The correct amount of ads is zero • Hacker News Board

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#501

Post by ksec » Fri, Dec 06, 2024, 4:31 PM UTC

kmeisthax wrote: post #489

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 approp…

1. Not all ads are pay per click. There are still plenty of old fashion ad slot in podcast, video or even web page. See Darling Fireball, currently running 1Password Ad.

2. This happen a lot more in publishing industry than people would like to admit.

3. I dont disagree here. But most site still dont sell your data. Which is my point about double dipping. Tracking, however is another issue and I dont support it.

4, 5. I think there is where the top / my comment and the opinion of others on HN differs. No one, and even in this case the Verge ever said there will be zero ads.

6. Ads are everywhere. Newsletters, communication from Visa, Master, AMEX, App Store, Promotional material on discount, etc All have Ads. To suggest they have zero information or value to users is simply ignoring how large part of the world works.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#502

Post by ksec » Fri, Dec 06, 2024, 4:39 PM UTC

shortformblog wrote: post #394

ksec wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels such a breath of fresh air, especially being the top comment and coming from a 2009 account. >This feels like a situation where an organization tries doing something laudable, but still gets criticized for it. Ads is evil has been a thing on HN for a very very long time.

It’s because I’m a nerd with a background in journalism, and have been around the realities of a lot of this stuff for a while.

Well at least HN is at the point where you could write it out and not get any personal attack. So things are improving. In 2016 - 2020 it wouldn't even be upvoted in the first place.

I also dont think you need to be in journalism to understand the business case around it. People just need to understand business, or i.e the realities. But despite the swing back to somewhat moderate discussions, HN's pro business stance have been on the decline from the start and shows no kind of recovering.

So please continue to chime in when you can. It certainly help to balance the dynamics of discussion.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#503

Post by ToucanLoucan » Fri, Dec 06, 2024, 4:59 PM UTC

wat10000 wrote: post #436

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is: advertisers will argue that if you're offering a tier of service that removes ads, that's specifically going to be the most appealing to the group of your user-base that has the most money to spend and whom is most ready to spend it, evidenced by the fact that they have subscribed to your ad-free tier, and is therefore worth the most in terms of reaching with ads. Those people are self-selecting as th…

YouTube and Spotify both do “subscribe to remove ads.” If they’re not big, who is?

You've got it back to front, mate. The concept didn't take off among services and smaller websites precisely because the advertisers won't pay nearly as much if you're doing it. The big players can do whatever the hell they want, what kind of company isn't going to advertise on the biggest platforms that exist?

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#504

Post by nyclounge » Fri, Dec 06, 2024, 5:01 PM UTC

madeofpalk wrote: post #367

shortformblog wrote: post #265

Stances like this probably feel good to write out, but they miss the reality that when running a media business, relying on one revenue stream is dangerous. That’s why newspapers had classified ads, even though they charged a nominal fee to subscribe. People won’t pay $5 a day to subscribe to a newspaper, but the ads subsidize enough of it to make it so that a paid subscription is accessible to more people. On the in…

"Less ads" is the easy way to describe what they're offering, but I believe what they're doing is not just 50% less ad spots, but rather paying will remove all third party ad networks from the site, leaving first party ads only. > we’ll get rid of all the chumboxes and third-party programmatic ads, cut down the overall number of ad units, and only fill what’s left with high-quality ads directly sold by Vox Media If y…

That is what brave is doing. If we are going down this getting money for ads road, then let's just pick the lesser of all evils.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#505

Post by godshatter » Fri, Dec 06, 2024, 5:03 PM UTC

bogwog wrote: post #413

HeatrayEnjoyer wrote: post #121

Advertising is fundamentally corrosive to society and should be outlawed with few and carefully tailored exceptions. Any business models that consequently fail, fail because their externalities to collective society are now priced in.

I hate the modern advertising ecosystem, but ads themselves are not evil. We're just in a place where there is no limit to the what/when/where/how many. Without advertising, it would be really difficult to run a business. Back when Google was great, they kind of acted as an advertising police on the entire internet, keeping ads unobtrusive and negatively ranking sites with bad user experiences. That system worked pre…

In my view, the ads themselves are only slightly evil since they are designed to influence you subtly (well, sometimes subtly) into paying for something you probably don't want. Not a big deal, I have shields in place for that mentally. I wouldn't hate them so much if they didn't try to track you around the web and didn't sell your info to anyone with some loose change in their pockets.

I never hated ads when we had full-page ads in magazines and you had to skip multiple pages of ads to get to the actual articles. But selling my data makes them too much money, so I do my best to never have them load on the internet.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#506

Post by WickyNilliams » Fri, Dec 06, 2024, 5:06 PM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #477

dghughes wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That’s why newspapers had classified ads, I don't recall in the past a company needing my identity required or be tracked just because I bought a newspaper. I pay the $1 for the newspaper and no more interaction or relationship after that. Ads are OK but why do all the ad companies need to track me and know my movements and just to show me an ad? It's basically malware, stalking. Ads are zero advantage to me the co…

[flagged]

> What am I losing..?

An ever increasing amount of privacy. The ad industry will never be satisfied with the amount of data they collect now. They will always want more. This insatiable appetite for tracking and data represents a slow erosion of our privacy. Building unimaginable surveillance machinery for what? So that I might buy something online once every few years? It's casting an extremely large net to catch extremely small fries. The means do not justify the ends.

I think relevant, contextual ads are the best alternative. I'm more likely to eg buy something related to what I'm reading than I am to buy a mattress advertised to me across a million websites (a mattress that I've probably already bought I should add!). That doesn't require intense tracking and surveillance across the web. It just requires understanding the context in which the ads are placed. And it's essentially how marketing worked prior to digital advertising

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#507

Post by godshatter » Fri, Dec 06, 2024, 5:15 PM UTC

dhosek wrote: post #19

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People still subscribe to cable TV even though it's full of ads. Back in the day (yes, I'm that old) the selling point of cable was "TV without any ads". It was marketed as expensive and upscale TV, though. And people don't really want to pay for content, so this business model didn't work out in the end.

You must be really old because the selling point was always more channels/better quality picture. No ads was reserved for the premium channels (HBO and Showtime) which were an added fee. There were a small number of basic cable channels which were ad-free (AMC and TCM, if I recall correctly were originally both ad-free), but most basic cable channels had ads (and some were just re-feeds of independent broadcast “supe…

I do remember back when MTV started they showed videos on rotation without ads, along with some other content. Ads only came later. I also remember being greatly annoyed by ads appearing everywhere on a service we were paying for. I wasn't alone in this, it was a big topic at the time.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#508

Post by altairprime » Fri, Dec 06, 2024, 5:16 PM UTC

Mindwipe wrote: post #140

altairprime wrote: post #83

I don’t get why advertisers still advertise. I select brands either by nearest retail box store or by dedicated research into comparative qualities. I don’t watch or listen to any advertising-supported video or audio media. I don’t use personalized or targeted promotion codes. I don’t ever knowingly click on banner/interstitial ads of any kind. Am I still in the minority or has my behavior become more prevalent? (Not…

You are not even in a 0.00001% group, never mind approaching "prevalent".

Damn. Well, thanks for the confirmation.

I wish I could teach other people how to evict ads from short-term memory before they get written to long-term and how to create mental blind spots the size of billboards and banner ads. Apparently it’s an invaluable pair of skills :(

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#509

Post by gambiting » Fri, Dec 06, 2024, 5:26 PM UTC

mgraczyk wrote: post #495

gambiting wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just think you and me have a different definition of harm.

Harm is when something bad happens to someone, and the someone is aware of it

So like I said, you and I have very different definition. Using yours, you cannot harm someone who is in come or too young to understand what is happening to them. Similarily, if my personal information is being traded online for money a harm is being done to me, even if I'm not aware of these transactions taking place. I just don't expect we'll agree on this.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#510

Post by mgraczyk » Fri, Dec 06, 2024, 5:28 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #509

mgraczyk wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harm is when something bad happens to someone, and the someone is aware of it

So like I said, you and I have very different definition. Using yours, you cannot harm someone who is in come or too young to understand what is happening to them. Similarily, if my personal information is being traded online for money a harm is being done to me, even if I'm not aware of these transactions taking place. I just don't expect we'll agree on this.

That's not what I said, you can harm somebody who is too young to understand. I'm claiming that nothing bad happens to you from information being traded about you, under whatever definition of "bad" you prefer