4 ms·

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 bus

by 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.
gregmac 11y ago
> native ads like Taboola, Outbrain and Revcontent are winning Ah yes, Taboola, that was it. About a year ago, Taboola was specifically what caused me to install ad block. I generally didn't find ads too horrible. My browsing habits just never sent me to sites that had really obnoxious ads, and in certain cases, I specifically would avoid sites like Sourceforge, Softpedia or Download.com, because of their fake download link ads. For the most part, I tolerated (and largely ignored) the existence of ads. I've actually even legitimately clicked on ads before (fewer than 10 in my life, and only for something work-related), though I'm not sure it's ever caused a purchase. Then these stupid "You may also like" things started appearing everywhere, very similar in style to actual real "related articles on this site" content. That's so misleadingly close to the fake download button ads that it was really getting on my nerves. Then the content quickly got obnoxious, with celebrity gossip, and the one that totally put me over the edge was some gross picture of some type of medical problem which I was seeing multiple times a day. Honestly I even initially started out with just the intent of blocking Taboola only, but they do things to presumably make it harder to block, and so it was easier just to leave on the default blocklists (which had already done the work to block Taboola everywhere) and everything else was just a casualty of that working. So are "native ads" like Taboola the answer? I sure hope not, because I am willing to spend a lot of energy to never see that nonsense again.

by tn13 11y ago

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.

gregmac 11y ago

> native ads like Taboola, Outbrain and Revcontent are winning Ah yes, Taboola, that was it. About a year ago, Taboola was specifically what caused me to install ad block. I generally didn't find ads too horrible. My browsing habits just never sent me to sites that had really obnoxious ads, and in certain cases, I specifically would avoid sites like Sourceforge, Softpedia or Download.com, because of their fake download link ads. For the most part, I tolerated (and largely ignored) the existence of ads. I've actually even legitimately clicked on ads before (fewer than 10 in my life, and only for something work-related), though I'm not sure it's ever caused a purchase. Then these stupid "You may also like" things started appearing everywhere, very similar in style to actual real "related articles on this site" content. That's so misleadingly close to the fake download button ads that it was really getting on my nerves. Then the content quickly got obnoxious, with celebrity gossip, and the one that totally put me over the edge was some gross picture of some type of medical problem which I was seeing multiple times a day. Honestly I even initially started out with just the intent of blocking Taboola only, but they do things to presumably make it harder to block, and so it was easier just to leave on the default blocklists (which had already done the work to block Taboola everywhere) and everything else was just a casualty of that working. So are "native ads" like Taboola the answer? I sure hope not, because I am willing to spend a lot of energy to never see that nonsense again.