91–98 of 98 posts
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The large amount of debt ceded from society to jedberg in exchange for aiding and abetting the pollution of peoples' minds is morally reprehensible and disgusting to me
You think Netflix is polluting people’s minds? What’s OK with you, reading Wittgenstein over backgammon?
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Why would I pay for targeted ads? You mean because I find them useful? I assume they're more useful to the advertisers than to me. I am willing to not get paid by them since I find them useful.
I think the parent question is interesting... you say you derive value from them, so it's somewhat conspicuous and seemingly arbitrary (rather than intentional, or calculated) that you've happened upon exactly $0.00 as the value to you, rather than negative (you'd like no ads unless you're being paid to compensate for the pain, loss of privacy, etc.) or positive (because you enjoy them and derive value out of them as…
Rather, jedberg has already found way more suppliers than he needs, all willing to supply him ads at $0.00, which makes that the equilibrium price.
Analogously, I would value oxygen basically infinitely high because I don't want to die. However, I would never pay for it because I can easily get it for free, and would laugh at anyone who tried to charge me for permission to breathe.
I think it's difficult in general for people to put a price on most of the things they get for free, just because they're used to getting them for free, and build their price intuitions on being able to get them for free.
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TL;DR: It gives me ideas of ways to spend money I was already going to spend, but now I have a place to start my research with some concrete ideas. Well, I've given the example of live shows a couple of times. I've been to a few live shows that I learned about from targeted ads. Those were experiences I enjoyed and would not have learned about otherwise. I'll pull up my Insta feed right now and list the targeted ads:…
Here's what I don't get: Why not just block the ads, which has two benefits: 1. Reduces profitability of advertising companies 2. Makes browsing the web sane (not to mention 30000% more pleasant) And then after you've blocked all the ads you can just search for $subject_or_product_genre_that_interests_you, on your own terms, without worrying about scumbags tracking you and mining crypto via javascript in your browser…
Also, a lot of sites I like exist because of ads. If everyone had them off, they wouldn't exist anymore.
And because I wouldn't even think to search for those topics in the first place. It's the act of seeing that ad that gets me to start thinking about that topic in the first place.
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Not a fan of targeted ads, but which ad to show you is only half of the part. The other part is tracking conversions, aka finding out if you actually bought some item after you saw the ad. Also, ads don't have to work for everyone. If they work for some folks, it's already profitable for the platforms. And they do work.
I would say tracking conversions is the most important part. There’s always a lot of attention on targeting because it’s user-facing, creepy, and strikes a nerve with the HN crowd. But anyone that has spent five minutes working with their marketing people or implementing adTech would know the true story. “Are these ads effective? Should we spend more money on them?” Without conversion data the answer is one big shrug…
It doesn't help that people try to sell conversion as something that benefits the ad viewer because if it increases sales, it must also be good for the people doing the buying or something like that. That argument of "better ads" then gets easily misunderstood as targeting but it is only indirectly about that.
I was recently met with a new popup in the Instagram app, asking me to allow it to track me across applications. I actually said yes, because I get great targeted ads in Instagram and Facebook. I've clicked on multiple ads and actually even made purchases of things that I didn't know about that looked interesting. But the important part is that I do it willingly. I'm glad they were forced to ask -- not everyone is ok…
this is the weirdest take on ads i’ve ever heard. sounds like “i have too much money and enjoy when people show me new ways of spending it”
Is there something wrong with that?
I was recently met with a new popup in the Instagram app, asking me to allow it to track me across applications. I actually said yes, because I get great targeted ads in Instagram and Facebook. I've clicked on multiple ads and actually even made purchases of things that I didn't know about that looked interesting. But the important part is that I do it willingly. I'm glad they were forced to ask -- not everyone is ok…
I wonder how you get into a useful ads category! Instagram usually wants to show me either absurdly expensive luxury property, student flats to rent near universities I’ve never been to, or luxury investment property in Dubai. They did at one point think I’d want to constantly see massively marked up dumbbells when they were sold out everywhere but when I didn’t bite they went back to showing me property I can’t affo…
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I'm fine, thanks. :) The purpose of ads is to inform people of things they wouldn't otherwise know about. In that regard, I appreciate good ads that tell me about things I would want to know about and didn't already. For example, some of the ads I get are for live shows (back in the before times). These are live shows that I enjoy going to, but would never have known about, because I don't know where to look for them…
On HN there seems to be a notion that ALL Ads are bad. No Ads should be allowed. And yet at the same time they are enjoying all the free tools and website build upon this business model. And then also the notion that ALL data gathered intrude privacy. And somehow anyone on the Internet should be anonymous , may be that is not even the right word, may be invisible could be used to better describe it. Privacy means peo…
And then also the notion that ALL data gathered intrude privacy. And somehow anyone on the Internet should be anonymous, may be that is not even the right word, may be invisible could be used to better describe it.
Let's name it the Thiel paradox. Maybe then this flavor of cognitive dissonance is better captured and told further.