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Why I Work on Ads

jefftk.com

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Re: Why I Work on Ads

#411

Post by Causality1 »

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 think the fact people like HN's readership are living in a golden age is underappreciated. Think about it: we block ads while the people who don't subsidize our digital lifestyle. Sooner or later the providers are going to decide we're getting too much for free. Instead of an easily-blocked separate video, the YouTube ad will be part of the video stream and the server will refuse to send any part of the video until such time as the ad has had time to play. You might be able to blank the player for the ad but you'll get a fifteen second black screen instead of a fifteen second video.

So I resolved to sit back and enjoy what time I have left for getting a great experience.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#412

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

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…

A Google subscription would likely need to cost over $20/m - considering how many people wouldn't pay even one dollar for paid search. Google had $186Bn in revenue last year and ~1.8Bn monthly active users. The revenue comes almost entirely from search - with 1.2Tn searches per year - that's $0.15 per search - hardly anyone would pay that - and to get the same amount of revenue and profit with less users - they'd have to charge many many multiples of that. It's just not feasible.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#413

Post by svnt »

mhb wrote: post #371
aaroninsf wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a genuine question, if one I cannot help but deliver in an acid tone: what does it mean to be a "decent" person, if one is willfully, or disingenuously, ignorant of participation in an unethical system? Decent is a stand-in for ethical; this is a contradiction at a logical level, but to answer my own question, in contemporary American culture, not least in the readership of HN, there is disturbing dance betwe…

He is a decent person by at least a consequentialist definition - that the harm of ads (if any) due to him is offset by the amount of salary he is able to devote to doing good in the world.

What? I want to put together a yo dawg meme for this but I’m too lazy. This is just another corporate cog rationalization.

Unless your company is rocketing toward bankruptcy, your salary is by definition a (much) smaller number than the impact your work has on the world. You cannot offset your day job even by what seems to you a large fraction of your personal income.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#414

Post by dont__panic »

djoldman wrote: post #367
dont__panic wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Individuals absolutely have rights to do what they want, but only as far as those things don't have a negative impact on others. Pretty much the central kernel of libertarian philosophy, which, as we all know, HN loves. But dark patterns undermine that kind of personal choice. Think of Facebook hiding the "delete my account" page so that you literally cannot navigate to it through the UI -- you need to have a link to…

Good points. > But dark patterns undermine that kind of personal choice. Think of Facebook hiding the "delete my account" page so that you literally cannot navigate to it through the UI -- you need to have a link to that page. Doesn't that erode my autonomy to decide when I want to delete my account? >Similarly, software like Windows 10, my LinkedIn profile, Firefox settings, macOS/iOS options, and plenty of others t…

I think I (mostly) agree with you on this, with one caveat: network effects. If my friends and family and local businesses and community groups all use Facebook to organize events, plan socialization, announce things... I'm sort of trapped into using Facebook, because there's no alternate way to get that information! Now, I've done the cost/benefit analysis myself and actually ditched Facebook a couple of years ago. But that gives me even more insight into just how many things I can't do because I don't use Facebook.

Perhaps a better comparison would be a multiple choice test that's a requirement to do something you really want to do -- scuba diving, or renting a bike to ride around a national park, something like that. Sure, it's not essential. But it sounds fun, and you could question the necessity of the test in the first place. But the test needs you to submit your name, birthdate, address, and answer a bunch of personal questions about your interests before you can do the fun thing. At some point, you feel like you're being taken advantage of.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#415

Post by aflag »

jefftk wrote: post #388
aflag wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, with that system, isn't it possible for the advertiser to ultimately know which users saw the ads and ultimately what their interests are?

Nope! The proposal includes: * Ads render inside "fenced frames" where they cannot learn what page they are on and the page cannot learn what ad is being shown * Reporting is available, but it is aggregate-only

I've read the original turtledove readme, maybe there's something better, maybe it went over my head. But there is this request:

> GET https://first-ad-network.com/.well-known/fetch-ads?interest_...

So, at the very least, the ad network will be able to see your IP and know that you like athletic shoes and visited www.wereallylikeshoes.com. If you visit some other domain first-ad-network.com owns with the same IP whithin a small window of time, it can be pretty confident it's the same person and even store some client side data at that point. It feels like they can construct a reasonably good profile about their users by using that technique. That's considering the browser doesn't leak out any other potentially identifying information.

Then, the actual ad owner could have something in the URL that identifies which campaign you ultimately came from, as they probably know which interest groups they were targeting. So, when you click on the ad, they know one interest about you and, if you clicked in ads from other campaigns they run, they may reconstruct your profile well.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#416

Post by godelski »

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 don't mind ads, I mind data mining.

Ads on podcasts don't bug me as much as the ads Google/Facebook does. Nor do the ads that are sponsored inside videos (see LTT). I don't mind the ads that DDG does (which just uses key words in your search).

I don't like this dichotomy of ads vs no ads, I'm not sure that's really the right framework. I turn off ads everywhere I go because I can't trust ads. But I don't bother skipping through ads on my podcasts or in videos. So it isn't the ad part that's the problem.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#417

Post by ma2rten »

UncleMeat wrote: post #381
smsm42 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why it has to be a single ethical problem? The industry is quite capable of having multiple ethical problems in parallel.

Because everybody is complaining to everybody else that they aren't discussing the real ethical problem. This is being pointed at OP as well as commenters. It makes conversations difficult to have because as soon as people start talking about one thing, somebody jumps in and says "but you aren't talking about the real problem".

I have also noticed this in other HN discussions. Everyone seems to assume everyone else agrees with their view on the topic and there is never any open discussion about it. Usually people just talk past each other and it's never pointed out.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#418

Post by BCM43 »

joshuamorton wrote: post #331
falcolas wrote: post #136

Unpopular opinion: Ads by themselves are unethical. Whether targeted, contextual, or just randomly applied. Ads are psychological warfare against a populace using their very nature against them. All in an effort to get them to change their behavior in a way that's going to be detrimental to them. Either they stop looking for alternatives, or they make purchases they don't need to (see: toothpaste consumption rates).…

How do you draw the difference between an ad and not an ad? Is a doctor telling you to brush 2x a day an ad for toothpaste? What about their suggestion that you floss more? Those are aligned with your well being, but will increase your consumption. > change their behavior in a way that's going to be detrimental to them. This seems obviously wrong. The implication here is that anything advertised must be bad for the t…

> How do you draw the difference between an ad and not an ad?

If it's paid promotion, it's an ad. If the doctor's doing this only because they think it's in my best interest, it's not. The FTC already has some pretty clear guidelines on this because ads are required to be clearly marked as such in many cases.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#419

Post by ThaDood »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #412
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…

A Google subscription would likely need to cost over $20/m - considering how many people wouldn't pay even one dollar for paid search. Google had $186Bn in revenue last year and ~1.8Bn monthly active users. The revenue comes almost entirely from search - with 1.2Tn searches per year - that's $0.15 per search - hardly anyone would pay that - and to get the same amount of revenue and profit with less users - they'd hav…

If Google had a paid, ad-free option for more then just YouTube and some drive space I would be happy to pay it. I don't know if I would shell out for paid Google searches but I would at-least like to see an alternative option.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#420

Post by greggman3 »

chrismorgan wrote: post #213
celticninja wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that advertising in general, pre-internet, was perhaps a pain. It was unsightly to have stuff plastered all over buses, trains, any available space someone was trying to show something in your face, to get their brands name in your eyeline. Now they are still doing that, but they have compounded the awfulness, because now they track where you are visiting and push more of those ads in your eyeline. Switched d…

I’m only 29, but the impression I have received from my youth, from parental and grandparental anecdotes, and from photographic records is that offline advertising in at least Melbourne, Australia is worse than it was, with a key tipping period being somewhere around 15 years ago. As the most significant example, public transport vehicles and locations had no-to-minimal advertising 20 years ago; now they have extensi…

It's funny but i actually like the ads on the trains in Japan and when I was visiting other countries who's transit systems had no ads I thought it was boring.

Some of the ads are hilarious. Some are for the services that are not common in the USA. Nintendo has some where they add in a trivia Q&A, the format being, Question->Ad->Answer and I usually find them interesting and I'm often happy to learn about whatever new Nintendo game they are showing off. Often there are ads for theater plays, concerts, museum events that I only find out about because I saw them on the train.

I also like some of the campaigns where they decorate an entire station or the entire train, the entire car.

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