Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by edmundsauto » Fri, Mar 15, 2019, 1:24 AM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #78

kornish wrote: 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.

My SEO knowledge is a few years out of date, but when I ran sites with AdSense, it hugely increased the page weight and load time. Google's own tools would ding me PageSpeed Insights score for some of the scripts, even though they were loaded async. GA would tell me I had 8+s average page load; when tested from slow connections, it would never be more than a couple sec.

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

#242

Post by jacobolus » Fri, Mar 15, 2019, 1:26 AM UTC

chrisdsaldivar wrote: post #240

jacobolus wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding of the current consensus among researchers is that nearsightedness is usually caused by (a) not focusing on distant objects enough, and (b) not being outside often enough in very bright light. There’s no reason to believe that screens are inherently worse for vision than books, knitting, legos, or any other close work. Which is to say, any of these are only a problem to the extent they are crowding o…

I’m 24 man I ain’t even thinking about having kids; I’m just putting information out there. Tbf I spent nearly every waking moment of my childhood outside and I’m extremely near sighted. I can’t even see my laptop screen without my glasses.

That’s a bummer. Sounds like you might be one of the few people who would have still developed myopia 200 years ago.

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

#243

Post by altitudinous » Fri, Mar 15, 2019, 1:28 AM UTC

Ads cost a tenth of my users, but I gain 100% of my income. No regrets.

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

#244

Post by drngdds » Fri, Mar 15, 2019, 1:33 AM UTC

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 '…

Your best option by far for mobile gaming (if you're on Android) is to install an emulator for an old console/handheld and download/rip some games.

It's unfortunate how bad the state of mobile gaming is, considering how powerful today's phones are.

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

#245

Post by stickfigure » Fri, Mar 15, 2019, 1:42 AM UTC

jacobsenscott wrote: post #213

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.

Organized crime has been really successful in spreading the "two willing consenting parties" myth. Trust me - there is only ever one willing consenting party. No woman on earth wants to @%$! a constant parade of scumbags.

I suggest you go out and talk to some actual sex workers, with an open mind. I know (socially) a few former sex workers, and they would vehemently disagree with your characterization. The world is way, waaaay more complicated than you seem to think.

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

#246

Post by wwweston » Fri, Mar 15, 2019, 1:50 AM UTC

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.)

McConnell's gig is inserting his clientele's p...olicy into US law / practice for their pleasure....

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

#247

Post by m463 » Fri, Mar 15, 2019, 2:07 AM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #145

I don't have the data anymore, but based on my memory of the time, I don't think reddit saw any difference in traffic when we launched ads (which was more than 10 years ago). That's not to say that it wouldn't change now, but just throwing out there that it didn't make a difference then.

Reddit lost me with the redesign to track and monetize. maybe 2-3 years ago? I had 250k karma all from mindful comments.

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

#248

Post by blotter_paper » Fri, Mar 15, 2019, 2:11 AM UTC

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…

I appreciate that you didn't take my comment as an attack on your parenting. I definitely share your misgivings about daycare, and would extend them to the educational system in general (another topic, I know). I'm glad that you and your SO are raising a bright kid, and I wish you the best of luck!

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

#249

Post by scarface74 » Fri, Mar 15, 2019, 2:11 AM UTC

simongr3dal wrote: post #24

gwern wrote: post #7

More 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.)

It also lines up pretty well with the fact that a lot of early stage SV-style startups don't monetize before they have a lot of users. You don't want to lose 10% in the early stages of exponential growth. 10% less users later on would not be a big deal however.

I am so glad that I’ve never worked for a non B2B company. It’s so much easier having 10-20 large companies as customers that pay real six and seven figure amounts for your services than chasing after a few pennies.

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

#250

Post by eridius » Fri, Mar 15, 2019, 2:31 AM UTC

gameshot911 wrote: post #126

winrid wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All this feedback is great. I'm working on a little competitive multiplayer game for Android (and soon iOS) as a side project. I was thinking about showing ads after every other match w/ the option to pay out and now I think I'll only show them past a certain rank, or just put up a pay wall.

Keep in mind that the HN crowd is not always reflective of the broader population. There is a reason apps show adds they way they do - it's very effective in making a lot of $$.

The highest-grossing apps on the app store are not the ones that are crammed full of unskippable ads. Don't mistake that being a popular model for being an effective one.