Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

Post by 1000units » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 10:06 PM UTC

braythwayt wrote: post #170

TeMPOraL wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's similar to how prostitution seems more ethical than telemarketing - one involves voluntary exchange of value between two willing consenting parties, the other involves harassing people and, frequently, trying to scam them.

My understanding is that the people working in that industry prefer to call it "sex work." "Prostitute" has negative historical connotations. For example, we will say that Mitch McConnell has prostituted himself to billionaires, but we would never call him a sex worker. /ducks

Post by T2_t2 » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 10:09 PM UTC

nabla9 wrote: post #86

gwern wrote: post #7

More detailed discussion of the 4 other datapoints: https://www.gwern.net/Ads#replication (I added McCoy et al 2007 just last night, so now it's 5 total: me, Pandora, Mozilla, LinkedIn, and McCoy et al 2007.)

It's often said that less than 10% of users click ads. If there would be way to identify those users with reasonably low false positive rate, you could annoy only small fraction of users and keep more of them (if you want to have them).

Post by XCSme » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 10:14 PM UTC

braythwayt wrote: post #168

umvi wrote: post #32

I believe it. There are a lot of games that I downloaded from the app store and really liked initially. However, I noticed a pattern. At first, ads seemed to be optional (i.e double your gems by watching an ad!) However, after about 10 minutes of playing, I'd see an ad. No big deal. But then it got more and more aggressive. Pretty soon there was an ad after every single level, (plus the bonus ad if you want to double…

You are not their target market. Most of these companies make all of their money from "whales," people who play around the clock and spend a significant amount of money per month on in-app purchases and/or subscriptions. They have optimized their experience for finding and landing whales, and at the end of the day, you are probably an irritant to them, walking around complaining about the game while contributing so l…

Post by DuskStar » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 10:21 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #156

chrisdsaldivar wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another reason to limit screen time for kids is to prevent developing nearsightedness. Although this is just anecdata, I was talking to my optometrist at my last appointment and he told me he's seen far more kids coming in with myopia than ever in his 30 years of practicing and he attributes it to kids spending too much time on phones and tablets. edit: Here's an article from nature which compiles some research on th…

I was looking for research to say that is a myth. But from a trusted source: The American Optometric Association: https://www.aoa.org/patients-and-public/eye-and-vision-probl...

Post by lotu » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 10:23 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #148

blotter_paper wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly don't take the medical establishment as infallible, and I can imagine arguing against these recommendations, but FYI the American Association of Pediatricians recommends against allowing a 20mo the sort of screen time necessary to learn ad-skipping through trial and error[0]: >Among the AAP recommendations: >For children younger than 18 months, avoid use of screen media other than video-chatting. Parents…

I appreciate the concern. I'm not going to get into a debate about this, nor do I sense you are trying for one. But my toddler is wildly ahead of his peers in almost every measure (edit: wow this sounds pretentious. Not sure what to say. He spells and assembles words he sees around the house. He just turned 2), so I'll give the facts I observe more weight than the massively simplified single sentence prescription tha…