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The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs (2012)

andrewchen.com

21–30 of 63 posts

Re: The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs (2012)

#21

I sometimes think, that marketing is one of the worst thing that happened to us. It is constantly destroying all things that worked really well for us. There were times when checking my mailbox (I mean physical one) was either important - taxes, administration, bills or fun - postcards from family and friends. Now it’s 99% spam. It’s not worth checking. Email - the same. Mostly spam and shitty newsletters that will '…

I've had the same email address for over 15 years and each day I get maybe one spam email at best.

I agree that nearly everything has become a marketing channel but it is possible to avoid most of it.

Re: The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs (2012)

#22
post #13

I sometimes think, that marketing is one of the worst thing that happened to us. It is constantly destroying all things that worked really well for us. There were times when checking my mailbox (I mean physical one) was either important - taxes, administration, bills or fun - postcards from family and friends. Now it’s 99% spam. It’s not worth checking. Email - the same. Mostly spam and shitty newsletters that will '…

Click on random shit to cost the advertisers money lowering their roi and ruin the analytics at the same time The profile on you in various advertising scumbags databases will eventually be so inaccurate it will be worth the cost to store in a rust platter Over indulge the scummy advertisers. Cost them as much money as possible for worthless clicks. They crossed so many lines over the last couple of decades people sh…

By clicking random ads you may be actually encouraging publishers to keep deploying them?

Re: The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs (2012)

#23
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately if they don't know anything about you - then they will not be able to deliver anything informative.

Uhh, I think they meant "informative about the product for sale", not "informative about the aspirations being targeted"

My point was that to informative about a product you need to know the person you are advertising to. First of all because you need to choose the product that he might be interested about.

Re: The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs (2012)

#24
The main takeaway:

The 10X solution to solving the Law of Shitty Clickthroughs, even momentarily, is to discover the next untapped marketing channel. In addition to doubling down on traditional forms of online advertising like banners, search, and email, it’s important to work hard to get to the next marketing channel while it’s uncontested.

Sometimes I get asked “have you ever seen someone do XYZ to acquire customers?” Turns out, the highest vote of confidence I can give is, “No I haven’t, and that’s good – that means there’s a higher chance of it working. You should try it.”

Re: The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs (2012)

#25

I sometimes think, that marketing is one of the worst thing that happened to us. It is constantly destroying all things that worked really well for us. There were times when checking my mailbox (I mean physical one) was either important - taxes, administration, bills or fun - postcards from family and friends. Now it’s 99% spam. It’s not worth checking. Email - the same. Mostly spam and shitty newsletters that will '…

This seems to be a pervasive attitude here.

Pessimistic, cynical, backwards-looking to a golden age that never existed, anti-marketing and sales, etc.

If this is such a huge problem, and you seem to have a lot of passion for it, why not try to create tools to solve it for people?

And if you think business is evil, it doesn’t even have to be a product or service! You could simply create a political organization to try to lobby government to right these wrongs you see in the world.

Your comment is the most upvoted one on this thread so a lot of people must feel the same way.

There’s only one problem.

People are irrationally resistant to change and new things. Even changes that might make their lives better.

To affect this change, you’ll need to get a lot of people’s attention and buy-in via this process…

…called marketing.

Awww crap. This means becoming the thing you hate.

Maybe this is just how the world has always worked and will always work?

And maybe it’s not so bad?

Re: The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs (2012)

#26
Can this be tagged with 2012?

Otherwise people might think Andrew Chen is advocating for mobile notifications and Open Graph in 2021...

Here is the 2012 discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3804055

The dated URL is: http://andrewchen.co/2012/04/05/the-law-of-shitty-clickthrou...

Re: The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs (2012)

#27

I sometimes think, that marketing is one of the worst thing that happened to us. It is constantly destroying all things that worked really well for us. There were times when checking my mailbox (I mean physical one) was either important - taxes, administration, bills or fun - postcards from family and friends. Now it’s 99% spam. It’s not worth checking. Email - the same. Mostly spam and shitty newsletters that will '…

I completely agree with you, but this is a straight up ancient problem, and if you don't believe me, you can ask Scaurus, maker of the best gaurum in Pompeii. The "get crowd's attention and monetize it" strategy has been around since the invention of begging. It's a fundamental strategy in any large group of people. The bigger the crowd, the better it is as a strategy. Sure, social psychologists and marketers are out…

The first killer app of AR glasses will be blanking out adverts. I imagine putting on a pair and then all the ads just show my next calendar event or task list, or pictures of my kids.

Cuts out billboards, ads on the screen you're looking at, Nike swooshes on people's shoes.

Re: The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs (2012)

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree with you, but this is a straight up ancient problem, and if you don't believe me, you can ask Scaurus, maker of the best gaurum in Pompeii. The "get crowd's attention and monetize it" strategy has been around since the invention of begging. It's a fundamental strategy in any large group of people. The bigger the crowd, the better it is as a strategy. Sure, social psychologists and marketers are out…

The first killer app of AR glasses will be blanking out adverts. I imagine putting on a pair and then all the ads just show my next calendar event or task list, or pictures of my kids. Cuts out billboards, ads on the screen you're looking at, Nike swooshes on people's shoes.

Do you really believe that ?

The first killer app of AR glasses will be ads in places where we couldn't have ads before. Your neighbor's lawn ? Ad space. The sky ? Ad space. Whirlpool in a toilet ? Ad space.

Re: The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs (2012)

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first killer app of AR glasses will be blanking out adverts. I imagine putting on a pair and then all the ads just show my next calendar event or task list, or pictures of my kids. Cuts out billboards, ads on the screen you're looking at, Nike swooshes on people's shoes.

Do you really believe that ? The first killer app of AR glasses will be ads in places where we couldn't have ads before. Your neighbor's lawn ? Ad space. The sky ? Ad space. Whirlpool in a toilet ? Ad space.

Exactly.

Re: The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs (2012)

#30
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As well as endless newsletter signups in a century where nobody checks their email.

Oh yeah forgot who ruined email, if that wasn't bad enough I can't even pickup the phone anymore because I get multiple scam calls per day.

I guess this varies greatly between countries. I used to get these, but as the GDPR thing came they were less frequent. For the most persistent ones it was enough to say you do not give consent and request to be deleted from their database and never contacted again otherwise you file a complaint with the personal information protection office.

I suspect there are only few companies that manage the contact lists and they are now careful not to overstep the law.

On the other hand, scam calls from abroad started to appear (sir-your-computer-has-a-virus type).

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