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Google ad exec: “it is a worse user experience to not have ads on the page”

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Re: Google ad exec: “it is a worse user experience to not have ads on the page”

#71

Post by stcroixx »

duped wrote: post #26
asah wrote: post #3

Before HN jumps all over this, I worked at Google and other ads and search companies... and this is technically true (in selected cases) ! There are certain categories of websites and search results pages, where ads actually improve user experience, measured by nearly any metric you want to pick, from user perception to CTR/conversion, etc. There's lots of random categories, but the obvious ones are commercial/produc…

> There's lots of random categories, but the obvious ones are commercial/product searches where you're looking to buy something. I believe that you believe this while also believing that your metrics must be so horribly biased towards indicating that "ads are good" that you miss the forest for the trees. I have entirely stopped using google to search for products because of ads. It is impossible to research products…

It's this failure to engage with reality that will be their downfall. Hubris is at the root of it really, reinforced by the way they hire.

Re: Google ad exec: “it is a worse user experience to not have ads on the page”

#72

Post by candiodari »

tommica wrote: post #52
jjoonathan wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like this one too: > The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. - Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine

Damn, now I feel like a fool. Of course google is in the ad business, but I never considered that they could compromise the quality of their results to boost up ads, but it's absolutely possible.

The central defining quality of Google search was that they didn't do that. That's what that quote refers to. Google wasn't the first search engine. It wasn't the best, at least not initially. But Google, the first decade, refused to destroy it's own relevance for a buck, and all the others did. From Yahoo to Altavista.

It now appears it was a delay tactic. 2-3 ads on the side, next to 10-20 "organic" search results, like Google in 2005, was great and nice. And it's certainly true that occasionally the ads were useful. The ads, like the search results, were high quality.

Now Google barely has one organic search result visible. I just checked for the search "credit card", which I know is bad, but ... The first organic search result is the fifth, with only 2 results actually visible when you do the search, both "sponsored". 3 and 4, not on the first page, are sponsored too. And if you don't want commercial search results for that search (excluding wikipedia that seems to get very special treatment) the first organic result, the first result not trying to get you to put yourself into debt ... well, I gave up after scrolling though at least 20 pages. It just isn't there anymore.

Hell, it isn't even that long ago that in-line ads were on the first page of Google ... now they take up 80% of the space on every page of Google results. So organic results have been banned from the 2nd page to at least the 21st page or so. There's no more point to "Googling".

Google now really does look like Yahoo looked in 2000. And last year they did layoffs, just like yahoo. What I don't understand is how investors fool themselves into believing the stock price won't do the exact same thing. 5-10 more years and Google gets sold to Verizon for 10 billion. And why? Because no manager at Google will risk their career on getting 1% less out of their customers than they did last quarter ... and they do that like everyone else: by accepting every last dollar every last scummy advertiser makes to Google.

Re: Google ad exec: “it is a worse user experience to not have ads on the page”

#73

Post by tqi »

Terretta wrote: post #21
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, sure, build a better search engine that functions and is better without ads. Easier said than done. The internet is 99.99% scams and trash. It's easier said than done to find the signal in the noise. Some times - willing to pay (and being vetted not to be a scam) is a good indication of signal. Unfortunately, Google could do a little better on vetting their ad partners. Too often these days, ads are scams.

> build a better search engine that functions and is better without ads https://kagi.com > The internet is 99.99% scams and trash. It's hard to find the signal in the noise. https://blog.kagi.com/small-web

> We gather new content, published within the last week, from a handpicked list of blogs

imo this only only works because it is a niche product? If Google went away, and Kagi became the #1 search engine overnight, I think this approach would immediately become a source of criticism for being too restrictive, gatekeeping newcomers or biased towards a narrow perspective (as Google itself already is).

Re: Google ad exec: “it is a worse user experience to not have ads on the page”

#74

Post by vidarh »

timeon wrote: post #15
asah wrote: post #3

Before HN jumps all over this, I worked at Google and other ads and search companies... and this is technically true (in selected cases) ! There are certain categories of websites and search results pages, where ads actually improve user experience, measured by nearly any metric you want to pick, from user perception to CTR/conversion, etc. There's lots of random categories, but the obvious ones are commercial/produc…

> And this isn't new: over history, there've been magazines and other media where the ads dominated the content Was it better user experience than if it was not dominated by ads?

In some cases the ads were one of the product. Some catalog businesses charged you for their catalogs. Some other magazines were also entirely for ads. In both cases there's be no user experience without the ads.

But an important caveat was of course that buyers chose this. You got those magazines when you were looking for an ad for a specific product.

If Google let you search specifically for their ads, I'm sure some searches would be specifically for ads, but most wouldn't be.

Re: Google ad exec: “it is a worse user experience to not have ads on the page”

#75

Post by jrockway »

wlesieutre wrote: post #58
jrockway wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I think about a lot is what the world would look like without advertising, i.e., you'd have to make every decision on its merits, and never rely on bought opinions. Like imagine you walk into a grocery store, and every shelf is lined with plain cardboard boxes with the name of the product on it ("chocolate-covered breakfast cereal") and a nutrition label. You walk in and there is nothing other than the meri…

Funny you use light switches as an example because I have indeed spent some hours looking at light switch options. Decided not to blow a bunch of money on smarthome stuff (yet…), but for anyone who likes to tinker with that kind of thing the Inovelli switches look pretty fun. Time well spent? Who knows. But I know more about smart light switches than I used to!

Something else I think about a lot. I have Lutron Caseta but would probably choose something Z-wave if I were starting from scratch today. Proprietary stuff is generally not as flexible as the more open-ecosystem stuff, but Caseta works perfectly with Home Assistant.

The worst part of smart lights is how I've forgotten the tactile sensation when flipping a light switch. Sometimes I see regular light switches outside of my house and play with them, which probably makes me look like a psychopath with a mental age of 6. But so clicky!

Re: Google ad exec: “it is a worse user experience to not have ads on the page”

#76

Post by zelphirkalt »

graypegg wrote: post #68
RankingMember wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if bringing Larry and Sergey back into day-to-day leadership roles would help. They've been out of the day-to-day so long I wonder how long the ramp-up time would be, though.

I don't know the specifics, but I can only imagine Google is too big to have a single "thought leader" at this point. The many layers of middle management that are already implemented are probably the source of a lot of this. It is shocking to hear the higher ups saying this stuff, but I don't think swapping them out would change much.

My guess is, that people simply do not get into management positions at G, if they are not fully onboard or brainwashed enough or greedy enough for the next paycheck, to state obvious nonsense, if that is what is good for G.

Re: Google ad exec: “it is a worse user experience to not have ads on the page”

#77

Post by 20after4 »

chankstein38 wrote: post #56
lesuorac wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that almost the whole point of the magazine? I guess for something a bit more catch-all like "Rolling Stone" Ads would detract. But for something like USA Hockey, honestly the Ads are more interesting than half the actual content. Although seeing the same 4 ads for home skating rinks has gotten old. Although I guess this would be more akin to searching Google for "new hockey products" and then it would make a l…

That's fair! To be honest I haven't looked at a magazine in a long time unless I was in a waiting room so maybe I am just a bad example.

adbusters(https://www.adbusters.org/) is the only magazine I ever liked.

Re: Google ad exec: “it is a worse user experience to not have ads on the page”

#78

Post by jrockway »

asah wrote: post #64
jrockway wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I think about a lot is what the world would look like without advertising, i.e., you'd have to make every decision on its merits, and never rely on bought opinions. Like imagine you walk into a grocery store, and every shelf is lined with plain cardboard boxes with the name of the product on it ("chocolate-covered breakfast cereal") and a nutrition label. You walk in and there is nothing other than the meri…

interesting points. one comment: growing up, we have Pathmark groceries, with the "generic" aisle of all (literally) white labeled products. It was depressing and uninspiring.

Yeah, I also find it depressing. I think it's conditioning from exposure to advertising, though. It's good to be rich and bad to be poor, and if you're poor, you can't afford name brand stuff. So open your wallet and impress your friends with NAME BRAND BAKING SODA. WHOA WOW! I'm not sure it's objectively depressing to not be able to choose from 300 brands of household essentials, but the explosion of color and creativity and eye-popping packaging that's the result of multiple companies competing is certainly a sensory experience.

Re: Google ad exec: “it is a worse user experience to not have ads on the page”

#79

Post by 20after4 »

jrockway wrote: post #12
asah wrote: post #3

Before HN jumps all over this, I worked at Google and other ads and search companies... and this is technically true (in selected cases) ! There are certain categories of websites and search results pages, where ads actually improve user experience, measured by nearly any metric you want to pick, from user perception to CTR/conversion, etc. There's lots of random categories, but the obvious ones are commercial/produc…

I don't think you deserve any downvotes, but there is also somewhat of a tragedy of the commons effect at play. I hear people Google "Facebook" to find the Facebook login page. No doubt, Facebook has ads for that search so that people click the right link. This ends up being expensive; people should have just clicked their bookmark, but don't really understand URLs, so there is just a tax on big companies to have tha…

Firefox, not Chrome, dethroned IE. It was just short lived because very soon after, Google hired half the Firefox team away from Mozilla and created Chrome.
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