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AT&T confirms it is buying ad platform AppNexus reportedly for between $1.6B-$2B

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Re: AT&T confirms it is buying ad platform AppNexus reportedly for between $1.6B-$2B

#31

Post by pavel_lishin »

coastal-fiesta wrote: post #26
asafira wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extra props for including "old." there.

Why the dislike of the new interface?

Personally:

1. Clicking on a link now takes you to the comments page, instead of the destination. To get to the destination, you need to hunt down the "direct" link. This is a shitty pattern.

2. The spacing is all weird. I just don't like the design aestheticially. But it might just be "it's different and therefore bad".

3. A lot of features aren't yet implemented on the new platform. (Crossposting, at least.)

4. Some content that I want available immediately (my multis) are loaded asynchronously, forcing me to wait before I can actually go to where I want.

5. Infinite scroll can fuck off and die in a fire. It's less of an issue on reddit, where bookmarking a given page doesn't really make sense anyway, but in principle I want my content paginated so I can have a sense of how much I've seen so far.

6. Collapsing threads is now slightly more annoying than it was, although it might be another case of "new and different therefore bad".

Some of these aren't really relevant to a link to a specific thread from outside reddit.

Re: AT&T confirms it is buying ad platform AppNexus reportedly for between $1.6B-$2B

#32

Post by knuththetruth »

coastal-fiesta wrote: post #26
asafira wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extra props for including "old." there.

Why the dislike of the new interface?

If you’re not on mobile, it takes for me like 4 times as long to load a page. And there’s all kinds of dark UI patterns to prevent things like linking away from the site or even searching the site.

Re: AT&T confirms it is buying ad platform AppNexus reportedly for between $1.6B-$2B

#33

Post by hari_seldon_ »

paulsutter wrote: post #20

Big congrats to Brian OKelley and Michael Rubenstein

With IPO rumors existing for at least 4 years and a price under $2B, is this a good exit for the company’s leadership and employees? (Understanding that an exit is better than nothing at all!)

Re: AT&T confirms it is buying ad platform AppNexus reportedly for between $1.6B-$2B

#35

Post by majormajor »

rectang wrote: post #9
tehwebguy wrote: post #4

This is incredibly disturbing, they need not inject a unique ID like Verizon’s, they can now do it all on the backend.

When I went to start streaming the world cup, AT&T took the initiative to "sign me in" to a third party (Fox) without asking for credentials or permission. They know who you are. They know everywhere you go. And they are happy to spread what they know about you around.

When I used AT&T TV+internet a few months ago, this was still the old-style "click here to auth with your cable provider" -> [click the AT&T Uverse button] -> "thanks!" (they recognized I was on a hardwired AT&T connection so didn't require auth).

Is this something new? What was the flow? Do you have both AT&T internet + TV as well?

Re: AT&T confirms it is buying ad platform AppNexus reportedly for between $1.6B-$2B

#36

Post by michaelbuckbee »

coastal-fiesta wrote: post #26
asafira wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extra props for including "old." there.

Why the dislike of the new interface?

It breaks keyboard navigation in some cases that I've been unable to identify why. I think that the new style of loading pages in a div on top of the underlying page sets the focus wrong or something but often pgup/pgdown will not work.

Re: AT&T confirms it is buying ad platform AppNexus reportedly for between $1.6B-$2B

#37

Post by gumby »

JaimeThompson wrote: post #8

And just this morning I received a text from AT&T that said, in part, "Your privacy comes first, as always." I wonder if they are getting their definition of privacy from the same place they get their definition of unlimited?

I think they mean the first thing they target is your privacy.

Re: AT&T confirms it is buying ad platform AppNexus reportedly for between $1.6B-$2B

#39

Post by zkms »

coastal-fiesta wrote: post #26
asafira wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extra props for including "old." there.

Why the dislike of the new interface?

It's a lightbox-infested mess that badly reimplements browser features like "tabs" and "back button" with so much needless JS that my laptop's fan goes to 100% of rated RPM.

Also the design takes up lots of screen real-estate with cutesy useless features.

Compare the traditional UI: http://tinyimg.io/i/nBQo9uw.png

with the ugly lightboxed replacement: http://tinyimg.io/i/rOS8oVI.png

Re: AT&T confirms it is buying ad platform AppNexus reportedly for between $1.6B-$2B

#40

Post by mcny »

charleyma wrote: post #12

Interesting answer to Verizon's acquisition of AOL + Yahoo, until all the recent acquisitions I (naively) just assumed ISP's revenue was primary from selling services (cable, internet, tv, data, etc) and reselling the data somehow, but did not connect that they're all very much in adtech...

I am more surprised to see Oracle in adtech. I assumed ATT would want a piece of the pie when I read about Verizon's supercookies. I think I still fail to grasp the size of the ad tech/marketing industry. I know it is big but I think it is bigger than I can comprehend.
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