What Happens Next Will Amaze You • Hacker News Board

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#251

Post by logfromblammo » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 7:15 PM UTC

PavlovsCat wrote: post #150

vlehto wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How about ending hunger worldwide? It's mostly a distribution problem nowadays. It's also incentives problem if you are not all in communist. If you simply send food from Europe to Africa, it disincentives food production in Africa. Which causes unemployment and hinders economic growth with it. And it also causes huge security of supply problem and might cause starvation if something happens to the shipping. My best…

> If you simply send food from Europe to Africa, it disincentives food production in Africa. That's already happening. http://www.ipsnews.net/2007/06/africa-food-for-12-billion-so... > Jean Ziegler, U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, alerted the more than 500 delegates that while 854 million people went without food in the world last year, enough food was produced to feed 12 billion people. "This is why a…

And there you finally get to the heart of it. African farmers cannot invest in capital improvements upon farmland and farming equipment because they cannot be certain they will be able to recoup that investment with greater productivity over time.

If you build a farm that is as productive as a European farm, you are still only one coup, rebellion, election, criminal-at-large, or corrupted official away from losing it. I don't know what the best solutions to that may be, because I'm not African, and therefore lack the necessary cultural knowledge to do anything productive. Anything I might suggest would be flawed by my expectations that Africans will behave somewhat like Americans.

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#252

Post by Kalium » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 7:16 PM UTC

pconner wrote: post #219

osmode wrote: post #172

I'm so glad someone finally has courage to comment so poignantly on what San Francisco has become. This sentence will stay with me: "But we expect that people will trust us to reinvent their world with software even though we can't make our own city livable"

SF is pretty culturally hostile to outsiders. Maybe if more residents felt like it was "their" city, rather than just the place they live, they would feel a greater sense of responsibility to improve it. This problem probably affects most cities with a large transplant population.

It's very difficult to feel that a city is "yours" when you are constantly attacked for the gall of trying to do so.

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#253

Post by dclowd9901 » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 7:19 PM UTC

krisdol wrote: post #89

mozumder wrote: post #2

The correct answer is to never use programmatic ads. Ever. If you own a site, just curate a set of ads on your site that actually enhances your sites appeal. A fashion site should have matching fashion ads. A tech site should have matching tech ads. A local site should have matching local ads. Reach out to advertisers to get these ads. Never use an algorithm. You, as an editor, should be better than the algorithms. A…

Intent-driven ads are far more relevant to a site's audience than hand-picked, static ones. They have much higher CTR and conversion rates, when done right. You're asking sites to remove sources of income that people find relevant in exchange for ads that some higher up in marketing thinks relates to its users. Not all publishers subscribe to the low quality Google AdExchange. In fact, they typically have a variety o…

Podcasts do this very thing and it's lucrative enough for the lot of them to stay afloat while providing great content. The only thing I'd say sucks about it is the price for curated ads are probably prohibitively high compared to highly targeted, algorithmically picked ones.

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#254

Post by phaer » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 7:23 PM UTC

shadowmint wrote: post #67

phaer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We should just spend that money on like... I dunno. Better park benches or something. That'll solve everything. How about ending hunger worldwide? It's mostly a distribution problem nowadays. Or what about providing things like sanitation, electricity or some form of education for each and everyone on this planet? I guess what I want to say is that there are much, much more elemental things to spend your money on t…

how? That's the issue here. Don't just complain. Actually suggest, tangibly, how to achieve that goal. Installing ad blocks isn't it. A free internet; also not the solution. Redistributing wealth? Ok; that's an idea, but how ? The Gates Foundation has spent billions , and achieved a great deal, but it's not visible for most people. If someone tells me they're sick of people like Elon Musk, who is out there, actually…

> Armchair social commentary doesn't cut it for me.

If you'd consider to argue a bit less aggressive and just a but more nuanced, I would in turn consider a serious answer to your arguments. As it stands I am one of the people who can "categorically get lost" for you. Not because I criticize people who are changing the world, but the priorities of some of those people and social structures which ensure that mostly white, western men are in the position to change the world.

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#255

Post by nemothekid » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 7:27 PM UTC

j2kun wrote: post #218

krisdol wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intent-driven ads are far more relevant to a site's audience than hand-picked, static ones. They have much higher CTR and conversion rates, when done right. You're asking sites to remove sources of income that people find relevant in exchange for ads that some higher up in marketing thinks relates to its users. Not all publishers subscribe to the low quality Google AdExchange. In fact, they typically have a variety o…

Does this become less true the more niche the website is? People who read my math blog should be served ads for technical things (math books, online courses, etc), regardless of recent search history. In reality, I have a math blog with ads for Cap'n Crunch cereal and strange new yogurts which seem very distracting and poorly-targeted when compared to, say, ads for O'Reilly math/CS books or a MOOC on probability and…

>I have a math blog with ads for Cap'n Crunch cereal and strange new yogurts

Seems like to me the algorithm gods decided that your site was better suited to advertise to parents of toddlers.

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#256

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 7:34 PM UTC

tertius wrote: post #201

wcummings wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>excess income I don't think this a problem most small publishers have.

They need to realize that eventually the market will drive their users elsewhere. Content is king and there is more content elsewhere. If you provide a worse user experience with the same content as another, then income will dwindle altogether. Innovate, move forward.

[deleted]

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#257

Post by kbenson » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 7:36 PM UTC

JacobJans wrote: post #217

> I don't believe there's a technology bubble, but there is absolutely an advertising bubble. When it bursts, companies are going to be more desperate and will unload all the personal data they have on us to absolutely any willing buyer. And then we'll see if all these dire warnings about the dangers of surveillance were right. If you read this paragraph critically, it is easy to find the problem with the argument in…

I agree. In general, I found this presentation to ramble far more and make weird connections than some of his other ones, which I remember liking. Presentations and talks such as Web Design: The first 100 years[1] (even if it was a while back and I don't remember it all that clearly), and Barely succeed! It's easier![2] (which I saw within the last couple of days) are quite good (if memory serves).

1: http://idlewords.com/talks/web_design_first_100_years.htm

2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Vt8zqhHe_c

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#258

Post by wcummings » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 7:36 PM UTC

tertius wrote: post #201

wcummings wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>excess income I don't think this a problem most small publishers have.

They need to realize that eventually the market will drive their users elsewhere. Content is king and there is more content elsewhere. If you provide a worse user experience with the same content as another, then income will dwindle altogether. Innovate, move forward.

If you have an interest in the 3rd party web, you should have an interest in a functional ad technology industry. The market might just drive small publishers out of business. Or drive them and their customers to walled-gardens, so we'll be reading their content on Facebook, being served Facebook ads.

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#259

Post by nemothekid » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 7:37 PM UTC

idlewords wrote: post #133

kasey_junk wrote: post #124

Let me start by saying I love idlewords writing and largely agree with his proposed rules (even if he did demonize something like 1/3 of my working life with 1 sentence). > Ban on Third-Party Ad Tracking My experience in finance makes me skeptical that this will play out the way that he hopes. Most of the financial regulation in the world started with laws "average people can understand". Things like Banks should hav…

I think this is a very trenchant criticism of what I said, and I appreciate you not taking offense at me! For a) I imagine data sharing is fine, except that you can't share behavioral data about users, and you can't use any of the shared data for advertising. That said, I know very little about how publisher networks work and would appreciate pushback. b) is unfortunately quite right. If you're sufficiently pessimist…

I think we are already seeing a shift to b.), one that is only being exacerbated by ad-blocking (on mobile) - and it makes me think about what will come of the "open" web.

I have no insider knowledge, but I'm starting to think Apple is placing a huge bet on the fact that ad-blocking will 1.) eventually make the web unprofitable then 2.) shepherd users onto platforms like iOS and Facebook where they can be monetized better. This, to me, is starting as an experiment with Apple Music vs Spotify (ad enabled) to test whether their platform has enough clout to get people to pay $9.99 for their platform and is now eventually moving to News where Apple is now starting with exclusive news but may move to a pay model where you also pay $9.99 for news.

If this model "works", you may see sites move inside Apple's wall garden in order to keep the lights on, and create a barrier for new sites to ever build up an audience without relying on Apple's/Facebook's walled garden.

All this stems from the fact of my fear that while everyone seems to be gung-ho about the proliferation of ad-blockers, no one, except Apple (Music, News for now) and Facebook (News), is providing any real alternative solutions to publishers for a source of revenue.

Re: What Happens Next Will Amaze You

#260

Post by mozumder » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 8:00 PM UTC

krisdol wrote: post #89

mozumder wrote: post #2

The correct answer is to never use programmatic ads. Ever. If you own a site, just curate a set of ads on your site that actually enhances your sites appeal. A fashion site should have matching fashion ads. A tech site should have matching tech ads. A local site should have matching local ads. Reach out to advertisers to get these ads. Never use an algorithm. You, as an editor, should be better than the algorithms. A…

Intent-driven ads are far more relevant to a site's audience than hand-picked, static ones. They have much higher CTR and conversion rates, when done right. You're asking sites to remove sources of income that people find relevant in exchange for ads that some higher up in marketing thinks relates to its users. Not all publishers subscribe to the low quality Google AdExchange. In fact, they typically have a variety o…

> Intent-driven ads are far more relevant to a site's audience than hand-picked, static ones. They have much higher CTR and conversion rates, when done right.

Not in my experience. My hand-picked ads are alway at a higher CTR than programmatic. Intent-driven programmatic gives me a 2x CTR over random static ads. Hand tuned gives me about 10x more CTR.

You may be able to optimize down a set of hand-picked ads programmatically, but you still need that manual curation in the process.

More important is losing your audience to a bad user experience via programmatic ads when they visit your site.

Also, I'm pretty sure Vogue or the advertisers use DoubleClick as just the ad hosting network for analytic purposes. They are likely sold on a display basis in Vogue.