Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#281

Post by manigandham » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 4:27 AM UTC

zrobotics wrote: post #276

manigandham wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't get Stackoverflow, and barely any of the content today. You may be fine with the internet of the early 90s but most people are not.

Who paid for the content I actually visit StackOverflow for? It surely wasn't SO; they provide a nice platform but they also get that content for free. This isn't a journalism site, the value in SO comes from freely provided user answers. Yes, SO provides some value vs. forums via their q/a platform, but it is a marginal amount of value. Sure, SO is easier than parsing a forum thread, but the actual value that I care…

SO doesn't pay for the content, they pay for the space to host that content and community. Since users aren't paying, SO needs to monetize it somehow and that's what the ads are for.

I'm sure you could return to the old internet, but many billions of other internet users enjoy the content they consume for free. Use your adblocker and stick with paywall/subscription sites because we're unlikely to ever go back to a pre-commercial internet.

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#282

Post by rhizome » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 4:29 AM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #269

rhizome wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> usually means less total revenue for the site if that's all they run. Does it? If native ads were blocked less, couldn't these units reach more eyes than RTB trash?

Native is a format, RTB is ad transactions and delivery. They're not mutually exclusive. If you mean an entirely custom format then that reach is offset by the higher production and impression costs, which results in less overall demand. Liquidity becomes an issue, which is why Reddit is a good example. They also use adzerk and built their own custom self-serve ad network but they make very little money compared to s…

Native as in self-served non-RTB first-party, whatever.

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#283

Post by viraptor » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 4:30 AM UTC

minitoar wrote: post #115

jf wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would pay for an ad-free version of Stack Overflow. Take my money, please.

I think the data in aggregate is worth more than people like you would pay for an ad-free service.

But they're mostly wouldn't pay in ads either. The difference may be pay-for-ad-free vs adblock-and-no-money rather than getting more ad views.

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#284

Post by rsj_hn » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 4:32 AM UTC

Groxx wrote: post #273

rsj_hn wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using an iframe sandbox has some issues: 1. scrollbars and positioning can cause problems with iframes that an inline div doesn't have, especially if there are multiple small iframes on the page. 2. As soon as you allow script in the sandbox iframe, then you are susceptible to these types of fingerprinting attacks. The fact that you have origin isolation doesn't really block what the ad was doing. This is because ifr…

> 1. scrollbars and positioning can cause problems with iframes that an inline div doesn't have, especially if there are multiple small iframes on the page. I'm not quite sure what you mean here, but I'm curious. Have any examples?

Ideally you would like the iframe to not be visible -- you don't want it to show scrollbars if the content overflows.

But at the same time, you want to see all the content in the iframe. If you knew ahead of time exactly the layout of the text in the iframe you could do this, but it's harder when you have dynamically generated content inserted into the iframe, and now add to that wanting the page to be on different devices with different viewports, resolutions, users resizing the page, users increasing or decreasing text sizes for accessibility or changing default fonts.

And if you don't control the content, some of it may contain fixed size elements or absolute positioning inside the frame.

It's a really difficult problem that we were struggling with before ultimately giving up on trying to use iframes for this purpose. And when you make a mistake you either get ugly scrollbars in your iframe or part of your content is cut off when the user resizes the page.

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#285

Post by pnw_hazor » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 4:44 AM UTC

Programmers make these tools. When challenging said programmers who work for companies that promote this kind of behavior (G) they suggest that they work for these evil companies because their job is interesting and it pays well.

This practice could stop tomorrow if the best and brightest of us decided so.

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#286

Post by manigandham » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 4:54 AM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #282

manigandham wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Native is a format, RTB is ad transactions and delivery. They're not mutually exclusive. If you mean an entirely custom format then that reach is offset by the higher production and impression costs, which results in less overall demand. Liquidity becomes an issue, which is why Reddit is a good example. They also use adzerk and built their own custom self-serve ad network but they make very little money compared to s…

Native as in self-served non-RTB first-party, whatever.

That would be the reddit example, just low overall demand for something like that. They could try it, but probably already did the analysis to see its not worth it.

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#287

Post by m0dest » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 5:00 AM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #86

Nick-Craver wrote: post #68

I just wanted to chime in from Stack Overflow here and let people know: we are aware of the issue. And we're NOT okay with it. We're trying to sort out how to kill the audio behavior now. It's not very straightforward to find where it's coming from, but we are working on it. We've also reached out to Google for their assistance in tracking it down. If anyone can offer advice, we'll more than happily take it. - Nick C…

Why are you allowing arbitrary javascript to be served to your users?

The solution is in sight. It's called Feature Policy.

https://feature-policy-demos.appspot.com/

https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/06/feature-po...

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#288

Post by wtmt » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 5:08 AM UTC

nerdponx wrote: post #124

minitoar wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the data in aggregate is worth more than people like you would pay for an ad-free service.

This is the actual problem at the heart of it all. And even if it were more profitable to take subscription fees than to serve ads, what's stopping you from "double dipping" and serving ads anyway?

ArsTechnica (obviously a very different site compared to SO) has an ad free subscription model where it also removed all trackers for paying subscribers. It's possible to do this in an ethical way. Whether the site publisher is interested or not is a different matter.

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#289

Post by wtmt » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 5:12 AM UTC

Nick-Craver wrote: post #68

I just wanted to chime in from Stack Overflow here and let people know: we are aware of the issue. And we're NOT okay with it. We're trying to sort out how to kill the audio behavior now. It's not very straightforward to find where it's coming from, but we are working on it. We've also reached out to Google for their assistance in tracking it down. If anyone can offer advice, we'll more than happily take it. - Nick C…

If you're "NOT okay with it", how about stopping ads completely until you resolve this problem? That should give a bigger impetus to solve it ASAP as the bottom line gets hit for multiple stakeholders.

This is not just ads, but about fingerprinting and tracking users somehow or the other by third parties. It's plain evil, and not a decent thing to continue foisting on your unsuspecting users after you've known it. Tell management to take an ethical stance and preserve the reputation of SO.

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#290

Post by manigandham » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 5:18 AM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #258

manigandham wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertising isn't enterprise sales.

That’s just the point - why not? What different strategy would you use selling a SAAS app to a few whales than selling advertising to a few whales?

Most ad money is in walled gardens (Facebook running ads on facebook.com). SMBs and performance marketers buy billions without ever talking to a salesperson.

Advertising at big companies is the only space left for traditional sales teams and it's all outsourced to agencies. Adtech vendors and publishers sell to these agencies, not the client (and if they do, its just redirected) but there aren't any long-term deals because everything is constantly shifting. Agencies have lots of teams, they win and lose accounts, work on multiple campaign initiatives and strategies with constantly changing budgets and requirements, and use dozens of vendors to create and execute campaigns.

This is the opposite of a traditional SaaS contract sold for a term directly to the people that will be using it. There's also a steady trend towards all inventory being traded programmatically which will eliminate most of the sales negotiations. Unique inventory and formats can still stand out but they also cost more in effort and money so there's less overall demand. It's very hard to scale custom sales like that, especially if one of your requirements is to avoid all the javascript verification, brand-safety and measurement.

Most media sales these days is more about biz dev to get the pipes connected to exchanges and represent your inventory in the best way possible while letting the market work.