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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

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I worked in mobile gaming and would never work in porn (unless it was like filtering or prosecuting creators). A coworker hard a good point to say what the people who are addicted to mobile games would be addicted/spend money on if they didn't play. It's possible they would be buying meth/booze with it.

We don't hand children meth so that they behave, but we do with mobile games.

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

#182
post #173

I feel like advertisements ruin everything. I remember driving onto the my air force base and being thankful that all the visual pollution was gone. It was like stepping into another world. Now the internet has ads everywhere. I find the attention economy awful and dystopian. I'd gladly pay to never see another ad.

I remember reading about someone that built a system where you put $X in to a pot every month, and every page you visit gets $X/pages_visited. This allows you to directly monetize creators without ads. I cannot for the life of me find it - does it ring any bells with anyone?

Ironically(?), Google Contributor is a thing:

https://contributor.google.com/

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

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

#183
post #177

I feel like advertisements ruin everything. I remember driving onto the my air force base and being thankful that all the visual pollution was gone. It was like stepping into another world. Now the internet has ads everywhere. I find the attention economy awful and dystopian. I'd gladly pay to never see another ad.

How many years do you think it is before someone pays to put ads on the Blackhawks and Humvees? (I think this was a throwaway idea in Snow Crash )

I get your point, but in the US, I don't think military leaders would ever let that happen. Being in the military feels like living in a heavily socialist country within a heavily capitalist one. The experiences could be amazing (good and horrific), but what I most noted was how different it felt from being a private citizen. It is a strange dichotomy.

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

#184
post #173

I feel like advertisements ruin everything. I remember driving onto the my air force base and being thankful that all the visual pollution was gone. It was like stepping into another world. Now the internet has ads everywhere. I find the attention economy awful and dystopian. I'd gladly pay to never see another ad.

I remember reading about someone that built a system where you put $X in to a pot every month, and every page you visit gets $X/pages_visited. This allows you to directly monetize creators without ads. I cannot for the life of me find it - does it ring any bells with anyone?

Blendle, perhaps?

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

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I appreciate the concern. I'm not going to get into a debate about this, nor do I sense you are trying for one. But my toddler is wildly ahead of his peers in almost every measure (edit: wow this sounds pretentious. Not sure what to say. He spells and assembles words he sees around the house. He just turned 2), so I'll give the facts I observe more weight than the massively simplified single sentence prescription tha…

Out of curiosity, do you get the impression other cultures do parenting advice better?

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

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd rather pay $40-60 for a game that keeps me in the story. I don't have time for ads. Old-fashioned console and PC gaming is still a thing, though mobile inspired microtransactions are starting to creep into the market.

Yes and I am very appreciative of companies like Nintendo who keep the art alive. I feel the phone market has untapped potential still.

The Nintendo Switch's start screen has ads on it. When you turn the console on from sleep mode, it shows flashy images entitled "Featured News" on the left third of the lock screen. [1] I tried to disable it, but apparently you cannot unsubscribe from the preloaded "news" channels.

When I play Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the in-game experience is mostly ad-free, but there is a side quest on my quest log that appears to be a cross-promotion with some non-Nintendo game.

It's really frustrating that Nintendo is also doing this bullshit now, even if in moderation.

[1] Representative example: http://www.bearingnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/IMG_49...

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

#187

I feel like advertisements ruin everything. I remember driving onto the my air force base and being thankful that all the visual pollution was gone. It was like stepping into another world. Now the internet has ads everywhere. I find the attention economy awful and dystopian. I'd gladly pay to never see another ad.

You'd love visiting Vermont. They banned billboards in 1968.

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

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in mobile gaming and would never work in porn (unless it was like filtering or prosecuting creators). A coworker hard a good point to say what the people who are addicted to mobile games would be addicted/spend money on if they didn't play. It's possible they would be buying meth/booze with it.

We don't hand children meth so that they behave, but we do with mobile games.

In fact this is almost exactly what happens with many children being prescribed Adderall.

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

#189
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

I really shouldn't suggest this because it is definitely a bug that I enjoy exploiting, but on YouTube, if you hit the next video link then immediately hit back on the browser, the ads all clear. As in all the yellow ad markers disappear. So no annoying mid video ads at all. My default YT viewing is click link, click next, hit delete.

This is on my Macbook and all three major browsers Safari, Chrome and Firefox.

... AAAAAAND watch as this gets fixed (I'm an idiot).

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

#190
post #78
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the incentives go the other way? I'd imagine Google wants people to get to sites that serve ads from Google so they can collect fees.

Ads don't affect SEO. It would allow websites to essentially pay for higher search results. There are tools that come with using ads that allow for insights into better SEO though - e.g. Adwords keyword planner.

Google's core business is letting people pay to be the top of search result.
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