Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?

ninjasandrobots.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 99 posts

Re: Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?

#31

Post by rglullis »

tomkarlo wrote: post #17
rglullis wrote: post #11

I really, really don't buy the idea that I should feel bad for using adblock. The whole "ads can be a way to provide quality services, and adblock removes that revenue" is the marketer's equivalent to the {MP|RI}AA's "every pirate is a stolen sale". The whole thing with the Internet is about desintermediation, and marketing departments are nothing but middle-men between producers and consumers. Even worse that they a…

I agree with you that the MPAA claim is silly. But in this case, you're actually consuming the product - using their bandwidth, their servers, etc, all of which costs money - and denying them the revenue they use to support that service. The argument with the MPAA concept is that you're not denying them a sale, nor are you increasing their cost of doing business, but here you're you're doing the latter. Do you really…

The thing is, if the product is actually valuable to me, I would spend more money on them that they could ever make from me through ads.

"But wait, what about freemium? Plenty of services remove the ads for paying customers", one might ask. The problem with it is that you now a have false sense of choice:

  1) Free product + ads
  2) Paid product and no ads.
There is a third alternative: free product, adblock, no ads.

Yes, marketing is much more than advertising. But I think that the "advertising" part is what everything else is based on, when it shouldn't. To take on your example, the "press who review products" is, most of the time, dependent on eyeballs to sell ads to. This model is so broken that you either have newspapers going bankrupt or Huffington Post-style blogs, with zero actual content.

If enough people started using adblock, perhaps we would get to a point where the current model would be unsustainable, which would producers to either:

  - Get rid of ad-based services and products, and start charging directly.
  - Improve their ads to make it more relevant to consumers.

Re: Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?

#32

Post by tomkarlo »

joejohnson wrote: post #30
tomkarlo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you that the MPAA claim is silly. But in this case, you're actually consuming the product - using their bandwidth, their servers, etc, all of which costs money - and denying them the revenue they use to support that service. The argument with the MPAA concept is that you're not denying them a sale, nor are you increasing their cost of doing business, but here you're you're doing the latter. Do you really…

That argument is false for a few reasons. With many online services, who's to say precisely what the product is. Aren't we (the users) the real product for a lot of large, free services (gmail, Facebook, etc.)? And for the bandwidth, I'm paying for that too. I pay an ISP every month to browser the internet. Shouldn't I be able to control what I use this bandwidth for? When I click on a link, I don't truly know what r…

I don't disagree that as a consumer you should have the right to choose what gets sent to you - but generally, if you're using a site, you're also consenting to its terms of service (which generally include accepting its ads.) As such, the product IS actually defined for you, and not up for you to define as you see fit. Using it outside of those terms is theft of service.

If you don't want accept those ads, fine, but from an ethical and legal standpoint you shouldn't be consuming its content or using its service, either. This whole "the users are the product" thing sounds great but it's an oversimplification; ultimately, it's the user's consumption of advertising that's the product for an ad-supported site; the user itself (ex ads) is often worthless or less than worthless.

You're making a deal with the provider of the site that you'll consume their product in exchange for also viewing the ads; if you don't like that bargain, don't accept it and don't consume the content.

The fact that you pay for your bandwidth, btw, has nothing to do with the fact that the site also pays for its bandwidth. Your ISP is not using part of what you pay to cover the bandwidth costs of the content provider.

Re: Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?

#33

Post by tomkarlo »

rglullis wrote: post #31
tomkarlo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you that the MPAA claim is silly. But in this case, you're actually consuming the product - using their bandwidth, their servers, etc, all of which costs money - and denying them the revenue they use to support that service. The argument with the MPAA concept is that you're not denying them a sale, nor are you increasing their cost of doing business, but here you're you're doing the latter. Do you really…

The thing is, if the product is actually valuable to me, I would spend more money on them that they could ever make from me through ads. "But wait, what about freemium? Plenty of services remove the ads for paying customers", one might ask. The problem with it is that you now a have false sense of choice: 1) Free product + ads 2) Paid product and no ads. There is a third alternative: free product, adblock, no ads. Ye…

"There is a third alternative: free product, adblock, no ads."

By that logic, it's also possible to avoid high grocery bills by sticking some things in your pocket and not paying for them. Just because you can do something doesn't mean it's a scalable or ethical option.

Google's core breakthrough in advertising was to close the loop and push advertisers towards ads that are relevant to customers, where they know exactly how much they're earning per dollar they spend on ads. Ads have, actually, improved quite a bit over the past 10 years. The famous line was "half of ad spending is wasted, we just don't know which half" (paraphrased)... now they know which half.

To go back to the OP's subject - the reason why retargeting has grown so popular is that it WORKS LIKE A MOFO. Retargeted ads are usually an order of magnitude more relevant and are immensely cost effective in terms of spend versus conversions. The best indicator that someone's interested in buying a Ford? They visited the Ford site.

Re: Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?

#35

Post by awakeasleep »

bo1024 wrote: post #24
rglullis wrote: post #11

I really, really don't buy the idea that I should feel bad for using adblock. The whole "ads can be a way to provide quality services, and adblock removes that revenue" is the marketer's equivalent to the {MP|RI}AA's "every pirate is a stolen sale". The whole thing with the Internet is about desintermediation, and marketing departments are nothing but middle-men between producers and consumers. Even worse that they a…

I think this a good perspective. Advertising only has societal value when it helps connect people who want to buy something with services that want to sell it. I can think of a couple other ways to get some sort of value from advertising. The first is using an ad to get someone to purchase something they otherwise wouldn't have. I suppose this creates societal value too, but in my opinion it mainly just benefits the…

I think you are right in your conclusion that you have no understanding/conception of how the average internet browser reacts to advertisements.

I was shocked to realize this about myself after talking to my ex's sister. She teaches kids in the BD class of a Chicago public school. She shared a story of her frustration trying to teach them about healthy eating. It went something like this:

"Can anyone give me an example of good or healthy food" Class Chorus: "Mcdonalds!" Carrie, taken aback: "Oh! and what makes McDonald's healthy" Class: "McDonalds makes you big and strong! You could play in the olympics"

That anecdote hit me at the same time I had been researching literacy, and it really struck me that different classes of people exist in our society who interpret symbolic content at different levels. You or I probably see a picture of an athlete on an McDonald's bag and our lip curls in contempt at the transparency of the lie. But to a different type of person with a different background, that representation is taken at face value.

It's really apparent when you see people make a living off other transparent advertising, "Teen Mom discovers weird old trick to remove belly fat." Ok, bullshit. You can't target lose weight etc, but that isn't a multinational with inefficient marketing, that's an individual identifying basic desires and exploiting certain segments of their market. And it works.

Re: Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?

#36

Post by zmj »

rglullis wrote: post #31
tomkarlo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you that the MPAA claim is silly. But in this case, you're actually consuming the product - using their bandwidth, their servers, etc, all of which costs money - and denying them the revenue they use to support that service. The argument with the MPAA concept is that you're not denying them a sale, nor are you increasing their cost of doing business, but here you're you're doing the latter. Do you really…

The thing is, if the product is actually valuable to me, I would spend more money on them that they could ever make from me through ads. "But wait, what about freemium? Plenty of services remove the ads for paying customers", one might ask. The problem with it is that you now a have false sense of choice: 1) Free product + ads 2) Paid product and no ads. There is a third alternative: free product, adblock, no ads. Ye…

What makes you think that you're qualified to judge what's relevant to you?

Re: Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?

#37

Post by 12uu45dd »

Now, let's be serious. If we all block ads, whic is really trivial to do, then the web would cease to be an important medium, the quality of content found through the web would drop sharply and our lives would lose the enrichment that online advertising brings. It would just be terrible. Don't block ads. A kitten is tortured everytime you do.

Re: Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?

#38

Post by rglullis »

tomkarlo wrote: post #33
rglullis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, if the product is actually valuable to me, I would spend more money on them that they could ever make from me through ads. "But wait, what about freemium? Plenty of services remove the ads for paying customers", one might ask. The problem with it is that you now a have false sense of choice: 1) Free product + ads 2) Paid product and no ads. There is a third alternative: free product, adblock, no ads. Ye…

"There is a third alternative: free product, adblock, no ads." By that logic, it's also possible to avoid high grocery bills by sticking some things in your pocket and not paying for them. Just because you can do something doesn't mean it's a scalable or ethical option. Google's core breakthrough in advertising was to close the loop and push advertisers towards ads that are relevant to customers, where they know exac…

If using adblock is unethical, so is torrenting TV shows; and I thought you agreed with me that the MPAA claim is bullshit.

Google is better than the alternatives, sure. It doesn't mean that it is any good. The ads I get on my cell phone are still awful, to the point of discouraging me to use it more.

Re: Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?

#39

Post by rglullis »

zmj wrote: post #36
rglullis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, if the product is actually valuable to me, I would spend more money on them that they could ever make from me through ads. "But wait, what about freemium? Plenty of services remove the ads for paying customers", one might ask. The problem with it is that you now a have false sense of choice: 1) Free product + ads 2) Paid product and no ads. There is a third alternative: free product, adblock, no ads. Ye…

What makes you think that you're qualified to judge what's relevant to you?

I hope you are joking.

I am me. I guess that is a pretty strong credential.

Post reply on HN