Why I Work on Ads • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#141

Post by isoskeles » Thu, May 06, 2021, 3:05 PM UTC

whitepaint wrote: post #129

Aren't effective ads good for society? Don't they make us prosperous? Jobs are created, people get cheaper goods, many small businesses emerge?

Jobs are not necessarily good for society, nor are cheaper goods. We could have dirt cheap asbestos and cigarettes, that's not good for society. We can have billions of jobs making and filling dirt holes, that's also not good for society.

That aside, the effectiveness of ads are orthogonal to the quality or "good"-ness of jobs and products. They just seem, to me, like more of an amoral thing that can be used to sell something else, good or bad.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#142

Post by omginternets » Thu, May 06, 2021, 3:06 PM UTC

ksec wrote: post #96

omginternets wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The author jefftk is getting unfairly downvoted maybe because cynics just see it as a version of, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." I don't think that's why people are downvoting. Speaking for myself, it's because his analysis focuses only on the benefits of ads, and conveniently ignores the actual ethical problems ( e.g. large-scale collect…

>In other words, I see no fresh insight and perspective in jefftk's writing, May be I am living in my bubble, but most of the site I visit, mostly mainstream media news in tech, along with most of the social media post, has a flat out dismissal of Ads in general. So while ads works to pay for X isn't a "fresh" insight, it was never really pointed out ( enough ) in most of the discussions. If the discussion in general…

>a flat out dismissal of Ads in general.

Yes, I agree. That is indeed another unoriginal, stale perspective.

The question for me isn't so much whether hear from one side more than the other, but whether there is some new idea. For me, intellectual content matters much more than equal representation in (social) media.

By this measure, the OP's post is equally trite.

>In the context of Ads. Not all ads are large-scale collection of personal information.

We're talking about Google ads here. Let's stop pretending otherwise.

>Which is what FloC was ( AFAIK ) trying to solve.

Leaving my skepticism aside for a moment, this may have been an opportunity for OP to provide some insight into how the adtech market is evolving, and make the case that it is headed in an ethical direction. He did not. There is no insight here, either.

So again, I think a downvote is a pretty reasonable and measured response. The OP's post was unconvincing and cliched. No big deal. I've written plenty of stuff like that, myself.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#143

Post by cletus » Thu, May 06, 2021, 3:06 PM UTC

fouric wrote: post #109

jasode wrote: post #29

The author jefftk is getting unfairly downvoted maybe because cynics just see it as a version of, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." I will offer a contrarian opinion as a user whose salary does not depend on advertising: the advertising model for using Google search and watching Youtube videos works better for me as a consumer . The alternati…

> all more user hostile for my use cases Why are these user-hostile? I see very little friction to any of them - $10/year YT subscription disappears into the background (that's, what, two moderately expensive coffee drinks? if you spend just a single day watching educational content, the obtained value will easily exceed $10), per-search microtransactions would be so cheap that you could just turn on the "always tran…

> I see very little friction to any of them - $10/year YT subscription disappears into the background

So there are several problems with this:

1. You restated the above commenter's cost from $10/month to $10/year for some reason. For context, Google's annual revenue seems to be $180B. That makes $10/month far closer to the likely alternative;

2. That $10/year or $10/month "disappears into the background" for you. That's a far more significant cost for the majority of Internet users who are in the developing world. Cost aside, there may be issues with even having the payment infrastructure to actually pay for that (eg due to sanctions or US foreign policy).

I agree with the post's author: there are significant benefits to an ad-supported model and high on that list is low friction (paying for any service is a huge point of friction) and that those in the developing world get highly-equivalent services to the developed world.

There are definitely problems with advertising. The over-collection of data is of course one. But it seems convenient and disingenuous to overlook the benefits as they're inconvenient to a shallow anti-advertising diatribe.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#144

Post by the_snooze » Thu, May 06, 2021, 3:06 PM UTC

elliekelly wrote: post #88

jasode wrote: post #29

The author jefftk is getting unfairly downvoted maybe because cynics just see it as a version of, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." I will offer a contrarian opinion as a user whose salary does not depend on advertising: the advertising model for using Google search and watching Youtube videos works better for me as a consumer . The alternati…

I find the "ads are useful" argument frustratingly disingenuous. It's a transparent and deliberate attempt to move the discussion away from what people actually take issue with in modern internet advertising - tracking and data collection - and instead tries to frame it as something far more benign. The ads. Aren't. The problem. The stalking is. Ads can be useful. But no one is saying they aren't! So why is it consta…

>The ads. Aren't. The problem. The stalking is.

Exactly. If you want online ads done right, look no further than how podcasts do it. The medium doesn't allow for stalking. Podcast producers often stake their own reputation by voicing the ads themselves. That editorial freedom lets them be creative and respectful of their audiences. And advertisers can use podcast-specific coupon codes to attribute ad campaigns to sales. It's a win-win for everyone.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#145

Post by cortesoft » Thu, May 06, 2021, 3:07 PM UTC

ericmay wrote: post #35

jefftk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you say more what you mean by "pointless red queen race"? Let's say someone wants to sell fishing equipment. The traditional way of doing this is to buy ads on fishing sites. So now my fishing equipment purchases make there be more writing about fishing; yay! Then one of the fishing websites decides to put a tracking pixel on their site to drop "fishing website visitor" cookies (or, in a future without third-part…

> The traditional way of doing this is to buy ads on fishing sites. Before digital advertising or Google reading emails to find out you're going on a fishing trip, how did people buy fishing equipment? Whatever we did then, we can probably go back to and be much better off. Like why do I need "relevant ads" on a blog about urban planning? What problem does that solve for me?

They saw ads for fishing equipment in fishing magazines, or in the newspaper.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#146

Post by MaxwellM » Thu, May 06, 2021, 3:08 PM UTC

Thanks for sharing. This was a compelling argument that nudged my understanding in a new direction.

I recently started paying creators on Patreon and subscribing to news outlets I wanted to support. But within a year, I realized that this was inefficient, I didn't like/read/watch most of the content that my subscriptions were supporting. As much as I wanted to support the content creators and quality journalism, I questioned the value of my subscriptions and cancelled - I felt like I signed up for a gym membership on Jan 1st that I wasn't using anymore.

Ads allow me "to pay" with my attention for only the content that I value. I don't like ads, I generally use an ad-blocker, but I appreciate the post and the perspective.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#147

Post by cm2012 » Thu, May 06, 2021, 3:08 PM UTC

Agree with all. Reposting an old comment of mine:

Solving world hunger is obviously better than ads, but I'd say in the scheme of things tech people spend their time on, ad improvements is middling in importance? It's not the bottom. Good ad targeting means:

1) New small businesses (like Shopify stores) can reach customers without going through retail gatekeepers. Ask any Shopify seller, nothing beats FB.

2) New challenger SaaS brands can get in front of customers to compete with mammoth corporate brands with worse software (I see this all the time on my job).

3) Without good ad targeting, only bottom hanging fruit advertisers that appeal to the lowest common denominator can afford to spend. Weight loss, teeth whitening, etc. Good ad targeting means a better user experience with ads.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#148

Post by jefftk » Thu, May 06, 2021, 3:09 PM UTC

omginternets wrote: post #128

jefftk wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> conveniently ignores the actual ethical problems (e.g. large-scale collection of personal information)* Ignores? That's what the entire second half of the post is about ;) Starting at "But the biggest issue I see people raising is the privacy impact of targeted ads..."

>Starting at "But the biggest issue I see people raising is the privacy impact of targeted ads..." Yes, that's literally all you have to say on the subject. The very next paragraph is about how this helps keep ads relevant...

> that's literally all you have to say on the subject

Not at all! First I talk about the economic benefit of targeted ads ("Most products are a much better fit for some people than others..."), then how it works today ("Historically, ads like this have been built on top of third-party cookies..."), then how it can work without cross-site tracking ("build browser APIs that will allow this kind of well-targeted advertising without sending your browsing history to advertisers, and then get rid of third-party cookies...")

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#149

Post by whitepaint » Thu, May 06, 2021, 3:10 PM UTC

isoskeles wrote: post #141

whitepaint wrote: post #129

Aren't effective ads good for society? Don't they make us prosperous? Jobs are created, people get cheaper goods, many small businesses emerge?

Jobs are not necessarily good for society, nor are cheaper goods. We could have dirt cheap asbestos and cigarettes, that's not good for society. We can have billions of jobs making and filling dirt holes, that's also not good for society. That aside, the effectiveness of ads are orthogonal to the quality or "good"-ness of jobs and products. They just seem, to me, like more of an amoral thing that can be used to sell…

Free markets don't work like that. We would only be having billions of jobs filling dirt holes if it produced more value to the society than it extracted it from.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#150

Post by cm2012 » Thu, May 06, 2021, 3:10 PM UTC

omginternets wrote: post #41

jasode wrote: post #29

The author jefftk is getting unfairly downvoted maybe because cynics just see it as a version of, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." I will offer a contrarian opinion as a user whose salary does not depend on advertising: the advertising model for using Google search and watching Youtube videos works better for me as a consumer . The alternati…

>The author jefftk is getting unfairly downvoted maybe because cynics just see it as a version of, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." I don't think that's why people are downvoting. Speaking for myself, it's because his analysis focuses only on the benefits of ads, and conveniently ignores the actual ethical problems ( e.g. large-scale collect…

I've never seen any evidence of anyone hurt by the large scale collection of personal data by Google and FB.