Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

meta.stackoverflow.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 416 posts

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#401

Post by shostack »

manigandham wrote: post #393
wastedhours wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's just not how digital ad campaigns are run I appreciate you trying to fight the argument that's being made, and you have a background for a valid opinion people are dismissing. That being said, I'm on the buying end and work a lot of different channels, and would argue that there are definitely direct buy models that SO could utilise. Lots of smaller sites have started offering direct buy inventory in larger…

I'm curious how you're buying these packages? Is this traded directly with the site instead of a DSP? Also it seems like you're in the UK, is that right? Aren't the privacy laws having a major effect on the programmatic market there? I covered it in other comments but yes, SO could start their own self-serve ads like Reddit (since they both use adzerk). The problem with that ends up being lower quality ads and the in…

In your opinion, what are the main factors or thresholds (impression volume, RPM, etc) where a self-serve solution starts to make sense for a publisher? Ie. what framework would you use to determine viability?

Separately, in your opinion, what sort of stack should a publisher consider if they want to be privacy-friendly? Obviously if certain values are left out of the bid request, fill RPMs will suffer, but that may be acceptable for some publishers as the cost of striking a better balance between privacy and ad revenue.

I realize there's a lot to unpack, but feel free to get technical with me, I'm on both the buy and sell side.

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#402

Post by pushpop »

manigandham wrote: post #391
luckylion wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment was referencing the parent: Digital ad impressions number in the billions with 10s of millions of ad creatives

I wrote both comments. There are billions of impressions but a single creative is not seen by that many. The point is that the scale is too large to validate on the publisher side.

It seems to me there are two solutions to this problem:

* remove the ability for 3rd parties to abuse their automatic powers (ie disable their ability to inject JavaScript)

* or have a human manually vet every creative

The problem here is you neither want to control their access nor take responsibility for monitoring their access. So the blame equally lies with yourselves for not managing an easily exploitable vector of attack.

If this were any other system, eg VPN, security professionals would tear you a new asshole and point out just how irresponsible your lack of management is.

You’re only excuse here is greed and frankly I’m disgusted.

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#403

Post by manigandham »

rhizome wrote: post #396
manigandham wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be the reddit example, just low overall demand for something like that. They could try it, but probably already did the analysis to see its not worth it.

I don't think demand would stay low if other sites started doing the same thing. Companies basically have to advertise, and they'll buy time with whatever outlet serves the eyes they want to reach. Ford Motors isn't gonna let MyPillow.com take over ESPN.com on Super Bowl day just because they don't like the advertising provider, method, or architecture.

You're right, but it's impossible to overstate how uncooperative publishers are. They refuse to work with each other and every major publisher-run ad exchange has failed. Maybe privacy and data regulations will finally push them to change.

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#404

Post by pushpop »

manigandham wrote: post #197
mikeash wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason it’s not the same situation is because they’re willing to throw their users under the bus for a little extra cash. If they wanted to exert more control, they absolutely could. Ads would cost more and we’d see fewer distinct ads as a result.

That is absolutely not the only reason. Digital ads work entirely different from the TV medium and its more than "a little extra cash". No single publisher today really has the power to change much, no matter how big they are. The issue likes with adtech (like Google) and advertisers.

Yet adverts on porn sites do operate as per our wish list:

* adverts are vetted by a human

* adverts are not allowed to inject JavaScript.

There have been a few interesting blog posts from businesses outside of the adult entertainment industry where they discuss just how work is involved in getting an advert approved on adult sites.

It’s a sad state of affairs when an adblocker is less required on porn sites than it is on Stack Overflow.

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#405

Post by johnchristopher »

DJHenk wrote: post #309
craftinator wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be adults here. This is SO, and I imagine you've used and enjoyed the use of their services just like the rest of us. Support them by letting passive ads sit on the edges of the page, and appreciate that they are actually trying to solve this issue.

> Let's be adults here. This is SO, and I imagine you've used and enjoyed the use of their services just like the rest of us. Support them by letting passive ads sit on the edges of the page If we're adults, lets also acknowledge that this relationship between me and SO is not really symmetrical and that forcing me as a user to accept privacy invading ads has a hint of blackmail in it. This is not about supporting th…

> If they would introduce a paid service that lets me have the exact same site, but without ads, I would sign up in a second.

And then do that and then suddenly users think it's not worth the money for reason X and they tank. It has happened many times before and few companies can pull that off when their products were established as free.

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#406

Post by wastedhours »

manigandham wrote: post #393
wastedhours wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's just not how digital ad campaigns are run I appreciate you trying to fight the argument that's being made, and you have a background for a valid opinion people are dismissing. That being said, I'm on the buying end and work a lot of different channels, and would argue that there are definitely direct buy models that SO could utilise. Lots of smaller sites have started offering direct buy inventory in larger…

I'm curious how you're buying these packages? Is this traded directly with the site instead of a DSP? Also it seems like you're in the UK, is that right? Aren't the privacy laws having a major effect on the programmatic market there? I covered it in other comments but yes, SO could start their own self-serve ads like Reddit (since they both use adzerk). The problem with that ends up being lower quality ads and the in…

> Is this traded directly with the site instead of a DSP?

Yep, direct buy with the site, I'm in a niche with a lot of sector specific media - some mix it with other inventory (so I guess serving it as bespoke through a standard DSP), and some only have direct bought. We also buy a lot through standard platforms too for reach and retargeting, but I've noted a marked increase in the last year-18months of sites offering it directly (often at competitive rates).

> Also it seems like you're in the UK, is that right? Aren't the privacy laws having a major effect on the programmatic market there?

Not massively to be fair, the market has just consolidated a bit more - so large scale buys are going more and more through Google (as the industry trusts them to either know their stuff or pay the fines if they get caught). Perhaps the rise of sites offering it is as a result, thinking they can offer a more privacy conscious option, but my assumption is that they're just trying to offer a more niche offering with closer alignment between content and ads (and trying to slowly push CPMs up - which is somewhat fair, my CTRs are higher on direct bought vs prospecting ads).

> SO could start their own self-serve ads

I think that's why other commenters have been getting agro, the fact is they could do it, and they have some very useful 1st party data to make it quite a compelling offering, but they're relying on all our old tools. I'd like to see them get the revenue in and then build it out.

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#407

Post by nerdponx »

ammar2 wrote: post #397
DCoder wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the post I linked to, the TV in a similar situation was happily connecting to someone else's (open) WiFi network nearby. You can't really block those…

Let it connect to your network and then black-hole it? But that's assuming it doesn't try to connect elsewhere if it detects it doesn't have internet.

And this safely outside the scope of what most people know how to do with their routers.

Imagine having to take countermeasures like this to prevent things you've purchased from spying on you!

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#408

Post by sfink »

rkagerer wrote: post #45
rkagerer wrote: post #44

TLDR: A case of invasive fingerprinting triggered by a Microsoft ad delivered by Google.

Are all fingerprinting techniques used in the wild pretty generally well-known? Do any browsers have an option to blindly return a standard set of values regardless of actual client capabilities/metrics? (i.e. make it difficult to achieve more granular results than browser agent). I know Mozilla made an anti-fingerprinting announcement recently but IIRC all it does is check scripts against a blacklist: https://blog.m…

There's an option in Firefox, yes. privacy.resistFingerprinting or something, you can search for it. It tends to break a number of sites, iiuc.

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#409

Post by zeta0134 »

DCoder wrote: post #280
zeta0134 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Vizio's built-in software tries to do that. There's a reason it's not allowed to connect to wifi.

When you say "it's not allowed", do you trust its own settings? Are you sure it's not doing something like [0]? How do you even protect against that? [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/bpr6xs/if_you_choo...

I bought a new wifi router and never told the Vizio the new credentials. If it manages to somehow figure out how to log onto the new router, and transmit the data about how I don't own cable service and mostly use it to play retro games? I'm going to be kindof impressed really; at that point, Vizio can have the data.

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#410

Post by caconym_ »

luckylion wrote: post #306
caconym_ wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, I'm the opposite way. I don't care about seeing ads—it seems only fair, if I'm reading a site without paying for it. Unfortunately the water hole has been poisoned, so now I have to block it all.

It really depends on the ads, I believe. You can't actually read that page when the ad people go all out. There will be a video playing in the background of the page, there will be animations in content and they will throw in a pop over saying if you really, really, really don't want to save $10.

Yeah, that is a good point. I guess I have unconsciously written off a certain class of website as simply unusable...
Post reply on HN