5 ms·

I believe you hit the nail on the head: greed. This was my tipping point. When sites got so greedy that they stopped caring if anyone read their content, I stop

by nulbyte 11y ago

I believe you hit the nail on the head: greed. This was my tipping point. When sites got so greedy that they stopped caring if anyone read their content, I stopped caring if they got paid for obtrusive ads. Even Google has designed some horrendous ads, especially the Nexus ad that grabs swipes on mobile, keeping you from scrolling past it. If the ads stuck to the meatverse-equivalent style of static but attractive, I would be fine. But the overwhelming majority overwhelms the reader with animation, transitions, cover-ups, pop-over, pop-up, pop-under—how many pops do we need before we have enough?! And publishers have restored to covering up their just to force interactivity, so you can click through them and see more ads. Why is there a Read More link on this recipe page? Obviously I want to read more, that's why I visited this page! It boils down to greed. The bar has been set so low to attract more and more advertisers to make more money. Frankly, if someone were ingenious enough to inflate the price for plain publisher-hosted ads, one to a page, that didn't overwhelm the reader, I'm pretty sure that person would soon be rich.

eli 11y ago
Is it fair to call it "greed" if these sites aren't making much money, even with all the aggressive ad units? You need to have an extremely popular site with uncommonly low overhead to be very profitable just off of banner ads.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  Then why do they bother?
  - spacehome 11y ago
    Yea, I'm ready for websites who can't find a viable monetization strategy to just go bankrupt already and stop blaming me for their shitty business plan.
    - eli 11y ago
      You won't miss them? Quite a few of the sites I enjoy are struggling to remain ad supported and I would be sad if they can't find a way to make it work.
      - trolly 11y ago
        Out of curiosity could you give a couple examples?
        eli 11y ago
        Well, first off: full disclosure that my startup is ad-supported business news sites. So feel free to consider me biased, but the reason I started the company with this model is because I really believe news websites work best when anyone can read the articles without paying a fee or signing up for an account. Off the top of my head maybe a good example is http://popville.com/ http://popville.com/ which is a local DC blog. The guy who runs it is a little controversial, but the site is extremely well-read and useful and 100% ad supported. http://arstechnica.com/ http://arstechnica.com/ is great too. And then, ya know, stuff like Twitter wouldn't really work if you had to pay to use it. Or do Twitter ads not count?
        spacehome 11y ago
        So considered. I have no real issue with people who want to put ads on sites. My tolerance ends, however, when they try to moralize to me about how I render hypertext on my own machine. My attention and mental health are worth more to me than the ad impression ever could ever be to the marketer. Occasionally a site will refuse to serve articles unless I turn off my adblocker, and every time I just close the tab with no regrets.
        chris_wot 11y ago
        Not only that, but I'd suggest that the parent you are replying to doesn't have highly intrusive ads...
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  You do now. It was easier before the ad industry fell into the classic Tragedy of the Commons trap. "Reinvent your industry with this one weird old tip." Yes, it was greed, and yes, of course it led to a predictable outcome. The smart thing for the industry to do would be to create a code of practice and do a deal with the ad blockers to allow - not force - people to view ads that add value to their lives. Print publishing used to make this work fairly well. But the industry seems incapable of acting with anything that passes for strategic intelligence. If it didn't treat customers like exploitable prey, it wouldn't be in the situation it's in now.
  - FussyZeus 11y ago
    Cannot up vote this hard enough. The attitude of ad purveyors to their consumers idles at neglect and ramps up to direct malice.
vijayr 11y ago
The problem with greed is that it only takes a handful of players to ruin it for everyone. There are still good sites providing quality content and monetizing it responsibly and decently with ads - they will also get hit by ad blockers, as most users would likely block all ads (and we can't blame them for it)
- GVIrish 11y ago
  > The problem with greed is that it only takes a handful of players to ruin it for everyone. This is a classic case of tragedy of the commons. Bad actors in the advertising space rush to extract the most value out of internet ads by continually pushing the frontier of obnoxiousness. Because, 'hey if I don't do it, someone else will'. And much like the tragedy of the commons with overfishing, they have to keep increasing effort to make up for the decline in effectiveness as they 'overfish' internet users. Even if you're an ethical advertiser you end up getting harmed by the unethical ones as wide swathes of people start using ad blockers, and the ones that don't are ad-blind anyway.
- ufmace 11y ago
  I've been sticking to blocking all ads everywhere for a long time. It feels like every time I start thinking I ought to whitelist a few of the sites with better content, a story comes out about a fresh set of malware via ads attacks on very respectable sites. Another example of advertiser's greed and sloppiness spoiling the pot.
  - rincebrain 11y ago
    There's an interesting short story I am unable to find online at the moment, which describes a near-future in which people have figured out how to have similarly invasive effects on the viewers with print ads - leading to infectious graffiti, for example.
tn13 11y ago
I don't understand the "greed" part. I worked for a publisher which eventually had to put 8 ad units per page and still could not break even and went out of business soon. I don't think trying to pay salaries of employees is greed and if it is then all of us are greedy. But your solution is right and that is why native ads like Taboola, Outbrain and Revcontent are winning. As times goes by having ads that are not distinguishable from content is what might help these publishers. PS. There is one more serious side effect of small publishers dieing out. It means Facebook and Twitter might have much more influence public opinion and they may not support diversity of opinion the way an open internet did. Facebook is already taking a pro-migrants stand or Twitter is also helping censor criticism of religion. Survival of small publishers is important.
- tanker 11y ago
  The idea of ads indistinguishable from content is troubling. I agree this is a probable outcome. It sounds like food for conspiracy theories. I see two paths. First, ads so good you seek them out knowing they are advertising. This would be similar to a good catalog. Second, you are looking for content and find something produced by a company without your knowledge. It would be easy to produce "Top 10" lists or other style of content that favors your products. In that scenario, trust becomes the valuable commodity.
  - pdkl95 11y ago
    Ads as content isn't that bad of a problem. Consider a review or a show that uses a product for legitimate reasons. The (far) bigger problem will be using your friends against you[1]. Advertising by making various "credit scores" dependent on your friends using the "right" products will be very hard to counter. I suggest fighting it now. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHcTKWiZ8sI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHcTKWiZ8sI
- basseq 11y ago
  Maybe the alternative is "desperation". In your publisher example, lets say they needed 12 ad units per page to break even. At that point, you might start losing people to a bad signal-to-noise ratio. At the end of the day, it's a viable business model. It's not about the money in of itself. But if you can't support yourself and your business with the "right level" of advertising and you can't persuade people to give you their money any other way, your business model is failing, not advertising in of itself.
ghrifter 11y ago
Next up will be getting rid of "sponsored content". At least they dont eat bandwidth or server you malware. I mean they should just be images wrapped in a href to link to a "sponsored" article, instead of some javascript ad network that can serve malware

by nulbyte 11y ago

eli 11y ago

Is it fair to call it "greed" if these sites aren't making much money, even with all the aggressive ad units? You need to have an extremely popular site with uncommonly low overhead to be very profitable just off of banner ads.

chris_wot 11y ago
Then why do they bother?
- spacehome 11y ago
  Yea, I'm ready for websites who can't find a viable monetization strategy to just go bankrupt already and stop blaming me for their shitty business plan.
  - eli 11y ago
    You won't miss them? Quite a few of the sites I enjoy are struggling to remain ad supported and I would be sad if they can't find a way to make it work.
    - trolly 11y ago
      Out of curiosity could you give a couple examples?
      - eli 11y ago
        Well, first off: full disclosure that my startup is ad-supported business news sites. So feel free to consider me biased, but the reason I started the company with this model is because I really believe news websites work best when anyone can read the articles without paying a fee or signing up for an account. Off the top of my head maybe a good example is http://popville.com/ http://popville.com/ which is a local DC blog. The guy who runs it is a little controversial, but the site is extremely well-read and useful and 100% ad supported. http://arstechnica.com/ http://arstechnica.com/ is great too. And then, ya know, stuff like Twitter wouldn't really work if you had to pay to use it. Or do Twitter ads not count?
        spacehome 11y ago
        So considered. I have no real issue with people who want to put ads on sites. My tolerance ends, however, when they try to moralize to me about how I render hypertext on my own machine. My attention and mental health are worth more to me than the ad impression ever could ever be to the marketer. Occasionally a site will refuse to serve articles unless I turn off my adblocker, and every time I just close the tab with no regrets.
        chris_wot 11y ago
        Not only that, but I'd suggest that the parent you are replying to doesn't have highly intrusive ads...
TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
You do now. It was easier before the ad industry fell into the classic Tragedy of the Commons trap. "Reinvent your industry with this one weird old tip." Yes, it was greed, and yes, of course it led to a predictable outcome. The smart thing for the industry to do would be to create a code of practice and do a deal with the ad blockers to allow - not force - people to view ads that add value to their lives. Print publishing used to make this work fairly well. But the industry seems incapable of acting with anything that passes for strategic intelligence. If it didn't treat customers like exploitable prey, it wouldn't be in the situation it's in now.
- FussyZeus 11y ago
  Cannot up vote this hard enough. The attitude of ad purveyors to their consumers idles at neglect and ramps up to direct malice.

vijayr 11y ago

The problem with greed is that it only takes a handful of players to ruin it for everyone. There are still good sites providing quality content and monetizing it responsibly and decently with ads - they will also get hit by ad blockers, as most users would likely block all ads (and we can't blame them for it)

GVIrish 11y ago
> The problem with greed is that it only takes a handful of players to ruin it for everyone. This is a classic case of tragedy of the commons. Bad actors in the advertising space rush to extract the most value out of internet ads by continually pushing the frontier of obnoxiousness. Because, 'hey if I don't do it, someone else will'. And much like the tragedy of the commons with overfishing, they have to keep increasing effort to make up for the decline in effectiveness as they 'overfish' internet users. Even if you're an ethical advertiser you end up getting harmed by the unethical ones as wide swathes of people start using ad blockers, and the ones that don't are ad-blind anyway.
ufmace 11y ago
I've been sticking to blocking all ads everywhere for a long time. It feels like every time I start thinking I ought to whitelist a few of the sites with better content, a story comes out about a fresh set of malware via ads attacks on very respectable sites. Another example of advertiser's greed and sloppiness spoiling the pot.
- rincebrain 11y ago
  There's an interesting short story I am unable to find online at the moment, which describes a near-future in which people have figured out how to have similarly invasive effects on the viewers with print ads - leading to infectious graffiti, for example.

tn13 11y ago

I don't understand the "greed" part. I worked for a publisher which eventually had to put 8 ad units per page and still could not break even and went out of business soon. I don't think trying to pay salaries of employees is greed and if it is then all of us are greedy. But your solution is right and that is why native ads like Taboola, Outbrain and Revcontent are winning. As times goes by having ads that are not distinguishable from content is what might help these publishers. PS. There is one more serious side effect of small publishers dieing out. It means Facebook and Twitter might have much more influence public opinion and they may not support diversity of opinion the way an open internet did. Facebook is already taking a pro-migrants stand or Twitter is also helping censor criticism of religion. Survival of small publishers is important.

tanker 11y ago
The idea of ads indistinguishable from content is troubling. I agree this is a probable outcome. It sounds like food for conspiracy theories. I see two paths. First, ads so good you seek them out knowing they are advertising. This would be similar to a good catalog. Second, you are looking for content and find something produced by a company without your knowledge. It would be easy to produce "Top 10" lists or other style of content that favors your products. In that scenario, trust becomes the valuable commodity.
- pdkl95 11y ago
  Ads as content isn't that bad of a problem. Consider a review or a show that uses a product for legitimate reasons. The (far) bigger problem will be using your friends against you[1]. Advertising by making various "credit scores" dependent on your friends using the "right" products will be very hard to counter. I suggest fighting it now. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHcTKWiZ8sI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHcTKWiZ8sI
basseq 11y ago
Maybe the alternative is "desperation". In your publisher example, lets say they needed 12 ad units per page to break even. At that point, you might start losing people to a bad signal-to-noise ratio. At the end of the day, it's a viable business model. It's not about the money in of itself. But if you can't support yourself and your business with the "right level" of advertising and you can't persuade people to give you their money any other way, your business model is failing, not advertising in of itself.

ghrifter 11y ago

Next up will be getting rid of "sponsored content". At least they dont eat bandwidth or server you malware. I mean they should just be images wrapped in a href to link to a "sponsored" article, instead of some javascript ad network that can serve malware