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Insane state of today's advertising part 3

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Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#191

Post by alkonaut »

therealidiot wrote: post #187
alkonaut wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens with ad blocking visitors? They never become a visitor to bid for? I'd actually like for my ad blocker to download all ads and pretend to download the ad, and give the impression of an impression. That way someone would have made a bid for that impression. Otherwise what will happen is that as ad blocking use becomes more and more widespread, the ad viewers become fewer but more profitable (Ironically pe…

> I'd actually like for my ad blocker to download all ads and pretend to download the ad, and give the impression of an impression. That way someone would have made a bid for that impression. https://adnauseam.io/

Yeah I don't really think the idea of cheating any further (i.e. fake-clicking the ad) is necessary. I just want to appear like a regular ad-viewing browser that doesn't click ads.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#192

Post by belorn »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #32
allanbreyes wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never quite understood why domain-blocking works so well for ad-blockers. I'm surprised why sites don't just use a reverse proxy or something to serve from those ad domains. What am I missing?

If the ads were static (e.g. advertiser A bought a specific place on one of publisher B's pages, for a month), and advertiser A didn't want independent verification that the ads were seen, then your proposal could be simply implemented. "What am I missing?" Many ads are served after real-time auction: whilst your browser is loading and rendering the page, an auction is going between advertisers for the ad spot(s) on…

Which reveals a problematic truth. The tracking is worth more than getting rid of ad blocking.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#193

Post by kbart »

erikb wrote: post #142
jdangu wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone feels the pain: Publisher gets paid on a $1 CPM basis while Cedato gets paid $5-10 CPM and pockets the difference. Advertiser thinks they paid for quality video content preroll but it's actually a tiny rectangle normally used for "display" ads. Audience is infuriated. Think about what happens on a 4G mobile plan now that VPAID has been fully migrated from Flash to JS...

And you can't even install ad blockers on the phone.

"And you can't even install ad blockers on the phone."

Nonsense. I've been using Firefox + uBlock Origin on Android for years. There are even browsers/add-ons that can disable JavaScript completely, but I find it too much of a hassle.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#194

Post by self_awareness »

dhab wrote: post #164

Might be off-topic. It seems a majority of people are against ads. What are the top few reasons why people dislike ads, excluding reasons such as them just being a nuisance? My own guesses are: * People don't like the idea that the platform serving the ads is making money through ads which is not directly tied to the main value they derive from that platform * Maybe people feel that they are also indirectly contribut…

I don't like ads on the Internet, because I don't want to feel like I'm in a shop when I'm searching for information about something.

However I do like ads when I'm actually in a shop. The problem is that 98% of ads I see on the Internet are served on pages that don't sell anything.

It's mostly about context; I want to discover new services/goods/whatever only when I want to discover them. Most of the time I don't.

There are also lots of technical issues. One technical problem is described in OP's link, so I won't go there. There are also examples when the ad opens a new window. The ad steals focus -- window's focus, and my focus. It switches my context, it wants to hijack or steal my concentration. I didn't give my consent to that. It can track my fingerprint. It slows down my connection by issuing lots of HTTP requests.

Also, ads lie. - 20% discount on something? Only with payments $399 and above. - Price goes down from $200 to $50? How do I know that the price was $200 in the first place? Maybe it was always $50 and you just told me it was $200 few weeks ago? - Price that says $200* for something? The asterisk basically tells you that this is a lie. - Best company in the market? Best service in the world? Lowest price in the country? Those are most overused, empty and incorrect sentences in the world.

Simply put, ads are wasting my time (most of the time). Most ads are low quality eye catchers and nothing more.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#195

Post by mastazi »

Google Ads, interstitials, multiple Tag Manager accounts, Analytics' tracking cookies, Facebook and Twitter buttons + embedded feeds, Video pre roll ads, Nielsen Tags...

At every new request from marketing you die a little bit inside, because you know you'll never win if you try to make a case against this stuff.

Then one day a manager finally emails you and goes "the website is a bit slow". And you smile while you start preparing your technical report.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#196

Post by avaer »

manigandham wrote: post #162
jdangu wrote: post #76

Awesome to see that subject #1 on HN. At my startup Confiant [1], we block bad ads in stream on behalf of publishers. Cedato aka Algovid aka TLVMedia is one of our prime targets, we block millions of their ad impressions daily. They are essentially buying cheap display ad placements to resell them as fake video preroll ad placements. They sell on video exchanges like AOL's AdapTV and others. To maximize their yield,…

This happens because it's a business problem with perverse incentives across the entire advertising supply chain - and no amount of technical solutions will solve it. It's the same issue with every anti-fraud vendor and the new hyped blockchain nonsense. Until buyers and agencies vote with their dollars, nothing will change.

The thing is people are voting with their dollars, but it's on credit.

People don't want to pay for "free" content, and "free" software. So instead they pay with malware, insane data charges, markups to pay for ads, markups to pay for dealing with fraud, the indefinite privacy tax of their data, markups extracted from monopoly positions, and much more.

The problem is people don't see all of these exorbitant fees, but they see that dollar in their wallet.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#197

Post by Cthulhu_ »

cft wrote: post #156
oasfboasbfos wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only good ad is a dead one. With very few exceptions, especially in the consumer space, you won't need advertising if you actually need something. You'll search it out or your friends will tell you what to buy. Advertising serves as a way for the capitalist class to exert veto power over other aspects of society by yanking funding at opportune moments (see the current Google snafu or Bill O'Reilly's departure fro…

An anecdote from 2010: my company had racks of Rackable Systems servers. Every month a server went dead- power supply, board or some such. Rackable Systems were unreliable. Then on Slashdot I saw a square ad for IBM System X servers (unfortunately they have been sold to Lenovo a couple of years ago). That somehow made me do research- although I was aware of IBM System X before. Between 2010 and 1013 we bought perhaps…

Those ads were relevant though, and (I hope) not doing thousands of requests in the background; it was an IT-related ad, on an IT-related website, targeted at a person working in IT that was interested in new servers - what really is what the better ad providers are looking for. The rest is just idk, shotgunning and hoping something sticks.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#198

Post by Cthulhu_ »

stale2002 wrote: post #188
recursive wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone thinks advertising doesn't work on them. And everyone is wrong.

Of course advertising works. And this is a very bad thing, not a good thing.

Depends. How many products are you using which you first heard from via HN? That's a form of advertising too, albeit a lot less sleazy.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#199

Post by DamonHD »

bonqis wrote: post #177
exikyut wrote: post #64

IMO the way to solve this is a single-click "pay this tiny amount to keep reading" UI. Now that Amazon's one-click checkout patent has expired this is actually legally viable. But it won't happen until Chrome is overturned by a new browser because Google will never let such a model succeed :( It's possible Firefox may successfully do the "phoenix re-viral" thing, in spite of the fact that it would be a literal miracl…

I co-founded Flattr and one of the things we learned is that even a one-click is to much effort. So we now have a zero-click solution that measures attention and visits in your browser locally (as Archon810 wrote.) and then your monthly subscription is distributed based on that. Happy to answer anything and or give an invite.

Would like to chat further. As CTO in a previous "fintech" start-up I tried to make something like that work: a tiny-pay-per-view is indeed something like the right goal for funding content.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#200

Post by stale2002 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #198
stale2002 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course advertising works. And this is a very bad thing, not a good thing.

Depends. How many products are you using which you first heard from via HN? That's a form of advertising too, albeit a lot less sleazy.

Aggregation sites, that use crowd sourcing to bubble up interesting content and products is a fundamentally different beast than paid advertising.
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