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Please Stop Working on Ads

diegobasch.com

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Re: Please Stop Working on Ads

#61

Post by theorique »

axian wrote: post #52
petercooper wrote: post #26

No thanks. While ads are less than ideal, I'd rather be enriching the lives of my 75,000 subscribers and run ads than have 500 people paying me $10 a month for the same publications (75k paying $10 would be even better but wouldn't have happened ;-)). Apps powered by ads are a different kettle of fish but advertising is still a big deal for media and publishing businesses.

Unless it's a company that cures cancer over the internet, your startup isn't enriching anyone's life. "Capture eyeballs, monetize later" mantra has failed in almost all cases, save for few select companies who are just breaking even on momentum alone. Media and publishing business are dying. What a strange example to illustrate a point.

Unless it's a company that cures cancer over the internet, your startup isn't enriching anyone's life.

There's a lot of room to operate between "curing cancer" and "not enriching anyone's life".

Re: Please Stop Working on Ads

#62

Post by stan_rogers »

adgar wrote: post #32
thesash wrote: post #29

The consumer packaged goods industry generates two TRILLION dollars a year in the US, by selling us things we don't think we need, through branding and marketing. Bottled water is an entire industry that was built on selling us plastic bottles filled with an abundantly free resource by convincing us we needed it through, you guessed it: advertising. There are many, many industries that rely on brand awareness to sell…

> Bottled water is an entire industry that was built on selling us plastic bottles filled with an abundantly free resource by convincing us we needed it through, you guessed it: advertising. I drank the bottle of water on my nightstand when I woke up this morning in my hotel. I was a bit hungover and feeling lazy. Advertising had nothing to do with it. I wanted the bottle of water to make my morning a little easier.…

>> I wanted the bottle of water to make my morning a little easier.

No, you merely wanted water. It could have as easily been a pitcher and glass and would have satisfied the want.

Re: Please Stop Working on Ads

#63

Post by jaredsohn »

diego wrote: post #14

For those who criticize the lack of "anything new" in my post: What motivated me to write it is that in the past few weeks I've met SEVERAL entrepreneurs who are starting businesses that would have no choice but to depend on ads. I'm almost at the point where I want to start a campaign to convince people that this is a bad idea, given how many other important problems are not receiving enough attention. I'm not sayin…

>given how many other important problems are not receiving enough attention

This would be a good place to mention some of them.

Re: Please Stop Working on Ads

#64

Post by adgar »

stan_rogers wrote: post #62
adgar wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bottled water is an entire industry that was built on selling us plastic bottles filled with an abundantly free resource by convincing us we needed it through, you guessed it: advertising. I drank the bottle of water on my nightstand when I woke up this morning in my hotel. I was a bit hungover and feeling lazy. Advertising had nothing to do with it. I wanted the bottle of water to make my morning a little easier.…

>> I wanted the bottle of water to make my morning a little easier. No, you merely wanted water . It could have as easily been a pitcher and glass and would have satisfied the want.

> It could have as easily been a pitcher and glass and would have satisfied the want.

Actually, no it wouldn't. If you read closely, my want was not water. I'd say my want was closer to convenience. I explicitly did not want to pour a glass of water, my other (free) option.

I wanted to chug down 16 ounces of clean H2O and roll over. Which I did. And it was awesome. Well worth the 2 bucks the hotel is going to charge me. In fact... I'm probably going to make the same decision tomorrow morning. Explain that!

Edit: waiting on a cab, so I'll be even more explicit. This morning I woke up, exhausted after a week of travel and a night of whiskey. Ad usual, a bit confused and not eager at all for my last day of work here in California before I fly home tomorrow to NYC. definitely going to sleep in another half hour at least. I know I need water but I don't even want to move. I can walk to the bathroom but at that point I might as well get up for the day. I look over: cheapo bottled water. The kind where the plastic is so thin you start to crush the bottle without trying. That decision takes less than a second: I grab it, unscrew the smaller-than-a-soda-cap cap and literally squeeze the entire bottle's worth down my throat in under 5, 10 seconds. Sated, I turned onto my stomach, buried my face in a pillow, and welcomed the sandman.

No way a pitcher and glass beats that. Even for free.

Re: Please Stop Working on Ads

#65

Post by mark_l_watson »

I recently saw a good comment, something like 'the best minds of today are working on Internet advertising instead of curing cancer, cleaner sustainable energy, etc.'

Tough problem though. I don't want Google without ads. For other web properties like my favorite blogs to read, NYT, etc. I would be happy enough to make micro payments if doing so was really easy. (Actually, I do pay for the NYT, so why the ads?)

Maybe the conversation should be about easy to use and secure micro payments.

Re: Please Stop Working on Ads

#66

Post by khyryk »

eschutte2 wrote: post #53
axian wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless it's a company that cures cancer over the internet, your startup isn't enriching anyone's life. "Capture eyeballs, monetize later" mantra has failed in almost all cases, save for few select companies who are just breaking even on momentum alone. Media and publishing business are dying. What a strange example to illustrate a point.

As one of those 75,000 subscribers, I'm happy to say that's not correct. To state the obvious, if the product or service weren't enriching people's lives, why do you think they would choose to subscribe to it?

I think there are various ways to approach this. One could argue that, for instance, watching TV for 6 hours per day does not enrich a particular person's life, no matter how convinced they may be that it does.

Your second sentence is a type of an argument I've encountered numerous times, but I can't seem to recall what it's called. I may get back to this later.

Re: Please Stop Working on Ads

#67

Post by mdonahoe »

ianstormtaylor wrote: post #35
hapless wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. First item first: Gmail is free because the rich consumers using it are worth a few dollars a month in ads. Those free users in Africa who don't have the money can only exist due to cross-subsidy. The ad model helps them only by accident. Until they have money to spend, they can only detract from the value of Google's ad inventory. 2. To address the second question, the cost of traditional media: Adwords made new…

I'm confused. Is #1 supposed to be a rebuttal? Or was your point to reiterate why ads are beneficial to "free users in Africa".

There could a freemium approach as well. The paying users get a better experience (more storage space, faster delivery, faster search), and the free users get the basic package. Seems to work for Dropbox and they dont show me ads, except ads for Dropbox itself.

Re: Please Stop Working on Ads

#68

Post by mdonahoe »

potatolicious wrote: post #2

Please stop writing articles telling people not to work on ads. I don't disagree with the point, but we've seen a deluge of these recently and not a single one has had something fresh to say. Pissing all over people working on ads, is the new working on ads.

"we've seen a deluge of these recently and not a single one has had something fresh to say"

Then stop reading them? Things get repeated, rehashed and re-posted all the time. Just be glad we arent talking about Bitcoin again :)

Personally, I would love to see these articles on HN everyday, at the top, just to make sure every software engineer has seen at least one.

Re: Please Stop Working on Ads

#69

Post by mark_l_watson »

mattmaroon wrote: post #31

I think there's a false dichotomy here between solving a problem and building an ad-supported service. Facebook definitely solves a number of problems. How to keep in touch with people, communicate, share photos, etc. That's why people use it. Admittedly it doesn't do anything that couldn't be done (or wasn't done) another way before it existed, but it reduces the friction and wraps them up into a great package. If f…

I don't know about $5 to $10/month for Facebook. I would like to see a HN vote/survey on how much people would pay per month for the most used web properties if paying was the only way to see them. For me, the maximum monthly costs would be:

NYT. $15 Gmail $3 LinkedIn $2 Facebook $2

Not sure though about Facebook, HN, Reddit, etc. since they would be so much less valuable without large user bases.

Re: Please Stop Working on Ads

#70

Post by petercooper »

axian wrote: post #52
petercooper wrote: post #26

No thanks. While ads are less than ideal, I'd rather be enriching the lives of my 75,000 subscribers and run ads than have 500 people paying me $10 a month for the same publications (75k paying $10 would be even better but wouldn't have happened ;-)). Apps powered by ads are a different kettle of fish but advertising is still a big deal for media and publishing businesses.

Unless it's a company that cures cancer over the internet, your startup isn't enriching anyone's life. "Capture eyeballs, monetize later" mantra has failed in almost all cases, save for few select companies who are just breaking even on momentum alone. Media and publishing business are dying. What a strange example to illustrate a point.

Unless it's a company that cures cancer over the internet, your startup isn't enriching anyone's life.

We have different definitions. I feel many things enrich my life from literature and magazines to cars and restaurants or walks in the park. And - drum-roll - even Hacker News ;-)

Media and publishing business are dying.

Some are. Many are thriving and growing, including mine.

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