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Vietnam bans unskippable ads

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Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#481

Post by charcircuit »

kibwen wrote: post #357
iammjm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world would definitely be better without ads. All ads are poisonous. All of them first convince you that you and your life as it is is not good enough, and that in order to be happy again you need to spend money to buy a $product.

Furiously seconded. Ads are just a tax that we pay both with our attention and then with our wallets. Every dollar that a company forks over to Google is a dollar they recoup by passing the costs on to you, for absolutely no benefit whatsoever to the product you're paying for. Destroy this heinous rent-seeking industry.

You are ignoring the value of discovering a good or service. Increasing the customer acquisition cost for a company to infinity doesn't make them lower their prices. It makes them go out of business because they have no customers.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#482

Post by anvuong »

nrclark wrote: post #9

Interesting, I wonder if this will spike VPN traffic into Vietnam.

Yeah probably not. A large amount of posts and videos from social medias are blocked in Vietnam, it's still a communist country with very low level of free speech and press freedom, albeit still better than China.

Source: I used to live there.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#483

Post by SchemaLoad »

socalgal2 wrote: post #326
_jab wrote: post #13

I've often wondered whether the world would be better without ads. The incentive to create services (especially in social media) that strive to addict their users feels toxic to society. Often, it feels uncertain whether these services are providing actual value, and I suspect that whether a user would pay for a service in lieu of watching ads is incidentally a good barometer for whether real value is present. Don't…

It's not ads IMO, it's just reality. Remove the ads, people (instagram/tiktok/youtube) still get influence by "strive to addict their users"

Without adverts, the platform has less incentive to maximise engagement. They won't send you push notifications, they won't implement short form video, etc. My gym/ISP/email provider don't design their services on making me spend the whole day using them. If anything they don't want me using the service at all but I myself want to.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#484

Post by btown »

layer8 wrote: post #409
btown wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a full mea culpa, I once implemented this years ago for an open-source project (non-ad-related) that could have an unpredictable number of steps with unpredictable timing. We went with an algorithm that would add a % of the remaining progress on each status tick, so, while it would inevitably decelerate, at least users would know that the processing wasn't just frozen. It was a compromise that let us focus our lim…

If the only purpose is to show progress and you don’t known the total number of steps in advance, it’s better to show information about the current step and/or substep. Otherwise when your processing actually freezes, the UI would still happily show an advancing progress bar. That’s worse than even just showing a spinner animation or similar.

If it froze and ceased emitting ticks, it wouldn't advance any more - but the larger point is well taken!

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#485

Post by tokioyoyo »

iuu666 wrote: post #395
MSFT_Edging wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Takes like this amaze me. It's like they've suddenly forgotten what the entire advertisement industry is like. Ads are designed to take advantage, manipulate, and even trick. Then this person comes along and suggests the industry should do the right thing. In what world would that ever be a possibility? It's like asking a dictator nicely that they relinquish some of their power!

Regulation is only a policeman. It doesn’t innovate. Competitive markets do innovate. I watch YouTube live instead of Twitch (many streamers double stream) precisely because the former has skippable ads. I’m guessing you haven’t taken even one semester of the relevant economics. Isn’t it great to be an internet commenter?

Both YouTube and Twitch have increased the amount of ads they serve over the last 5 years, not decreased. So, I’m not even sure if the “competition” between those two makes ads better for anyone. Imo, the objective of competition in adspace is “who can target better to increase click rate”, not “who can make the experience better for the user”.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#486

Post by DrewADesign »

nemomarx wrote: post #454
DrewADesign wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a sometimes designer, i don’t think there’s any distinction between punishing the ad and the company. The company bought the ad, probably directed its creation, and decided what its criteria was for success. 1-star away as far as I’m concerned.

I think they mean they leave a 1 star review on the app that was displaying the ad, who probably didn't directly do any of that. They did work with a bad ad network though so it's a valid enough reason to complain imo.

Yeah, good call, but I honestly have no problem with that 1-star either. They can’t say “well we just opened the garbage conduit and pointed it at your face… we didn’t actually MAKE the garbage.” Those ads are part of their app experience, now. They published it, so they’re ’re responsible for it. If it sucks I give it a sucky rating.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#487

Post by SchemaLoad »

nalekberov wrote: post #84
arethuza wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's impractical - isn't it exactly what YouTube Premium offers, ad free viewing for £12.99 a month. I watch quite a lot of content on YouTube and really should sign up for Premium but I feel that the shockingly irrelevant ads I get presented with on YouTube are trying to drive me to sign for it - they're certainly not going to get me to buy anything!

Yet, most content on YouTube these days are sponsored by the companies trying to sell you a crap. And with 'Native ads' it's nearly impossible to have ad-free experience nowadays.

At least on youtube premium it has a feature to "Skip commonly skipped section".

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#488

Post by SchemaLoad »

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #59
_jab wrote: post #13

I've often wondered whether the world would be better without ads. The incentive to create services (especially in social media) that strive to addict their users feels toxic to society. Often, it feels uncertain whether these services are providing actual value, and I suspect that whether a user would pay for a service in lieu of watching ads is incidentally a good barometer for whether real value is present. Don't…

People won't pay a few bucks a month for YouTube. They won't pay to keep their favorite sites online. They won't pay for their news. Without ads, a lot of things wouldn't exist.

They will actually. Youtube premium has had explosive growth after YT started pushing more ads and blocking ad blockers. People pay for streaming services quite regularly. And youtube has one of the strongest platforms/content bases to sell a subscription.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#489

Post by transcriptase »

xoxxala wrote: post #72
DrewADesign wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite most annoying ad tactic is the trick slowing down progress bar. It starts off fast making it seem like it’s going to be, say, a ten-second ad so you decide to suffer through it… but progressively slows so you notice at like the 20 second mark you’re only 2/3 of the way through the progress bar, so probably less than halfway done. Murderous rage.

Mr. Beast on youtube is guilty of that. Matt Parker of Standup Maths fame did an in-depth look at how that works. Whoever came up with that type of progress bar must hate people in general. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc0OU1yJD-c

If you watch him on Joe Rogan’s podcast he gives a full overview of how every single tiny detail down to colors, length of scene cuts, facial expressions, language, total length of videos, time of day for release, thumbnails, sound effects, music is extensively A/B tested to not only optimize for the algorithm but for hijacking people’s attention as well. That weird creepy face with the outline and uncanny smoothing aren’t by accident. Everything is intentional because he obsessively tests anything that might give him even the slightest edge in a sea of videos. The content itself barely matters.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#490

Post by SchemaLoad »

kfarr wrote: post #114

As much as this may have unintended consequences, I can appreciate the motivation. I can't let my kids play iPhone games unless I turn the device into Airplane mode. Almost all these pay to play mobile games have 60 second interstitials after each level that can't be skipped. It's insane. I've taught my kids how to force kill the game and reload to get out. Definitely depressing compared to the PC shareware days I gr…

Could consider getting them one of those retro handheld emulators and giving them real games.
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