Why I Work on Ads • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#771

Post by hisnameismanuel » Fri, May 07, 2021, 3:17 AM UTC

meowface wrote: post #734

dougmwne wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you buy your clothes at the thrift store or at the mall? If you buy them at the mall, how did you choose those stores? Did you buy those clothes to make sure you were meeting other people's expectations? Were those people's expectations shaped by advertising, marketing and branding? If you wear flour sacks, then my humble apologies and sincere congratulations.

It's kind of close to the equivalent of flour sacks for me; I don't shop in either thrift stores or malls or think about expectations, and I buy new clothes very rarely. When I do, I order the same cheap generic solid-color clothes off of Amazon, and sometimes one or two other low-cost generic brands (based simply on what's cheapest when I sort by price, as long as the ratings aren't way below the rest). I admit I'm…

You would admit, then, that you're not the norm, and that your experience - while interesting, certainly - does not appear to extrapolate very well to others?

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#772

Post by shkkmo » Fri, May 07, 2021, 3:18 AM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #711

bscphil wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I partially disagree: fake (paid) "organic" mentions and fake reviews are the most effective form of marketing. And, obviously, they're much easier for a company to achieve than the real thing. How unsurprising is it that the most effective class of ad spend is the most scummy? The reason (fake) organic marketing is effective is exactly because it fools people into thinking that it isn't marketing. Take paid Amazon r…

I generally agree with your gist; however, I would point out that there are niche review sites run by enthusiasts (whether computer parts, cameras, tools, gadgets, clothing, and so on.) and there are the SEO types that are near-worthless. Enthusiast sites have a range of community-only and not ads, some have affiliate links and some have paid reviews and so on. So you have to know how the site operates and take that…

So you happen to have a list of these niche sites or a link to a site that reviews the review sites?

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#773

Post by hisnameismanuel » Fri, May 07, 2021, 3:20 AM UTC

propogandist wrote: post #718

bigyikes wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don’t believe audio surveillance exists at this scale, and I still haven’t seen any evidence that these events are anything but coincidence. It seems to me that Facebook is extremely good at targeting me with ads (via Instagram) for products I might be interested in. I’m also much more likely to talk about products I’m interested in. I’m also much more likely to notice the spooky scenarios where the ads match…

I had a hard time believing it myself and came to terms with it after reproducing it consistently over many months, despite using everything from pihole to on-device firewalls running as root. Unfortunately, this topic tends to be routinely brushed off as coincidence and I believe it's partially because the level of surveillance underway would cause panic and outrage, if it becomes widely known. Although I have have…

yet not even one whistleblower has stepped forward? Not one person has been able to detect something which would be so obviously detectable? Come on, man.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#774

Post by gundmc » Fri, May 07, 2021, 3:21 AM UTC

ajkjk wrote: post #617

gundmc wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 really. I think we should operate such that consumption is slightly negative to begin with. imo, buying something you need is good, but then you don't need an ad to tell you to do it. Buying something you want is good. Buying something you neither need nor want is bad. Allowing something to manipulate you to want more stuff seems bad compared to it not happening.

> Buying something you neither need nor want is bad. Allowing something to manipulate you to want more stuff seems bad compared to it not happening.

Okay, those are the qualifiers I was looking for. That makes sense. It sounded like you were taking a stance against all purchases and not just excesses.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#775

Post by lotsofpulp » Fri, May 07, 2021, 3:25 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #749

joshuamorton wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

>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.

Does Netflix license content on a per play basis? All the info over the years I’ve read, although not official, indicate they were paying the content owners a flat amount for a certain time period.

For example

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/04/business/media/netflix-fr...

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#776

Post by manigandham » Fri, May 07, 2021, 3:28 AM UTC

meowface wrote: post #715

manigandham wrote: post #686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We definitely know that it works. We generate petabytes everyday proving it does. That being said there’s plenty of waste due to politics, bureaucracy, bad tech and general mismanagement. It’s important to separate the concept from the implementation.

As a consumer, why does it very strongly feel like in my case, it never, ever works, then? And why does pretty much everyone else I've ever heard talk about this say the exact same thing? Are we being 5D-chess'd and it's working on all of us subliminally and subconsciously and we just think we're immune? Or is there some other huge population of people out there it's working on who actually somehow are real manifesta…

Because you only notice the bad ones.

It’s like CGI graphics in movies. If it looks good then it just looks good and you definitely notice when it looks bad. Your average TV show probably has half the stuff on the screen being CG in some way but millions of watchers never know.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#777

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 » Fri, May 07, 2021, 3:29 AM UTC

adriand wrote: post #647

The author writes that you can either pay with money or you can “pay with your attention”. What’s left unsaid is the cost of that attention. I believe that cost is very high and it isn’t just ads, it’s the design of countless products including social media sites, games and even the site you’re reading this on right now. It’s all designed to extract as much attention as possible, and the cost is people’s ability to c…

The thing is, Google's customers generally do not simply want attention, they want people to pay them for something.

Thus, there is a monetary cost if the advertiser succeeds. Google is just a middleman, taking a cut of those prospective sales.

The sad part of online ads is that the internet allows an advertiser, with Google's help, to potentially annoy hundreds of millions of people in order to make some small number of sales. The "solution" to this inefficiency is "targeting" and "stickiness", and that is where the whole business becomes far too intrusive and counterproductive.

In the earlier days of the internet people knew ads were not what they wanted to see on the network. I remember the first ad someone posted to Usenet. IIRC it was an immigration lawyer. Brin and Page originally said when they announced Google in 1998 that they wanted to offer an alternative to a black box web search engine that is funded by advertising.

The only thing that has changed since then is that new users are less critical, they have no idea what the internet is like without the advertising. Imagine if every household had to participate in an AC Nielson study just to watch TV. There are generations of users now that have no idea what those times were like, when people expected privacy and there were boundaries. They cannot fully appreciate what has been lost because they never experienced it to begin with. It is not too late to reclaim what is being stolen.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#778

Post by sunsipples » Fri, May 07, 2021, 3:30 AM UTC

hisnameismanuel wrote: post #769

kelnos wrote: post #755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's more data than ever proving that it can be extremely effective Can you provide some pointers to that data (as the parent did for the contrary position)? Forgive me, but it seems you work in advertising, so I'm not sure if you're the most unbiased person to assert something like this without evidence.

With most advertising mediums, you can only show correlation. But with many parts of digital, you can show certain pages of your website exclusively to those who have clicked on ads (ie. hide those pages from regular browsers). In this way you can directly measure the direct effects of the advertising spend. There are many businesses, including three that I own, that have grown as a sole consequence of social media a…

"I'm not going to share my advertising accounts with you; I'm just going to ask you to trust that when I get my laptop out and show my results to my 'marketing skeptical' friends, they stop being skeptical."

spoken like a true used car salesman

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#779

Post by chmod600 » Fri, May 07, 2021, 3:30 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #749

joshuamorton wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

"The sweet spot...is whatever amount of attention keeps them subscribed, but no more."

I used to believe that. Nope, they want all your attention all the time. If they lose it, another streaming service might gain some market share, and the stock price will lose billions.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#780

Post by beervirus » Fri, May 07, 2021, 3:35 AM UTC

fastball wrote: post #666

beervirus wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ad blockers and legislation.

I kinda mean a better alternative to funding all this stuff. As pointed out in the OP, ads are actually a progressive model while the oft-cited alternative ("just charge people for what they use") is fairly regressive. The is actually what I like about Brave's solution, which is: - no ads by default. - if you have money and want to pay for the content you consume, you can load money into the browser and have it autom…

Brave seems interesting, although I haven't tried it. Why does HN hate it?

> I kinda mean a better alternative to funding all this stuff.

I tend to think we'd be just fine without this "stuff." The internet still worked when the only advertising was banner ads that didn't run code on my machine. In a lot of ways, it worked better.