Live data from Hacker News

Advertisers scramble as ‘non-human traffic’ eats up online budgets

theglobeandmail.com

1–10 of 98 posts

Re: Advertisers scramble as ‘non-human traffic’ eats up online budgets

#3
I envision a future where a significant share of the advertising market is comprised of automated ad-bots pitching services and wares to automated web-crawlers. There's something obtusely philosophical about that and what it says about us, though I am not sure what that is.

Re: Advertisers scramble as ‘non-human traffic’ eats up online budgets

#5
post #3

I envision a future where a significant share of the advertising market is comprised of automated ad-bots pitching services and wares to automated web-crawlers. There's something obtusely philosophical about that and what it says about us, though I am not sure what that is.

William Gibson could probably give you some ideas on what that says about us. He started writing about this fictionally decades ago.

Re: Advertisers scramble as ‘non-human traffic’ eats up online budgets

#6
post #2

"Wah, I can't advertise using old methods and might have to come up with something new. Waaah"

While I understand the downvotes, the sentiment here is valid in the sense that there's been so little innovation in advertisement for the web - even mobile ads are anachronistic.

The entirety of innovation has been sizes & styles and tracking and not on presentation and usability that's complementary with content.

It's not a 'you made your bed' situation, but not wholly removed from it, either.

Re: Advertisers scramble as ‘non-human traffic’ eats up online budgets

#8
There are two pretty obvious approaches: only pay per conversion, or accept that not all views are human.

Just like when you advertise in a classical news paper, you only know how many copies are typically sold, not how many humans actually look at your ad.

Re: Advertisers scramble as ‘non-human traffic’ eats up online budgets

#9
post #3

I envision a future where a significant share of the advertising market is comprised of automated ad-bots pitching services and wares to automated web-crawlers. There's something obtusely philosophical about that and what it says about us, though I am not sure what that is.

William Gibson could probably give you some ideas on what that says about us. He started writing about this fictionally decades ago.

Or Stanislaw Lem

Re: Advertisers scramble as ‘non-human traffic’ eats up online budgets

#10
post #8

There are two pretty obvious approaches: only pay per conversion, or accept that not all views are human. Just like when you advertise in a classical news paper, you only know how many copies are typically sold, not how many humans actually look at your ad.

This is what it's called:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_per_action

It's been about for a long time.

Post reply on HN