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Ads on paulgraham.com -- Check the bottom of any PG essay

adpinion.com

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Re: Ads on paulgraham.com -- Check the bottom of any PG essay

#11

Post by Tichy »

Hm, interesting, but slightly weird concept. If the users are willing to vote actively for their favorite ads, why not let them do it on your homepage to begin with?

On the other hand, why voting, isn't click/no click sufficient information to judge the effectiveness of ads (seems to work for Google Adwords)?

Re: Ads on paulgraham.com -- Check the bottom of any PG essay

#12

Post by falsestprophet »

pg wrote: post #3
eposts wrote: post #2

Its plastered all over paulgraham.com, not just the essays. I personally like the ad free version of paulgraham.com :). I wonder if adpinion is another YC startup.

Yep. Why else would I do it?

To make tens upon tens of dollars!

Re: Ads on paulgraham.com -- Check the bottom of any PG essay

#13

Post by lukexi »

ph0rque wrote: post #6
zach wrote: post #5

I got a chuckle that you had to link to Adpinion, because practically every page on paulgraham.com has already been submitted.

So what kind of information can the adpinion guys extract if someone downvotes every single ad?

Hi ph0rque, the theory is that even the most ardent of ad-downvoters would eventually like an ad enough to not down it (or, that they would get bored of compulsive negativity, and start being more selective). That one ad would be an extremely valuable piece of information. -Luke

Re: Ads on paulgraham.com -- Check the bottom of any PG essay

#15

Post by Leon »

Oh snap! I went to some random PG essay to see which ad agency PG would put up and was immediately disappointed to see an ad for Mortgages, which was entirely off-base for the page, but then an up/down mod appeared! What?! That was awesome! Down clicking made a 'Sorry' box appear and the ad was gone! Huzzah!

But still, what will happen when an advertisement that a group pays for is consistently down-modded into oblivion, essentially nullifying any chance for it to appear? How will the YC startup handle the irate company? I know an answer would be that they should change their advertisements, but still, some companies may get angry at the YC startup that the money they payed for advertisement didn't do any good. How will they handle that situation? I'm guessing the advertisements are charged on a per-click bases, but is there a base charge, or tiered pricing for size of initial random viewing of web-pages registered with the company?

If the YC startup can't fulfill a promise of at least some level of ad-viewer-ship, then why should a company have their ads go through them?

Re: Ads on paulgraham.com -- Check the bottom of any PG essay

#16

Post by rokhayakebe »

I wonder when people are going to get it. We have been talking about "IN-vertising" for ever but NO, NO, NO. We still want to guess what the user wants. No software can tell what a user wants better than the user him/herself. I believe we should spend more time and resources providing users with services that let the user initially decide the ads they want. For me send anything that rhymes with coffee, mobility, startups and thick women. Block the other ads. If I feel like buying a car in the next few weeks, then let me pull the firefox or IE plugin and tell it to serve me a few VW Golf ads and listings. Would it be hard to build such a plugin?

Re: Ads on paulgraham.com -- Check the bottom of any PG essay

#17

Post by byrneseyeview »

Leon wrote: post #15

Oh snap! I went to some random PG essay to see which ad agency PG would put up and was immediately disappointed to see an ad for Mortgages, which was entirely off-base for the page, but then an up/down mod appeared! What?! That was awesome! Down clicking made a 'Sorry' box appear and the ad was gone! Huzzah! But still, what will happen when an advertisement that a group pays for is consistently down-modded into obliv…

So, what you're saying is "Who would want to be rewarded based on performance, given that some people won't perform well?" I guess I might be irate if I said "Let my customers tell me how good my ads are," and the answer was "They suck," but wouldn't I be better off knowing, or at least having the option to know?

Re: Ads on paulgraham.com -- Check the bottom of any PG essay

#19

Post by Leon »

byrneseyeview wrote: post #17
Leon wrote: post #15

Oh snap! I went to some random PG essay to see which ad agency PG would put up and was immediately disappointed to see an ad for Mortgages, which was entirely off-base for the page, but then an up/down mod appeared! What?! That was awesome! Down clicking made a 'Sorry' box appear and the ad was gone! Huzzah! But still, what will happen when an advertisement that a group pays for is consistently down-modded into obliv…

So, what you're saying is "Who would want to be rewarded based on performance, given that some people won't perform well?" I guess I might be irate if I said "Let my customers tell me how good my ads are," and the answer was "They suck," but wouldn't I be better off knowing, or at least having the option to know?

Yes, a reasonable person would be glad to have such feedback, but I was more curious of the Marketing Management reaction who would look at their ad click-through's and notice that they aren't that high for a service they just paid money for, or that they're ads aren't even being viewed anywhere at all.

I was just asking how an online advertising service, especially a small startup, handle such things.

Re: Ads on paulgraham.com -- Check the bottom of any PG essay

#20

Post by staunch »

It's an exciting idea because it has that magic "Why didn't anyone do this before" feel to it. That's always a good sign. Good luck. I haven't had any coffee yet but I totally missed the voting thumbs on the left, and I was looking for them. Not sure if that's good or bad though.
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