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Why I Work on Ads

jefftk.com

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Re: Why I Work on Ads

#701

Post by wmf »

alex_young wrote: post #693

Here's an honest question: Why should a search engine cost so much? Look at Wikipedia - it's a search engine and content repository for all of the world's knowledge, and its operating expenses are around $100M / year. The Internet Archive has an annual budget of $10M / year. Google on the other hand, has annual revenues of $181B / year, or about 2000 times Wikipedia's spending. Is the crawling part hard? The folks at…

Ah yes, the "how much could it cost" comment.

"Businesses should keep adding engineers to work on optimization until the cost of adding an engineer equals the revenue gain plus the cost savings at the margin. This is often many more engineers than people realize." https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#702

Post by bscphil »

mc32 wrote: post #654
mediaman wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the interesting things about advertising is that nobody really knows if it works, and there's a growing body of evidence that it largely doesn't work. We are sold on the idea that they work, because someone clicks this ad, we track them, they buy the product, and we attribute the sale to that ad. But we don't know whether the customer would have bought anyway. And some research suggests that, for the most part…

Organic mentions are the best ads; aside from that dedicated niche review sites which I’ll hit to look at the review and the comments. On the other hand, brand recognition I do believe has value but is hard to quantify. I also never click on an internet ad EXCEPT if it links to a price -not to buy.

I partially disagree: fake (paid) "organic" mentions and fake reviews are the most effective form of marketing. And, obviously, they're much easier for a company to achieve than the real thing. How unsurprising is it that the most effective class of ad spend is the most scummy? The reason (fake) organic marketing is effective is exactly because it fools people into thinking that it isn't marketing.

Take paid Amazon reviews for example. This is advertising, just one of the most scummy possible forms of it. It's effective because people like me look to reviews to provide a third-party take on whether or not a product is any good. If I have a choice between two otherwise equivalent products, I'll pick the one with better reviews. But usually this just means rewarding the company that paid more to "advertise" on Amazon.

I realize you're probably talking about "real" organic mentions, but those are growing increasingly harder to find. A good example is the last time I bought headphones. I got suckered by a bunch of small review sites that had either been paid or gotten free samples in exchange for reviews. I bought two pairs, and when they arrived the sound from both was distorted. One pair broke within a few months. It was clearly trash that had been pumped using fake organic marketing. When I went back to find the sites that had provided the reviews in the first place, a few of them did mention (in very tiny print) that the reviews were paid. Me, suckered by advertising?! More likely than you'd think.

Back in the day, Johnny Carson reading an ad was convincing to the median consumer because they could be led to believe that the ad really was an endorsement of the product. That doesn't work any more, or not nearly as much at any rate. The basic strategy hasn't changed: it's still an attempt to find someone the consumer will trust. This is why, in my opinion, ads have always been and always will be bad, an attempt to subvert human rationality. Johnny Carson endorsing a product didn't mean that the product was good, it meant he was paid to endorse it. A review site endorsing a product nowadays doesn't mean that the product is good, it means they're paid to endorse it. In both cases the breakdown between what the consumer believes is happening and what is actually happening is the very thing advertising is trying to create, its raison d'être.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#703

Post by bongobingo »

> Ads. You pay with your attention.

What? No. You pay with your data. You pay with your privacy.

And the ads additionally destroy legitimate paid services. Ads have destroyed the entire internet economy, and brought upon a surveillance state.

This blog post is more detached from reality than the Q board on 8kun.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#704

Post by katzgrau »

jonplackett wrote: post #672
kingsuper20 wrote: post #61

The online ad business generally mystifies me. While an awful lot of the internet, especially the surveillance advertising part, looks to be the greatest misallocation of engineering (and other) talent in the history of the world, ya gotta ask about the efficacy. The only reasonably accurate targeting I've ever run into is the occasional ad for something I just browsed on Amazon. I've never clicked on an internet ad.…

One of the craziest parts is the total lack of accountability. Google / FB just say they show your ad to a XXXX million people. You owe them $XXXX.

People track conversions - click through URLs contain tracking query params which track the source. If you convert (download a resource, request a demo, start a trial, buy a product) it gets reported back to Facebook.

There's definitely accountability. The problem is that you can't always blame FB or Google because maybe your targeting is off, your ad copy sucks, you dumped the user off the front page of your website and they bailed, etc. There's a lot more to performance and accountability.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#705

Post by fomine3 »

thrwaeasddsaf wrote: post #124

For me the first big disagreement begins with asking for what's the alternative. I don't think there needs to be an alternative. I think ads are largely responsible for the sorry state of the seo spammed web where finding what you want can be a complete nightmare. (It costs almost nothing to run a website, and if you spam enough ~zero cost sites loaded with ads and affiliate links, you can probably make a buck. This…

I never wish ad-supported content to be disappeared or behind paywall

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#706

Post by jimmaswell »

adriand wrote: post #647

The author writes that you can either pay with money or you can “pay with your attention”. What’s left unsaid is the cost of that attention. I believe that cost is very high and it isn’t just ads, it’s the design of countless products including social media sites, games and even the site you’re reading this on right now. It’s all designed to extract as much attention as possible, and the cost is people’s ability to c…

My ability to concentrate, learn, or get shit done has only ever been hindered by an ad to the extent that it's annoying waiting for the ad to finish. I can't imagine most people don't just tune ads out most of the time. Still better than having to pay every website a subscription. It's nice having the option though, for example I personally find YouTube Premium worth the money.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#707

Post by katzgrau »

mc32 wrote: post #654
mediaman wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the interesting things about advertising is that nobody really knows if it works, and there's a growing body of evidence that it largely doesn't work. We are sold on the idea that they work, because someone clicks this ad, we track them, they buy the product, and we attribute the sale to that ad. But we don't know whether the customer would have bought anyway. And some research suggests that, for the most part…

Organic mentions are the best ads; aside from that dedicated niche review sites which I’ll hit to look at the review and the comments. On the other hand, brand recognition I do believe has value but is hard to quantify. I also never click on an internet ad EXCEPT if it links to a price -not to buy.

Genuine social proof is always the best.

Smart marketers don't try to get you to buy from an ad click. They want to move you one step down the funnel, which is usually getting your email/contact info if it's the type of product that has a longer nurturing process and sales cycle.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#708

Post by notJim »

m3at wrote: post #683
notJim wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why traditional advertising should get a pass here. Traditional advertising finds whatever fears and insecurities you have and exploits them to sell you stuff. If you're worried you're not manly enough, better buy an $80k truck with at least a V-6. If you're worried you're not a good enough parent, better give your kids some sugary crap. Exploiting people's psychology like this is also an overreach.

GP said he worked in traditional advertising then quit after a few years out of disgust, I don't think he's giving traditional advertisers a pass.

To be clear, my comment wasn't meant as a criticism of the person I was replying to, just expanding the discussion of negatives from advertising. I think these ethical decisions are fairly hard to make, and it's hard to blame anyone, unless the career is obviously purely harmful. It's admirable when people even consider these things, considering how many people just take the money and don't think twice about it.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#709

Post by meowface »

sidlls wrote: post #692
adriand wrote: post #647

The author writes that you can either pay with money or you can “pay with your attention”. What’s left unsaid is the cost of that attention. I believe that cost is very high and it isn’t just ads, it’s the design of countless products including social media sites, games and even the site you’re reading this on right now. It’s all designed to extract as much attention as possible, and the cost is people’s ability to c…

It's not just the cost in attention--those ads are produced with the price of our privacy included in the cost.

I feel like there are other costs beyond attention and privacy, too. Costs of malware and fraud are also common, but for the sake of argument we can just focus on somewhat more "legitimate" / "non-malicious" ads. (Emphasis on the scare quotes.)

There's the aesthetic cost. If I see an ad on or near a nicely designed or produced website or video, it immediately detracts from the visual appeal.

There's the annoyance cost. I'm personally immediately irritated and annoyed when I see or hear an ad. It affects my mood and my impression of whatever I'm trying to look at or listen to. (I despise it when I'm away from my computer and have a podcast on which ends and instantly transitions to some loud peppy ad for a fast food restaurant and I have to interrupt whatever I'm doing to walk over and shut the thing off.)

For some, there's the cost of paying for a product or service that an ad misled them about. They may pay more than they should have or get something which is portrayed a certain way in an ad which doesn't hold up in reality.

There's the psychological and sociological cost. Ads (especially in video or audio form) present a certain clinical and biased world frame. People usually talk and act in unnatural or "perfect" ways. A young person exposed to, say, hundreds of ads per week and thousands of ads per year may eventually start to subconsciously find that frame normal and expected. Even though they know they're ads rather than non-fiction, I think those things can potentially seep in in some cases.

There are the conflicts of interest and the effects caused by suspicion of conflicts of interest. If I see a "sponsored search result" or "sponsored article", I expect that the source will be less likely to show things which might propose a competing narrative or say anything negative about the sponsor. "Okay, I can't trust this source for anything related to [X], now."

As a corollary to the annoyance cost, there's the fakeness/sincerity dissonance cost. If I'm reading an article or listening to a podcast that's presented as, or may very well be, sincere and truthful, it's a little bit jarring for it to be interrupted with some fake, artificial, marketer-crafted bullshit with superlatives about how [X] will change your life and is the best thing ever. A little hard to take the rest seriously at that point.

I feel like I could list at least ten more. From a purely subjective and personal perspective, I don't even mind the egregious privacy implications as much as all these other things. I just fucking hate seeing and hearing ads.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#710

Post by wjamesg »

inopinatus wrote: post #673
adriand wrote: post #647

The author writes that you can either pay with money or you can “pay with your attention”. What’s left unsaid is the cost of that attention. I believe that cost is very high and it isn’t just ads, it’s the design of countless products including social media sites, games and even the site you’re reading this on right now. It’s all designed to extract as much attention as possible, and the cost is people’s ability to c…

The arrogance of appropriation is a pathology common to developers. For example: “we’re rolling out a new tool. It takes only fifteen minutes to learn!” when 100,000 people have to learn it. Developers working in advertising aren’t just exhibiting this disorder; they are consumed by it.

Can you elaborate
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