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“Your frustration is the product”

daringfireball.net

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Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#191

Post by browningstreet »

jes5199 wrote: post #77

I used to work at a startup that was trying to replace ads as the funding source for news (we failed, obviously) but the crazy thing we discovered is that the people who run news websites mostly don’t know where their ads are coming from, have forgotten how the ad system was installed in the first place, and cannot turn them off if they try we actually shipped a server-side ad blocker, for a parter who had so complet…

I had a site with some traffic and a popular, class-leading ad plugin for the platform.

At some point I just lost interest in the whole thing and cancelled my plugin subscription.

I got an email from the developer, which was kind enough, asking me why I was cancelling and if there was any feedback I wanted to share.

I mentioned how complicated ad inventory, ad placement, and online ordering for hands-off customer self-service was.

His question back was, "What's hard about it?"

I couldn't even muster a reply.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#192

Post by mikestew »

latexr wrote: post #185
MyHonestOpinon wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been waiting for "Netflix for news or magazines". Pay $20 a month and get access to multiple publishers.

Isn’t that Apple News+? Cheaper than $20, too. Alternatively, Libby is free (and yes, legal, though not available everywhere).

Isn’t that Apple News+?

You would be correct, but...and I say this as a subscriber to Apple's "all-in-one" package...Apple News+ is in many ways garbage. Low-rent articles from publications whose time has long passed (looking at you, Popular Mechanics), with Taboola-grade ads interspersed (as Gruber said recently, how many 30-something blonde women need hearing aids?).

That said, stay away from the front page and go straight to your selected publications, and it's a good deal with access to WSJ, LA Times, and what have you. You still get crappy ads (which I can't seem to find a way to block with PiHole), but the content is there. For all my bitching, I'd still recommend it.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#194

Post by pcl »

It’s ironic seeing Gruber gripe about screen percentages used when his own website dedicates only about 50% of the screen width (on mobile) to content, and leaves the other half blank. Not to mention the light-grey-on-dark-grey and the tiny font.

Just as I need an ad blocker to browse the modern web, I need Reader mode to read Gruber’s rant about it.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#196

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

tagami wrote: post #68
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So exactly when was this? Even Geocities was full of punch the monkey ads and the web was inundated with X10 pop under ads. Right before the web became a thing, Usenet was starting to become inundated with spam

Pre-1995

It was 96/97. I remember thinking "The drones are moving in on this."

Canter and Siegel had nuked Usenet in 1994, and banners were invented in 1994 by Hotwired. But it took a while for the tech to eat the web, because the web was a niche interest for the first few years.

During that time you could - and a lot of people did - put together a simple site with a text editor and free hosting supplied by your ISP.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#197

Post by Rebelgecko »

everdrive wrote: post #11

"I went to the New York Times to glimpse at four headlines and was greeted with 422 network requests and 49 megabytes of data." Not really the point of the article, but almost all major news sites are significantly better if you block javascript. You sometimes lose pictures and just get text, but often the pictures are irrelevant anyhow. (a story about a world leader, and some public / stock photo is used and is not…

NYT usually blocks me from reading articles when I block JS

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#198

Post by mikestew »

mhitza wrote: post #10

I was surprised at the claim that The Guardian leaves very little room for the article. Sure enough, I loaded it up in a private window with adblocks disabled and the above the fold was very obnoxious. Which is very surprising to me. I only read The Guardian within the Tor browser, and when the website is loaded over their onion urls I do not see the same large obnoxious ads. A rare Tor win? Maybe adnetworks block To…

I was surprised at the claim that The Guardian leaves very little room for the article.

I loaded up a Guardian article this morning on my new 14" MBP, only to find out that there was so much crap on the page I couldn't even see the full headline without using Safari's "hide shit" feature.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#199

Post by girvo »

latexr wrote: post #185
MyHonestOpinon wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been waiting for "Netflix for news or magazines". Pay $20 a month and get access to multiple publishers.

Isn’t that Apple News+? Cheaper than $20, too. Alternatively, Libby is free (and yes, legal, though not available everywhere).

I pay for Apple One and yet the apple news app on my phone is still riddled with ads with weird AI generated people and horrible articles from crappy publishers pushing some other sensationalist garbage.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#200

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

alex_smart wrote: post #81

> No print publication on the planet does this At least in India, most popular newspapers actually do this nowadays. Several full page ads including on the front page have become the norm. It is mostly a function of how little the reader is willing to pay for content. When the price point is too low (which for online content is too low), publishers make their money by other means. It is not rocket science.

A lot of print publications used to do it, and many still do.

Print magazines make most of their money from ad sales, not subscriptions. A typical ratio is 60:40 ads vs editorial. Magazines like Vogue go >70% ads, and I'm fairly sure old issues of Byte and other computer magazines were in that ballpark.

The difference in print is that the ads are targeted, and even welcome. Many of the ads in old computer magazines were price lists and mini-brochures, and pre-web that was the only way to get that information to customers.

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