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We need legal controls on web advertising

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Re: We need legal controls on web advertising

#121

Post by manfredo »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #46

I am beginning to believe that advertising (at all, on any medium) is an evil we need to do without. The "free stuff" that we get in return is never without consequences, as we're finding out. The "hey we built a thing you might want to buy" function can be done in different forms, better, I think. Probably by newspapers. I think we could start by taxing all advertising revenue by, say, 50%.

I disagree substantially. Advertising, especially web advertising, allows us to pay for services not with money but our attention. When the Economist polled people how much they would pay to forego search engines, the result was over $17,000 [1]. It'd be simplistic to say that this is what Google could charge in a subscription model, but the point is that the value is very high.

Is a world where poorer students who can't afford google have to compete against wealthier students with google a better world than one with web ads? I think it's easy to focus on the bad, the privacy issues and dark patterns that web ads incentivize, to the exclusion of the fact that it has expanded access to incredibly powerful services to people of all means (well, all means as long as they have access to the internet).

1. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/04/25/how-much...

Re: We need legal controls on web advertising

#122

Post by 6510 »

manfredo wrote: post #121
marcus_holmes wrote: post #46

I am beginning to believe that advertising (at all, on any medium) is an evil we need to do without. The "free stuff" that we get in return is never without consequences, as we're finding out. The "hey we built a thing you might want to buy" function can be done in different forms, better, I think. Probably by newspapers. I think we could start by taxing all advertising revenue by, say, 50%.

I disagree substantially. Advertising, especially web advertising, allows us to pay for services not with money but our attention. When the Economist polled people how much they would pay to forego search engines, the result was over $17,000 [1]. It'd be simplistic to say that this is what Google could charge in a subscription model, but the point is that the value is very high. Is a world where poorer students who c…

Where advertisement automatons have better information (which they increasingly do) advertising things to poor people is carefully avoided. So the model has finite life-span.

Japan CPC $1.32 CPM $0.38

Montenegro CPC $0.05 CPM $0.01

http://www.rudibedy.com/blog/facebook-advertising-cpc-cpm-pe...

Re: We need legal controls on web advertising

#123

Post by Guest42 »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #46

I am beginning to believe that advertising (at all, on any medium) is an evil we need to do without. The "free stuff" that we get in return is never without consequences, as we're finding out. The "hey we built a thing you might want to buy" function can be done in different forms, better, I think. Probably by newspapers. I think we could start by taxing all advertising revenue by, say, 50%.

It is a interesting notion to ask oneself how much these web services are worth or how to spell out contractual relationships for advertising.

Re: We need legal controls on web advertising

#124

Post by tomjen3 »

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #19
tomjen3 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would end up stalling the development of new products. I can't invent and sell an 800 usd massage chair if people assume they cost 5000 usd and so don't even go looking for them. I can't start a "we are cheaper than wallmart" discount business without advertising this fact. You need advertisements, or something like that, to encourage new products and price competition. You do not need tracking for any reason sin…

There is plenty of price comparison websites that one can use right now that allow one to search for a specific product and compare price offers. One would search for a massage chair on there and find that some are cheaper than others and read the reviews to make an educated guess about whether the extra price is worth it.

My point, is that you wouldn't do that if you thought the price was around 5k.

But then take the example of new technology: you wouldn't want to buy gore-tex shoes, which would be more expensive than the others, if you didn't know that they were both waterproof and breathable, something you would consider impossible before seeing the ad.

Apples M1 is a more recent example: until their marketing/pr blitz hit I couldn't buy a fanless laptop with anywhere decent performance and so because I didn't know it existed, I wouldn't have gone to search for it.

You can run a price comparison website for know old things, e.g I use them when I am after something specific.

Of course that leaves me the problem of which price comparison site I should use.

Re: We need legal controls on web advertising

#125

Post by grishka »

stevesearer wrote: post #66
marcus_holmes wrote: post #46

I am beginning to believe that advertising (at all, on any medium) is an evil we need to do without. The "free stuff" that we get in return is never without consequences, as we're finding out. The "hey we built a thing you might want to buy" function can be done in different forms, better, I think. Probably by newspapers. I think we could start by taxing all advertising revenue by, say, 50%.

I’d be interested in knowing what qualifies as advertising in this hypothetical. Web banners? Sponsored content? Trade shows? Sales rep stopping by and buying lunch and talking about a product? Clothing with logos? Hacker News? There are lots of ways to capture people’s attention to build awareness of your business that probably technically fall under advertising but would be quite difficult to regulate in any meanin…

I think it's pretty clear. Advertising is when someone pays to pass to you any information you didn't intentionally ask for. Banners and sponsored content obviously are advertising. Your friend telling you about some cool product is not advertising because he wasn't paid for that.

Re: We need legal controls on web advertising

#126

Post by manfredo »

6510 wrote: post #122
manfredo wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree substantially. Advertising, especially web advertising, allows us to pay for services not with money but our attention. When the Economist polled people how much they would pay to forego search engines, the result was over $17,000 [1]. It'd be simplistic to say that this is what Google could charge in a subscription model, but the point is that the value is very high. Is a world where poorer students who c…

Where advertisement automatons have better information (which they increasingly do) advertising things to poor people is carefully avoided. So the model has finite life-span. Japan CPC $1.32 CPM $0.38 Montenegro CPC $0.05 CPM $0.01 http://www.rudibedy.com/blog/facebook-advertising-cpc-cpm-pe...

Lower cost-per-click and cost per impression for lower income countries does not mean that companies are avoiding advertising to those populations. It just means people buying ads aren't as willing to spend money to reach those populations. The cost of advertising to populations with lower disposable income has always been lower. This isn't something new to web ads, it's a phenomenon that has existed long before the internet. I'm really not sure where you're going with this line of thinking.

Re: We need legal controls on web advertising

#127

Post by mrloba »

tehwebguy wrote: post #110
mrloba wrote: post #106

How about we fix the underlying problem: how to earn money without advertising? The issue right now is that subscribing to 100s of different services is both annoying and expensive. What if you could subscribe to a single service, which then would compensate the different services you use based on how much you use them? Sort of like how Spotify compensates artists based on number of listens. Quite easy to solve techn…

Wait who is the org that will pay websites and services based on how much time I use them?

Hopefully not a single org, or any org. But like I said, it's not easy to solve socially. The main point is to somehow get paid without advertising (Which already exists, it's just that people won't pay individually for every service on the internet. At least that's my assumption).

Re: We need legal controls on web advertising

#128

Post by SimeVidas »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #46

I am beginning to believe that advertising (at all, on any medium) is an evil we need to do without. The "free stuff" that we get in return is never without consequences, as we're finding out. The "hey we built a thing you might want to buy" function can be done in different forms, better, I think. Probably by newspapers. I think we could start by taxing all advertising revenue by, say, 50%.

I’m completely fine with ads on YouTube. They can sometimes get annoying, but it’s a very small price to pay for the hours of free entertainment that I get from YouTube.

Re: We need legal controls on web advertising

#129

Post by bonestamp2 »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #46

I am beginning to believe that advertising (at all, on any medium) is an evil we need to do without. The "free stuff" that we get in return is never without consequences, as we're finding out. The "hey we built a thing you might want to buy" function can be done in different forms, better, I think. Probably by newspapers. I think we could start by taxing all advertising revenue by, say, 50%.

> The "free stuff" that we get in return is never without consequences, as we're finding out.

Largely, I agree. But, this is an editorial decision and not an absolute.

We used to get better news when we paid straight up for it (newspaper cover price/subscriptions). But, lets not forget, those papers had advertising too. The difference is that the ads were not the only form of revenue and the papers with the best journalistic integrity were responsible to their readers more than their advertisers. Therefore, news was optimized for readers.

Now that most news is paid for by advertising, and because advertising pays out based on impressions and/or clicks, we get news that is optimized for impressions and clicks -- which is obviously much worse news than we used to get. This shift in incentive means that news organizations are now more responsible to their advertisers than their readers/viewers (and they don't like that either, but it is a decision that helps keep the lights on).

I don't think you can get rid of all advertising. I mean, there will always be advertising. If it's not overt, it will become more and more covert. So, I don't think the government would be successful in trying to control it further than they already have. Their current approach of transparency is on the right trajectory at least, but it's not much of a solution either. It's probably ok to allow: overt, paid, and responsible advertising. The key there is "responsible". No responsible editor should allow an advertisement that interrupts the content in any way!

I have worked in all of the industries involved in this issue so I can assure you it will be a difficult problem to solve. Either the incentives have to be flipped, so that the news organizations are incentivized to create the best content for readers (simply inform the public at large in an unbiased way -- the original purpose of "journalists" in ancient Greece). Or, the tastes of the readers/viewers has to change so that they reject clickbait news.

I don't have a lot of faith in readers, myself included, because it's often difficult to see that something was clickbait until you read it. I also don't have faith in news organizations being innovative enough to get ahead of this problem and fix it. So, I believe we need some kind of third party solution.

We need something like those content summary bots that can distill an article into a paragraph, but can rewrite clickbait headlines into boring but factual headlines. Then provide that bot as a browser plugin so the clickbait headlines are replaced for those of us who want a more honest approach to news. Again, not a perfect solution either... I'm not sure one exists for this problem.

Re: We need legal controls on web advertising

#130

Post by jbay808 »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #68
stevesearer wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d be interested in knowing what qualifies as advertising in this hypothetical. Web banners? Sponsored content? Trade shows? Sales rep stopping by and buying lunch and talking about a product? Clothing with logos? Hacker News? There are lots of ways to capture people’s attention to build awareness of your business that probably technically fall under advertising but would be quite difficult to regulate in any meanin…

The formalized ad business would be a good place to start. At least you'd kill the ad supported business model because clarity of the transaction required.

I think the GP's question is not so much "where does it start", as "where does it end".
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