Why I Work on Ads • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#571

Post by hermesfeet » Thu, May 06, 2021, 9:27 PM UTC

Thanks for laying out your logic.

I work in the ads business at FB. I do so because I personally like ads and my biggest gripe is that ads are not relevant and personalized enough. I want better ads.

Ultimately ads support a robust ecosystem of free software and content that keeps many creators going. Consumers can also choose to buy their software and content, or donate, but most don’t. Despite their whining, most people want free stuff, and ads are almost free (a small attention cost).

I think people comparing ads to guns, plagues, and locusts need to check their own values. Ads support free stuff for the poor and middle classes. Rich coastal elites can tell themselves they will pay for everything, and that’s great (most don’t). Most consumers cannot afford to pay for software or news subscriptions. Ad models fill out the spectrum of options.

Is the current ads ecosystem perfect? Clearly not. There’s a lot we need to do to educate users, get consent, and increase control and transparency. On the flip side, this needs to be simple and easy: consent needs to be an understandable and low friction process to avoid consent fatigue. They are also plenty of privacy enhancing technologies like differential privacy and local caching to deal with data sharing issues.

If you hate ads, lean into that. Don’t work for adtech, block all your ads, pay for everything. I support you and respect that! I just think it’s mean and shortsighted to think that everyone else is like you and to aggressively attack adtech engineers, platforms, businesses, and the billions of consumers who aren’t as rich as you and will happily watch ads to get free stuff. The internet is great because a lot of high quality stuff like software, news, videos, etc is free for anyone, anywhere. Ads make that possible and I’m proud of it.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#572

Post by TchoBeer » Thu, May 06, 2021, 9:29 PM UTC

tailrecursion wrote: post #472

The problem I see is that the advertising business enables free services such as Google and Youtube, Facebook, Twitter to dominate. It's even more difficult for a potential competitor to gain users when competing against a free service. Another is the spying and tracking, which are apparently vital for these big companies to grow.

Yeah I'd imagine it's pretty hard to compete for high quality free services which are used by billions of people. Is this supposed to be a bad thing?

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#573

Post by jonny_eh » Thu, May 06, 2021, 9:30 PM UTC

hermesfeet wrote: post #571

Thanks for laying out your logic. I work in the ads business at FB. I do so because I personally like ads and my biggest gripe is that ads are not relevant and personalized enough. I want better ads. Ultimately ads support a robust ecosystem of free software and content that keeps many creators going. Consumers can also choose to buy their software and content, or donate, but most don’t. Despite their whining, most p…

> Ads support free stuff for the poor and middle classes. Rich coastal elites can tell themselves they will pay for everything, and that’s great (most don’t).

Why doesn't FB offer a "premium" tier for people to buy their way out of ads?

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#574

Post by filoleg » Thu, May 06, 2021, 9:30 PM UTC

fastball wrote: post #504

kingsuper20 wrote: post #61

The online ad business generally mystifies me. While an awful lot of the internet, especially the surveillance advertising part, looks to be the greatest misallocation of engineering (and other) talent in the history of the world, ya gotta ask about the efficacy. The only reasonably accurate targeting I've ever run into is the occasional ad for something I just browsed on Amazon. I've never clicked on an internet ad.…

Generally yes but Instagram ads are somehow amazingly well-targeted towards me. Literally every ad I say to myself "wow, that is actually something I would consider buying" and in certain instances, I have. Outside of Instagram it is exceedingly rare that I would purchase something based on an ad.

From what I keep reading on HN, Facebook ad network ads (which includes Instagram) are by far the best and most precise in terms of targeting, it doesn't even get close.

And from my anecdotal experiences, I have to agree with both you and what I see on HN in that regard. Not only they get the advertisers right up my alley, they even get the exact products I want to click on.

For a specific example: I don't get easily baited by random no-name "hip" clothing startups (that are mostly just alibaba dropship sort of places), so instagram keeps giving me ads for Adidas products as well. And the thing is, not only does it get correctly that I am likely to be interested in Adidas products, the specific products from Adidas that get suggested to me in those ads are the exact kind of products from Adidas that I would be interested in. Which is very impressive and surprising, given how wide the range of Adidas products is, and how most of their general stuff isn't super appealing to me. It is hard to describe to the point where I am struggling myself to define what exactly I am looking for if I am navigating Adidas website. But somehow Instagram ads get it right on target most of the time.

The only time when those ads let me down big time was when I saw an Adidas tracksuit advertised with the design I just liked a ton. Without looking at the details, I ordered it, only to realize a bit later that it was in "kids" section of their website, and I have no kids (and neither do I fall under the typical "people who might have kids" demographic by any metric; e.g., I don't search for any items even tangentially related to children, not a part of any FB groups that are heavily populated by parents or children, etc.). But damn, I would be lying if I said that Instagram didn't get the exact idea of what I wanted perfectly correct, sizing issues aside lol.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#575

Post by andrepd » Thu, May 06, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

annoyingnoob wrote: post #482

The collection, cataloging, and storage of personal data is the issue. We can have effective ads without constantly looking over everyone's shoulder and documenting what they do. But obviously, the author sees this data collection as beneficial, I respectfully disagree. I left advertising because I didn't like what I could see on the backend.

This ubiquitous and ever-growing surveillance is a catastrophe. But to be honest I'm against ads altogether.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#576

Post by Riseed » Thu, May 06, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

code4you wrote: post #352

kingsuper20 wrote: post #61

The online ad business generally mystifies me. While an awful lot of the internet, especially the surveillance advertising part, looks to be the greatest misallocation of engineering (and other) talent in the history of the world, ya gotta ask about the efficacy. The only reasonably accurate targeting I've ever run into is the occasional ad for something I just browsed on Amazon. I've never clicked on an internet ad.…

I totally agree about the YouTube advertising. YouTube literally has hundreds of hours of my video history to work with, yet the vast majority of the ads I see are completely unrelated to my interests. What's the point of all the tracking if they can't even show me relevant ads on YouTube of all places? Podcast ads tend to be much more relevant, and I can even recall purchases I've made due to them. AFAIK my podcast…

> AFAIK my podcast player isn't tracking me or using targeted ads.

Some podcasts use "dynamic ad insertion", where the ads are inserted when you download the podcast rather than when the podcast file is created and uploaded. [0] Discovered my podcasts were tracking me when I traveled and then heard ads for an out-of-state regional chain after I returned home, clearly because I had downloaded the episodes while traveling. Overcast added privacy & tracking info, to show whether each podcast uses dynamic ad insertion or (possibly) tracks IP etc. [1].

[0] https://themarkup.org/ask-the-markup/2020/10/08/podcast-priv... [1] https://9to5mac.com/2020/09/03/podcast-privacy-alerts/

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#577

Post by stevenhuang » Thu, May 06, 2021, 9:36 PM UTC

gundmc wrote: post #546

ajkjk wrote: post #543

Like others I don't buy this argument. They wrote that the two choices are > Paywalls. You pay with your money. > Ads. You pay with your attention. But that's not quite right. Ads have two options themselves: > Ads. You pay with your money, because the ads get you to buy stuff. > Ads. You pay with your attention, wasted on stuff you'll never buy. Two negatives. Either you buy stuff you otherwise wouldn't (and therefo…

> buying things in general is bad -- bad for you, bad for the human race, and bad for the environment Do you mean to qualify this in any way? This is quite the radical statement that I'm not sure how you can reconcile with human existence any time the last X thousand years.

Not so radical. See the minimalist movement and related themes.

Specifically, there's the prevalence & overabundance of low-quality manufactured products made possible through economies of scale and mispriced environmental externalities.

In fact I think it's a good thing for one to question once in a while if they really need to buy that new thing.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#578

Post by nitwit005 » Thu, May 06, 2021, 9:39 PM UTC

hermesfeet wrote: post #571

Thanks for laying out your logic. I work in the ads business at FB. I do so because I personally like ads and my biggest gripe is that ads are not relevant and personalized enough. I want better ads. Ultimately ads support a robust ecosystem of free software and content that keeps many creators going. Consumers can also choose to buy their software and content, or donate, but most don’t. Despite their whining, most p…

I started hearing the idea that people wanted more personalized ads when I joined an ad tech company, and I have only heard it since from people working in the space. It doesn't seem to be an idea that normal people voice.

I have heard the opposite, which is people getting creeped out due to things like getting ads for infant products before they've told their family they're pregnant (presumably inference from browsing).

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#579

Post by andrepd » Thu, May 06, 2021, 9:40 PM UTC

dnissley wrote: post #307

omginternets wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now take us through the individual and collective consequences of mass data collection. You seem to be deliberately focusing on the beneficial parts of advertising, at the exclusion of the harmful bits. If you want to maintain your credibility -- let alone give the impression of someone striving to live ethically -- you'll need to give that second part its due attention. Addendum: If I were offered a generous salary…

Let's talk about the individual and collective consequences of mass data collection. Are you saying you know something about those? Do tell! Maybe I'm just terribly dense, but I seriously can't think of any reasonable objection to what google does. The best I personally can come up with is that most people don't understand what google is doing and if they did know some of them might object. When I google "the individ…

Are you being sarcastic? You cannot see consequences in the fact of a gigantic tech company having access to: searches, emails, attachments, photos, videos, location, messages, calls, apps installed and their usage, sleep schedules, driving styles, medical records, and about 1001 things I forgot to mention?

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#580

Post by klelatti » Thu, May 06, 2021, 9:40 PM UTC

hermesfeet wrote: post #571

Thanks for laying out your logic. I work in the ads business at FB. I do so because I personally like ads and my biggest gripe is that ads are not relevant and personalized enough. I want better ads. Ultimately ads support a robust ecosystem of free software and content that keeps many creators going. Consumers can also choose to buy their software and content, or donate, but most don’t. Despite their whining, most p…

> Despite their whining, most people want free stuff, and ads are almost free (a small attention cost).

> Most consumers cannot afford to pay for software or news subscriptions.

> Don’t work for adtech, block all your ads, pay for everything.

All this is false.

Growth hacking has created products that are addictive and which people don't really need. These are then justified by saying that consumers can't afford to pay for them (fact is that they wouldn't do because deep down they know they're not worth much). And in the meantime society suffers the consequences whilst FB etc profits hugely.