Why I Work on Ads • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#321

Post by ericmay » Thu, May 06, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

gundmc wrote: post #301

ericmay wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The traditional way of doing this is to buy ads on fishing sites. Before digital advertising or Google reading emails to find out you're going on a fishing trip, how did people buy fishing equipment? Whatever we did then, we can probably go back to and be much better off. Like why do I need "relevant ads" on a blog about urban planning? What problem does that solve for me?

Google doesn't read emails for ad targeting.

Is this a new policy? As far as I know Google employs algorithms and bots of different sorts to read emails to identify topics and then use it for ad targeting.

I.e if I send you an email talking about finding a vacation deal to go to Egypt, we will get ads to that effect (obviously it'll vary somewhat).

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#322

Post by aflag » Thu, May 06, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

jefftk wrote: post #187

dooglius wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most friction-free Maybe it's personal taste, but signing into an account is much more pleasant for me than watching an ad. As for the monetary cost, it only takes one ad per year that works on you to lose as much money anyway. > Advertising should be open and transparent. If business of ads are truthful Ads are not truthful because they are highly incentivized to lie > I will sometimes pay to see ads. E.g. I pay $…

> it only takes one ad per year that works on you to lose as much money anyway Only if you regret the purchase, no? For example, I subscribed to CBS (now Paramount+) because I saw ads for a show I was interested in watching (Picard). (I realize lots of advertising does not follow this model)

In my experience, I always come to regret anything I ever bought from ads. To the point that now I use an adblocker. For people who are unaffected by ads, it's just a minor annoyance. For people who actually affected by ads, I'd say it's a net negative, not a net positive for their lives.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#323

Post by austincheney » Thu, May 06, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

omginternets wrote: post #13

I'm always surprised that someone would go through the trouble of justifying their involvement in something prima facie unethical -- in writing, no less -- and fail to address the actual ethical issue. As other have noted in comments, the problem is not with advertising in general, but with the specific way in which Google advertises. I have a hard time believing the author is unaware of this, so I'm left wondering:…

Exactly. The greatest problem with ads isn’t the horrible code or even the resource consuming stalking. Those are just symptoms of something long decayed and separated from reality.

The biggest problem is that you are shipping and forcing something users, in most cases, don’t want. It’s like pornography and illicit drugs in that yes eventually there are some beneficial edge case side effects, but almost universally it is bad. In order to increase market penetration you must become more bad and simultaneously sell it as a positive.

This isn’t a universal truth. Users are willing to accept advertising as a payment in exchange for media or something similar. This isn’t evil so long as it isn’t violating privacy, is immediately apparent without deception, and is voluntarily accepted by the audience.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#324

Post by Aunche » Thu, May 06, 2021, 4:50 PM UTC

omginternets wrote: post #41

jasode wrote: post #29

The author jefftk is getting unfairly downvoted maybe because cynics just see it as a version of, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." I will offer a contrarian opinion as a user whose salary does not depend on advertising: the advertising model for using Google search and watching Youtube videos works better for me as a consumer . The alternati…

>The author jefftk is getting unfairly downvoted maybe because cynics just see it as a version of, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." I don't think that's why people are downvoting. Speaking for myself, it's because his analysis focuses only on the benefits of ads, and conveniently ignores the actual ethical problems ( e.g. large-scale collect…

>Speaking for myself, it's because his analysis focuses only on the benefits of ads, and conveniently ignores the actual ethical problems (e.g. large-scale collection of personal information).

Most people have no issue with the collection of personal information in itself. They only start caring when others start to make money off of it. If Google completely got rid of ads as a revenue source and still made the exact same services for free, they would still collect nearly as much sensitive data (e.g. location tracking for better routing). However, a lot fewer people would care. Privacy activists would still exist, but I doubt that regular people bother to listen to them.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#325

Post by anoncake » Thu, May 06, 2021, 4:50 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #29

The author jefftk is getting unfairly downvoted maybe because cynics just see it as a version of, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." I will offer a contrarian opinion as a user whose salary does not depend on advertising: the advertising model for using Google search and watching Youtube videos works better for me as a consumer . The alternati…

Where does the money you seemingly save come from? You pay for them whenever you buy something that was advertised. If Google Search was $10/month, the average Google user would save about that much spread across all the products they buy.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#326

Post by 8ytecoder » Thu, May 06, 2021, 4:50 PM UTC

omginternets wrote: post #41

jasode wrote: post #29

The author jefftk is getting unfairly downvoted maybe because cynics just see it as a version of, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." I will offer a contrarian opinion as a user whose salary does not depend on advertising: the advertising model for using Google search and watching Youtube videos works better for me as a consumer . The alternati…

>The author jefftk is getting unfairly downvoted maybe because cynics just see it as a version of, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." I don't think that's why people are downvoting. Speaking for myself, it's because his analysis focuses only on the benefits of ads, and conveniently ignores the actual ethical problems ( e.g. large-scale collect…

Evolution has bestowed on us the great gift of Cognitive Dissonance. When I look at what I do on a day-to-day basis, there are probably a hundred things that don't align with my own internal belief system. The only way I don't go mad is to find plausible justifications for what I do.

I work in a different industry with its own issues and impacts on the society and the environment. I try not to think about it and even look at the positive things to gloss over the bad impact.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#327

Post by the_snooze » Thu, May 06, 2021, 4:51 PM UTC

hiq wrote: post #289

fxleach wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that you cannot have good online advertising without a little bit of the stalking. Do you listen to podcasts? Their ads are shite. I don't want to hear another ad about "Coroner" on Netflix. The only reason they are making money is because podcasts are "hot" right now and everyone is throwing money at them. That money pile will slowly deplete in due time and they'll find a way to introduce ads that are m…

> The issue is that you cannot have good online advertising without a little bit of the stalking. The usual answer to this is to use the context rather than personal information and browsing history. You bring less value to the company advertising their product, but I'd argue that most people are fine with this approach. The problem is that current incentives lead to a race to the bottom: if some advertisers are less…

I hate to be cynical, but I think the reason why online advertisers keep harping on about the "benefits" of personalized ads is that it justifies their existence. They can keep trying to sell whiz-bang audience profiling and attribution technology, even if it doesn't work all that well.

Contextual advertising, on the other hand, is simple. It shifts the focus away from technology and toward people: recognizing your audience and crafting a message to them, instead of trying to have a computer do it for you. It's old-fashioned marketing.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#328

Post by djoldman » Thu, May 06, 2021, 4:51 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #291

mbesto wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> designed to convince you to do things you wouldn't normally do. When I search "good USB charger" in Google and get an ad, click the ad and make a purchase for a USB charger, how was that nothing something I normally would do? There's absolutely deceptive advertising, but to pretend all advertising is "intrusive" and "convincing you to do things you wouldn't normally do" is disingenuous.

How much toothpaste do you use on your toothbrush? Something the size of a pea, or the whole length of your toothbrush? 'Cause all you need is the first, but most people do the second. Why? Ads. Why do people have such a great impression of John Deere tractors? To the point where there's a whole culture of "green iron" and other companies had huge trouble breaking into the market? Ads. Ads going back to childhood in…

If a company has a service or product they want to sell and no one knows about it, no one will purchase it.

The minimum advertisement is essentially: "we sell ____."

I guess that could be called manipulative but without it, I'm not sure the economy could exist.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#329

Post by lordnacho » Thu, May 06, 2021, 4:51 PM UTC

omginternets wrote: post #41

jasode wrote: post #29

The author jefftk is getting unfairly downvoted maybe because cynics just see it as a version of, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." I will offer a contrarian opinion as a user whose salary does not depend on advertising: the advertising model for using Google search and watching Youtube videos works better for me as a consumer . The alternati…

>The author jefftk is getting unfairly downvoted maybe because cynics just see it as a version of, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." I don't think that's why people are downvoting. Speaking for myself, it's because his analysis focuses only on the benefits of ads, and conveniently ignores the actual ethical problems ( e.g. large-scale collect…

I think it's harsh to call it a bad faith argument. Say you were having a conversation with jefftk, and he makes the points in the article. Wouldn't you just say they're the start of a conversation, with room to move? Also, do you normally downvote articles that don't have a fresh perspective? There's not that many things new under the sun.

Anyway one thing I haven't seen mentioned yet about ads is that it encourages the unrestrained growth of ad space itself. There are just a billion articles on the internet written for the sole purpose of grabbing your attention and selling it. A lot of these sites have no real value, one of each ("How do I do X") on the internet would be more than enough. A lot of them ought to just be headlines that I can skip ("Man Utd interested in a teenager" would in the old days just say the guy's name).

The real argument against the article is that the calculus of paywall vs ads is not quite as straightforward as proposed. Either mode of operation has reflexive influence on what the internet looks like, and that's maybe where to dig deeper for an argument. How do the different options encourage different interests to behave?

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#330

Post by cm2012 » Thu, May 06, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC

burkaman wrote: post #302

cm2012 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never seen any evidence of anyone hurt by the large scale collection of personal data by Google and FB.

This is because you've never looked for the evidence. It is trivial to find with a 10 second search. https://www.intomore.com/you/facebook-ads-outed-me/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2018/12/12/dear-tec... https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/4/9/21204425/targeted-ads... https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-lets-advertisers... , https://www.propublica.org/article/hud-sues-facebook-housing... , https:/…

The first link is not a credible worry. Ad targeting is not even close to 100% accurate, no ad can out you. You can just brush it off.

Links 2 and 3 are concerning. The FB and Google do have a way to stop that though - you can click an ad and say it doesn't interest you or you don't like it, that signal is insanely strong and the platforms will turn off the spigot.

The rest is not actual harm to people, its people concerned about the idea of targeting being harmful. Cambridge Analytica was a laughable scandal btw, absolutely no one was actually impacted by it.