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The Internet Made Me Sad Today

raganwald.posterous.com

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Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today

#81

Post by patio11 »

lkozma wrote: post #74
patio11 wrote: post #39

You're looking at remnant inventory. Inventory (advertiser speak for "a page view plus a slot available on that page which we could sell an ad against") are a lot like cuts of meat. Some are worth a lot of money. Some are not, and end up getting sold to be turned into fertilizer or paste to infect cows with all matter of diseases. Things that tend to make inventory worth more money: 1) Better matching algorithms. Thi…

This is very informative and you make many cogent observations. However, you don't even remotely address the point of the article, which, as far as I understand it, is that something is fundamentally wrong if a child wants to learn about dinosaurs and he/she is lured away with addictive games. Even more so if this is considered the pinnacle of our combined capabilities and at the same time a hint of the future into w…

It's a comment, not a debate. I'm not trying to crush raganwald's constructive and collect many finger snaps from the judges. I'm just trying to explain how Internet advertising works for a community which a) viscerally despises advertising, b) often dreams of working for an advertising company, and c) even if they don't work directly for the ad company will have their careers determined in large part by their ability to form an accurate mental model of how advertising actually works. To the limited extent that I disagree with raganwald about anything, I think that any mental model where "An ad for a BBC documentary about dinosaurs" sounds like a more attractive placement for this pageview than "generic remant inventory" economically is likely flawed. That mental model has not come to grips with the fact that the conversion math would suggest a click on that ad would be worth fractions of a hundredth of a penny to the BBC and cost several orders of magnitude more.

Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today

#82

Post by karolist »

insickness wrote: post #3

So that's what a page looks like without Adblock. Interesting.

3 months ago I'd say you're mad for sawing the branch you sit on, taking bread away from content providers whose content you consume. I have content sites myself that rely on ads, I believed in this but my internet experience got increasingly frustrating within last year for some reason - Flash popover or whatever you call them which you can't close, disturbing images of old women tearing their skin as in this article, google ads sneaked into content or navigation in hopes of me mistakingly clicking them.

I've tried readability next, clicking "read now" in my chrome extension on every interesting article..but I'm now with Adblock, at least 3 years later than all my techie friends.

I'll silently consume my purified internet now, thanks.

Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today

#83

Post by crusso »

tlogan wrote: post #78
patio11 wrote: post #39

You're looking at remnant inventory. Inventory (advertiser speak for "a page view plus a slot available on that page which we could sell an ad against") are a lot like cuts of meat. Some are worth a lot of money. Some are not, and end up getting sold to be turned into fertilizer or paste to infect cows with all matter of diseases. Things that tend to make inventory worth more money: 1) Better matching algorithms. Thi…

Great overview of how ads work, but the rant is still valid. As the end, the environment around us will end up to be very similar to one described in the movie Idiocracy.

Yeah, but the blame the article's author espouses is misplaced.

It's not Google's fault that people want to play games any more than it's the sun's fault that it's shining outside of my window on days when I need to get real work done.

As usual it's easier to blame icons and officials in situations where really it's the consumers that drive these corporate decisions with their everyday decisions.

Granted, Google is showing self-serving ads that benefit it... but then again, maybe that site the opinion writer was reading is only possible because Google Adwords funds it. That part is a wash to me.

Sure, there's something sad in all this. It's sad that people want to play mindless games, watch sports, watch reality tv, etc. instead of learning and growing 99% of the time (or whatever) when given the choice. I don't really fault entertainers for providing the entertainment, though.

Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today

#84

Post by jasondrowley »

patio11 wrote: post #73
jasondrowley wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to think of the information I consume online as more than "inventory".

The information is not the inventory, because this particular information is not available for sale in a rivalrous fashion. Your attention is the inventory. (This is sometimes phrased sardonically as "If you're not paying for it, you are the product.")

Exactly. I've made the same comments re being the customer vs. the product regarding Facebook. Except with Facebook, there's a lot more than users' attention on offer to advertisers.

The real question is, would content quality improve if we paid for it directly, instead of indirectly through ads?

Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today

#85

Post by Lockyy »

AznHisoka wrote: post #56
raganwald wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you feel about the fact that certain farmers will starve if they can’t grow coca or poppies as a cash crop?

Hmm.. good point. You know this is a problem too in general. So many useless jobs and useless industries, serving little value to society, yet they are needed because they provide a living for so many people. This is a result of too many humans on Earth. So many people are just not needed on this Earth. So we have to come up with surrogate occupations

I think the problem may be less with too many humans and may be with the preoccupation of "Everybody must have a job! 9-5, Monday to Friday. No exceptions or you're a failure and the country is failing and it's all our leaders fault."

I mean really, we're heading towards more and more automation. There just aren't going to be as many jobs as there once where. Yes, we might get more programming jobs and management jobs. But not enough to replace the hundreds of jobs replaced by a few robots in a factory.

Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today

#88

Post by lkozma »

patio11 wrote: post #81
lkozma wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very informative and you make many cogent observations. However, you don't even remotely address the point of the article, which, as far as I understand it, is that something is fundamentally wrong if a child wants to learn about dinosaurs and he/she is lured away with addictive games. Even more so if this is considered the pinnacle of our combined capabilities and at the same time a hint of the future into w…

It's a comment, not a debate. I'm not trying to crush raganwald's constructive and collect many finger snaps from the judges. I'm just trying to explain how Internet advertising works for a community which a) viscerally despises advertising, b) often dreams of working for an advertising company, and c) even if they don't work directly for the ad company will have their careers determined in large part by their abilit…

Patrick, your argument is flawless, but you've become a bit of a robot. There must be some reason why they don't put Marlboro ads in a lung cancer clinic or a Ballantine's ad in an alcohol rehab center. Surely they would be perfect choices for the well-defined audience that frequents those places and they would make perfect sense economically, more than whatever else they put on those walls. Someone might even come along and say, hey, as long as it pays for the heating, it's good for everyone, right?

Also, I think you misrepresent Raganwald's point. I don't think he claims that economically a BBC ad would be better than an online game ad, he must be thinking along some other axis, along which it would rank higher.

Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today

#89

Post by shashashasha »

Those ads on the rest of the page, and the sad part about all of this, remind me of what Steve Jobs said about network TV:

"When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth."

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=36783

Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today

#90

Post by yew »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #52

This reminds me of an episode of South Park: [ http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/154597/find-the-heart ] The kids try to find the "heart of Wallmart" so they can destroy it (being the evil mom-and-pop store demolisher that it is). When they finally locate the mythical Heart of Wallmart, it turns out it just a mirror. In other words, the problem is not Wallmart (or Google, or whatever), it is us. On another note,…

The problem is actually a mutually reinforcing feedback cycle between culture and corporation that gives rise to addictive superstimuli. But I suppose "the problem is us" is an equally useful observation.
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