMe, for example...but Jewels Jungle, the interstitials may aggravate a small number.
Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users
#4Only if they are done intrusively. Nobody cares about the ads on CrossMe, for example...but Jewels Jungle, the interstitials may aggravate a small number.
I have troubles with the concept of a "non-intrusive" ad - If you don't notice it to any degree, it's not doing its job, and if you DO notice it to any degree, it's intrusive and disruptive (to a matching degree)
I think you mean "Nobody cares ENOUGH" rather than "Nobody cares", and that's a big distinction.
Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users
#5Only if they are done intrusively. Nobody cares about the ads on CrossMe, for example...but Jewels Jungle, the interstitials may aggravate a small number.
I have troubles with the concept of a "non-intrusive" ad - If you don't notice it to any degree, it's not doing its job, and if you DO notice it to any degree, it's intrusive and disruptive (to a matching degree) I think you mean "Nobody cares ENOUGH" rather than "Nobody cares", and that's a big distinction.
Actually, I'd have different concerns about ads that I didn't consciously notice.
Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users
#6[deleted]
Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users
#7More detailed discussion of the 4 other datapoints: https://www.gwern.net/Ads#replication (I added McCoy et al 2007 just last night, so now it's 5 total: me, Pandora, Mozilla, LinkedIn, and McCoy et al 2007.)
Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users
#8That would make sense. Ads are designed to be visible and clicked on, but on the other hand you can't go too far without annoying the users. It's a fine line to walk so it's not surprising you'd lose some users as a result. The unblockable ads they had on Facebook at some point is what finally pushed me to close my account.
Also, at the risk of stating the obvious: clicking on the ads takes you off the site in question. Some of the people who would have been clicking around your site more are now at someone else's site.
Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have troubles with the concept of a "non-intrusive" ad - If you don't notice it to any degree, it's not doing its job, and if you DO notice it to any degree, it's intrusive and disruptive (to a matching degree) I think you mean "Nobody cares ENOUGH" rather than "Nobody cares", and that's a big distinction.
Actually, I'd have different concerns about ads that I didn't consciously notice.
Good point - while I'd still lump that in as "disruptive", it's more accurate to be a bit more granular.
One of the things that I think got completely overlooked in the recent Cambridge Analytica (and related) scandal was the idea that microtargeting actually WORKED to some degree. (Granted, it's easy to be manipulative when you aren't accountable for anything, but still - the idea went from vague promise to actual implementation). We've paid attention to the CONSCIOUS effects of those ads, but not so much to the subconscious ones. Even the ads that I dismiss as ridiculous are affecting my impressions of certain groups, and when the ads are primarily there to increase division, dismissing them still has the same result.
Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users
#10This may help explain why many companies focus so much ad budget on brand awareness and generally inserting their brand into the zeitgeist or popular memes and conversation.
Corporations rarely prize loyalty of any type: loyalty from employees, loyalty from customers... they don’t care.
Creating loyalty requires sublimating your own short term desires for the sake of promoting someone else’s interests instead. Corporations, as sociopathic legal constructs meant to encode ruthless pursuit of short term financial gain, are essentially incapable of acting this way.
This is why you have to pay so much to get new employees to join your team, or pay so much to acquire new customers. The corporation never cares to proactively reward existing employees or proactively improve products or reduce prices for customers.
So all short term attention is paid to seeding the necessary details required to acquire new supply of employees / customers / whatever.
Holding on to / valuing what you already have is just not a concept modern corporations have the ability to understand or articulate, despite lots of lip service about it.