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

Vietnam bans unskippable ads

saigoneer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

601–610 of 835 posts

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#601

Post by Dylan16807 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #420
layer8 wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Directories aren’t ads. The crucial feature would be that nobody would have to pay to get listed, or only a small nominal fee that anyone can afford. Like in a phonebook. Paying for placement is what makes an ad. And that’s what would have to be prohibited.

> The crucial feature would be that nobody would have to pay to get listed, or only a small nominal fee that anyone can afford You see the contradiction. You’re essentially saying no bad ads, only good ads, without defunding the difference. (Anyone can afford a Google or Meta ad in the way they could a White Pages listing.)

> Anyone can afford a Google or Meta ad in the way they could a White Pages listing.

If I go buy a Google or Meta ad with the same negligible budget, I can get my product shown to 50 people and then the money runs out.

That's completely different from getting onto a phonebook-like list where everyone that visits can see my company's offer.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#602

Post by thfuran »

echelon wrote: post #31
austin-cheney wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not a great regulatory move, in my opinion. Why?

Second order effects. Many advertisers may avoid advertising or lower their ad budgets. This means the tech platform makes less revenue. This means the platform and the video creator both make less revenue. This means less videos get created. All of these happen at the population level. I hate ads, but regulations that are for things that aren't public health (including mental health), anti-monopolization, etc. are p…

>Many advertisers may avoid advertising or lower their ad budgets.

Great. Once that happens, we can work on regulation to kill even more advertising.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#603

Post by DrewADesign »

orbital-decay wrote: post #520
Tanoc wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like innately hostile behaviour. Not to other video creators, but to his audience. Stripping as much as he can using data and mathematics is the kind of thing engineers do to pull more out of a machine, not something you do when you're creating informal communications to other humans.

Attention engineering is how the charts are topped. Media producers knew this decades before the social media, and perfected it by the late 90's. Avoiding extremely popular stuff is just common sense if you want any real authenticity.

Oh, but then you’re the much-maligned hipster.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#604

Post by andrei_says_ »

everdrive wrote: post #558
transcriptase wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you watch him on Joe Rogan’s podcast he gives a full overview of how every single tiny detail down to colors, length of scene cuts, facial expressions, language, total length of videos, time of day for release, thumbnails, sound effects, music is extensively A/B tested to not only optimize for the algorithm but for hijacking people’s attention as well. That weird creepy face with the outline and uncanny smoothing…

>That weird creepy face with the outline and uncanny smoothing aren’t by accident. I take your point, but I am still baffled why people find this appealing.

Maybe not appealing but interesting. Distinct enough from the rest of the thumbnails on the page to trigger an impulsive tap or click.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#605

Post by DrewADesign »

everdrive wrote: post #558
transcriptase wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you watch him on Joe Rogan’s podcast he gives a full overview of how every single tiny detail down to colors, length of scene cuts, facial expressions, language, total length of videos, time of day for release, thumbnails, sound effects, music is extensively A/B tested to not only optimize for the algorithm but for hijacking people’s attention as well. That weird creepy face with the outline and uncanny smoothing…

>That weird creepy face with the outline and uncanny smoothing aren’t by accident. I take your point, but I am still baffled why people find this appealing.

Appealing isn’t the goal. Catching someone’s attention is the goal. (Nobody thinks the balloons on the cars at the car dealership look good but statistics prove that balloons sell cars.) Then, triggering someone’s curiosity, which is more where the copy comes in. (You can increase your click count with this one weird trick!)

You’re subject to it every bit as much as me or anybody else, but for whatever reason, we have different triggers than the Mr. Beast crowd. People that think they’re immune to it after having it pointed out to them are likely just less aware than most how their emotions are being manipulated by things they don’t even consciously perceive. Sales guys love people like that.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#606

Post by Dylan16807 »

kube-system wrote: post #316
phantasmish wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what a fucking store is for . They have catalogs. You could ask for one. If they think people will want something they will try to sell it and will tell you about it if you go looking . I see this pro-ads argument all the time and it’s so obviously-stupid that I’m truly baffled. Is this the kind of lie ad folks tell themselves so they can sleep at night?

There are no successful economies without ads. Ads are a necessary evil for effective market discovery. They should be heavily regulated but you can't effectively operate a market economy without one.

There are no successful economies without blue paint, either. As far as I'm aware, there hasn't been enough testing to say much about the importance of ads.

And even if they're necessary at some level, what if the US had 90% less ads, etc.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#607

Post by GuB-42 »

everdrive wrote: post #558
transcriptase wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you watch him on Joe Rogan’s podcast he gives a full overview of how every single tiny detail down to colors, length of scene cuts, facial expressions, language, total length of videos, time of day for release, thumbnails, sound effects, music is extensively A/B tested to not only optimize for the algorithm but for hijacking people’s attention as well. That weird creepy face with the outline and uncanny smoothing…

>That weird creepy face with the outline and uncanny smoothing aren’t by accident. I take your point, but I am still baffled why people find this appealing.

It doesn't have to be appealing, it has to make you click.

Car crashes are not appealing, and yet it is something most people are tempted to look at. Many people think of dopamine as the pleasure hormone, not really, it is the motivation hormone, pleasure is one way to achieve that, but so is horror.

It makes evolutionary sense, if something horrible happens, you better pay attention, to get prepared so that it doesn't happen to you.

I don't know the details of the psychological response to Mr Beast thumbnails, and I think neither does My Beast himself, the analytics say it works and that the only thing that matters to him.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#608

Post by al_borland »

phantasmish wrote: post #537
al_borland wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grocery stores are a low margin business. If you make selling shelf space illegal, they lose that revenue and will have to raise food prices to stay in business. This isn’t a good outcome. I also question if the shelves would even changes much. They will probably prioritize their high margin products, which doesn’t sound any better.

Where does the money to pay for shelf space come from if not the money we pay for food?

In theory, sure. In practice, the food makers aren’t going to lower their prices to the stores, they will just stop paying the shelf fees.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#609

Post by Dylan16807 »

drdeca wrote: post #270
wat10000 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertising isn't the general concept of letting people know what products are available for purchase. It's more specifically doing this for money and showing it to people who don't want to see it. One might quibble about exactly what the word "advertising" encompasses, but that description covers the bad stuff pretty well, whatever name you want to give it. I'd boil it down to: if you added a "don't show this" optio…

> and showing it to people who don't want to see it. So, do superbowl ads not count as ads because a non-negligible portion of the viewership wants to see them? Or are you saying that there needs to be a non-negligible fraction of the viewers who don’t want to see it for it to be an ad?

In the end it doesn't really matter. That's under 0.1% of TV viewing and it's a unique situation. Yes edge cases exist, edge cases always exist, but that's a very tiny one.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#610

Post by Dylan16807 »

tpmoney wrote: post #562
kibwen wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are really out here acting like we didn't have a functioning economy before we invited ad companies in to parasitize global commerce. I don't give a fuck if it means "less discoverability", if I could snap my fingers and make every ad company disappear tomorrow, the world would be a better place.

When did we have a functioning economy without ads? Was it the 1980's when some of the most classic children's shows were 30 minute commercials for toys? Was it the 1960s when Charles Schultz was lamenting the commercialization of Christmas in the Charlier Brown special? Maybe the 1910's when Uncle Sam famously wanted you to join the army? Was it the 1890's when Montgomery Ward and Sears were sending out mail order c…

They said "ad companies" not the entire concept of ads.
Post reply on HN