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

SMBC Parts Ways with Hiveworks

smbc-comics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 82 posts

Re: SMBC Parts Ways with Hiveworks

#61

Post by piperswe »

TRiG_Ireland wrote: post #53
ccppurcell wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're wrong about that last part. For ads to make sense as a revenue stream you have to basically auction them, for example at different times and different countries etc. So there has to be some automation, you can't just manually include each ad. This will have to be done programmatically, and there will always be traces (e.g. in div classes). You can try to randomise these or what have you, but it's basic…

Their used to be a system (which was created by a webcomic artist, though I forget which one) where ads could be sold in slots of time, completely independent of clicks. But it died a few years ago.

RIP Project Wonderful, I loved that it was an ad network that respected privacy

Re: SMBC Parts Ways with Hiveworks

#62

Post by Dylan16807 »

jrmg wrote: post #47
x0x0 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fwiw, you likely can't make real money with this. The big drivers are (1) ever more increasing inventory (ie page loads/refreshes/whatever with ad slots). Relatively fixed demand plus increasing supply gives you a price fall that has been going on for 10+ years with no end in sight, combined with: (2) retargeting has gotten endlessly more sophisticated allowing people whom advertisers wish to target to be found on pl…

It does feel like a rubicon has been crossed recently, where most things I like are going behind paywalls, and many smaller outfits are heavily pushing Patreon or the like. Anecdotally, I’m paying subscriptions for news sites (mainstream and niche) and podcasts I would not have had a few years ago. I subscribed to YouTube, which I thought I’d never do! I’m not sure what to make of this. Microtransactions and subscrip…

I'm still waiting for a more general way to replace ads with micropayments. YouTube premium works well but only for video. Subscribing to a dozen small websites/teams is not it; too much money per payment and 98% of sites get nothing from me.

Re: SMBC Parts Ways with Hiveworks

#63

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

michaelt wrote: post #28
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google and Meta collectively employ how many software people in the United States? The jobs hit would be unimaginable. High octane nightmare fuel, that idea.

Doesn’t seem like a nightmare to me - a trillion dollars spent on ads that get blocked is a trillion dollars wasted. The real nightmare is hundreds of thousands of people on six figure salaries wasting their lives producing ads everyone hates.

You're right. What was I thinking? Instead, they should be unemployed and starving, and all the services they bought from other Americans with their $200k/year salaries, those Americans should also be unemployed and starving too. All because you don't want to see an ad on whatever ridiculous social media it is that people are visiting now days. That will make the world right.

Re: SMBC Parts Ways with Hiveworks

#64

Post by Dylan16807 »

lazide wrote: post #43
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDP does not pay my bills.

If you participate in the economy or are dependent on anything related to taxes, it quite literally does pay your bills.

If we're talking about removing one advertising platform, there is plenty of other stuff to spend money on. Even if the totals go down, I don't expect the average bystander to take a notable hit.

Re: SMBC Parts Ways with Hiveworks

#65

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #10
lazide wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would mean the death of at a minimum Meta (market cap $1.5 trln), most of Google (market cap $2.1 trln, lets say half would die). So what, a couple trillion haircut on the US stock market, and more of a GDP hit than if the entire US military suddenly stopped getting funded. Not to mention the secondary effects - a LOT of businesses are built based on online ads. A LOT .

Google and Meta collectively employ how many software people in the United States? The jobs hit would be unimaginable. High octane nightmare fuel, that idea.

"...total advertising has averaged about 1.3% to 2% of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) over the past 20 years. ... In 2015, digital advertising corresponded to about 50% of total advertising spending and more recent estimates point to a share closer to 65% of total advertising spending. That represents about 0.6% to 1.1% of GDP. ..." from https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2024/oct/rise-digi...

So, nah. It's significant but not "nightmare fuel" even if online advertising entirely went away. (Which nobody is proposing, by the way.)

Re: SMBC Parts Ways with Hiveworks

#66

Post by starkparker »

jasonjayr wrote: post #23

From a comment on the announcement page: > This is the third webcomic, among the ones I read, that has quit Hiveworks in the past month. Anyone know what’s up with that? What were the other ones? Any material changes from the Hiveworks folks that prompted this?

There are rumors suggesting financial and legal issues: https://www.tumblr.com/shinesurge/777346311384072192?source=...

Re: SMBC Parts Ways with Hiveworks

#67

Post by kibwen »

superkuh wrote: post #59
stavros wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how cheap a forum is to run now. It used to be that you could run a janky thing on nothing hardware and people would still use it and find value, but now even just running the software is much more demanding and expensive. Never mind the fact that the UI has to be slick or people will be put off, because the bar is much higher now. These factors have made it less economical to just run a popular forum out of…

I've been playing NationStates(.net) for 20+ years now. They run a php forum as part of the civic simulation php site. It hasn't really changed in the 20 years. Lately the entire site has become completely inaccessible to many of us because they've deployed a cloudflare block. They say they had to do this because the increase in bot traffic was slowing down the site so much it was costing them money: https://forum.na…

Holy hell, I can't believe NationStates is still kicking, or that Firefox has managed to hold onto my login details for 20 years. Truly a more innocent age that we'll never be able to return to.

Re: SMBC Parts Ways with Hiveworks

#68

Post by pixl97 »

lazide wrote: post #44
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CDOs, the financial instrument behind the 2008 financial collapse, had a tremendous amount of market value too. A "LOT"(sic) of businesses were built on selling tobacco products, lead based gasoline, and high sugar ultra-processed foods too. Perhaps you should rethink your argument? Creating economic activity doesn't justify harming people and it has become thunderingly obvious that titillating and outraging viewers…

I’m saying it’s easy to say until the consequences arrive. And with something this big, the consequences will be big. But then I’ve lived through 3-4 major downturns so far - and seen the ‘oh shit’s land.

The best day to stop smoking was yesterday, but stopping today is the second best.

The consequences of addiction are huge, and the longer you stay addicted the worse it gets.

Re: SMBC Parts Ways with Hiveworks

#69

Post by relaxing »

x0x0 wrote: post #17
windowshopping wrote: post #13

Hey if anyone has strong experience with ad networks and configuring them to websites, give me an email at the address in my profile, I'd love to get freelance help with this. I'm new to it and realized it isn't as easy as just signing up the way it is for mobile apps. Apparently most sites can't get approved for adsense at ALL, let alone have it at time of launch before they have traffic. So yeah if anyone has a lot…

fwiw, you likely can't make real money with this. The big drivers are (1) ever more increasing inventory (ie page loads/refreshes/whatever with ad slots). Relatively fixed demand plus increasing supply gives you a price fall that has been going on for 10+ years with no end in sight, combined with: (2) retargeting has gotten endlessly more sophisticated allowing people whom advertisers wish to target to be found on pl…

Hold up, that “wishing death upon others” revenue stream sounds like an interesting business model…

Re: SMBC Parts Ways with Hiveworks

#70

Post by relaxing »

lazide wrote: post #30
ben_w wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That would mean the death of at a minimum Meta (market cap $1.5 trln), most of Google (market cap $2.1 trln, lets say half would die). And nothing of value was lost. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrFv1O4dbqY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSGVk2KVokQ > So what, a couple trillion haircut on the US stock market, and more of a GDP hit than if the entire US military suddenly stopped getting funded. Not even. Market…

I guarantee you if Meta all the sudden couldn’t sell any ads tomorrow, it would be a lot more than a 1 trln GDP hit we’d experience.

I think there are other advertising channels that could pick up the slack.
Post reply on HN