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The correct amount of ads is zero

manuelmoreale.com

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Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#481

Post by wat10000 »

adamc wrote: post #466
wat10000 wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of subscription services out there that are ad-free. YouTube does it, I think all the various music streaming services do it, most if not all of the video streaming services have an ad-free tier. Beyond the media realm, my cell phone service doesn’t package ads with my monthly subscription, nor my home internet service. I could go on. What narrow idea of “a media business” must have ads even when you…

Youtube does not do it. You stop seeing youtube's ads, which are obnoxious, but you still see the actual content author's ads.

YouTube shows you what you ask it to show you. The vast majority of content has no ads. You can easily go forever without seeing one.

That’s like saying Verizon has ads because I see ads on the internet.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#482

Post by H1Supreme »

I get the anti-advertisement sentiment, and when it comes to most every flavor of online advertising, I agree. But, once upon a time, ads blended seamlessly with the content. Or, at least had the potential to.

I used to subscribe to XLR8R and Thrasher magazine. The ads were tailored to the content of the magazine (electronic music and skateboarding, respectively). Thus, completely relevant to the interest of the reader.

I'm not sure how folks would emulate that online without heavy curation. But, I can't remember feeling any negativity towards ads while reading those magazines. If anything I was glad to be informed about a new skate video or music release.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#483

Post by kmeisthax »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #23
add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commercials on cable are fully skippable, since the first DVR in 1999. It's streaming that takes that freedom away.

Cable is an example of streaming; that particular freedom hasn't gone anywhere.

On the other hand, streaming (usually) isn't actually streaming, it's progressive download. The thing that stops you skipping the ads is just the fact that they turn off the fast-forward button and enforce that with DRM. Otherwise skipping ads would be trivial.

Cable DVRs have to actually capture and record the signal into a ring buffer, and if it isn't integrated into a cable box[0], it has to come out of one, with a complicated setup of IR blasters to have your DVR tune the cable box to a specific channel. And of course you have to actually pause the video or record it in advance in order to get commercial-skipping capability.

Cable ad skipping is entirely a technical problem, streaming ad skipping is entirely a legal one.

[0] You were supposed to be able to just get a CableCARD, but the cable companies fought tooth and nail to force you to

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#484

Post by Workaccount2 »

Sammi wrote: post #319
XCSme wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How else do you find out about new stuff, or recommendations, or things you never considered before? How do you find out about new movies, concerts, etc.? Most customers don't know themselves that a solution to their problem (which they might not even notice) exists. Manipulative ads are bad, yes. But ads that expand your knowledge of what's available in the world are good in my opinion.

I wanted to know about headphones that have high sound quality yesterday and you know what I did to find out? I googled it. I found out about ChatGPT and became a paying subscriber in january 2023, because it was all over hckrnews, youtube, twitter and tech media in general. New stuff and recommendations are everywhere. They are even a form of entertainment themselves. I watch several tech channels on youtube just to…

No ads needed for you.

Just like you can visit hacker news and see all the stories right there, do they just manifest through out the day? Or is there a group of people trudging through the new stories to pick which ones to elevate?

Having worked on the product side, I can tell you that when you google a product looking for organic reviews, what you are seeing is the sprouts of seeds planted by advertising.

Trust me, try and launch an amazing product with no advertising.

Then do it with a standard set of web ads, wait a few months, and go see the people on reddit talking about your product despite you never doing more than buying standard website/social media ads (not sponsored posts, just regular ads)

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#485

Post by blibble »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #473
blibble wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so that's a 45% cut for Google makes the widely hated app store look generous by comparison

The overhead for something like youtube is insane. There is good reason there is no competitor to it.

there are competitors (dailymotion, vimeo, ...)

they're just not widely used because it's the usual winner take all

people are also going to be queuing up to peer with Google so they don't have to pay for transit

unlikely to be the case for their competitors

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#486

Post by homebrewer »

stuffbyspencer wrote: post #480

I hate that we still are talking about this. Ads suck, and there's already a better way to do things. Micropayments are the answer. Everyone on the internet pays a small monthly fee, say $5/month (ideally this would just be integrated into your internet bill), and every piece of content you view streams tiny amounts of that fee to whatever content you are viewing. The actual amount sent is based on your monthly usage…

It's a very "first world" problem. Maybe it would work in the few rich countries the world has, but as someone who lives in a region with the median monthly income of under $300, I can assure you it would be difficult to extract anything over $0 from most of our population because people don't have money to spend on things that can be obtained for free. Many people I know have literally zero cash by the end of the month after all necessities are taken care of. AFAIU, most of the world's population lives something like that, a bit better here, a bit worse there, but still.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#487

Post by [deleted] »

grishka wrote: post #368
fastball wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using adblocker on YouTube (for example) is a violation of the ToS, which is not an "implicit contract".

It's still kinda implicit because ToS is not legally binding and not enforceable ("by continuing use, you agree blah blah blah" is just someone covering their asses), and because everything you do happens on your own device, not someone else's property. It's more of a suggestion than a law. The most an online service can do for a ToS violation is to ban your account, if you even have one to begin with.

[deleted]

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#488

Post by adamc »

wat10000 wrote: post #481
adamc wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youtube does not do it. You stop seeing youtube's ads, which are obnoxious, but you still see the actual content author's ads.

YouTube shows you what you ask it to show you. The vast majority of content has no ads. You can easily go forever without seeing one. That’s like saying Verizon has ads because I see ads on the internet.

Not my experience of youtube at all, but I primarily watch longer, more analytical content. It almost all has ads.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#489

Post by kmeisthax »

ksec wrote: post #381

>you don’t get to double dip and also sell my data to your advertisers and earn more on the side. 1. Placing an Ad on the page has absolutely nothing to do with selling your data. Just like a magazine decide to place a print ad. 2. Ad can sometimes function as news. New Product launch, marketing notes. etc. 3. Even an internet targeting Ad, which the author is likely referring to, does not necessarily sell your data…

1. Advertisements without data are worthless. At a minimum you need a mechanism to combat click fraud and that requires detailed profiles and tracking on users to determine the economic value of those users.

2. This is a vanishingly small subset of ads.

3. While advertisers do not directly receive your data, you do still get tracked. Furthermore, the infrastructure undergirding ad tracking is comically easy to appropriate for law enforcement and national security purposes; the CIA buys a shitton of ad tracking data from data brokers.

Furthermore, targeted advertising, even if used as intended without any law enforcement spook tracking nonsense, is still a nightmare because it allows fraudsters to target ads directly to their most optimal marks. Think about how good Facebook is at showing your grandpa a bunch of fake ads for fraudulent products and scams. Scamming online got a lot more efficient with targeted advertising.

4. The double dip still exists even if data isn't tracked because I don't want to see ads. I am paying to remove them. In fact, I shouldn't even have to pay to remove the tracking; that should be free, and under EU law it is free.

5. A lot of subscriptions actually were sold as no ads, because that's the thing people want.

6. The correct amount of ads are zero. Because ads are not information, they are attacks, in the same way that social engineering is an attack.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#490

Post by ndriscoll »

wat10000 wrote: post #438
nubinetwork wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freemium gets abused, just look at YouTube... give them money and they still run ads...

No they don’t.

Apparently they were showing some users football ads and support said that's expected.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42131778

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