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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

#131

Post by DuskStar »

therealdrag0 wrote: post #83
yeukhon wrote: post #77

I have been seeing Squarespace ads on YouTube nearly for every video. I hate it and I just gives thumbs down hoping it will go away. Nope. Although the echo effect is real, I have to say I do not and will not use Squarespace simply because of the ads. It's insane. Same music, same video over and over. /rant

Why don't you use an adblocker or pay for YouTube premium to support your content creators.

At least in my case, the SquareSpace/NordVPN/Audible/etc ads aren't preroll - they're embedded in the middle of the video by the content creators. Which is really irritating, because I DO pay for YouTube premium... (by way of GPM All Access, grandfathered in)

Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

#132

Post by manfredo »

nitrogen wrote: post #47
umvi wrote: post #32

I believe it. There are a lot of games that I downloaded from the app store and really liked initially. However, I noticed a pattern. At first, ads seemed to be optional (i.e double your gems by watching an ad!) However, after about 10 minutes of playing, I'd see an ad. No big deal. But then it got more and more aggressive. Pretty soon there was an ad after every single level, (plus the bonus ad if you want to double…

I've seen a five year old play those games and talk about how much he really needs that $100 gem pack. I wonder if these will have any lasting effect on how kids of today understand value.

I'd would legitimately be less angry at my kid for pirating games or using cheatEngine than buying those sorts of loot boxes or paid boosters or pestering me aggressively about them. At least kids would pick up on some basic reverse engineering.

Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

#133

Post by gpm »

HenryBemis wrote: post #60
umvi wrote: post #32

I believe it. There are a lot of games that I downloaded from the app store and really liked initially. However, I noticed a pattern. At first, ads seemed to be optional (i.e double your gems by watching an ad!) However, after about 10 minutes of playing, I'd see an ad. No big deal. But then it got more and more aggressive. Pretty soon there was an ad after every single level, (plus the bonus ad if you want to double…

This is not ethical.. but here is a work-around. On Android devices, install the (free-and no ads) 'NoRoot Firewall'. Then it takes some minutes to get used to it, but you ONLY 'Allow' connections that the game needs to operate (e.g. everything that goes to port 443 is an indicator, or everything to/from Akamai, AWS, Azure, Cloudfront), and 'Block' everything that goes to port 80 (which usually is AdJust, doubleclick…

Not unethical in the least.

I don't play many phone games but DNS66 has completely removed every ad from my phone with no hassle (no root required), assuming it reliably works on games it sound simpler than having to approve individual requests.

Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

#134

Post by elliekelly »

kelnos wrote: post #115
nabla9 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's often said that less than 10% of users click ads. If there would be way to identify those users with reasonably low false positive rate, you could annoy only small fraction of users and keep more of them (if you want to have them).

Yeah, that's the thing. I will never (except possibly accidentally) click on an ad. Every single time I see an add in my Instagram feed, I mark it as "not relevant". And yet these days I see ads every 5-7 photos in my feed. I use Instagram much less now because of the quantity of ads, and Instagram should clearly be able to tell that I don't interact with ads at all except to get rid of them. I've probably reduced my…

> Yeah, that's the thing. I will never (except possibly accidentally) click on an ad.

I've noticed more and more dark patterns to trick users into accidentally clicking on an ad. Showing an "x" in the top corner before the ad is allowed to be closed/skipped, for example. I'm not sure whether it's game developers or advertising agencies who are responsible but it's definitely frustrating.

Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

#135

Post by blotter_paper »

Waterluvian wrote: post #121
lupire wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parents today have to train kids early. Mine learned by age 3 that any non-animated video content on YouTube was an ad that needed to be skipped. Not perfect, but a great start. Constantly drill into them that these are ads, and ads are bad people trying to trick them, and that ads should be avoided, in apps, websites, billboards, etc. I'm not any advertising, but the only good ad is an ad I asked to see, as when I'm…

My toddler learned at about 20 months how to skip YouTube ads. It's unbelievable. I watched him evolve as he would mash the "skip ad in 5..." Countdown to waiting until it was done to skip. He also learned through trial and error not to accidentally tap on the ads.

I certainly don't take the medical establishment as infallible, and I can imagine arguing against these recommendations, but FYI the American Association of Pediatricians recommends against allowing a 20mo the sort of screen time necessary to learn ad-skipping through trial and error[0]:

>Among the AAP recommendations:

>For children younger than 18 months, avoid use of screen media other than video-chatting. Parents of children 18 to 24 months of age who want to introduce digital media should choose high-quality programming, and watch it with their children to help them understand what they're seeing.

>For children ages 2 to 5 years, limit screen use to 1 hour per day of high-quality programs. Parents should co-view media with children to help them understand what they are seeing and apply it to the world around them.

[0]: https://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/Pages...

Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

#137

Post by 1000units »

leggomylibro wrote: post #90
umvi wrote: post #32

I believe it. There are a lot of games that I downloaded from the app store and really liked initially. However, I noticed a pattern. At first, ads seemed to be optional (i.e double your gems by watching an ad!) However, after about 10 minutes of playing, I'd see an ad. No big deal. But then it got more and more aggressive. Pretty soon there was an ad after every single level, (plus the bonus ad if you want to double…

One of my favorite mobile games (an old Popcap title) used to have a version which cost ~$10 and was just a no-frills port of the original. No ads, no permissions beyond file storage, no issues working offline. But you can't buy that anymore; now the only option is a 'free' version which has ads that you cannot pay away. Fortunately I can still download the old version from the app store; now it is called 'zzSUNSET '…

I think my conscience would be more satisfied working in porn than mobile gaming.

Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

#138

Post by jfehr »

I have a strong feeling that not all ads/strategies will have the same result.

I enjoy a large number of the ads that are shown to me on instagram and facebook, and have actually bought things from them. They're easy to skip or ignore. I'm not sure I'd use Facebook as much as I do if I didn't get some value out of the ads.

But 30 second ads for penis enlargement pills every minute while playing a free puzzle game? I'm never coming back.

I'd love to see a paper along the lines of the ones linked in the twitter thread in the OP that tries to control for the annoyingness/intrusiveness of the ad, the number of the ads, the relevancy of the ad, and some kind of personal touch of the ad. Admittedly, I didn't click through to the papers in the OP, so I'm not sure if this already exists.

Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

#139

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #69
HenryBemis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not ethical.. but here is a work-around. On Android devices, install the (free-and no ads) 'NoRoot Firewall'. Then it takes some minutes to get used to it, but you ONLY 'Allow' connections that the game needs to operate (e.g. everything that goes to port 443 is an indicator, or everything to/from Akamai, AWS, Azure, Cloudfront), and 'Block' everything that goes to port 80 (which usually is AdJust, doubleclick…

Wouldn't it be simpler, more ethical, and send a stronger message to simply not play the game?

Why would this be more ethical? If I own a network connected device, I am perfectly within ethical grounds to case-by-case block any kind of web request it might make. Whatever web requests happen on my device has absolutely no connection to someone who decided of their own accord to make a game or a music channel or whatever freely available to download / stream / etc.

They may prefer that those web requests succeed and generate ad revenue, but that’s literally just a mere hope that the user will choose to allow that to happen.

Another example could be creating a little robot that floats above my shoulder and uses a computer vision system to place some construction paper in my field of vision dynamically to block the photons of light coming from ad pixels from reaching my eyeball.

I’ll just miniaturize that idea and place it into my phone either as a browser/app ad blocking program, or a root level web request blocker, etc.

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