Why I Work on Ads • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#741

Post by swader999 » Fri, May 07, 2021, 2:21 AM UTC

marcinzm wrote: post #455

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've never clicked on an internet ad. The most successful ads looks very similar to the organic content and tend to have very similar targeting mechanisms. Search ads that look like search results. Product ads on amazon that look like product search results. Facebook ads that look like Facebook posts. In my experience all those ads are quiet close to content I'd like and I've clicked on quiet a few without realizing…

I'd argue further that the most successful are not at all distinguishable as adds. They masquerade as content but are paid placements or placed just for the sake of advertising.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#742

Post by chillacy » Fri, May 07, 2021, 2:23 AM UTC

nonameiguess wrote: post #689

joshuamorton wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing that content creators (whether they be small or large) need to be able to subsist off of their work. This is especially true if we want high quality content. So the dichotomy is only false if you assume people are willing to accept "stop consuming content" which, by and large, they aren't.

No, they don't. Creative jobs have always been boom or bust, following a power law where ten people earn a living directly off of it and everyone else waits tables by day and hopes to someday catch a break. That was fine for centuries. The world didn't collapse prior to the invention of widescale cross-site tracking of user behavior to create intelligent targeted ads, and I'm not sure it was worse for "content creato…

> Creative jobs have always been boom or bust ...

> That was fine for centuries...

I always assumed that this was an artifact of recording technology: if you can record a movie or music, then you can have a handful of actors and musicians service the entire world, but without that each city needs its local musicians and theater troupes. If that's correct then we've been in this state for maybe 1 century.

For writers though it's been centuries, since writing enabled distribution of content in many places.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#743

Post by analog31 » Fri, May 07, 2021, 2:23 AM UTC

pierrefermat1 wrote: post #740

analog31 wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

c. a portion of the industry is based on a delusion Given that some industries (or movements, ideologies, etc.) could credibly be based on delusions, what do you think is the upper limit for how big such an industry could get?

The ad industry is an easily verifiable one, just go ask any of your small business running friends to see if they have generated more profit than they've spent on ads.

My business has generated more profit than it has spent on ads. ;-)

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#744

Post by bnralt » Fri, May 07, 2021, 2:24 AM UTC

meowface wrote: post #709

sidlls wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the cost in attention--those ads are produced with the price of our privacy included in the cost.

I feel like there are other costs beyond attention and privacy, too. Costs of malware and fraud are also common, but for the sake of argument we can just focus on somewhat more "legitimate" / "non-malicious" ads. (Emphasis on the scare quotes.) There's the aesthetic cost. If I see an ad on or near a nicely designed or produced website or video, it immediately detracts from the visual appeal. There's the annoyance cos…

> For some, there's the cost of paying for a product or service that an ad misled them about. They may pay more than they should have or get something which is portrayed a certain way in an ad which doesn't hold up in reality.

This is a big one. Something being free with advertisements doesn't mean that we're not paying for it, just that the way we're paying for it is hidden. Companies don't pay Google money for altruistic reasons, they're paying because they can earn more.

If you think about it, we're actually likely to pay more when we pay through ads. Google wants X dollars. In a subscription model, we pay X. In an ad model, a company gives Google X, because they think they can make X + P (profits). So they get us to buy a product we don't need, and in order to recoup their loss we need to be paying the manufacturing cost M (we'll pretend other costs like transportation and retail markups are included in here as well), plus X, plus P. Otherwise the advertising isn't worth it. Instead of us paying X to Google to us their products, now we're paying X+P+M for their products in a very roundabout way, and then calling it free.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#745

Post by kelnos » Fri, May 07, 2021, 2:26 AM UTC

While I applaud the author for giving a chunk of his income to charity, to me it just feels like paying a penance for doing something bad.

I may be in the minority on this belief, but I think advertising -- any kind of advertising -- is inherently bad. To me, it's just psychological manipulation. I never want to see any ads, ever. If I could wear a pair of contact lenses that removed things like billboards from my vision, I would wear them in a heartbeat, even though billboards are far less harmful than internet-based ads.

I sometimes hear arguments that advertising isn't all bad because when someone actually is planning to make a particular kind of purchase, advertising can help them figure out which brand/model/etc. to buy. The problem with that is that the ads have no interest in satisfying anyone's particular needs in the best way. Someone could easily be swayed by a slick ad for a product that is not as good for their use as another product that had a less-engaging/less-manipulative ad.

The worst thing about internet advertising is of course the erosion of privacy. If ad networks were merely paying for people's eyeballs, that might not be too nefarious. But they're paying to track people and build intimate profiles about them, and that's not ok. I have very little faith that any of these initiatives that will supposedly make ad targeting privacy-preserving will actually work. All they do is make it appear that a company is doing something, so they can point to it when they get in trouble, claiming that they tried really hard to help preserve privacy, but it just didn't work out.

I'm just not interested in any of this crap. I know micropayments and pay-per-article and such are really hard to do, and really hard to get adopted, but that is the only model I will accept if people want me to pay in some way for web content. Making me pay for a $30/month subscription for the three or four articles I'll end up reading on your site per month is not something I'm interested in doing. And I will not pay through psychological manipulation and erosion of privacy.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#746

Post by joshuamorton » Fri, May 07, 2021, 2:26 AM UTC

futureshock wrote: post #716

jimmaswell wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My ability to concentrate, learn, or get shit done has only ever been hindered by an ad to the extent that it's annoying waiting for the ad to finish. I can't imagine most people don't just tune ads out most of the time. Still better than having to pay every website a subscription. It's nice having the option though, for example I personally find YouTube Premium worth the money.

There's a very important piece you're missing here and once you get it, it's hard to see the world in the same way. A product you pay for doesn't care how often you use it. The tennis racket sits there. It doesn't matter how much you use it, that's your choice. A product you pay for with your attention has a voracious appetite for your attention. The more you use it, the more valuable it is to the company that made i…

This is still ultimately true with things you subscribe to though. Netflix vies for your attention even though you pay directly with $$, because if another streaming service takes more of your attention, you'll pay for it (potentially instead).

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#747

Post by inopinatus » Fri, May 07, 2021, 2:29 AM UTC

wjamesg wrote: post #710

inopinatus wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The arrogance of appropriation is a pathology common to developers. For example: “we’re rolling out a new tool. It takes only fifteen minutes to learn!” when 100,000 people have to learn it. Developers working in advertising aren’t just exhibiting this disorder; they are consumed by it.

Can you elaborate

I can tell you this is an unpopular observation to put before developers, who are not often great at considering the human price of their choices, and advertising executives will continue to roundly & loudly defend their value proposition until there is no more toothpaste to sell, or we finally convince them to board the Golgafrincham B Ark. The combination of the two is a potent toxin that can turn an unassuming everyday programmer into a vassal of malignant narcissism.

Time is the most valuable commodity anyone possesses. Stealing it is diabolical.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#748

Post by chillacy » Fri, May 07, 2021, 2:33 AM UTC

edmundsauto wrote: post #626

andrepd wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What value does advertising produce? I mean it, if advertising magically ceased to exist tomorrow, would anything be worse? Advertising is in itself a manipulative activity, an attempt to pass a worse product as a better one, or to create a demand where there was none, or to persuade someone to do something they otherwise wouldn't.

I think advertising has been crucial to increasing the economic size of the world. It's a valid argument if you think our world is crap, and we should never have switched to bigger civilizations. But the economic growth, driven significantly by increasing the available market for products, has led lots of people out of poverty, spurred innovation, and generally enabled a lot more humans to be born than would have. Ad…

I think it's pretty much this, advertising is lubrication for an economy of consumption.

Word of mouth and aggregators (like yelp) can help people find solutions when they know of a problem, but ads inform/manipulate (depending on how you see it) people to know they have a problem in the first place.

Also if you've ever written ad copy it's all pretty structurally similar: hook, problem statement, solution, testimonials, etc.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#749

Post by kelnos » Fri, May 07, 2021, 2:33 AM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #746

futureshock wrote: post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a very important piece you're missing here and once you get it, it's hard to see the world in the same way. A product you pay for doesn't care how often you use it. The tennis racket sits there. It doesn't matter how much you use it, that's your choice. A product you pay for with your attention has a voracious appetite for your attention. The more you use it, the more valuable it is to the company that made i…

This is still ultimately true with things you subscribe to though. Netflix vies for your attention even though you pay directly with $$, because if another streaming service takes more of your attention, you'll pay for it (potentially instead).

With Netflix they have to strike a balance, though. Someone who watches Netflix 8 hours a day is going to cost them more in royalties than someone who watches 8 hours a week.

The sweet spot is likely a little different for everyone, and is whatever amount of attention keeps them subscribed, but no more.

Additionally, I have a customer-vendor relationship with Netflix. With a random ad-supported website or something like Facebook, I'm the product, not the customer. I would much much much rather be a customer than a product.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#750

Post by katzgrau » Fri, May 07, 2021, 2:34 AM UTC

meowface wrote: post #667

katzgrau wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Digital marketing performance is increasingly measurable and there's more data than ever proving that it can be extremely effective. You can certainly waste a lot of money doing it too. Getting the right message in front of the right user at the right time is a lot harder than people think it is. The above is where there's a lot of smoke and mirrors in ad tech. But for advertising as a whole, it's not a massive indus…

>Getting the right message in front of the right user at the right time is a lot harder than people think it is. Guess that's why we need those brightest minds of our generation on the problem, as the saying goes, right? That sentence gives me extreme Matthew McConaughey-in- Wolf of Wall Street vibes. After seeing you wrote that, I immediately assumed you very likely work in advertising. Sure enough... I have no clue…

There are hucksters in every industry, and if you ask me, crypto has some next-level hucksterism.

The core of advertising is just getting some message about your product or service to a relevant audience.

A lot of companies offer that service, some more effective than others.

But yes, I started an ad-tech company that supports indie news publishers. Before that, I was offered a great gig at Yahoo (when it was still kind of cool) where I got into it. I honestly didn't seek it out but I guess I liked it enough to stick with it.