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People in Silicon Valley Don’t Click on Ads

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Re: People in Silicon Valley Don’t Click on Ads

#51

Post by teekert »

narrowrail wrote: post #48
teekert wrote: post #33

Most people here seem to think that one clicks ads only by accident. If this were true such clicks would never lead to a purchase or just associate a brand with annoyance. I simply can't believe that. Sure, mostly, I see ads for stuff I have just purchased, sometimes for months but there also have been useful ones from time to time for me (mostly home automation/Raspberry Pi stuff), also my brain seems wired not to i…

Personally, I've never discovered anything specifically from an ad worth purchasing, but I have found interesting things to purchase after an advert inspired me to research a topic further. Frankly, your comment reads as someone whose livelihood depends on advertising.

I also hate ads in general, my livelihood certainly does not depend on them. But there are sometimes ads that are useful. This must almost be the case as ads (excluding punch the monkey-like ads) try to be useful.

Well, according to the numbers SF people do click ads from time to time. I just can't imagine all ad clicks to be by accident and so by definition not all ads are useless. So maybe HN-ers that never click ads and always ignore them, do miss out.

Re: People in Silicon Valley Don’t Click on Ads

#52

Post by mirimir »

Nursie wrote: post #45
teekert wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? How about if you see something you actually want and are looking for? Is that really so difficult to imagine?

Then I would have searched for it and found the link that way.

Right. The ad might remind you that you need something. Or it might trigger a flash of insight. But it would not likely lead to any reliable information about the issue.

And that reminds me. It's very hard to get reliable information about new products. Just about all "reviews" are just advertorials.

Re: People in Silicon Valley Don’t Click on Ads

#53

Post by bduerst »

Trundle wrote: post #18

I think this has a large effect on opinions in an often revisited internet topic "moving away from ads". Whenever a service starts to offer a paid alternative, or people get on the topic of tracking, or micropayments comes up, it's always struck me that commenters seem used to effectively free content and seem to just ignore that there are people subsidizing their internet usage by clicking on ads comparatively all t…

> An internet where we pay for it instead of it being supported by user targeted ads isn't going to be covered by paying 10 cents per article you really liked.

There's Google Contributer, which lets you pay several pennies per article rather than see ads. It could work if existing ad networks let you opt out of ads and cover the display impressions.

Edit: It also shows you pictures of cats instead of ads - http://i.imgur.com/v3jSqyg.png

Re: People in Silicon Valley Don’t Click on Ads

#54

Post by xkiwi »

I recall @pg 's essay immediately:

"WHAT YOU'LL WISH YOU'D KNOWN"

http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html

here is what he wrote: If I were back in high school and someone asked about my plans, I'd say that my first priority was to learn what the options were.

Silicon Valley, or people on HN generally, are doing this unconsciously. I was shock that a lot of (non tech)people accept things as they are (as default). They let phone APP like LinkedIn scan and grab the contact list; buy things that are in the trend; over estimate price but underestimate value, etc.

ADs is good only if they introduce something new, CES-ish new, something that are not in the trend but available up on request. Something that you are not aware of, hope we get to that type of ad-era soon enough.

Re: People in Silicon Valley Don’t Click on Ads

#55

Post by lstamour »

0xCMP wrote: post #43
cpeterso wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard that Google had to rename their ad management portal's CSS styles because the site was broken for customers using ad blockers. :)

Well, still didn't work for me! :P (Privacy Badger, Disconnect, uBlock) But I'm rather aggressively blocking anything/everything I can.

If I recall, Facebook's ad manager might've asked me to disable my Adblock in order to preview the ads. ;-)

Re: People in Silicon Valley Don’t Click on Ads

#56

Post by drdeca »

teekert wrote: post #35
danneu wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you didn't know it was one.

Really? How about if you see something you actually want and are looking for? Is that really so difficult to imagine?

An example:

I occasionally will click on ads for webcomics that seem like they might be interesting.

Re: People in Silicon Valley Don’t Click on Ads

#57

Post by thedevil »

"Silicon Valley people don’t click on ads... Similarly, they appear not to be commenting or liking posts as frequently"

The most successful drug dealers don't use their own stuff, I hear.

Edit: I think I sounded a little snarky here. To be clear, I'm a huge fan of silicon valley. But I thought the analogy was humorous and thought provoking so I thought I'd share.

Re: People in Silicon Valley Don’t Click on Ads

#58

Post by jfoster »

frik wrote: post #29

I want contextual ads, like the original AdSense "Contextual advertising is a form of targeted advertising in which the content of an ad is in direct correlation to the content of the web page the user is viewing. For example, if you are visiting a website concerning travelling in Europe and see that an ad pops up offering a special price on a flight to Italy, that’s contextual advertising. " https://en.wikipedia.org…

For this reason, I think the ultimate ad network would be a combination of Google's data, Facebook's data, and data from a payment processor (PayPal or Stripe).

Google knows what you're after, right now.

Facebook knows what you're into, in general.

PayPal/Stripe know your propensity to spend money online.

I would argue that the perfectly targeted ad will want to know about all of these. Google's data & mechanism (search) is probably the most useful; there's a pretty good chance someone searching "where to buy X" is looking to buy X. Combined with purchase data and personal preference data, the ability to target would seem near-perfect. Not only would you know whether the user is likely to buy X online, but you would also know what brand of X they might be interested in (eg. if they liked "Dell"), where they would prefer to purchase it from (eg. if they liked "Amazon"), and what bundling might appeal (eg. if they liked "Logitech").

For some people, this is the nightmare scenario. All these big companies putting together their data to algorithmically know what a consumer will buy before the consumer knows what they will buy. I'm with you, though. I think it would make advertising a lot less annoying, especially if it leads away from "we need your attention!" video ads into hyper-targeted text & images.

The underlying assumption, though, is that advertising companies would be more successful if targeting were better. Undoubtedly, a segment of their audience would be in much higher demand than they are now. I suspect that a lot of other segments would be in much lower demand, though. Would Emirates bid as high on Google for "holidays in Europe" if they knew I had never spent online, was elderly, and liked "Cruises" on Facebook?

Re: People in Silicon Valley Don’t Click on Ads

#59

Post by Umn44 »

xkiwi wrote: post #54

I recall @pg 's essay immediately: "WHAT YOU'LL WISH YOU'D KNOWN" http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html here is what he wrote: If I were back in high school and someone asked about my plans, I'd say that my first priority was to learn what the options were. Silicon Valley, or people on HN generally, are doing this unconsciously. I was shock that a lot of (non tech)people accept things as they are (as default). They let p…

"I was shock that a lot of (non tech)people accept things as they are (as default). "

You shouldn't... the human brain is bad at reasoning, and remember everything we do is powered by power stations within our cells, aka we're resource based creatures which means our powers of cognition and behavior can be easily overwhelmed and exhausted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ

Re: People in Silicon Valley Don’t Click on Ads

#60

Post by jkaljundi »

patio11 wrote: post #24

Ad clicks are studied pretty extensively. A good search term is "compulsive clickers." The cariacature-with-a-bit-of-truth version is less-educated older white woman in Iowa. The heavy clicking user population, roughly 4% of users, is generally believed to contribute more than a majority of total clicks. This is as well-studied as you'd expect of clearly quantifiable data worth billions of dollars, and remains social…

Also as I remember the 2-4% of people who ever click on ads tend to be older female population. Microsoft Advertising used to have some good research on it, can't find it now.

It's said often you are more likely to survive an air crash than click on an ad.

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