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The correct amount of ads is zero

manuelmoreale.com

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Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#601

Post by johnnyanmac »

paulcole wrote: post #336
eqvinox wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point. There's a reasonable number of people who are willing to pay for content like this, but only if they actually get an ad-free experience in exchange. The business decision The Verge needs to make is whether they want to try to reach these people or not, since these people won't pay for a model that still has ads. (There could of course be 2 subscription levels at different prices, one…

> There's a reasonable number of people who are willing to pay for content like this, but only if they actually get an ad-free experience in exchange. I guarantee that the majority of these zealous anti-ad people will not subscribe to an ad-free service for The Verge. For the most part, their hobby is not subscribing to online publications, it’s complaining about the subscriptions at online publications that they wou…

I have a total of two publications I'd read enough to subscribe to. But as of now they don't even have a tip jar. A real shame because they also have some of the worst kinds of ads. The ones that will take up half your screen estate with an autoplay video levels of bad ads.

>I understand that this doesn’t apply to the ones of people who will reply here claiming that they would never do this.

wouldn't that be a strongly overlapping sub-group to people who take the time to complain as well? Some people just want everything for free, but I imagine a lot of this audience (on a platform to fund entrepreneurs) has higher than average empathy for business realities.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#602

Post by account42 »

dspillett wrote: post #247
jillesvangurp wrote: post #44

It's why I use Firefox and avoid situations where I might get exposed to annoying ads. I was watching some Amazon Prime recently (the new rings of power season). Pretty OK and completely ad free experience. Except I noticed these weird cuts every few minutes. It took me quite a while to realize that Amazon introduced ads some time ago for Amazon prime and uBlock origin was doing a great job of simply blocking them. H…

I'm sort of with you here, but not… > I use Firefox and avoid situations where I might get exposed to annoying ads. > I don't pay any websites/blogs for subscriptions for articles either. While some content creators do it for love, art, whatever, others do need an income stream to keep going. I'm fine with blocking annoying ads (pop-ups, forced interstitials, autoplaying audio, …) but basic image-and-some-text-on-the…

> While some content creators do it for love, art, whatever, others do need an income stream to keep going.

Then they should find a business model that doesn't involve psychological manipulation. Ads are predatory. I have as much compassion for those who cry about ad revenues as I do for people complaining that they worse off for not being allowed to rape and pillage.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#603

Post by account42 »

andrepd wrote: post #239
jillesvangurp wrote: post #44

It's why I use Firefox and avoid situations where I might get exposed to annoying ads. I was watching some Amazon Prime recently (the new rings of power season). Pretty OK and completely ad free experience. Except I noticed these weird cuts every few minutes. It took me quite a while to realize that Amazon introduced ads some time ago for Amazon prime and uBlock origin was doing a great job of simply blocking them. H…

Well I'm pretty much an anti-ad radical as well, but you're saying you block ads and you don't want to pay for stuff like subscriptions and similar. Well that's also not very sustainable, content creators have to eat :) Fortunately there's many ways to financially support the workers whose content you appreciate: patreon, ko-fi, etc. I still wished there was something much more friction-free, something like flattr

> Well that's also not very sustainable, content creators have to eat :)

That is a concern for the "content creator" not for anyone else. We have way more "content" than we need, especially "content" compromised by ads.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#604

Post by knorker »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #591
knorker wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voting with our wallets got us infowars and two major fake news groups of media (mainstream and not). Why should you want some MBA's life to be easy? So that it's feasible to keep producing what you actually want. I just wish it were possible to pay $1 for an article whose headline sounds interesting, or someone recommended. Subscribe, even with a free trial? Pass. The free market is great. But we should not deny it…

>Voting with our wallets got us infowars and two major fake news groups of media yes. that's the cost of freedom. Stupidity is freedom as well. >Why should you want some MBA's life to be easy? I want good creators compensated for good stories. MBAs will get paid no matter what. that's sort of what they minmax for. And they don't care what industry they suck off of. >I just wish it were possible to pay $1 for an artic…

>> Why should you want some MBA's life to be easy?

> I want good creators compensated for good stories.

I asked that rhetorically, and then immediately answered it.

> I want good creators compensated for good stories.

So do I. And yet they refuse to take my money.

> $1 for an article would be way overkill for 99.999% of the population.

Maybe. Maybe not. Yes, subjectively it'll feel that way to most people. But there are many out there who have a subscription for $5 a month where they consume none of the content.

But I just pulled the price $1 out of my ass. $0.20, then? The Economist seems to cost $79 per year. If you charge $0.20 per article that's order of one article per day. And most people would not even be interested in one of their articles per week.

Then tomorrow they can spend $0.20 at FT for another article, and so on. And at the end of the year, $79 has been sent to actual journalism, and the customer has received value.

Now this potential customer just consumes nothing. Or worse: Twitter.

> Stupidity is freedom as well.

Differential pricing too. It annoys me that I'm not charged $1 per Economist article, since I am willing to pay.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#605

Post by account42 »

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…

> Without advertising, it would be really difficult to run a business.

It's difficult to run a business without advertising in a world full of advertising. If others can get to your customers before they find you then yes that's a problem. But all you get from paying to advertise is to get back to where you would have been without ads (assuming your competitors spend a similar amount).

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#606

Post by lobsterthief »

account42 wrote: post #581
next_xibalba wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then don’t consume it. You have full control over that. We all do. What we don’t have is the right to assert a condescending “moral” stance that ignores the economic realities that producers must grapple with.

You are ignoring the reality that ethical producers must grapple with: it's impossible to compete ethically when your competitors don't have that limit. Note that this also goes for genuinely free content - if tons of ad-supported businesses just dominate the search results because they can afford to spend time on SEO then free alternatives (individuals sharing their passions, non-profit organizations, etc.) will be…

> Having every single of currently ad supported businesses cease to exist would not be a real problem.

Uhh, what about news organizations? That would be a problem.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#607

Post by account42 »

lobsterthief wrote: post #606
account42 wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are ignoring the reality that ethical producers must grapple with: it's impossible to compete ethically when your competitors don't have that limit. Note that this also goes for genuinely free content - if tons of ad-supported businesses just dominate the search results because they can afford to spend time on SEO then free alternatives (individuals sharing their passions, non-profit organizations, etc.) will be…

> Having every single of currently ad supported businesses cease to exist would not be a real problem. Uhh, what about news organizations? That would be a problem.

It wouldn't be a problem at all, no.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#608

Post by johnnyanmac »

knorker wrote: post #604
johnnyanmac wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Voting with our wallets got us infowars and two major fake news groups of media yes. that's the cost of freedom. Stupidity is freedom as well. >Why should you want some MBA's life to be easy? I want good creators compensated for good stories. MBAs will get paid no matter what. that's sort of what they minmax for. And they don't care what industry they suck off of. >I just wish it were possible to pay $1 for an artic…

>> Why should you want some MBA's life to be easy? > I want good creators compensated for good stories. I asked that rhetorically, and then immediately answered it. > I want good creators compensated for good stories. So do I. And yet they refuse to take my money. > $1 for an article would be way overkill for 99.999% of the population. Maybe. Maybe not. Yes, subjectively it'll feel that way to most people. But there…

>I asked that rhetorically, and then immediately answered it.

Okay, I can still answer a question, especially if the framing is bad.

>So do I. And yet they refuse to take my money.

We don't get to choose how we pay for stuff. That's part of the deal. Maybe I want a slice of bread but I often need to buy a loaf. Maybe I want a bottle of ketchup but Costco only sells 2 giant vats.

Again, blame Mastercard/Visa for your model not being popular. I mentioned as such in the previous response. You may have chosen a dollar arbitrarily, but you were kind of correct about that cost if we're talking per article purchases.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#609

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

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…

Today, we see online ads being used as a form of "nag", to borrow the term from the shareware days, to encourage computer users to "sign up" for or "subscribe" to something that is free from ads (but still a means of data collection that may support delivery of ads elsewhere). I have read that YouTube is doing this, as many HN commenters like to try to convince readers to pay.

The utility value of ads to the computer is low. But these users are not the ad buyers so that makes little difference.

The tragedy of online ads is that computers when used for search do provide utility to computer users in locating products and services. But middlemen, so-called "tech" companies, seek to intermediate the use of computers for search in order to profit from ad services. This lowers the utility value of search to the computer user.

HN commenters and other commenters across the web complain about this degradation, namely they complain about results delievered by the largest search middleman, Google, almost daily.

Online ads annoy the majority of computer users in order to be "effective", i.e., profitable for the ad buyers, with respect to only a small minority of computer users. The system is profitable for the ad buyers but extremely inefficient. Waste and fraud are common on an unprecedented scale.

Personally I have nothing against advertising. However, having used computer networks that had restrictions on advertising, I question whether computer networks are the appropriate place for advertising.

The decreasing ability of those who produce software to license it for fees, i.e., no viable business plan, has caused them to use surveillance, data collection and advertising services as a substitute means of generating income. Software is given away "for free" and functions as a Trojan Horse for surveillance, data collection and advertising services. The sustainability of such a strategy is questionable.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#610

Post by unsungNovelty »

manuelmoreale wrote: post #533
unsungNovelty wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'll quote you "this is a bad take". What's bad is asking me to pay money and then serving me premium ads because you now know i'm someone with disposable income and i'm willing to give it to a premium publication. > What's bad is asking me to pay money and then serving me premium ads because you now know i'm someone with disposable income and i'm willing to give it to a premium publication. OK. Let's first examine…

> I don't have anything else to say than the fact that Ads are not going anywhere. Why? You state that as if Ads are a product of the universe we live in and we need to accept them like gravity. > And it should NOT be done with data surveillance but with curated and useful ads. Agree in principle. The problem is that you don't even need to do data surveilance in this case. I pay money to the verge. You can infer I ha…

> Why? You state that as if Ads are a product of the universe we live in and we need to accept them like gravity.

Am being realistic. The enshittification of tech companies is not to be blamed on ads. Ads have been around way way before, internet, tv or even news papers.

> Agree in principle. The problem is that you don't even need to do data surveilance in this case.

I agree with you here as well. Remove data surveillance and behavioural ads and you get contextual / static ads. That is better for users, advertisers. Ads zero is not the solution is all am saying.

The disagreement I have with this is that the other way (your way) doesn't work as well. They still track data, make you pay and it is only accessible to people with disposable income.

> The problem is the ambiguity. The old mantra says "If you're not paying for the product then i'm the product"

No. Data surveillance has nothing do with ads. DuckduckGo is a good examplle of it. It doesn't have to be like that.

> Well i'm paying. The transaction should be clear. I give you money, you give me content. But instead that's not what you get. Because you still get profiled, you're still served ads, and sure, BETTER, ads. That's my problem.

This is a very entitled view. Not all of them has the disposable income. Moreover, How many are you going to subscribe? But also, it doesn't fly with news sites. Subscription works for software etc. Anything that needs to be accessible for the broader audiences (like journalism), it fails. This is where ads come in.

Moreover, my problem with the whole statement is that ads were done in a right away in the past. We know how to do that. While it hasn't panned out very well when it comes to subscriptions for news sites etc. It is making it more difficult for journalists and others to survive with subscription. There is a reason why newspapers had ads even after you pay for subscription. Especially for news sites like services.

The problem with internet ads is that we just don't want to directly deal with advertisers. We rather make an api call and let google do the rest. AND they do surveillance. Thats on us. Not on ads.

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