What the ad blocker debate reveals • Hacker News Board

Re: What the ad blocker debate reveals

#111

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 2:28 PM UTC

bigbugbag wrote: post #109

TeMPOraL wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There will always be advertising. The point is, we shouldn't tolerate anything but honest, decent one.

why would there always be advertising? there wasn't any for about 400 000 years and we had it for a couple centuries ? a few milleniums at most.

As long as there is more than one product competing for the same application and a benefit for the vendor from getting their product picked, there will be a pressure to convince people to choose in a particular way, i.e. advertising.

Re: What the ad blocker debate reveals

#112

Post by mirimir » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 2:29 PM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #51

danr4 wrote: post #2

It's rather simple in my mind. Putting your content up for free is the same as standing by my fence, waiting for me to ask you to throw your magazine over so I could read it. You can put ads, but I can cut them out if I want for a better reading experience. Don't want me to cut out the ads? tough luck, my reading experience, my choice. Want to make money? try a subscription model. Why can't you have both? Welcome to…

This comment rubs me in the wrong way. Content creators aren't "putting it up for free" - they're putting it up with ads attached. They're certainly not "throwing it over your fence." They're not injecting their articles into your browser, you're going to a URL to request them. You seek the content out. So, you go to a site, and download all of the content. That is what the company offered. Some of that is what allow…

> So, you go to a site, and download all of the content.

> You elect to not display that part using your client.

That's not how ad-blockers work. They prevent ads from downloading. And so sites load faster, and mobile users pay less for throughput.

Re: What the ad blocker debate reveals

#113

Post by anc84 » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 2:31 PM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #110

TeMPOraL wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is, but I think all they'd have to do to get money is ask nicely . I have high hopes for Patreon as a platform for that. They could also ask nicely to whitelist the site in ad blocker, promising they won't abuse it. I've seen a site that does that and happily complied because hey, I get it, they need the money and I do get some value from their services. The reason people block ads is not because they don't wan…

> I think all they'd have to do to get money is ask nicely. Having been a part of a lot of media sites in the past, I can safely say that wouldn't have been true for any of them.

Maybe there were not actually valuable to the visitors?

Re: What the ad blocker debate reveals

#114

Post by anc84 » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 2:32 PM UTC

Killswitch wrote: post #68

danr4 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with your correction to my analogy, though I do not think it changes the conclusions. I don't think it's a problem that consumers aren't willing to pay for content. That's literally the description of consumers, to decide what to consume, how to use it, and what they are willing to give in exchange.

Except if it came down to it, everyone would be in an uproar about having to pay monthly fee to visit every site on the net.. I'm willing to bet half the people in this thread who say if people want to be paid for their content, to charge for it, not use ads, don't donate to Wikipedia. It absolutely flabbergasts me the amount of people in the tech world who don't realize to run a top site delivering content to you co…

I doubt that you are making a site 5$ per month. Does anyone know reasonable numbers what a single recurring visitor can make you?

Re: What the ad blocker debate reveals

#115

Post by moron4hire » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 2:33 PM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #98

hibikir wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a Tragedy of the Commons situation: When we block ads, we do it relatively aggressively, so those that implement advertising in an acceptable way get crushed anyway. You are either using ads people don't see, or doing terrible things like many Minecraft mods, often downloaded by kids, and hosted at a particularly nasty site where the obvious download link gives you malware. To block horrible things like that, we…

> so those that implement advertising in an acceptable way get crushed anyway I have yet to see any ad blocker that blocks a simple link along with text like "I used this and here's how it helped me". I don't consider any other forms of advertising "acceptable". > Pay people not to post advertisements on their page, but to actively talk about you in the same way they talk about other things on their site. A couple of…

> I don't consider any other forms of advertising "acceptable".

Now, that's not fair. There is no such thing as "if you build it, they will come". If you are building a thing and you want people to come and use it, you have to advertise in some form. Even if you're making a diner on the side of the highway, you have to put up a sign "Eat at Joes" so people know that you exist and will pull over to try you out.

The problem is that online advertisements these days aren't even designed to inform potential consumers, they're just a mechanism to leech money out of paying customers via selling a dream to content producers that they might be able to make a living off of their craft.

Re: What the ad blocker debate reveals

#116

Post by austenallred » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 2:35 PM UTC

anc84 wrote: post #113

austenallred wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think all they'd have to do to get money is ask nicely. Having been a part of a lot of media sites in the past, I can safely say that wouldn't have been true for any of them.

Maybe there were not actually valuable to the visitors?

I don't think that's true. People would write us letters and emails saying how much they loved it. But if you asked them if they'd pay (and they were being honest), they'd say no.

Re: What the ad blocker debate reveals

#117

Post by JoshTriplett » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 2:38 PM UTC

moron4hire wrote: post #115

JoshTriplett wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so those that implement advertising in an acceptable way get crushed anyway I have yet to see any ad blocker that blocks a simple link along with text like "I used this and here's how it helped me". I don't consider any other forms of advertising "acceptable". > Pay people not to post advertisements on their page, but to actively talk about you in the same way they talk about other things on their site. A couple of…

> I don't consider any other forms of advertising "acceptable". Now, that's not fair. There is no such thing as "if you build it, they will come". If you are building a thing and you want people to come and use it, you have to advertise in some form. Even if you're making a diner on the side of the highway, you have to put up a sign "Eat at Joes" so people know that you exist and will pull over to try you out. The pr…

> Now, that's not fair. There is no such thing as "if you build it, they will come". If you are building a thing and you want people to come and use it, you have to advertise in some form.

I stand by my statement: the best way to do this is to build something awesome, show it to people, and have them be so excited about how much it helped them that they jump at the chance to show others. Bonus if you build something that gets more valuable the more people use it (even if only by having more people share related tools and tips for it), so people have an active incentive to share it with others.

Re: What the ad blocker debate reveals

#118

Post by Coincoin » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 2:38 PM UTC

joshstrange wrote: post #60

Let me start off by saying I have clicked (on purpose) on less than 10 ads in my whole life. It's to the point that I have what can best be described as "Ad Blindness", I don't even see them anymore. So much so that sometimes I think I've reached the end of an article because my eyes have determined that below is only ads only to find it's an ad in the middle of the content or actually part of the article (Just to re…

I find the hardest thing for me related to ad blindness is finding the download link for a software.

We get spammed with so many fake "DONWLOAD HERE!" buttons that it becomes impossible to see the real one.

Re: What the ad blocker debate reveals

#119

Post by onion2k » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 2:41 PM UTC

joshstrange wrote: post #60

Let me start off by saying I have clicked (on purpose) on less than 10 ads in my whole life. It's to the point that I have what can best be described as "Ad Blindness", I don't even see them anymore. So much so that sometimes I think I've reached the end of an article because my eyes have determined that below is only ads only to find it's an ad in the middle of the content or actually part of the article (Just to re…

Let me start off by saying I have clicked (on purpose) on less than 10 ads in my whole life.

I've clicked on hundreds. Thousands probably. For me clicking an ad is a win-win - the site I want to support gets a little money, and the advertiser gets to find out that online ads don't convert to sales so eventually they'll stop buying them. You can support the things you love and drive the ad model off the internet at the same time.

I realise this isn't a workable long term strategy. :)

Re: What the ad blocker debate reveals

#120

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 2:41 PM UTC

fridek wrote: post #83

It's funny how people saying ads should be replaced with a subscription model in different threads are going completely bananas about paywalled articles. Couple of web newspapers in my country switched recently to 10 articles a month for free and then asking for a subscription. It's awful, it makes me read less and I would prefer to see some ads I'm used to ignoring anyway. Usually I don't know if I like the content…

Let me show you a model of a decent web news paper that could get by with ads and no paywall:

     |----------------------------------|
     | MY AWESOME NEWSPAPER             |
     |----------------------------------|
     | category | links | cool | topics |
     |----------------------------------|
     | Article Title         | Ads      |
     |                       |          |
     | Article content arti  | A bunch  |
     | cle content article   | of static|
     | content.              | not      |
     |                       | annoying |
     |  |---------------|    | ads      |
     |  | A cat picture |    |          |
     |  |---------------|    |          |
     |                       |          |
     | Article content arti  |          |
     | cle content article   |          |
     | content.              |          |
     |                       |          |
     |----------------------------------|
     | footer links & copyright notices |
     |----------------------------------|

Simple as that. Just don't shit on your users. If they have ad blockers, kindly ask them to whitelist your site.

> Lets not kill content quality by taking even more money out of it.

What content quality?