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The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

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Re: The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

#261

Post by Eisenstein »

JeremyNT wrote: post #254
commandlinefan wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twitter and Reddit ... have made huge blunders In addition to which - they were never that solid in the first place. They (and Facebook) are mostly just "dumb hosting" for other people's content - if the content producers leave, they don't have anything to offer. They don't even really own the content that was produced on their platform and it wouldn't have any value even if they did. There's a weak value propositi…

I think this is really what we're seeing now. One can suggest that recent decisions were "blunders" due to the problems they have encountered, but maybe there just was no path forward for them simply because there's not much value to be extracted from this business. Now we just see the entire house of cards collapsing around them.

There were many obviously lucrative paths Reddit could have taken. They have incredible amounts of data on users who self-select their own interests. They were making money selling subscriptions even. They could have monetized all sorts of things in non-annoying ways, like secret santa (pay to verify users or have direct anonymous shipping?), subreddit sponsorships (want to own /r/steam, Valve pays for it), etc.

Instead they wanted to be Facebook Jr, killed all of their interesting and niche aspects, ignored the things users and mods were asking for, and hamfisted general ads in people's faces while adding expensive, unneeded (unwanted!) features like live chat and video hosting.

Reddit is an example of what happens when you put people in charge of a business who are both greedy and stupid.

Re: The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

#262

Post by yomlica8 »

qup wrote: post #23
charlieyu1 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have enough content farms.

At least in this situation they'd be identifying themselves up front.

And you'd be identifying yourself up front to in order to pay.

Re: The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

#263

Post by vel0city »

RandallFlagg wrote: post #145
jhaenchen wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real issue IMO is that users do not understand that ads pay for their apps. They don't want to see ads and the ads they do see they want them to be uninformed and general. They want everything free. This just encourages subscriptions. Which we're seeing become more and more common.

I would personally prefer to pay for a service with my money as opposed to my information and ads being shoved in my face. Unfortunately many services don't even give an option to pay with money, so I've been trying to find alternatives, for example I've been starting to migrate away from Gmail to Protonmail. I understand things cost money, so let me pay you for your services. I just despise ads with a passion.

Google absolutely wouldn't mind if you paid in money for your mail. They sell it to lots of paying subscribers.

https://workspace.google.com/products/gmail/

No ads in workspace, they don't mine your data for advertising.

Re: The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

#264

Post by andreygrehov »

rglullis wrote: post #253
andreygrehov wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Twitter acquisition happened 7 months ago, on October 27, 2022 to be precise. 7 months is effectively 3 quarters. Let's take "Elon Musk" name out of the equation for a moment. How much do you think is possible to do with one of the largest social network companies in the world within 3 quarters? I work at AWS and I must say everything is really slow here. What I'm trying to say is it seems like the world is "dema…

Why should we be rooting for his success ? Why would I want to live in a world where "a superapp" is needed? Why would I want to live in a world where you have one company in control of the "town square"? Personally, I just wanted Twitter to fail because I think that any ad-funded business is bad for us. But if you tell me that Elon's long term game is to make it something even more dystopian than it ever was , then…

> Why should we be rooting for his success?

Rooting for someone's success is not about personal preferences or endorsing their actions. It's about fostering a positive and supportive environment that encourages growth and achievement.

> Why would I want to live in a world where "a superapp" is needed?

Super-apps already exist in other markets. Entrepreneurs want to create ones in the US market to foster the diversity of options. This is a healthy process. You live in the world with wars, but you want to do everything in your power to see Twitter fail. That's strange. A world catered only to your preferences is unlikely, so you have to be realistic.

> Why would I want to live in a world where you have one company in control of the "town square"?

I don't know. You don't have to live in that town.

> Personally, I just wanted Twitter to fail because I think that any ad-funded business is bad for us.

Pretty much every business in the world is driven by ads, one way or another. However, as I said, Musk doesn't care about ads. In fact, he wants even fewer ads on Twitter. That being said, his goals kinda align with what you want.

Re: The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

#265

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

earthboundkid wrote: post #195
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #111

Some people, besides the ones who read HN, believe the success of online advertising service providers, including so-called "Big Tech" and "adtech", is based on fraud. Please distinguish the success of online advertising service providers, e.g., Google, versus the success of online advertisers, e.g., Joe's Pizza. One example is Bob Hoffman. Hoffman is an ad industry veteran who suggests that despite all the advances…

I think it's pretty obvious just as a consumer that banner ads don't work. No one deliberately clicks on them, and meanwhile every major site has obvious scam ads on it. Magazines always had scam ads, but they were in the back pages in small print. Now the scam ads are quite prominent (and disgusting). People in general like ads: they sing jingles, they talk about funny Super Bowl ads, they buy the mattress their pod…

How about tracking. Tracking is what Hoffman wants to do away with.

Re: The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

#266

Post by rglullis »

andreygrehov wrote: post #264
rglullis wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should we be rooting for his success ? Why would I want to live in a world where "a superapp" is needed? Why would I want to live in a world where you have one company in control of the "town square"? Personally, I just wanted Twitter to fail because I think that any ad-funded business is bad for us. But if you tell me that Elon's long term game is to make it something even more dystopian than it ever was , then…

> Why should we be rooting for his success? Rooting for someone's success is not about personal preferences or endorsing their actions. It's about fostering a positive and supportive environment that encourages growth and achievement. > Why would I want to live in a world where "a superapp" is needed? Super-apps already exist in other markets. Entrepreneurs want to create ones in the US market to foster the diversity…

> It's about fostering a positive and supportive environment that encourages growth and achievement.

Not when this "growth" and "achievement" is something that affects part of the society negatively, or when there might be unknown consequences.

> Super-apps already exist in other markets.

And they are enablers of authoritarian states and continuous centralized power over a handful of corporations.

> You don't have to live in that town.

Just on another thread I was being accused of being "socially inept" for refusing to use WhatsApp.

If we live in a world where so much power is centralized into a few corporations, they affect everyone's lives, even if they don't participate directly on it.

> Pretty much every business in the world is driven by ads

Does it help you sleep at night to be telling yourself this kind of bullshit, or are you just apathetic?

> he wants even fewer ads on Twitter.

You forgot to capitalize your Lord's name.

Re: The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

#267

Post by damnesian »

itsoktocry wrote: post #232
AltruisticGapHN wrote: post #188

I agree with recent TWiT discussion on this : we've had it good for a while - the promise of free internet but all those services cost money to keep running. I don't have an issue with paying Youtube Premium Lite. Where I have an issue with the subs model is you're pay subs to so many services, YT Netflix Twitch, etc. It adds up pretty quickly, and costs way more than traditional TV used to cost. Then there's the iss…

> It adds up pretty quickly, and costs way more than traditional TV used to cost. I have trouble understanding this complaint. There's way more content than ever before; why wouldn't it be more expensive to get everything? You don't have to subscribe to it all, but the ability to pick and choose providers a la carte, as well as cycle subscriptions on and off seems like a huge win to consumers.

Well, true, except entertainment consumers want a good variety. And ideally, they'd like it priced like a utility, a monthly payment they can budget for.

Before it was taken over by infomercials and reality tv, cable offered unprecedented variety, all for one manageable monthly payment. this is still what people want. This will be what the market gravitates towards, and we see it happening now with cheaper ad-supported tiers and even many 100% free with ads small players. Streaming is, in effect, slowly becoming cable tv all over again. Hell, some of these free channels- like PlutoTV- even look like cable. I predict eventually which aggregator you choose- Roku, Firestick, AppleTV- won't matter, it will be the same galaxy of choices.

Re: The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

#268

Post by bsder »

tornato7 wrote: post #260
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that will drive a lot more self-funded communities. People talk about how expensive it is to host websites, but they're talking about sites several orders of magnitude larger than what most communities need. A single Discord server could effectively be hosted on a Raspberry Pi, the market price among cloud hosts for which is "free", or at most ~$10 a month. That's not "We need to charge for access" level pric…

To make this happen, we need better open source forum software. A group of us have been searching for a good self-hosted forum to replace /r/BuyItForLife and have trialed quite a few, but they are just... Really bad.

Define: really bad.

I generally find the software is fine.

The problem is login/security and spam control. Those are painful things that I really, really, really don't want to have to deal with. Yet they are the vast majority of the issue with self-hosting your own forums.

Self-hosted forums are not a technical problem--they are a social problem.

Re: The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

#269

Post by HWR_14 »

makeitdouble wrote: post #25
gleenn wrote: post #5

His two examples are Twitter and Reddit whose ad revenue is dying because those two companies have made huge blunders. Elon seems to almost actively be killing Twitter (which the poster even states). Reddit screwed Apollo and then many of the most popular subreddits protested and did things like show porn on otherwise usually SFW content to prevent Reddit from showing ads and thus killing their profits. Those are big…

What examples of ad based rising companies do you see ? My first thought was Google, and it's started to plateau in the recent years: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOGL/alphabet/rev... . Meta also took a dive, and while it was from a sharp turn of the business focus, I'd argue it comes from an attempt to avoid staying on a stagnating market.

Google and Meta each have something like half the world as users in any given month? And most of the people who aren't using them are not on the internet?

At some point, you literally have no more people you can get in your service.

Re: The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

#270

Post by HWR_14 »

HEmanZ wrote: post #79
gleenn wrote: post #5

His two examples are Twitter and Reddit whose ad revenue is dying because those two companies have made huge blunders. Elon seems to almost actively be killing Twitter (which the poster even states). Reddit screwed Apollo and then many of the most popular subreddits protested and did things like show porn on otherwise usually SFW content to prevent Reddit from showing ads and thus killing their profits. Those are big…

Have adds been getting worse? Adds I get in the last 3 years have been way too good for me, so my personal experience has been the opposite (or maybe not? Definitely makes me want to buy more stuff). I guess I’m easily targetable

It's possible that the density of ads has increased (gotten worse) thus leading to you buying more items. And some bias in your recall makes you think they've gotten more effective at targeting you, instead of the same conversion rate but far more opportunities to convert.
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