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Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

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Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#331

Post by JohnBooty »

keyle wrote: post #145
dabeeeenster wrote: post #76

"It's not very straightforward to find where it's coming from, but we are working on it." This encapsulates the entire problem with the current state of digital advertising in 1 simple sentence.

But you know, we wouldn't stop serving ads until we work it out... no no imagine the loss in revenues.

They have to pay a bunch of engineers and pay for a bunch of servers to keep things running.

And they certainly do contribute a massive amount of value to our community -- and as far as I can tell, they've always tried their very best to be good folks.

I'm not going to tell you how to think, but they have built up a lot of trust and goodwill in my book over the past decade.

I believe them when they say they'll work hard to do the right thing.

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#332

Post by akavel »

rsj_hn wrote: post #132
ndiscussion wrote: post #111

How We Make Money at Stack Overflow: 2016 Edition: Quality ads. "...we don’t want to use an automated system that selects some ads for us. We looked at this. It didn’t allow us the control we required to maintain the level of quality we want to maintain." How We Make Money at Stack Overflow: 2019 Edition: Taking money from Microsoft and Google fingerprinting our users 100+ ways source: https://stackoverflow.blog/2016…

Your options, as I see them. 1. Text based ads only (no third party js) 2. HTML based ads but no js (run it through DOMPurify https://github.com/cure53/DOMPurify ) 3. Look for a js sandbox -- this _will_ break arbitrary js, will not be supported in all browsers, and will require dev work on your side: * Google Caja https://github.com/google/caja * MentalJS https://github.com/hackvertor/MentalJS other options are avai…

4. Images! Why would they need anything else? Why would they need JS?

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#334

Post by adtac »

akavel wrote: post #332
rsj_hn wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your options, as I see them. 1. Text based ads only (no third party js) 2. HTML based ads but no js (run it through DOMPurify https://github.com/cure53/DOMPurify ) 3. Look for a js sandbox -- this _will_ break arbitrary js, will not be supported in all browsers, and will require dev work on your side: * Google Caja https://github.com/google/caja * MentalJS https://github.com/hackvertor/MentalJS other options are avai…

4. Images! Why would they need anything else? Why would they need JS?

Images are much heavier than text (and let's face it, most of advertisement is just words). But these days, JavaScript is heavier than millions of colour pixels, so maybe images are better :)

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#335

Post by z3t4 »

cameronbrown wrote: post #215
z3t4 wrote: post #172

I guess it's part of Googles Ads's endless battle against "robot" clicks. A site as big as SO should not use Google ads, but instead use their own ad service. Just make an automated system where people can signup and show an ad. Make it cost 1$ per 100 page views. That would probably earn SO two orders of magnitude more then they get from Google Ads.

> $1 per 100 page views Eh, that's like 10x average CPM nowadays. And advertisers usually are paying per click, not impression.

As an advertiser, yes, but on Google Ads you know that 90% of those will be fake ¹. And as a publisher on Google Ads you only get something like 1$ per 10000 impression ². Advertising directly on SO you know all views are not only legit, but also target at developers, so I think advertisers are willing to pay more. While most advertisers are paying per click, the whales only care about impressions, not clicks (TV commercials).

1) Measured by analyzing the traffic I got from Google Ads 2) That's what I get from Google ads as a publisher, but you used to get a lot more in the epoch, like $5-10 CPM

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#336

Post by GenghisSean »

huac wrote: post #299
zrobotics wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who paid for the content I actually visit StackOverflow for? It surely wasn't SO; they provide a nice platform but they also get that content for free. This isn't a journalism site, the value in SO comes from freely provided user answers. Yes, SO provides some value vs. forums via their q/a platform, but it is a marginal amount of value. Sure, SO is easier than parsing a forum thread, but the actual value that I care…

"it wasn't as convenient but it worked" - this is the story of every single dead product. Zunes were less convenient than iPods and iPhones. Books are less convenient than Kindles. AltaVista and Yahoo Directories were less convenient than Google.

I would hardly call books a dead product. They even have an advantage over Kindles because they don't track you[0].

[0] https://files.catbox.moe/gxyjfn.png

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#337

Post by lol768 »

It's insane to me the extent to which companies will go in order to prevent cross-site scripting attacks.. and yet they're perfectly happy to include unvetted, potentially malicious JavaScript on the same origin in the form of ads.

There is no reason these ads should be anything other than a linked image.

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#338

Post by mikro2nd »

BonesJustice wrote: post #35
yoz-y wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The tech crowd is using adblockers to prevent spying and resource consumption. But majority of people running adblockers just don't want to see ads.

In most cases, I don’t think it’s ads as concept that’s the problem. If websites only had static ads in the sidebar, I question how many people would bother with ad blockers. But when ads block content; include flashing animations, audio, and video; and take up more layout space on a site than the actual content; then people have had enough.

No, some of us block ads because we don't want to ever see any ads. Ever. At all.

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#339

Post by lol768 »

m0dest wrote: post #287
coldpie wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you allowing arbitrary javascript to be served to your users?

The solution is in sight. It's called Feature Policy. https://feature-policy-demos.appspot.com/ https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/06/feature-po...

This is not a solution. JS still runs, it just has limited access to certain features.

You also need to somehow the ad content (and serve it from somewhere else with the feature policy header set/attribute on the iframe set) or else sacrifice use of these features on your own site.

The solution is to make the ads inert. They do not need to run code.

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#340

Post by lol768 »

adtac wrote: post #334
akavel wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4. Images! Why would they need anything else? Why would they need JS?

Images are much heavier than text (and let's face it, most of advertisement is just words). But these days, JavaScript is heavier than millions of colour pixels, so maybe images are better :)

Is there any reason they couldn't be vector SVGs?
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