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Why I Work on Ads

jefftk.com

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Re: Why I Work on Ads

#851

Post by cutemonster »

Grustaf wrote: post #841
pydry wrote: post #812

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried starting a website a while back that would give reliable, unbiased information on a certain class of goods and services. I looked at my competitors and saw that most of them were obviously shilling for the company that was paying them the most, which was never the best. I figured by being the most honest I could be the most trusted and win out. The trouble is, the best companies would rely upon word of mouth.…

Figure out which brand you prefer, contact them and negotiate a commission. If you're open to your readers about it, it should be fine.

Nice idea :-) hmm at the same time, from the perspective of the readers, how can they know that Pydry (GP) didn't behind the scenes contact 20 brands, and are now promoting those who paid the most?

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#852

Post by w0de0 »

ericmay wrote: post #35
jefftk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you say more what you mean by "pointless red queen race"? Let's say someone wants to sell fishing equipment. The traditional way of doing this is to buy ads on fishing sites. So now my fishing equipment purchases make there be more writing about fishing; yay! Then one of the fishing websites decides to put a tracking pixel on their site to drop "fishing website visitor" cookies (or, in a future without third-part…

> The traditional way of doing this is to buy ads on fishing sites. Before digital advertising or Google reading emails to find out you're going on a fishing trip, how did people buy fishing equipment? Whatever we did then, we can probably go back to and be much better off. Like why do I need "relevant ads" on a blog about urban planning? What problem does that solve for me?

Jeff contends that '"relevant ads" on a blog about urban planning' solve the problem of funding the blog for you. They allow the blog to not be required to focus on 'fishing equipment' in order to place such ads, only that it attract people known to Google's ad network to like fishing.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#853

Post by Justsignedup »

Nasrudith wrote: post #432
Justsignedup wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally am of the opinion that "targeted advertising" _is_ the problem. Random generic advertising is fine. It isn't as profitable but it doesn't exploit a person's mental weaknesses. Targeted advertising is straight up exploitation. Kids being bombarded with ads for plastic surgery nonestop on TikTok, radicalized individuals being targeted with fear-based ads. This is super toxic. And while advertising is a tal…

Those parade of horribles raise an awkward question - couldn't the lack of targetting of advertising make it even worse in several senses? We had the "punch the monkey/click here for viruses" in the past instead to monetize general targets when it was more niche. People forget /why/ Google won web advertising like they did. The "badness" of the ads results from the selecting function and what becomes sustainable and…

Oh totally. Google did win because of personalization. However I don't think that is necessarily a good thing.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#854

Post by mikl »

latexr wrote: post #649

> I think advertising is positive > (…) > So: why is advertising good? (…) The question is, what is the alternative? “I can’t think of a better alternative than the status quo, thus the status quo is positive” isn’t a sound conclusion. Every sufficiently ingrained societal negative we’ve abolished since was likely reasoned in that manner at one point.

Yep, without otherwise equating the two, this is basically “But who will pick the cotton then?” argument against the abolition of slavery.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#855

Post by Grustaf »

cutemonster wrote: post #851
Grustaf wrote: post #841

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Figure out which brand you prefer, contact them and negotiate a commission. If you're open to your readers about it, it should be fine.

Nice idea :-) hmm at the same time, from the perspective of the readers, how can they know that Pydry (GP) didn't behind the scenes contact 20 brands, and are now promoting those who paid the most?

Sure, they won't know that, but I don't actually think honesty is an important selling point in most sectors. If the review seems coherent and plausible, that's enough for most people. So in a way, honesty is mostly for his own benefit.

Besides, how could he prove his honesty either way?

I guess he could arrange commission with all companies, hope that his favourite brand isn't also the one paying the most, and then disclose all the commissions.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#856

Post by nearbuy »

munk-a wrote: post #662
drcongo wrote: post #119

As the person who originally asked "why" I feel like I ought to respond, though much of it is covered by other comments. I used to work in more trad advertising, so my question wasn't so much an objection to working in advertising itself, but specifically Google's version of advertising, which I see as gross overreach into people's personal lives. In other comments people have mentioned YouTube subscriptions as being…

> I quit advertising after only a couple of years because it blackened my soul. If I was helping to harvest people's personal lives for private profit I can only imagine it would have been worse. I can definitely feel this - I worked in mobile gaming for a little while. The camaraderie was amazing, I keep in touch with a number of coworkers from that job - the company was terrible (like gaming companies tend to be) b…

> If you need to justify your work by calling out the charity you're doing with the earnings then I think you, internally, have identified that what you're doing is causing harm to society.

You're misunderstanding the author's intent here. He's saying he works so that he can donate to charities. That part of his answer would remain no matter what type of work he did. Charity is important to him. He was giving a large fraction of his income before he ever started working on ads.

I think that because you believe ads are harmful, you're assuming that the author must also internally feel that ads are harmful. That may be your own bias. What seems obvious to you may not seem true to others. The author explained why he feels ads are a net benefit to society (and also acknowledged some negatives of ads).

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#857

Post by wayoutthere »

pseudozach wrote: post #358
wayoutthere wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been saying this for decades. I don’t see a way for this to happen that is both more convenient to users and not open to all manner of automated attacks that would be difficult if not impossible to track down. Ad fraud is already a huge problem, as are things like ransomware. Micropayments would just give bad actors a direct line to your wallet.

You can allow certain domains to automatically withdraw from your bitcoin wallet and set limits to how much they can withdraw. This is not a technical problem but more of a marketing/adoption one. There are very smart people working on these: https://socket.money/

And what happens when one of those domains gets hacked and a malicious script injected into their code that takes advantage of a 0-day in the browser to siphon the cash? Not at all a far-fetched situation as it’s how ransomware works today.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#858

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #777
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 thing is, Google's customers generally do not simply want attention, they want people to pay them for something. Thus, there is a monetary cost if the advertiser succeeds. Google is just a middleman, taking a cut of those prospective sales. The sad part of online ads is that the internet allows an advertiser, with Google's help, to potentially annoy hundreds of millions of people in order to make some small numbe…

@canadianfella: same as TV but worse, and we're just getting started

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#859

Post by ericmay »

w0de0 wrote: post #852
ericmay wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The traditional way of doing this is to buy ads on fishing sites. Before digital advertising or Google reading emails to find out you're going on a fishing trip, how did people buy fishing equipment? Whatever we did then, we can probably go back to and be much better off. Like why do I need "relevant ads" on a blog about urban planning? What problem does that solve for me?

Jeff contends that '"relevant ads" on a blog about urban planning' solve the problem of funding the blog for you. They allow the blog to not be required to focus on 'fishing equipment' in order to place such ads, only that it attract people known to Google's ad network to like fishing.

I’d prefer the blog shut down or just self-host or find some alternative. Donations work well enough. I’m blocking the ads anyway and if they block me because of that, then that’s fine too.

Ad blockers are a godsend though. I either get to opt-out of ads, or I get to opt-out of sites that rely on ads (for the most part, caveats aside).

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#860

Post by munk-a »

nearbuy wrote: post #856
munk-a wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I quit advertising after only a couple of years because it blackened my soul. If I was helping to harvest people's personal lives for private profit I can only imagine it would have been worse. I can definitely feel this - I worked in mobile gaming for a little while. The camaraderie was amazing, I keep in touch with a number of coworkers from that job - the company was terrible (like gaming companies tend to be) b…

> If you need to justify your work by calling out the charity you're doing with the earnings then I think you, internally, have identified that what you're doing is causing harm to society. You're misunderstanding the author's intent here. He's saying he works so that he can donate to charities. That part of his answer would remain no matter what type of work he did. Charity is important to him. He was giving a large…

But, specifically, he mentioned that when asked why he works in that field. There are lots of different industries and different roles within those industries - my understanding is that marketers don't make particularly outsized salaries and as such it doesn't really logically click for me that you'd choose to work as a marketer to maximize the amount you could give to charity.

I could say that I specifically play board games because I need to repay my student loan - maybe board games are a slightly more economic choice than playing MMORPGs but these two qualities are only tangentially related and, if I made that statement - you'd probably be awfully curious why I thought playing board games was a tactic specifically related to paying off my student loan.

I definitely do feel they're harmful so while I'll try to remain neutral in logic I won't downplay the fact that I'm very much not emotionally neutral - but that sort of a statement specifically rings false to me, it sounds like someone trying to make an excuse.

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