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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

#201

Post by radium3d »

majewsky wrote: post #186
radium3d wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think an ad outside of a game is fine if it's not too excessive, but I too was disappointed to see cross-game "ad" content being baked into The Legend of Zelda DLC.

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

#202

Post by wittedhaddock »

Ads strike me as a laughable local maximum on our ability to monetize spare brain cycles of the human mind. Critical thinking cycles, arguably the most precious resource, is subverted for single digit clickthrough rates. Ad tech makes me cry, and after reading science fiction, depressed. Let's please please gtfo out of this paradigm and figure out how to bootstrap these things between our ears for creation, than consumption, of something.

And to go a bit deeper for a moment, it seems likely to me that what we now call critical thinking is the same thing as what Chomsky and Berwick mean when they use the word "language": an ability to hierarchically represent the world using symbols. Our "external representation" or ability to communicate ideas to one another, according to them is a byproduct of that effect. This was from their recent book, Why Only Us, and go on to point to the specific gene, FOXP2, that they believe caused this ability for the mind, and then assert that this emergence caused us to leave Africa (Out of Africa Theory). And if that's even remotely true, then the human mind is inherently more able and creative than we will ever know. Or said another way, the cross product of Dunning & Kruger with Berwick & Chomsky suggests an almost infinite unawareness of our own potential. - How do we know that the 10% drop off in traffic isn't "just" due to the increase of latency by the nature of adding additional the additional ad package that dispatches and draws on the main thread, slowing everything down (Linden, 2006)?

http://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/12/slides-from-my-talk-at-s...

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

#203

Post by gnopgnip »

lupire wrote: post #108
nitrogen wrote: post #47

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…

Youtube kids/safety/restricted mode removes ads.

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

#204

Post by xyzzy123 »

Waterluvian wrote: post #148
blotter_paper wrote: post #135

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…

Shared care can be helpful in that your child gets used to being cared for by other people and interacting with a variety of other kids.

We send our kids 3 days a week and would probably do it even if we weren’t both working.

Room for a variety of opinions here, agree one size does not fit all.

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

#205

Post by dlivingston »

luxuryballs wrote: post #48
eridius wrote: post #44

If a game doesn't offer any way to pay to remove ads, it's an instant uninstall for me. If a game does offer it, but doesn't let me play for long enough to decide whether I like the game before it starts serving up unskippable ads, I uninstall it. Most games simply don't give enough time to decide if you even like it before they start throwing ads at you. That seems like a terrible policy in general, regardless of wh…

I’m about to release a fun little ambient physics based puzzle game on iOS and have been debating this. To me ads are a stain on what I consider my art. But at the same time I want to monetize and wonder if people will skip over a $1.99 download. What do you think? Ads with the option to unlock? Seems gross though... maybe free with paid version that includes level editor or additional level packs?

I'm working on an iOS game as well, and my plan of attack is to have a 'donate' button with different tiers ($1, $3, $5) that gets treated internally as an in-app purchase.

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

#206

Post by Beldin »

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…

Did you try gaming with data and wifi turned off? It might help stem the tide of ads...

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

#207

Post by LorenPechtel »

braythwayt wrote: post #170
TeMPOraL wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's similar to how prostitution seems more ethical than telemarketing - one involves voluntary exchange of value between two willing consenting parties, the other involves harassing people and, frequently, trying to scam them.

My understanding is that the people working in that industry prefer to call it "sex work." "Prostitute" has negative historical connotations. For example, we will say that Mitch McConnell has prostituted himself to billionaires, but we would never call him a sex worker. /ducks

"Sex worker" is a broader term than "prostitute". The former covers most every commercial activity whose objective is orgasm, the latter covers only those whose normal job is orgasm via insertion (although they may do it by other means at a client's request.)

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

#208

Post by the_gipsy »

braythwayt wrote: post #168
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…

You are not their target market. Most of these companies make all of their money from "whales," people who play around the clock and spend a significant amount of money per month on in-app purchases and/or subscriptions. They have optimized their experience for finding and landing whales, and at the end of the day, you are probably an irritant to them, walking around complaining about the game while contributing so l…

Whales have nothing to do with ads.

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

#209

Post by GhostVII »

copperx wrote: post #119
jermaustin1 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss this model for games. Demo disks were my favorite thing in the world. I'd play a demo a dozen times or so before I decided that it was worth begging a parent to buy the game for me.

It has been a long time since I played games, but I thought games still had demos. In Steam, do you have to buy a game before playing it?

In steam you can return for a full refund if you have played less than 2 hours within the first 14 days, so you effectively get a 2 hour demo.

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

#210

Post by blattimwind »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #207
braythwayt wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that the people working in that industry prefer to call it "sex work." "Prostitute" has negative historical connotations. For example, we will say that Mitch McConnell has prostituted himself to billionaires, but we would never call him a sex worker. /ducks

"Sex worker" is a broader term than "prostitute". The former covers most every commercial activity whose objective is orgasm, the latter covers only those whose normal job is orgasm via insertion (although they may do it by other means at a client's request.)

> The former covers most every commercial activity whose objective is orgasm

I don't think that's technically true.

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