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Advertisers Could Soon Demand 'Verified Clicks'

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Re: Advertisers Could Soon Demand 'Verified Clicks'

#51

Post by tzs »

swader999 wrote: post #34
OroPla wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire internet ad business has never made sense to me. Have you ever clicked any of the links? The landing pages were always confusing and not at all designed for you to engage with them. I used to think, okay, I guess they don't care about visiting their sites and just want to get eyeball impressions to stay relevant in the cultural zeitgeist. Then I learned how ads worked in the print industry, where it is ass…

I can't remember the last time I clicked an ad link. I can't even remember a brand I've seen advertised.

It is possible you do remember brands you've seen advertised but just don't remember you saw an ad.

I remember a long time ago seeing a study that asked people if they had seen ads for the California lottery and if so what they remembered about them. They also asked people if they played the lottery and if so why they played.

What they found was that in the people who said they had not seen ads and in the people who aid they had seen them but could remember anything about them a large fraction of those who played gave reasons that were almost word for word quote from slogans from the ads.

Re: Advertisers Could Soon Demand 'Verified Clicks'

#52

Post by wolvoleo »

gdulli wrote: post #47
wolvoleo wrote: post #29

Tbh I'm all in favour of ad fraud because it undermines the whole industry which I'd love to see disappear. I love running ad nauseam which instead of hiding ads clicks them all in an invisible browser, making advertisers pay for ads I didn't even see. And devaluing the entire concept. I wish ublock origin did this too, it's so common that it would totally screw up entire ecosystems. The number of people running ad n…

If not illegal, what if it's used as justification to further lock down browsers and operating systems? Apple makes a ton of money selling traffic to Google and has a vested interest in preserving the effectiveness of targeted advertising.

That will happen anyway. All the manufacturers want to do this so they can route every install through their app store and collect rent from it. It's Apple's primary source of profit these days.

Besides, I'm not going to suck up to the big corpos just so they might leave me alone if I'm lucky, tbh. I'm too rebellious for that.

Re: Advertisers Could Soon Demand 'Verified Clicks'

#53

Post by wolvoleo »

abc123abc123 wrote: post #46
wolvoleo wrote: post #29

Tbh I'm all in favour of ad fraud because it undermines the whole industry which I'd love to see disappear. I love running ad nauseam which instead of hiding ads clicks them all in an invisible browser, making advertisers pay for ads I didn't even see. And devaluing the entire concept. I wish ublock origin did this too, it's so common that it would totally screw up entire ecosystems. The number of people running ad n…

I often wondered if this strategy could work with email/phone scammers as well? Have an LLM write positive email responses, stringing them along as long as possible. Imagine the Nigerian prince of scams... instead of getting 0.1% response rates that he can work on, he gets 99% responses of encouraging replies stringing him along. He would drown in false positives. On the other hand, the Nigerian prince of scams would…

> On the other hand, the Nigerian prince of scams would probably just use his LLM:s to take care of the answers, and we'll have email storms of LLM:s stringing along LLM:s.

I already see that happening in other ways.

On a forum I frequent there's been a user who instantly replies to new articles with a long irrelevant blahblah with a bunch of bulletpoints and emoji. And a while later another user started insta-replying to everyone with the same kind of crap.

Both were banned after a while and the forum now has a stricter "No AI" policy but even that caused some uproar, some users say they want it so they can be more elaborate without having the linguistic skills. But personally I'd love to see it go because most of these replies added nothing to the conversation.

You can do nice things with AI, yes. But it needs a human to tell it what to do. If you just put in a generic prompt "Write something insightful about this article" it's going to provide nothing but slop.

Re: Advertisers Could Soon Demand 'Verified Clicks'

#54

Post by toss1 »

tzs wrote: post #51
swader999 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't remember the last time I clicked an ad link. I can't even remember a brand I've seen advertised.

It is possible you do remember brands you've seen advertised but just don't remember you saw an ad. I remember a long time ago seeing a study that asked people if they had seen ads for the California lottery and if so what they remembered about them. They also asked people if they played the lottery and if so why they played. What they found was that in the people who said they had not seen ads and in the people who…

Interesting data, and possibly true

OTOH, I'm quite sure if you came to me with a truckload of $100 bills and a gun, put the gun to my head and asked me to tell you anything about an advert I saw 3 minutes ago, the truckload of cash is mine if I can say anything, and you'll shoot me if I can't, you'll end up shooting me. I'm pretty sure that is true for the next 100 people also.

The question is, which matters?

Re: Advertisers Could Soon Demand 'Verified Clicks'

#55

Post by WarmWash »

nemomarx wrote: post #37
WarmWash wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People need to just take responsibility and pay for shit. Like if you don't want to be kicked around, you need to be the one kicking. People interpret business as hostility because they cannot conceive of the idea that they themselves should pay for a service.

When I do pay for services, they can just add ads anyway to get more money. Look at Netflix or Amazon prime for this, or even cable. How do I pay for something with a guarantee they'll leave the ad money on the table? I pay for Ars, I pay for YouTube, I pay for discord nitro at the highest tier. Notice that all of those services are still ad funded?

I don't know about ars and discord, but netflix, prime, and yt all have ad-free and ad-subsidized options.

There is also the degree to which people consider something ad free. A character using an iPhone in a show could be considered an ad to some, and not noticed to others.

Re: Advertisers Could Soon Demand 'Verified Clicks'

#56

Post by WarmWash »

sunaookami wrote: post #40
WarmWash wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People need to just take responsibility and pay for shit. Like if you don't want to be kicked around, you need to be the one kicking. People interpret business as hostility because they cannot conceive of the idea that they themselves should pay for a service.

>you need to be the one kicking ...by giving rent-seeking corporations more money? The internet was always "free". I've been using Adblockers since decades and will continue to do so.

The internet was never free, it was just people other than you carrying the cost. Those people are the ones who control the internet, not you.

Re: Advertisers Could Soon Demand 'Verified Clicks'

#57

Post by OroPla »

pixl97 wrote: post #49
OroPla wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire internet ad business has never made sense to me. Have you ever clicked any of the links? The landing pages were always confusing and not at all designed for you to engage with them. I used to think, okay, I guess they don't care about visiting their sites and just want to get eyeball impressions to stay relevant in the cultural zeitgeist. Then I learned how ads worked in the print industry, where it is ass…

5 years from now: "I'm glad we banned ads from the internet, I can drink and ice cold coca-cola in peace now, it refreshes my totally human body". Ads are going to be very very difficult to ban as the incentive behind ads will never go away. With that said, less ads is always better, but it will be a tit for tat battle.

I'm not saying all ads. Only Internet ads. Though, I'd very much be behind banning all unsolicited ads, too.

Or make it a human right to not be exposed to unsolicited ads. They are effectively a psychological attack. They target your mind with the express goal to alter your perception. And they work. It's baffling how this psychological warfare against everyone is legal.

Re: Advertisers Could Soon Demand 'Verified Clicks'

#58

Post by sunaookami »

WarmWash wrote: post #56
sunaookami wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you need to be the one kicking ...by giving rent-seeking corporations more money? The internet was always "free". I've been using Adblockers since decades and will continue to do so.

The internet was never free, it was just people other than you carrying the cost. Those people are the ones who control the internet, not you.

Wrong :)

Re: Advertisers Could Soon Demand 'Verified Clicks'

#59

Post by mattmatheus »

tzs wrote: post #51
swader999 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't remember the last time I clicked an ad link. I can't even remember a brand I've seen advertised.

It is possible you do remember brands you've seen advertised but just don't remember you saw an ad. I remember a long time ago seeing a study that asked people if they had seen ads for the California lottery and if so what they remembered about them. They also asked people if they played the lottery and if so why they played. What they found was that in the people who said they had not seen ads and in the people who…

There's a survey that pops up on Twitter/X every now and then asking about a specific brand and it always asks whether I remember seeing an ad for that brand... I usually cannot, but I'm going to assume that X knows whether it showed me an ad or not.

Completely agreed about being influenced without knowing it.

Re: Advertisers Could Soon Demand 'Verified Clicks'

#60

Post by ranger_danger »

wolvoleo wrote: post #29

Tbh I'm all in favour of ad fraud because it undermines the whole industry which I'd love to see disappear. I love running ad nauseam which instead of hiding ads clicks them all in an invisible browser, making advertisers pay for ads I didn't even see. And devaluing the entire concept. I wish ublock origin did this too, it's so common that it would totally screw up entire ecosystems. The number of people running ad n…

> the whole industry which I'd love to see disappear.

For what alternative? Paying money to each website to access it?

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