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Why I Work on Ads

jefftk.com

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Re: Why I Work on Ads

#861

Post by nearbuy »

munk-a wrote: post #860
nearbuy wrote: post #856

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you need to justify your work by calling out the charity you're doing with the earnings then I think you, internally, have identified that what you're doing is causing harm to society. You're misunderstanding the author's intent here. He's saying he works so that he can donate to charities. That part of his answer would remain no matter what type of work he did. Charity is important to him. He was giving a large…

But, specifically, he mentioned that when asked why he works in that field. There are lots of different industries and different roles within those industries - my understanding is that marketers don't make particularly outsized salaries and as such it doesn't really logically click for me that you'd choose to work as a marketer to maximize the amount you could give to charity. I could say that I specifically play bo…

He's not a marketer. He's a software engineer. At Google. They do make outsized salaries.

He's not donating to charity out of guilt from working on ads. We know this because he was giving large amounts to charity well before he started work on ads. His behaviour hasn't changed.

I understand you're interpreting it as, "Really, I'm just doing this (distasteful) job to make money." That isn't how the author meant it. It's more like, "Ultimately, the reason I work at any job is to make money. But here's why I think this job in particular makes the world better."

I'm curious though. If you didn't think he was working for the money, and you also think he feels that ads are bad, then why do you think he chose that job?

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#862

Post by kirso »

katzgrau wrote: post #655
mediaman wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the interesting things about advertising is that nobody really knows if it works, and there's a growing body of evidence that it largely doesn't work. We are sold on the idea that they work, because someone clicks this ad, we track them, they buy the product, and we attribute the sale to that ad. But we don't know whether the customer would have bought anyway. And some research suggests that, for the most part…

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…

For user acquisition you are completely right, however for the incrementality of purchases and sales, this is highly questionable and needs to be measured on case by case basis.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#863

Post by robbrown451 »

andrepd wrote: post #817
robbrown451 wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you could list ones you think could work...? I've heard several proposed, none of them make a lot of sense to me. Patreon? Government grants? Or what?

Sure! One idea I like is this: you pay a small, fixed subscription on top of your internet bill. This amount is then given proportionally to the websites/services you visit. This is nice for several reasons: even a small amount (~3-5$) gives a similar or higher revenue for content creators than ads do (a very rough back-of-the-envelope estimate based on youtube CPM). Plus, there's no problem with the friction of payi…

Proportionally? How does that work? Is it based on time of usage? So sites will now have an incentive to keep you on the site as long as possible? Not sure I like that.

Also, do people who use the internet for half an hour a week pay the same as those that spend all day online? Not sure I like that either.

I do like the general idea, I suppose, but trying to make it reward people who actually add value, proportional to that value, is not an easy problem.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#864

Post by nikitaga »

underlines wrote: post #814
nikitaga wrote: post #813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just googled that to see if the ads are helpful. They weren't. Not surprising, because Google ads are ranked by profitability, not helpfulness, and those metrics don't correlate as much as Google would like you to think. The ads just took my attention away from organic results, which are the ones that are supposed to be ranked by helpfulness. Those sneaker ads probably aren't destroying our democracy[1], they're just…

No, Google Ads are not ranked for highest bidder. There's Quality Score that affects the decision a lot. If I have a website about running shoes and want to bid on the keyword "second hand cars" two things happen: first my bid gets astronomically high, because it's not matching the user's intent. secondly from all those people who click and leave google search but come back after a few seconds, google figures out tha…

I know. I didn't say the ads were ranked for highest bidder. I said they were ranked to maximize profitability. If the user does not click an ad, it's not profitable to Google. If the user comes back to the search page after visiting the ad, the ad is not profitable to the advertiser.

But if the user buys from the ad, that doesn't say anything about whether the ad was useful (or counter-productive) to the user, it only means that this transaction was profitable to Google and the advertiser.

Ads not matching the search query are not the issue. They are neither profitable nor helpful, so you can't use that criterion to distinguish the two goals.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#865

Post by cutemonster »

Grustaf wrote: post #855
cutemonster wrote: post #851

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice idea :-) hmm at the same time, from the perspective of the readers, how can they know that Pydry (GP) didn't behind the scenes contact 20 brands, and are now promoting those who paid the most?

Sure, they won't know that, but I don't actually think honesty is an important selling point in most sectors. If the review seems coherent and plausible, that's enough for most people. So in a way, honesty is mostly for his own benefit. Besides, how could he prove his honesty either way? I guess he could arrange commission with all companies, hope that his favourite brand isn't also the one paying the most, and then…

> If the review seems coherent and plausible, that's enough for most people

I think so too

> hope that his favourite brand isn't also the one paying the most, and then disclose all the commissions.

I'm thinking that if the site visitors have a way to see that usually the site promotes other brands than the highest paying, then that'd be good enough. At the same time, why would they trust the disclosure info :-)

Another thought: if his/her favorite brand didn't pay enough, s/he could just disclose the commissions, but not write any review. (To encourage that brand to pay more)

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#866

Post by pydry »

Grustaf wrote: post #841
pydry wrote: post #812

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried starting a website a while back that would give reliable, unbiased information on a certain class of goods and services. I looked at my competitors and saw that most of them were obviously shilling for the company that was paying them the most, which was never the best. I figured by being the most honest I could be the most trusted and win out. The trouble is, the best companies would rely upon word of mouth.…

Figure out which brand you prefer, contact them and negotiate a commission. If you're open to your readers about it, it should be fine.

Cutting out the commission was partly how the better companies tried to provide a good service at a reasonable price. Some even had FAQs that stated that they wouldn't pay commission. A couple paid pretty meager commissions.

The competing sites would tend to either pretend that these companies don't exist, or if that wasn't possible coz the brand was strong would subtly try to indicate that they weren't all that hot compared to [site that pays a LOT for new customers].

I don't mean to suggest that the challenge was insurmountable, but I couldn't figure out a way to make honesty pay, particularly given the high cost of acquiring traffic.

Moreover, if you acquired some sort of trust (which many parties did) or a high spot in google through an aged domain or something, the incentive to exploit it for profit would inevitably take over.

It was clearly something users cared about coz they complained about it, but there was something akin to a tragedy of the commons going on.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#867

Post by Grustaf »

pydry wrote: post #866
Grustaf wrote: post #841

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Figure out which brand you prefer, contact them and negotiate a commission. If you're open to your readers about it, it should be fine.

Cutting out the commission was partly how the better companies tried to provide a good service at a reasonable price. Some even had FAQs that stated that they wouldn't pay commission. A couple paid pretty meager commissions. The competing sites would tend to either pretend that these companies don't exist, or if that wasn't possible coz the brand was strong would subtly try to indicate that they weren't all that hot…

Aha ok. Without knowing the product it’s hard to advise, perhaps you can start a youtube channel around it, become the go to expert in the field? Sell consulting? Sell follow on products or services?

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#868

Post by pydry »

Grustaf wrote: post #867
pydry wrote: post #866

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cutting out the commission was partly how the better companies tried to provide a good service at a reasonable price. Some even had FAQs that stated that they wouldn't pay commission. A couple paid pretty meager commissions. The competing sites would tend to either pretend that these companies don't exist, or if that wasn't possible coz the brand was strong would subtly try to indicate that they weren't all that hot…

Aha ok. Without knowing the product it’s hard to advise, perhaps you can start a youtube channel around it, become the go to expert in the field? Sell consulting? Sell follow on products or services?

Yeah, I tried content creation but I quickly realized that it was more expensive than advertising, it's fiercely competitive, there are people out there way better at than me, there's major incumbency advantage that I didn't have and it pays off slower. It fundamentally didn't change the economics of what I was trying to do at all. The people taking the highest commissions had a lot more to blow on content creation than I did, with my refusal to play the same tricks.

These market dynamics are fairly common across many industries. I don't think the one I chose was particularly special.

Consulting or something might have been possible but at that point it's basically giving up and joining an entirely different industry - which is what I ultimately did.

I really really tried to make honesty pay but I couldn't.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#869

Post by katzgrau »

ploxiln wrote: post #765
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…

> Digital marketing performance is increasingly measurable Yes, I believe this is true. But also, I've heard that payouts per impression are going down precipitously. Desperate news sites are chock full of heavy ads because each impression pays less and less. Popular Youtube channels increasingly run their own integrated promotional content instead of depending on youtube ad revenue which keeps falling, even as viewe…

Ad network CPMs are seasonal, but I agree that it's a race to the bottom there. Ad networks (including Google's) are designed to maximize profit for ad-tech, not the publisher. The publisher/creator is always the last on line to get paid.

Direct sold digital advertising (OG, cutting ad networks out) is a different story.

Imagine, for example, that HN said they would auction off a single ad slot beneath the navbar to the highest bidder for the year.

How much do you think that would command? Do you think there could be sincere branding value (and actual performance) for the advertiser? I think it could be worth north of 1MM just to promote open jobs at a company.

If it was a clean, tasteful ad, and it was simply to support the cost of running HN, I'm pretty sure most of the audience would put up with it.

The common perception of digital advertising is network advertising. But the type of advertising that is the least annoying and most beneficial to both the advertiser and publisher is direct sold.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#870

Post by katzgrau »

meowface wrote: post #760
katzgrau wrote: post #750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 k…

>There are hucksters in every industry, and if you ask me, crypto has some next-level hucksterism. It's certainly hard to compare entire industries apples-to-apples. The worst parts of the cryptocurrency industry are definitely worse than the worst parts of the advertising industry. However, I personally feel like in an "average", "net", or "expected value" sense, advertising may be worse. But maybe it isn't; either…

> which in my book just makes it delusional rather than dissonant or contradictory.

Not to get off track, but ultimately it's a subjective position. I could easily take the view that anyone working for Facebook is actively helping erode the privacy of internet users. Or, that anyone working for Google is furthering its anticompetitive agenda and stifling innovation on the open web.

Without my platform, there are some towns and cities across the US that wouldn't have a local news outlet or reporter to follow local government and uncover corruption. I have case studies on my website where the publishers say it themselves.

From someone else's point of view I could be deluded, but from my standpoint, I'm doing something very positive. I don't think someone has to actively seek out the most cynical perspective on their line of work.

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