34 ms·

We’re dropping Google Ads

1477 points by alex_hirner 10y ago

jjcm 10y ago
The ad driven models are slowly killing publishing. They're right in what they're saying - their competition is clickbait that just wants attention. A view is a view, and an ad will pay out the same regardless of the quality of the content on the page. I really hope we find a way to distribute payment for quality content in a better way. It's something that I've been working on personally because I like publishing content, and I hate having to choose between marring my content with ads, or losing money if I hit the front page of reddit.
- GooglyMoogly 10y ago
  >A view is a view, and an ad will pay out the same regardless of the quality of the content on the page. That's not really true. Advertisers can bid on how much they want to pay for each individual impression. Advertisers will likely bid more for ads on high quality websites. Advertisers will also bid more for people willing to buy stuff.
  - notgood 10y ago
    >Advertisers will likely bid more for ads on high quality websites Citation needed > Advertisers will also bid more for people willing to buy stuff. Unfortunately, there is no correlation between people willing to buy stuff and high quality content.
    - eli 10y ago
      We don't typically sell them this way, but the CPM for an ad on e.g. retaildive.com is much higher than anything on Google's network. > Unfortunately, there is no correlation between people willing to buy stuff and high quality content. Citation needed :)
      - notgood 10y ago
        Do I really need a citation to prove dumb people have money? Because that's basically what you are asking. Or perhaps you believe that when people click an ad on "low-quality" site the are less likely to buy than from the same ad on "high-quality" site? Seriously, the "enlargement penis" spam works because the average person is not that selective on the ads they chose nor the websites they visit.
        Noseshine 10y ago
        > the "enlargement penis" spam works because the average person is not that selective on the ads they chose nor the websites they visit I don't think you understand "average". It's the extreme tail of the distribution that is targeted by such ads. Example: > Nigerian scam emails 'deliberately implausible' > New research from Microsoft suggests that email scammers maximise profits by entrapping only the most gullible. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/microsoft/9346371/Nigerian-scam-emails-deliberately-implausible.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/microsoft/9346371/Nige...
- nol13 10y ago
  I think ideal for me would be some sort of hassle free micro-payment if some form of it ever really caught on. With all the paywalls going up I really wouldn't mind paying a small bit for some of the quality content out there, but I'm not gonna sign up for a subscription to every site on the internet nor give them my info.
- Huhty 10y ago
  I really hope we find a way to distribute payment for quality content in a better way. Our platform Snapzu (similar to Reddit) allows tribe leaders to earn a 55% revenue split when their referred members buy premium (our version of Reddit gold.) This was recently added with the launch of our "blog enhancement suite" as explained in this explainer video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTvWM-kjXSQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTvWM-kjXSQ TLDR: You can start/run a community (like a sub-reddit), embed it on your blog/website, and earn money from your referrals (your members.)
foobar1962 10y ago
They'll want your HEAD for revealing that you're dropping Google Ads!
hartator 10y ago
Adsense has became a less and less attractive option. Ad quality is poor, revenue per click lower and lower, policies are enforced weirdly and keep changing, force you to display annoying cookie modals, etc.
mevile 10y ago
I always imagined that some website/mobile app/service would appear that would let you buy subscriptions for access to multiple publishers at once. I think people have a hard time spending $5 here a month $10 there a month, but would spend maybe $49 for a range of access to sites. I don't know why something like that hasn't taken off yet. You could pick the sites you want access to or they could do a pay out based on where you went and what you read.
- iLoch 10y ago
  Google Contributor would be your primary competition. I think typical users just aren't ready to pay for access to regular websites.
  - mevile 10y ago
    This only works for sites that show google ads. This is not a subscription service and probably doesn't pay sites much as I am signed up for this and I pay maybe $6-$9 a month and I spend a lot of time online. Google Contributors is a way for readers to opt out of ads, it's not a way to fund sites other than to maybe opt to whitelist in an adblocker. But it's not a lot of money.
- techsupporter 10y ago
  I'd love to have something like that. We already have Spotify (et al) for music. PressReader for newspapers. If the music industry can be dragged kicking and screaming into the bulk buying model, why can't online publishers?
- Mz 10y ago
  You can also just do a tip jar model or patreon. So far, for me, the tip jar has been more successful than ads or Patreon (though I am new to Patreon, so, time will tell). I would be happy to get rid of ads altogether (with the exception of one site, for REASONS) if I thought that would drive up tips. But I have experimented a bit and it didn't seem to drive up tips. Then, whenever I read these discussions, there is a great deal of vitriol about the evil of ads, yet, most people don't actually want to pay for content. They just want it free. When you suggest this is a broken model and content producers also deserve compensation, the answer is typically "not my problem," basically. As a content producer, I find it enormously frustrating to read some of the awful things that get said. It reminds me of the line in All in the Family where Archie says men are supposed to have experience before marriage and women are not and his daughter asks "Who are they supposed to get their experience with?" My snarky son's answer: Elderly widows should be deflowering young men. It fits all the parameters of the expectations while horrifying most people. An awful lot of people are only thinking about "I don't want ads" and that's it. They basically want it for free, then don't think about what that means for the big picture. /rambling vent
627467 10y ago
I've been saying that when you're selling ad space, knowing your buyer is as important as knowing your audience. In the traditional online ad (Google and alikes) model that knowledge is lost to third party algorithms. And worst, feeds the generic ad blockers which destroy the reliability of said algorithms. Theoutline.com is an example of how the new relationship between brands<>publishers<>audience will evolve.
- phoneyphone 10y ago
  For those who want no ads at all, try using Outline.com
phantom_oracle 10y ago
For smaller websites (also referred to the democratization of the internet), I am sure many people may (or have) feel (felt) guilty for using an ad-blocker. Then you see all those shitty ads for: - finding a russian bride - getting rich through some millionaires secret - anti-aging remedies - adware and you realize that the ad-model only benefits Google and the peddlers pushing the dodgy adverts. Everyone else is losing. People keep saying that "journalism is dying", but this industry and its ad-model isn't very "old" in historical terms. For every Business Insider that dies, the world will carry on. For quality journalism (an oxymoron of sorts) and news that matters to people and their circumstances, I assume people will keep forking out money (like they do for The Economist). If someone smarter than myself can elaborate, how is Googles business-model for ads on 3rd-party websites sustainable for the long-term?
- reaperducer 10y ago
  Just so you know, there's this one crazy trick for getting free news without ads while Oprah refinances Obama's secret mortgage...
- eli 10y ago
  With the notable exception of AdBlock Plus (which has its own problems) the big ad block plugins tend to be philosophically opposed to all ads of any type, quality or quantity. This is a bummer for sites like ours where the ads are sold directly to advertisers (no network) and are relevant to the audience and subject matter.
  - nebabyte 10y ago
    It's actually kind of amazing how many wrong notes this 2-line comment hits (A) The plugins do not actually have any particular philosophy. They act as facilitators for different lists which certainly have their own. (B) The creators of the plugins' philosophies (which again, aren't actually in the plugin - usually you have to look into the creator) tend to be varied, and several of them (notably the best ones) do promote supporting content creators, either directly or via whitelist (C) You can always control your adblocker, and many users (especially those who care about a site, are interested in related content, or so on) do disable it for their favorite sites. The extensions (that I've used, anyways) specifically account for this and remember whitelisted sites. If your site is significantly suffering because of adblocking and you've mentioned your concerns to users, adblockers are not your problem, your users are. There's no fix for resource leeches.
reaperducer 10y ago
I've been on the fence about this for a while, and after reading what GroundUp wrote, I can't agree with them more. So I think it's time for me to dump Google Ads from my sites, as well. I send Big G three million ad impressions a month, and in return I get $150 and a bunch of visual dreck that makes the site look bad. $200, if I'm lucky. And this is all U.S. traffic on an award-winning news site. I only need to sell one more local ad to more than make up for the loss, and I get the extra benefit of having only quality, relevant advertising on my site. So to quote GroundUp: "Obviously the behemoth in Mountain View won’t miss [us], but we take some pride in saying the feeling’s mutual."
- Safety1stClyde 10y ago
  The amount of money you get from Google Adsense depends on the type of content. I looked at your profile but didn't find any information on what sites you might be running. Since this is hacker news, it might be that your site contains computer-related content. That type of content gets very low RPM. Still 3,000,000 impressions a month is quite a lot, so your site is obviously popular.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- sp33k3rph433k 10y ago
  I'm working on something that will benefit people who have high traffic sites that don't want to show their users ads. The basics are here: http://www.trussapp.com/ http://www.trussapp.com/ -- it's not quite ready for production, but if it's something you might be interested in, I'm looking for beta users. cam@trussapp.com
  - howenterprisey 10y ago
    Small nitpick, and if you want some unsolicited feedback on that site: the GIF that shows a user using the site goes super slow and it would be a lot more engaging if the user typed faster. Although I don't know how much I can blame this on connection problems on my end, it looks like it takes five seconds or so to type "Test Tester", when in my opinion it should take only one.
Safety1stClyde 10y ago
I too deal with Google as a "publisher", and some of my experiences are similar to theirs. For example the odd way that they complain about certain forms of content, apparently prompted by an algorithm and unchecked by a human. It seems to me that Google is a kind of corporate "Rain Man" - they have amazing abilities, and yet there are also these astonishing failures to deal with problems which could easily be resolved by a normal corporation.
tps5 10y ago
> Perhaps at some point online publishers [will] find a new way to solicit advertising from reputable companies that pay properly. Someone get on this.
- username223 10y ago
  That was The Deck, and they recently shut down: http://decknetwork.net/ http://decknetwork.net/ In the near future, it will be total war between amoral lowlife hucksters, and cheapskate users.
wonderway 10y ago
I often wonder how much revenue my hometown newspaper makes off online adds -- http://newspressnow.com http://newspressnow.com. When you first go to the site, a Credit Karma ad or Rite Aid ad popup appears (promoted by Kixer). Close that and you see a site just overwhelmed by ads, some local. Then they have the "Sponsored Links" by Content.ad saying: - "Cheaper and Stronger than Adderral" - "Don't watch this video around you wife <insert photo of model>" - "Fruits that fight diabetes" - "Biblical solutions to weight loss" The local owners of the newspaper, sold their cable company for $350 million which they had owned for 45 years (Cablevision->Suddenlink). If an exceptionally wealthy local newspaper owner can't offer content in a reasonable way without egregious deceptive links, who can? This type of behavior should be heavily criticized, especially by those who can afford to avoid it. Instead, it's considered business as usual.
paulcole 10y ago
>So Google accepts get-rich-quick ads featuring famous people without their permission Just curious but is there any way to know for sure whether those images are licensed or not?
killjoywashere 10y ago
> our articles get much more traffic on mainstream media that republish us, but we receive no advertising revenue from this Um, so, shouldn't you be charging a syndication fee, probably a percentage of their ads displayed on your articles?
beezischillin 10y ago
It's such a weird time to be alive: with all the controversy around advertising nowadays we're kind of seeing Google's previously invulnerable tendrils around the Internet slowly being peeled off. That being their major source of income, they must be worried. I am too, but for another reason -- I don't want a company like Facebook taking over and establishing a monopoly (say what you will about Google, companies like Facebook are even less ethical).
- JKCalhoun 10y ago
  Is it no easier to peel back the tendrils of Facebook though?
sidcool 10y ago
Honestly, I won't use an ad-blocker if the ads weren't so creepily targeted and so annoyingly pervasive. Hell, I don't even mind looking and clicking on some ads if they are not intrusively shoved down my throat.
paulcole 10y ago
You're the first armchair philosopher to reply with a non-equivalent real world analogy looking to trip me up! Congratulations.
- Crito 10y ago
  Here's a digital analogy for you. Suppose I: 1) Disable my ad blocker. 2) "Open Link in New Tab" 3) Wait for my browser to finish requesting that data from the server 4) Close the tab without ever looking at it. Is that unethical? Is it unethical for me to decide I don't want to read a webpage after requesting it? Should the "open in new tab" feature always force a tab switch against my wishes, so ensure I'm not ripping off some website by requesting their data but not looking at their ads?
  - erikbigelow 10y ago
    If you're doing it for the sole purpose of wasting their money then it's pretty unethical. That's why in law they always talk about intent.
    - baddox 10y ago
      You've lost me on this analogy. Ad blocking is generally not used for the purpose of wasting a publisher's money.
  - Confusion 10y ago
    No, because you didn't enjoy the content either. Having the ads forced into your view is the cost of enjoying the content. So this is not a good analogy.
    - MichaelBurge 10y ago
      "Enjoy" is an interesting word to use there. That makes it akin to tipping, where if I read an article from the NY Times but don't think it was any good I don't have to see their ads. I haven't seen anyone else make that argument, but I do enable ads on certain sites that I like so it's probably not wrong for a certain class of people.
gregable 10y ago
A large problem here is that ads only support one type of content: low-cost and large-audience. Content ads, more or less, offer a fixed amount per impression. Sure, you might get a higher ad price for certain audiences than others, but this is related to topic, not the quality or cost of content. If you only make a fixed amount per impression, the only business model low-cost content targeting a large audience. High quality (aka high cost) content, with a narrow interest audience needs a different model. That different model is probably charging your reader. However, the moment you set up a paywall, the content disappears. Search engines will not suggest the content, feed readers can't access it, suggestion interfaces won't suggest it, etc. The content might as well not exist. We don't need micropayments. We need a model where paywall content can be discovered. Systems whereby paywall content can be accessed by aggregators who then can suggest/search/deliver the content, but will not give the content to users without payment.
rdl 10y ago
You really need different monetization for different kinds of sites. 1) Low quality, high volume, low overhead: google ads. 2) High quality/high value, low volume, niche: subscription/services 3) Medium quality, low volume, niche: donation The only form of advertising I'd ever want on my site, unless it is a very low quality, is direct sold by my own staff (i.e. me). I'd probably optimize for effort and just do a single "sponsor" for each month, or maybe ongoing. The low-touch way is probably to pick a relevant CPA program (say, Audible) and pitch that to your own audience.
- camillomiller 10y ago
  Everyone always forgets about Amazon referrals. For certain categories it's a valuable and inobtrusive monetization method
  - rdl 10y ago
    They recently killed electronics referral fees, though.
anoisyboy 10y ago
I added this article to /. (Slashdot) and it was marked as spam, sending it's rating black and instantly damaging it's chance of being seen, yet here it has proper and full engagement?!? How did someone at /. consider this spam? Hopefully someone here can shed some light.
- campuscodi 10y ago
  Don't worry. People on slashdot complain about HN mods.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
alexchantavy 10y ago
Off topic: this is the first time I've heard of GroundUp, and I really like the "Dear Editor" format of the comment page on this site. I'm used to seeing mainstream newspaper websites with downright toxic commenting environments, so seeing "Dear Editor" followed by a thought-out response is very refreshing. Maybe they have a "better" readership/screening process/whatever, but I think this higher quality commenting behavior is in part due to how GroundUp has simply tweaked the wording of the comment box interface - by framing the comment with "Dear Editor".
- anonymouz 10y ago
  Their letters (comments) are moderated. "In contrast to comments, letters are only published if approved by our editors. Views expressed in letters are not necessarily endorsed by GroundUp, but they must meet our quality requirements. Letters are given more prominence than comments on the website. "
- Antrikshy 10y ago
  It's not just the framing. They call their comments "letters". Try clicking the "Write a letter in response to this article" button. The UI is designed to promote constructive comments.
  - yjain 10y ago
    Thanks for the comment. I found a link to http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/free-guides.html http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/free-guides.html there which is very interesting!
  - vit05 10y ago
    Great observation. I think the UI wants to remember that this article was written by another human being. A simple solution to encourage civil conversation.
guelo 10y ago
I applaud the advertisers. For a good long while racists were afraid or ashamed to push their racism too publicly. I liked that world, less hate and venom being spewed around poisoning the public sphere. But something snapped in the last few years and all the assholes have become loud and proud of their assholiness and they are celebrated and encouraged to be the biggest asshole they can possibly be. From what I can tell it is linked to gaming and 4chan, a new culture of young aggressive males raised on shock and gore and porn and no consequences. For the good of civilization this needs to be bottled up. Racists need to be ashamed again. Assholes need to return to pretending to be decent human beings. The great human achievement that makes civilized society possible is keeping testorene fueled young males under some control to allow things to be built up instead of always being torn down. If we lose that then everything is lost.
- hoppa_liza 10y ago
  While I generally agree with you, I do not think control is the best route, but rather guidance. Oppressing/bottling high energy individuals is destructive on the long run even if it seems otherwise at the beginning. Directing this energy into a constructive path however is more beneficial to the individuals themselves as well as the communities they live in.
- syrrim 10y ago
  >from what I can tell this is from 4chan and gaming I do not think so. Gaming and 4chan have been around a while, but this development is, as you say, relatively recent. I think there is some force that is new that promotes this curve. One explanation is the widespread adoption and acceptance of the internet. Not so long ago, much fewer people had easy access to the web. Those that did often treated it with disdain, being mostly uninterested in it. At some point, people realized that the internet enabled them to freely speak their mind and associate with whomever they like to an unprecedented degree. Whereas before, people were limited by not wanting to distance themselves from friends and family, the internet enables them to lead a double life, with one part being a normal family man, the other being an internet pundit, freely spreading whichever vitriol they choose. For these same reasons, I don't think this facet of internet culture will be so easily put away. To do so requires breaking some of the principles that make the internet what it is, primarily the ability to post whatever you want, even illegal content (copyright, cp). There is also the ability to join comunities from anywhere in the world, not just those local to you, that have some extension in real life. These functions are part of what people dreamed about when they fostered the internet and the web. I think removing someone's advertising harms them to a point, but for many, it is a labor of love. They talk about the things they do because they truly enjoy those topics, and want to deseminate their views on it. If you cut off a revenue stream, they will continue posting, but perhaps scaled back due to needing a real job. Further, if their audience truly and unabashedly enjoys the content, they might be willing to fund the content maker through other channels, such as patreon or a similar websites. Cut off one revenue stream and two more pop up. I don't know what the solution is. Cutting off advertising won't be enough. Destroying the internet as we know it might be needed, but I worry that this is going too far.
mrtree 10y ago
The world in 2017, when a large chunk of economy revolves around clicking an ad. So fucked up.
danieka 10y ago
I noticed how civil all the comments are. I wonder if automatically prepending all comments with "Dear Editor" makes people think twice before writing the more common and nasty form of comments usual found in the comment sections of news pages?
- scrollaway 10y ago
  It definitely looks like it's prepending with Dear Editor and appending the date/name as signature. Really cool :)
elorant 10y ago
The real problem is that Google approves pretty much everyone for AdSense. Which works in favor of scammers and plagiarism. Someone scrapes content from respectable sites, parse them through an article spinning mechanism and voila, you have a legitimate looking site with absolutely no original content on it. Google shouldn't be approving any of those sites for ads. But they do, and that's a bit shocking for all of us who grew fond of them because of the "do no evil" mantra. Well Google, you're doing evil and perhaps it's time to do something about it.
justabystander 10y ago
Ad networks regularly serve various forms of malware and spyware, as well as tracking beacons that put my data at risk of being stolen or misused. And once it's in a database somewhere, it's only a matter of time until it gets stolen and someone attempts to hijack accounts or steal an identity. It's funny how you never see the sites that whine about adblockers offer to accept legal responsibility for their complicity in the potential theft and property destruction served from their site. When you take away the option to protect myself, you accept responsibility for attacks. After all, if it's morally/legally wrong to alter the presentation of the content they serve, then they also morally/legally responsible for incidents when they serve it improperly and cause losses/damages. Quite obviously it's not financially viable for them to pay for their negligence, and so it's also not financially viable for me to trust that a site won't host some sort of attack vector. The pennies of advertising revenue earned from my modest browsing over the course of a year doesn't pay nearly enough to compensate for the time I lose through dealing with malicious ads. Unless online advertising cleans itself up, adblockers will be the best option. And sites that don't respect that aren't sites I'm interested in.
- davidgerard 10y ago
  > It's funny how you never see the sites that whine about adblockers offer to accept legal responsibility for their complicity in the potential theft and property destruction served from their site. yep. This is an effective way to get newspapers whining about ad blockers to shut up as well.
  - Pigo 10y ago
    Every time I'm blocked from a news site because of my blocker, I just get context from comments and move on with my life. It's so rare that there's important information beyond what's in the headline anyways. I respect paywalls much more.
    - tripzilch 10y ago
      "I'll whitelist you, as soon as you stop using a third party ad network" "But then what's the point", we both said in unison.
harwoodleon 10y ago
I started, ran an sold an ad based business in 2008. To say that most of the activity in the ad space was dubious back then is a complete understatement. Most of our traffic to the adverts was generated, purely to syphon off money from the advertisers and we established this by fingerprinting the traffic with JS tools at the client side. This was what let me to the conclusion that the business is dysfunctional, the customers at best are getting wildly ripped off, their privacy effectively sold off and they open themselves up to huge amounts of malware too. Advertising is a horrible business model. But until a new way is found, people/businesses don't have any other choice of marketing their activities. I totally stand by the publication. Any publication that really cares about it's readers will try to find another way. (Edit: I am viewing this page on a Brave Browser, check it out, it has ad blocking and publisher micropayments built in https://brave.com https://brave.com)
bazillion 10y ago
I've been saying that the ad model is broken for a while, and prescribing a real fix for it: a new form of native advertising that actually benefits the user. My company, PLEENQ[1], makes it so users can hover over an image and click on the individual products within it to go where they can buy the product. Here's a demo video: https://youtu.be/V_oTtDUV0yI https://youtu.be/V_oTtDUV0yI My solution is to basically build features around the content of sites that enhance the areas of the site that already attract the users. More importantly, it simplifies the revenue model that the article talks about -- people click on your links and make purchases, and you get a share of every single purchase (CPA). The important thing is that it's compatible with any other revenue models a site might use. If, like GroundUp, they take donations, then it's just an extra revenue source on top of that. I looked on GroundUp.org for building an example video of how that would work so I could show the community, but it doesn't really fit the model of PLEENQ. Regardless, there are a vast number of niches that this new form of native advertising would drastically improve the revenue for. Imagine an auto blog showing a picture of an engine, and you being able to hover over any part within the picture and purchase it from Auto Zone. Another thing is that it can be used to split between revenue generating links, and informational links. Perhaps you have a news site, and a lot of your articles have pictures of politicians that your users might not be familiar with -- how about hovering over that person and being able to click on them to go to their Wikipedia page? I think that would greatly benefit a user browsing the site, and wouldn't cheapen in any way the experience of the site itself (in fact would greatly improve it). [1] http://pleenq.com http://pleenq.com
- nso 10y ago
  While cool as a tech (hello again <map>, i did not miss you) , most sites do not have large pictures of sellable items -- and far from every country has amazon as a reasonable choice due the cost of shipping and import tax. Maybe it is cool for pink bloggers ( https://goo.gl/OFWwmp https://goo.gl/OFWwmp ), but I don't see the use case for the masses like you do with adsense.
malikNF 10y ago
But they still have google analytics on their site.
jlebrech 10y ago
I wouldn't be on any social network if i had to pay $1 a month, but how much am I worth to them i wonder.
- dhimes 10y ago
  I would pay if they would keep my privacy, but I realize it would lock a lot of the world out. From last year's financials it looked like you were worth just over that to Facebook.
eddd 10y ago
Average CPM for ad online is 5$. Would you pay 0.005$ for rendering most of the websites?
- dhimes 10y ago
  Seriously? I pay about $0.50 per CPM.
nathan_f77 10y ago
"Less than $200" seems like a very small amount of money for 329,000 impressions. I imagine the number might be higher if the readers were mostly from the US, instead of South Africa. But still, you're not going to make a lot of money from a few hundred thousand impressions. In my experience, a YouTube video with 1,000,000 views will give you around $1,000. That's nowhere near enough to sustain a company or pay any employees. Right now I'm working on a game (which I hope to launch soon and show on HN!). While I dislike ads, I'm still going to put them in my game, because I enjoy making money more than I hate ads. I think Google and AdMob will mostly serve ads for other games, so they're not so bad.
Jean-Philipe 10y ago
My experience with google ads was not great. I once ran google ads for my mom's online shop. Before, there was a constant stream of visitors and revenue. With google ads, the visitor rate went up crazy - the revenue, not at all! Despite the fact that the ad was very specific for what you could buy for how much. Once the google ad credits were all used up, the visitors rate dropped to almost zero. As if google was punishing us for not running ads anymore.
StreamBright 10y ago
People should realize that Ad-blocking became a way of protecting users from malware and scam that even Google includes in their system. I understand that they do their best to remove these sort of things but they are doing a shitty job.
Elect2 10y ago
To me the biggest problem with Adsense is that I can not place the ad code to "modern" pages with ajax-loaded content.
deavmi 10y ago
Google Ads are shit. But Mindtree or whatever is worse. "Millionaire from Worcester makes $100 per hour"
kome 10y ago
Those people finally woke up, when others will start following the example? Advertising is not an easy job: and it takes more than a few lazy banner to do it right. The current model, the one pushed by Google, has no future. Using adblocks is a duty we have to change the system.
jere1 10y ago
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jere1 10y ago
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return0 10y ago
Google incentivizes so much of the content you read on the web, it's fair to say it's "Google's web" at the moment. What alternatives are there though? People can try dropping adsense, but for most websites it would hurt them more than they can handle. I wish there were better advertising systems, but, compared to the rest, adsense is actually better. Advertisers need to come up with better ideas.
arundhatikher 10y ago
I fully acknowledge the frustration with AdSense. And their rules are prudish and seemingly intermittent in nature-- at one's whim, if you get my meaning. I see nothing wrong with the above image and there is no nudity involved. I've seen more skin on a public beach. The real question at this point is, how are you going to pay for your site? I realize AdSense payments are tiny, but they are at least something. How do you plan on replacing those payments? Our site wouldn't be able to pay our writers without that tiny bit of revenue. In any case, I applaud your efforts and wish you the best.
known 10y ago
Relevant https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13992576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13992576
hawski 10y ago
I had a bit silly idea about financing of web services. Create beautiful, fast and very lean web serivce - "easy" part. It should be very lean - every page at most few hundred kB. Serve the website with useless bytes at front. Example: page weights 100kB - add 500kB of garbage to it at front. You can place them in html or js comment. You can add useless EXIF data to jpegs. You could place small number in every HTTP header. Or you could add artificial latency to every request. Then you sell those useless bytes or milliseconds. Your bytes could really be unicode glyphs. Example: a dollar for every byte per month. When a user leases a specific byte you can send it to him by an e-mail for increased silliness factor. He leased it, so it will not be sent to anyone else as long as he pays. That way you can specify a ceiling of profits. 500kB at one dollar per kB can bring you at most $500k per month. It seems fair, a bit like Patreon targets. I thought about doing a service this way. And even a platform - providing web server configs and plug-ins that would do all this selling of bytes process, also payment processor for bytes that would also run on the idea.
- pdexter 10y ago
  I'm lost, why would someone buy a byte? To reduce load time for everybody?
  - hawski 10y ago
    Exactly. For me it's analogue to Patreon: Why would anyone give money on Patreon? To finance a creator for everybody? If you would sell all the useless bytes you would serve the clean version of your website. Ads are useless bytes. But a bit dishonestly useless. You can block them to some extent. Some will not get served to you. However there are still some ad divs or native ads that are uselessly sent to you in case of ad blocking. I propose sending honestly useless bytes, but give people ability to strip them out for money. Then everyone can be happy. People can support a creator. People can get a better product by paying. A creator can eat.
- jackdh 10y ago
  So from that I'm getting is to run it like one of those "Pay to increase download speed" across the site. I mean it makes sense, all content is still available to every user but when you pay you get instant or higher speeds.
J-dawg 10y ago
This might be a stupid question, but is it possible to monetise a website successfully using entirely "dumb" adverts with no ad networks involved? I mean ads which are simply an image inside an <a> tag. Presumably this is how everyone was doing it before the ad networks existed? (I was around in the 90s but never really thought about it.) I guess it would take a lot of extra work and expense to approach potential advertisers and make deals. But on the upside you could host only well-curated ads that are relevant to your audience. Presumably they would also be difficult to block (although I suppose ad blockers could start recognising images, maybe they do this already?) Has anyone had any success doing this? Is it likely to become more common as ad blocking increases? I feel like I'm missing something incredibly obvious!
- baby 10y ago
  https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/ https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/
- imglorp 10y ago
  Yes, ads targeted to the viewer's demographic and interests are far more lucrative. Just try searching for "mortgage interest" or "divorce lawyer" and see how long until your adscape changes when browsing.
- Kluny 10y ago
  Certainly. I had a client who did that (www.greatervictoria.com). He makes decent money at it. I've also seen it on, for example, mrmoneymustache.com and theartofmanliness.com.
- GuB-42 10y ago
  I've seen it done on some websites. Typically as a partnership with an online shop that sells things of interest for the website audience. It is probably very effective if you have an audience with well targeted interests. For example a site about espresso coffee may partner with a shop that sells high end espresso machines and specialty coffee. However, it is much harder if a website has a broader audience. A news network probably has no clue about what visitors want to spend their money on, so either they use an ad network that does the targeting for them, or they are limited to less beneficial generic partnerships.
Flenser 10y ago
It's interesting how the comments on that page are so respectful. I wonder if it's entirely due to the templated "Dear Editor" and "Sincerely" formatting, i.e. remove those words and I wouldn't infer the same perception of respectfulness, that the templating encourages more respectful comments, or just good moderation and I can't see all the bad comments that have been submitted but not shown.
rampage101 10y ago
I recently tried putting Google ads on one of my websites. Over the course of 10,000 page views Google shows there were only 7 click throughs. It does not even make sense because it means there was basically zero mis-clicks. I don't know how they count a click-through but it seems to be more than just someone clicking on the ad. Also I'm pretty tired of hearing how Google are the good guys and 'do no evil'. It's obvious through their latest YouTube scandals and AdSense they are literally stealing billions of dollars from individuals around the world.
- user5994461 10y ago
  About 1%, that sounds right. People very rarely click ads.
- mrtksn 10y ago
  You can improve that with better ad space placing and styling but seems about right. Also 1000 impressions pay about 1 click. The earnings per click will vary wildly depending on your content "quality"(whatever Google's algorithms decide is quality) and category(content about insurance will probably bring better paying insurance ads and content about 9/11 conspiracies will probably bring less paying ads). AdSense has many problems but it's not a scam.
72deluxe 10y ago
The argument appears to be about whether to block adverts and whether this is ethical or not. The real reason for adverts is to pay for the site and its content. I think the real argument should be about how we pay for content on a site and how to solve that problem instead of arguing about the adverts. Why didn't HTTP 402 ever take off?
madshiva 10y ago
Who will pay for my comment? Yeah I make comment I should be pay with Ad. Seriously the Internet was about freedom not money. 99% of journalism article are crap and I will not pay for 40 pages that don't go to the point and summarize. You get all the blablabla for nothing, and can find the info at another place. Tell me where is the value added? Almost everythings that I do I share it for free, it's like that, I don't care, I'm not Mark Z. I don't try to find how to get money first... Let the web free, free of Ads.
epmaybe 10y ago
Is there a group discount for subscriptions to major journalistic outlets?
Practicality 10y ago
So many of these problems go away if we just enforce higher quality (less annoying) ads.
bg0 10y ago
Are you doing any alternative methods of ad revenue or just removing ads from the site entirely?
aws_ls 10y ago
I think this speaks for 1000s and 1000s of small(er) website publishers. All squeezed by Google. For example, we run a website having millions of page views a month. And similarly frustrated. If we can divide the slot between 10 advertisers directly, we might make much more. Perhaps even double than what Adsense pays. The only reason, why we don't attempt that is time and effort getting directed in an unwanted direction. And many small businesses are always struggling for bandwidth to do the core job (and projects that enthuse them). And Google is getting full advantage of this situation.[1] Sometime back, I even wrote to them on falling CPCs (eCPMs) but of course, Google has a culture of not replying. Its amazing to see, Internet living with a broken Ad model, for so long. I can't wait for a browser like Brave to take off. Where we can collect an ultra small amount from users for pageview, and still make more than Adsense. [1] I suspect, this squeeze is happening more recently, because Google itself is feeling the pinch from Facebook. As its stealing a lot of its Ad revenue.
- JupiterMoon 10y ago
  Unfortunately if your money comes from advertising your core job is advertising. So you should focus on your core business. I don't blame you for not liking this - and I don't like it either. The problem is that I like so many others probably wouldn't pay for your content/service if I had to.
  - aws_ls 10y ago
    You may not want to pay for it, if its inconvenient. But you may not mind paying for it in the aggregate, in a way similar to what you pay for Internet access. Especially, if there is a charge back feature built in, i.e. you can exclude some site for payment, if you felt they click baited you. Edit: To add, I am slightly uncomfortable with 'if your money comes for Ad, then you are an Ad business'. People will need to settle for whatever model pays them, so that they can work on better things. On a different note, Google itself is spoken of as Ad company till date. But look at what it has now, possibly a leadership position in self driving cars; Companies working on longevity; Android and several other Alphabet companies.
mtgx 10y ago
Seeing posts like these always send me back to when I was reading comments saying that Google needs to track you all over the web because that's how it serves you "relevant ads". How is that working so far? For all the tracking Google does through Google analytics, Google search, and the Play Android framework, you'd think ads would be a lot better by now. What's funny is that Google seems quick to fire publishers but it's never so quick to fire advertisers.
tke248 10y ago
If malware writers can get toasters to mine bitcoin a browser should be able to do the same for content creators, this would incentize people to make more engaging content the longer people stay on your page the more you make.
reilly3000 10y ago
Those rates are consistent with much of the world. It's typical in the US, Canada, UK, and AU to average about a dollar per thousand visitors. There is very little demand from advertisers for global ad inventory. Part of it is fear of click farms, but mostly corporations are simply interested in reaching consumers and top tier markets.
tabeth 10y ago
If no one would pay money for your service then isn't it inherently valueless? Advertisements is just a scam that's gonna pop eventually. I'd pay a lot of websites a buck a month for access. Multiply this by millions and you see. It's only when you introduce advertisements that the craziness begins.
- return0 10y ago
  > Multiply this by millions and you see I would be curious to know how many websites have millions of paying subscribers.
nurettin 10y ago
Months ago I was excited to get google ads into my app and monetize a project on google play for the first time ever. After a few dozen bucks, the ads turned into virus scams, +18 hotlines, which I am pretty sure I unchecked the last time I logged into admob's web interface, so I removed it. Good riddance. Now thanks to google (ironically) I sell in-app purchases to enable features.
QuadrupleA 10y ago
It would be interesting to do a study, for a busy site with a big enough sample size, counting ad clicks locally and then comparing with Google's reports. I imagine you could attach your own javascript events etc. to do your own comparative statistics, and see if Google is cheating.
PaulHoule 10y ago
When I started with Google ads, Google was classier than other ad networks. Other ad networks were stuffed with free ringtones, sketchy supplements and other scams. Then at some point Google gave me the option to opt out of various objectionable topics and soon Google ads got as bad as the others. Maybe Google bought the bad ad networks, or partnered with them or something. Quite a bit of subtext is largely unexamined. AT&T and Verizon, two of the biggest advertisers, have pulled out from YouTube. AT&T is the biggest pay TV provider in the US now (DirecTV) and Verizon wishes you would watch Go90 so they could sell ads against it. Both of them benefit if ad spend goes elsewhere than YouTube.
- WorldMaker 10y ago
  I worried when Google bought DoubleClick many years back if Google would become as bad as DoubleClick. I don't think we can point fingers at any one thing precisely, but that did seem like an omen at the time. I think the problem with ads on the internet is that it will always be a race to the bottom. Ads on TV and in newspapers/magazines have scarcities in play to somewhat help manage them. Ad space on the internet has never been scarce. The ad companies (Google and Facebook especially) see themselves as somehow unbiased market platforms, and I think we are coming to point where the lack of scarcities leaves "neutral" platforms vulnerable to very cheap "attacks". I worry that ad platforms need to exert a lot more editorial control in the face of that and/or start building a lot more artificial scarcity into their platforms, and I don't think any of them are appropriately incentivized to do that. I also worry that Google and Facebook's ad spaces are content spaces: search ads at the top of search results, and sponsored "posts" that have like/share/comment abilities. I think that also requires a custodianship and a moral obligation to editorially control those spaces that neither Google nor Facebook have thus far been inclined to take enough responsibility for. Facebook especially, when liked/shared ads graduate to "real" viral content, entirely blurring the lines between ads and content and giving direct power to cheap micro-targeting attacks without having some editorial immune system to help avoid the worst memetic viruses. (Facebook claims to want to do better, but their fiduciary responsibility incentivizes them not to treat ads as user hostile infection points.)
  - 10y ago
wkoszek 10y ago
Google Ads I've put on my koszek.com once. Then while doing some layout changes I saw all sorts of things being displayed. Some really inappropriate -- in my Google Summer of Code writeups I got some ulcer and sex-related ads. And I removed it then, never looked back. Not worth compromising your quality. Right now I only use Amazon Affiliate and I guess only because it's (a) easy to get a link to the books I review (b) they are actually controlled by me, at least in theory. No flipping products Amazon is randomly sending me.
malchow 10y ago
Seven years ago I cofounded a genuine alternative platform to Google Ads (Publir). The company is doing remarkably well and we have many happy publishers (and users). Happy to answer questions here or via PM.
pasbesoin 10y ago
At some point, someone is going to turn static visual (and text, I suppose) ads (back, per the "text" part) into a competitive advantage. Why? Because they actually get through. For the graphics, forcefully stripped of any meta-data and corners of the format that can become mal-ware vectors. I'll put up with ads that don't move or make noise at me. And that don't/can't try to infect me. But, no one wants to do that. Stalemate. My fear is that, in addition to increasingly locking down the web, the new DRM extensions will be used to force (crap-laden) ads upon us. Content and crap will all get packaged up together, as an encrypted binary. Et voilà, no more open Web. P.S. Yeah, I don't want to look at gross medical ads, either. So, I guess I have a few more qualifications, personally.
drumttocs8 10y ago
Well? So why isn't there a better source of ad revenue than Google Ads?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
meatyapp 10y ago
Interesting to see this on HN. I use AdMob in my app. Do my stats seem normal to you guys? ~70-100k impressions a day = ~$4-9, not enough for me to eat... pics of the details can be found here: http://i.imgur.com/NDubFOO.png http://i.imgur.com/NDubFOO.png Please help: https://www.reddit.com/r/reactnative/comments/64wwge/ads_making_little_money_pic_included_any_advice/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reactnative/comments/64wwge/ads_mak...
mack73 10y ago
I have a solution to the problem of having an ad network (Google) as the dictator of the internet. 1. Create a new browser where the concept of a URL is missing. 2a. Make terms, keywords, concepts first-class citizens. Ban URLs alltogether. Search using keywords to get to the places you want to go, not by typing URLs. 2b. Make it so that the browser gets smarter as you go and accustomed to your prose (the way you formulate your queries). 3. Make it so that the internet index is centralized so that all your browsers use the same "lookup URLS through keywords" service. Also let people use a local index version. 4. Create a buzz around this new browser. Start in the tech community of your choice. They will love using something that has a fair chance of becoming a Google-killer. 5. Your mom and dad already want to use this new browser. URLs are not important to them. Today, they google for "www.facebook.com" before starting their internet session. 6. We are done here. Internet has re-booted. We all profit. Point 2b makes this perfect for the [random tech incubator], wouldn't you agree?
- nottorp 10y ago
  Except you'll replace Google with another Google...
manfredsinger11 10y ago
very interesting. I was thinking of removing Google Ads from my site too. I think websites such as BuySellAds can easily double my site's revenue.
Joberror 10y ago
Haha! In quote, "Google pays a tiny amount each time an ad appears, and a somewhat larger amount if readers click on an ad. To understand exactly how the payment system works requires several PhDs, a four-digit IQ and stay-awake drugs." That's enough for GroundUp to make these decision.
tripzilch 10y ago
That's awesome to hear. In particular reading the comments and finding that this sentiment is echoed among many of us. For what it's worth, some of us just never stopped putting cool and interesting content online, for free, without monetizing it with ads (except perhaps as a short-duration experiment in the early 2000s when this madness started taking off). If I wanted to get paid to let someone shit all over and between that content/media, I'd be writing/designing very different content. ... unless maybe it was an art project to explicitly demonstrate the fragility of excellence (okay maybe that's a cool idea actually--this besides the point :p)
tripzilch 10y ago
Sometimes, I really wonder how the advertising industry actually earns their bread. By which I don't mean how they provide a service, in exchange for monetary compensation, in exchange for goods (bread). I mean I wonder how they earn it.
tracker1 10y ago
If google would simply charge a "review fee" for new adverts, or when a target for an advert changes (via detection), that could cover the cost of manual review. Another fee to "challenge" review, etc... This would allow good advertisers to pay once or twice a month for reviews on new ad campaigns and the spammy throw it all at the wall campaigns less likely. But google isn't interested in quality... but quantity, so they can charge higher rates per view/click.

1477 points by alex_hirner 10y ago

jjcm 10y ago

The ad driven models are slowly killing publishing. They're right in what they're saying - their competition is clickbait that just wants attention. A view is a view, and an ad will pay out the same regardless of the quality of the content on the page. I really hope we find a way to distribute payment for quality content in a better way. It's something that I've been working on personally because I like publishing content, and I hate having to choose between marring my content with ads, or losing money if I hit the front page of reddit.

GooglyMoogly 10y ago
>A view is a view, and an ad will pay out the same regardless of the quality of the content on the page. That's not really true. Advertisers can bid on how much they want to pay for each individual impression. Advertisers will likely bid more for ads on high quality websites. Advertisers will also bid more for people willing to buy stuff.
- notgood 10y ago
  >Advertisers will likely bid more for ads on high quality websites Citation needed > Advertisers will also bid more for people willing to buy stuff. Unfortunately, there is no correlation between people willing to buy stuff and high quality content.
  - eli 10y ago
    We don't typically sell them this way, but the CPM for an ad on e.g. retaildive.com is much higher than anything on Google's network. > Unfortunately, there is no correlation between people willing to buy stuff and high quality content. Citation needed :)
    - notgood 10y ago
      Do I really need a citation to prove dumb people have money? Because that's basically what you are asking. Or perhaps you believe that when people click an ad on "low-quality" site the are less likely to buy than from the same ad on "high-quality" site? Seriously, the "enlargement penis" spam works because the average person is not that selective on the ads they chose nor the websites they visit.
      - Noseshine 10y ago
        > the "enlargement penis" spam works because the average person is not that selective on the ads they chose nor the websites they visit I don't think you understand "average". It's the extreme tail of the distribution that is targeted by such ads. Example: > Nigerian scam emails 'deliberately implausible' > New research from Microsoft suggests that email scammers maximise profits by entrapping only the most gullible. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/microsoft/9346371/Nigerian-scam-emails-deliberately-implausible.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/microsoft/9346371/Nige...
nol13 10y ago
I think ideal for me would be some sort of hassle free micro-payment if some form of it ever really caught on. With all the paywalls going up I really wouldn't mind paying a small bit for some of the quality content out there, but I'm not gonna sign up for a subscription to every site on the internet nor give them my info.
Huhty 10y ago
I really hope we find a way to distribute payment for quality content in a better way. Our platform Snapzu (similar to Reddit) allows tribe leaders to earn a 55% revenue split when their referred members buy premium (our version of Reddit gold.) This was recently added with the launch of our "blog enhancement suite" as explained in this explainer video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTvWM-kjXSQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTvWM-kjXSQ TLDR: You can start/run a community (like a sub-reddit), embed it on your blog/website, and earn money from your referrals (your members.)

foobar1962 10y ago

They'll want your HEAD for revealing that you're dropping Google Ads!

hartator 10y ago

Adsense has became a less and less attractive option. Ad quality is poor, revenue per click lower and lower, policies are enforced weirdly and keep changing, force you to display annoying cookie modals, etc.

mevile 10y ago

I always imagined that some website/mobile app/service would appear that would let you buy subscriptions for access to multiple publishers at once. I think people have a hard time spending $5 here a month $10 there a month, but would spend maybe $49 for a range of access to sites. I don't know why something like that hasn't taken off yet. You could pick the sites you want access to or they could do a pay out based on where you went and what you read.

iLoch 10y ago
Google Contributor would be your primary competition. I think typical users just aren't ready to pay for access to regular websites.
- mevile 10y ago
  This only works for sites that show google ads. This is not a subscription service and probably doesn't pay sites much as I am signed up for this and I pay maybe $6-$9 a month and I spend a lot of time online. Google Contributors is a way for readers to opt out of ads, it's not a way to fund sites other than to maybe opt to whitelist in an adblocker. But it's not a lot of money.
techsupporter 10y ago
I'd love to have something like that. We already have Spotify (et al) for music. PressReader for newspapers. If the music industry can be dragged kicking and screaming into the bulk buying model, why can't online publishers?
Mz 10y ago
You can also just do a tip jar model or patreon. So far, for me, the tip jar has been more successful than ads or Patreon (though I am new to Patreon, so, time will tell). I would be happy to get rid of ads altogether (with the exception of one site, for REASONS) if I thought that would drive up tips. But I have experimented a bit and it didn't seem to drive up tips. Then, whenever I read these discussions, there is a great deal of vitriol about the evil of ads, yet, most people don't actually want to pay for content. They just want it free. When you suggest this is a broken model and content producers also deserve compensation, the answer is typically "not my problem," basically. As a content producer, I find it enormously frustrating to read some of the awful things that get said. It reminds me of the line in All in the Family where Archie says men are supposed to have experience before marriage and women are not and his daughter asks "Who are they supposed to get their experience with?" My snarky son's answer: Elderly widows should be deflowering young men. It fits all the parameters of the expectations while horrifying most people. An awful lot of people are only thinking about "I don't want ads" and that's it. They basically want it for free, then don't think about what that means for the big picture. /rambling vent

627467 10y ago

I've been saying that when you're selling ad space, knowing your buyer is as important as knowing your audience. In the traditional online ad (Google and alikes) model that knowledge is lost to third party algorithms. And worst, feeds the generic ad blockers which destroy the reliability of said algorithms. Theoutline.com is an example of how the new relationship between brands<>publishers<>audience will evolve.

phoneyphone 10y ago
For those who want no ads at all, try using Outline.com

phantom_oracle 10y ago

For smaller websites (also referred to the democratization of the internet), I am sure many people may (or have) feel (felt) guilty for using an ad-blocker. Then you see all those shitty ads for: - finding a russian bride - getting rich through some millionaires secret - anti-aging remedies - adware and you realize that the ad-model only benefits Google and the peddlers pushing the dodgy adverts. Everyone else is losing. People keep saying that "journalism is dying", but this industry and its ad-model isn't very "old" in historical terms. For every Business Insider that dies, the world will carry on. For quality journalism (an oxymoron of sorts) and news that matters to people and their circumstances, I assume people will keep forking out money (like they do for The Economist). If someone smarter than myself can elaborate, how is Googles business-model for ads on 3rd-party websites sustainable for the long-term?

reaperducer 10y ago
Just so you know, there's this one crazy trick for getting free news without ads while Oprah refinances Obama's secret mortgage...
eli 10y ago
With the notable exception of AdBlock Plus (which has its own problems) the big ad block plugins tend to be philosophically opposed to all ads of any type, quality or quantity. This is a bummer for sites like ours where the ads are sold directly to advertisers (no network) and are relevant to the audience and subject matter.
- nebabyte 10y ago
  It's actually kind of amazing how many wrong notes this 2-line comment hits (A) The plugins do not actually have any particular philosophy. They act as facilitators for different lists which certainly have their own. (B) The creators of the plugins' philosophies (which again, aren't actually in the plugin - usually you have to look into the creator) tend to be varied, and several of them (notably the best ones) do promote supporting content creators, either directly or via whitelist (C) You can always control your adblocker, and many users (especially those who care about a site, are interested in related content, or so on) do disable it for their favorite sites. The extensions (that I've used, anyways) specifically account for this and remember whitelisted sites. If your site is significantly suffering because of adblocking and you've mentioned your concerns to users, adblockers are not your problem, your users are. There's no fix for resource leeches.

reaperducer 10y ago

I've been on the fence about this for a while, and after reading what GroundUp wrote, I can't agree with them more. So I think it's time for me to dump Google Ads from my sites, as well. I send Big G three million ad impressions a month, and in return I get $150 and a bunch of visual dreck that makes the site look bad. $200, if I'm lucky. And this is all U.S. traffic on an award-winning news site. I only need to sell one more local ad to more than make up for the loss, and I get the extra benefit of having only quality, relevant advertising on my site. So to quote GroundUp: "Obviously the behemoth in Mountain View won’t miss [us], but we take some pride in saying the feeling’s mutual."

Safety1stClyde 10y ago
The amount of money you get from Google Adsense depends on the type of content. I looked at your profile but didn't find any information on what sites you might be running. Since this is hacker news, it might be that your site contains computer-related content. That type of content gets very low RPM. Still 3,000,000 impressions a month is quite a lot, so your site is obviously popular.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
sp33k3rph433k 10y ago
I'm working on something that will benefit people who have high traffic sites that don't want to show their users ads. The basics are here: http://www.trussapp.com/ http://www.trussapp.com/ -- it's not quite ready for production, but if it's something you might be interested in, I'm looking for beta users. cam@trussapp.com
- howenterprisey 10y ago
  Small nitpick, and if you want some unsolicited feedback on that site: the GIF that shows a user using the site goes super slow and it would be a lot more engaging if the user typed faster. Although I don't know how much I can blame this on connection problems on my end, it looks like it takes five seconds or so to type "Test Tester", when in my opinion it should take only one.

Safety1stClyde 10y ago

I too deal with Google as a "publisher", and some of my experiences are similar to theirs. For example the odd way that they complain about certain forms of content, apparently prompted by an algorithm and unchecked by a human. It seems to me that Google is a kind of corporate "Rain Man" - they have amazing abilities, and yet there are also these astonishing failures to deal with problems which could easily be resolved by a normal corporation.

tps5 10y ago

> Perhaps at some point online publishers [will] find a new way to solicit advertising from reputable companies that pay properly. Someone get on this.

username223 10y ago
That was The Deck, and they recently shut down: http://decknetwork.net/ http://decknetwork.net/ In the near future, it will be total war between amoral lowlife hucksters, and cheapskate users.

wonderway 10y ago

I often wonder how much revenue my hometown newspaper makes off online adds -- http://newspressnow.com http://newspressnow.com. When you first go to the site, a Credit Karma ad or Rite Aid ad popup appears (promoted by Kixer). Close that and you see a site just overwhelmed by ads, some local. Then they have the "Sponsored Links" by Content.ad saying: - "Cheaper and Stronger than Adderral" - "Don't watch this video around you wife <insert photo of model>" - "Fruits that fight diabetes" - "Biblical solutions to weight loss" The local owners of the newspaper, sold their cable company for $350 million which they had owned for 45 years (Cablevision->Suddenlink). If an exceptionally wealthy local newspaper owner can't offer content in a reasonable way without egregious deceptive links, who can? This type of behavior should be heavily criticized, especially by those who can afford to avoid it. Instead, it's considered business as usual.

paulcole 10y ago

>So Google accepts get-rich-quick ads featuring famous people without their permission Just curious but is there any way to know for sure whether those images are licensed or not?

killjoywashere 10y ago

> our articles get much more traffic on mainstream media that republish us, but we receive no advertising revenue from this Um, so, shouldn't you be charging a syndication fee, probably a percentage of their ads displayed on your articles?

beezischillin 10y ago

It's such a weird time to be alive: with all the controversy around advertising nowadays we're kind of seeing Google's previously invulnerable tendrils around the Internet slowly being peeled off. That being their major source of income, they must be worried. I am too, but for another reason -- I don't want a company like Facebook taking over and establishing a monopoly (say what you will about Google, companies like Facebook are even less ethical).

JKCalhoun 10y ago
Is it no easier to peel back the tendrils of Facebook though?

sidcool 10y ago

Honestly, I won't use an ad-blocker if the ads weren't so creepily targeted and so annoyingly pervasive. Hell, I don't even mind looking and clicking on some ads if they are not intrusively shoved down my throat.

paulcole 10y ago

You're the first armchair philosopher to reply with a non-equivalent real world analogy looking to trip me up! Congratulations.

Crito 10y ago
Here's a digital analogy for you. Suppose I: 1) Disable my ad blocker. 2) "Open Link in New Tab" 3) Wait for my browser to finish requesting that data from the server 4) Close the tab without ever looking at it. Is that unethical? Is it unethical for me to decide I don't want to read a webpage after requesting it? Should the "open in new tab" feature always force a tab switch against my wishes, so ensure I'm not ripping off some website by requesting their data but not looking at their ads?
- erikbigelow 10y ago
  If you're doing it for the sole purpose of wasting their money then it's pretty unethical. That's why in law they always talk about intent.
  - baddox 10y ago
    You've lost me on this analogy. Ad blocking is generally not used for the purpose of wasting a publisher's money.
- Confusion 10y ago
  No, because you didn't enjoy the content either. Having the ads forced into your view is the cost of enjoying the content. So this is not a good analogy.
  - MichaelBurge 10y ago
    "Enjoy" is an interesting word to use there. That makes it akin to tipping, where if I read an article from the NY Times but don't think it was any good I don't have to see their ads. I haven't seen anyone else make that argument, but I do enable ads on certain sites that I like so it's probably not wrong for a certain class of people.

gregable 10y ago

A large problem here is that ads only support one type of content: low-cost and large-audience. Content ads, more or less, offer a fixed amount per impression. Sure, you might get a higher ad price for certain audiences than others, but this is related to topic, not the quality or cost of content. If you only make a fixed amount per impression, the only business model low-cost content targeting a large audience. High quality (aka high cost) content, with a narrow interest audience needs a different model. That different model is probably charging your reader. However, the moment you set up a paywall, the content disappears. Search engines will not suggest the content, feed readers can't access it, suggestion interfaces won't suggest it, etc. The content might as well not exist. We don't need micropayments. We need a model where paywall content can be discovered. Systems whereby paywall content can be accessed by aggregators who then can suggest/search/deliver the content, but will not give the content to users without payment.

rdl 10y ago

You really need different monetization for different kinds of sites. 1) Low quality, high volume, low overhead: google ads. 2) High quality/high value, low volume, niche: subscription/services 3) Medium quality, low volume, niche: donation The only form of advertising I'd ever want on my site, unless it is a very low quality, is direct sold by my own staff (i.e. me). I'd probably optimize for effort and just do a single "sponsor" for each month, or maybe ongoing. The low-touch way is probably to pick a relevant CPA program (say, Audible) and pitch that to your own audience.

camillomiller 10y ago
Everyone always forgets about Amazon referrals. For certain categories it's a valuable and inobtrusive monetization method
- rdl 10y ago
  They recently killed electronics referral fees, though.

anoisyboy 10y ago

I added this article to /. (Slashdot) and it was marked as spam, sending it's rating black and instantly damaging it's chance of being seen, yet here it has proper and full engagement?!? How did someone at /. consider this spam? Hopefully someone here can shed some light.

campuscodi 10y ago
Don't worry. People on slashdot complain about HN mods.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

alexchantavy 10y ago

Off topic: this is the first time I've heard of GroundUp, and I really like the "Dear Editor" format of the comment page on this site. I'm used to seeing mainstream newspaper websites with downright toxic commenting environments, so seeing "Dear Editor" followed by a thought-out response is very refreshing. Maybe they have a "better" readership/screening process/whatever, but I think this higher quality commenting behavior is in part due to how GroundUp has simply tweaked the wording of the comment box interface - by framing the comment with "Dear Editor".

anonymouz 10y ago
Their letters (comments) are moderated. "In contrast to comments, letters are only published if approved by our editors. Views expressed in letters are not necessarily endorsed by GroundUp, but they must meet our quality requirements. Letters are given more prominence than comments on the website. "
Antrikshy 10y ago
It's not just the framing. They call their comments "letters". Try clicking the "Write a letter in response to this article" button. The UI is designed to promote constructive comments.
- yjain 10y ago
  Thanks for the comment. I found a link to http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/free-guides.html http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/free-guides.html there which is very interesting!
- vit05 10y ago
  Great observation. I think the UI wants to remember that this article was written by another human being. A simple solution to encourage civil conversation.

guelo 10y ago

I applaud the advertisers. For a good long while racists were afraid or ashamed to push their racism too publicly. I liked that world, less hate and venom being spewed around poisoning the public sphere. But something snapped in the last few years and all the assholes have become loud and proud of their assholiness and they are celebrated and encouraged to be the biggest asshole they can possibly be. From what I can tell it is linked to gaming and 4chan, a new culture of young aggressive males raised on shock and gore and porn and no consequences. For the good of civilization this needs to be bottled up. Racists need to be ashamed again. Assholes need to return to pretending to be decent human beings. The great human achievement that makes civilized society possible is keeping testorene fueled young males under some control to allow things to be built up instead of always being torn down. If we lose that then everything is lost.

hoppa_liza 10y ago
While I generally agree with you, I do not think control is the best route, but rather guidance. Oppressing/bottling high energy individuals is destructive on the long run even if it seems otherwise at the beginning. Directing this energy into a constructive path however is more beneficial to the individuals themselves as well as the communities they live in.
syrrim 10y ago
>from what I can tell this is from 4chan and gaming I do not think so. Gaming and 4chan have been around a while, but this development is, as you say, relatively recent. I think there is some force that is new that promotes this curve. One explanation is the widespread adoption and acceptance of the internet. Not so long ago, much fewer people had easy access to the web. Those that did often treated it with disdain, being mostly uninterested in it. At some point, people realized that the internet enabled them to freely speak their mind and associate with whomever they like to an unprecedented degree. Whereas before, people were limited by not wanting to distance themselves from friends and family, the internet enables them to lead a double life, with one part being a normal family man, the other being an internet pundit, freely spreading whichever vitriol they choose. For these same reasons, I don't think this facet of internet culture will be so easily put away. To do so requires breaking some of the principles that make the internet what it is, primarily the ability to post whatever you want, even illegal content (copyright, cp). There is also the ability to join comunities from anywhere in the world, not just those local to you, that have some extension in real life. These functions are part of what people dreamed about when they fostered the internet and the web. I think removing someone's advertising harms them to a point, but for many, it is a labor of love. They talk about the things they do because they truly enjoy those topics, and want to deseminate their views on it. If you cut off a revenue stream, they will continue posting, but perhaps scaled back due to needing a real job. Further, if their audience truly and unabashedly enjoys the content, they might be willing to fund the content maker through other channels, such as patreon or a similar websites. Cut off one revenue stream and two more pop up. I don't know what the solution is. Cutting off advertising won't be enough. Destroying the internet as we know it might be needed, but I worry that this is going too far.

mrtree 10y ago

The world in 2017, when a large chunk of economy revolves around clicking an ad. So fucked up.

danieka 10y ago

I noticed how civil all the comments are. I wonder if automatically prepending all comments with "Dear Editor" makes people think twice before writing the more common and nasty form of comments usual found in the comment sections of news pages?

scrollaway 10y ago
It definitely looks like it's prepending with Dear Editor and appending the date/name as signature. Really cool :)

elorant 10y ago

The real problem is that Google approves pretty much everyone for AdSense. Which works in favor of scammers and plagiarism. Someone scrapes content from respectable sites, parse them through an article spinning mechanism and voila, you have a legitimate looking site with absolutely no original content on it. Google shouldn't be approving any of those sites for ads. But they do, and that's a bit shocking for all of us who grew fond of them because of the "do no evil" mantra. Well Google, you're doing evil and perhaps it's time to do something about it.

justabystander 10y ago

Ad networks regularly serve various forms of malware and spyware, as well as tracking beacons that put my data at risk of being stolen or misused. And once it's in a database somewhere, it's only a matter of time until it gets stolen and someone attempts to hijack accounts or steal an identity. It's funny how you never see the sites that whine about adblockers offer to accept legal responsibility for their complicity in the potential theft and property destruction served from their site. When you take away the option to protect myself, you accept responsibility for attacks. After all, if it's morally/legally wrong to alter the presentation of the content they serve, then they also morally/legally responsible for incidents when they serve it improperly and cause losses/damages. Quite obviously it's not financially viable for them to pay for their negligence, and so it's also not financially viable for me to trust that a site won't host some sort of attack vector. The pennies of advertising revenue earned from my modest browsing over the course of a year doesn't pay nearly enough to compensate for the time I lose through dealing with malicious ads. Unless online advertising cleans itself up, adblockers will be the best option. And sites that don't respect that aren't sites I'm interested in.

davidgerard 10y ago
> It's funny how you never see the sites that whine about adblockers offer to accept legal responsibility for their complicity in the potential theft and property destruction served from their site. yep. This is an effective way to get newspapers whining about ad blockers to shut up as well.
- Pigo 10y ago
  Every time I'm blocked from a news site because of my blocker, I just get context from comments and move on with my life. It's so rare that there's important information beyond what's in the headline anyways. I respect paywalls much more.
  - tripzilch 10y ago
    "I'll whitelist you, as soon as you stop using a third party ad network" "But then what's the point", we both said in unison.

harwoodleon 10y ago

I started, ran an sold an ad based business in 2008. To say that most of the activity in the ad space was dubious back then is a complete understatement. Most of our traffic to the adverts was generated, purely to syphon off money from the advertisers and we established this by fingerprinting the traffic with JS tools at the client side. This was what let me to the conclusion that the business is dysfunctional, the customers at best are getting wildly ripped off, their privacy effectively sold off and they open themselves up to huge amounts of malware too. Advertising is a horrible business model. But until a new way is found, people/businesses don't have any other choice of marketing their activities. I totally stand by the publication. Any publication that really cares about it's readers will try to find another way. (Edit: I am viewing this page on a Brave Browser, check it out, it has ad blocking and publisher micropayments built in https://brave.com https://brave.com)

bazillion 10y ago

I've been saying that the ad model is broken for a while, and prescribing a real fix for it: a new form of native advertising that actually benefits the user. My company, PLEENQ[1], makes it so users can hover over an image and click on the individual products within it to go where they can buy the product. Here's a demo video: https://youtu.be/V_oTtDUV0yI https://youtu.be/V_oTtDUV0yI My solution is to basically build features around the content of sites that enhance the areas of the site that already attract the users. More importantly, it simplifies the revenue model that the article talks about -- people click on your links and make purchases, and you get a share of every single purchase (CPA). The important thing is that it's compatible with any other revenue models a site might use. If, like GroundUp, they take donations, then it's just an extra revenue source on top of that. I looked on GroundUp.org for building an example video of how that would work so I could show the community, but it doesn't really fit the model of PLEENQ. Regardless, there are a vast number of niches that this new form of native advertising would drastically improve the revenue for. Imagine an auto blog showing a picture of an engine, and you being able to hover over any part within the picture and purchase it from Auto Zone. Another thing is that it can be used to split between revenue generating links, and informational links. Perhaps you have a news site, and a lot of your articles have pictures of politicians that your users might not be familiar with -- how about hovering over that person and being able to click on them to go to their Wikipedia page? I think that would greatly benefit a user browsing the site, and wouldn't cheapen in any way the experience of the site itself (in fact would greatly improve it). [1] http://pleenq.com http://pleenq.com

nso 10y ago
While cool as a tech (hello again <map>, i did not miss you) , most sites do not have large pictures of sellable items -- and far from every country has amazon as a reasonable choice due the cost of shipping and import tax. Maybe it is cool for pink bloggers ( https://goo.gl/OFWwmp https://goo.gl/OFWwmp ), but I don't see the use case for the masses like you do with adsense.

malikNF 10y ago

But they still have google analytics on their site.

jlebrech 10y ago

I wouldn't be on any social network if i had to pay $1 a month, but how much am I worth to them i wonder.

dhimes 10y ago
I would pay if they would keep my privacy, but I realize it would lock a lot of the world out. From last year's financials it looked like you were worth just over that to Facebook.

eddd 10y ago

Average CPM for ad online is 5$. Would you pay 0.005$ for rendering most of the websites?

dhimes 10y ago
Seriously? I pay about $0.50 per CPM.

nathan_f77 10y ago

"Less than $200" seems like a very small amount of money for 329,000 impressions. I imagine the number might be higher if the readers were mostly from the US, instead of South Africa. But still, you're not going to make a lot of money from a few hundred thousand impressions. In my experience, a YouTube video with 1,000,000 views will give you around $1,000. That's nowhere near enough to sustain a company or pay any employees. Right now I'm working on a game (which I hope to launch soon and show on HN!). While I dislike ads, I'm still going to put them in my game, because I enjoy making money more than I hate ads. I think Google and AdMob will mostly serve ads for other games, so they're not so bad.

Jean-Philipe 10y ago

My experience with google ads was not great. I once ran google ads for my mom's online shop. Before, there was a constant stream of visitors and revenue. With google ads, the visitor rate went up crazy - the revenue, not at all! Despite the fact that the ad was very specific for what you could buy for how much. Once the google ad credits were all used up, the visitors rate dropped to almost zero. As if google was punishing us for not running ads anymore.

StreamBright 10y ago

People should realize that Ad-blocking became a way of protecting users from malware and scam that even Google includes in their system. I understand that they do their best to remove these sort of things but they are doing a shitty job.

Elect2 10y ago

To me the biggest problem with Adsense is that I can not place the ad code to "modern" pages with ajax-loaded content.

deavmi 10y ago

Google Ads are shit. But Mindtree or whatever is worse. "Millionaire from Worcester makes $100 per hour"

kome 10y ago

Those people finally woke up, when others will start following the example? Advertising is not an easy job: and it takes more than a few lazy banner to do it right. The current model, the one pushed by Google, has no future. Using adblocks is a duty we have to change the system.

jere1 10y ago

he1

jere1 10y ago

he1

return0 10y ago

Google incentivizes so much of the content you read on the web, it's fair to say it's "Google's web" at the moment. What alternatives are there though? People can try dropping adsense, but for most websites it would hurt them more than they can handle. I wish there were better advertising systems, but, compared to the rest, adsense is actually better. Advertisers need to come up with better ideas.

arundhatikher 10y ago

I fully acknowledge the frustration with AdSense. And their rules are prudish and seemingly intermittent in nature-- at one's whim, if you get my meaning. I see nothing wrong with the above image and there is no nudity involved. I've seen more skin on a public beach. The real question at this point is, how are you going to pay for your site? I realize AdSense payments are tiny, but they are at least something. How do you plan on replacing those payments? Our site wouldn't be able to pay our writers without that tiny bit of revenue. In any case, I applaud your efforts and wish you the best.

known 10y ago

Relevant https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13992576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13992576

hawski 10y ago

I had a bit silly idea about financing of web services. Create beautiful, fast and very lean web serivce - "easy" part. It should be very lean - every page at most few hundred kB. Serve the website with useless bytes at front. Example: page weights 100kB - add 500kB of garbage to it at front. You can place them in html or js comment. You can add useless EXIF data to jpegs. You could place small number in every HTTP header. Or you could add artificial latency to every request. Then you sell those useless bytes or milliseconds. Your bytes could really be unicode glyphs. Example: a dollar for every byte per month. When a user leases a specific byte you can send it to him by an e-mail for increased silliness factor. He leased it, so it will not be sent to anyone else as long as he pays. That way you can specify a ceiling of profits. 500kB at one dollar per kB can bring you at most $500k per month. It seems fair, a bit like Patreon targets. I thought about doing a service this way. And even a platform - providing web server configs and plug-ins that would do all this selling of bytes process, also payment processor for bytes that would also run on the idea.

pdexter 10y ago
I'm lost, why would someone buy a byte? To reduce load time for everybody?
- hawski 10y ago
  Exactly. For me it's analogue to Patreon: Why would anyone give money on Patreon? To finance a creator for everybody? If you would sell all the useless bytes you would serve the clean version of your website. Ads are useless bytes. But a bit dishonestly useless. You can block them to some extent. Some will not get served to you. However there are still some ad divs or native ads that are uselessly sent to you in case of ad blocking. I propose sending honestly useless bytes, but give people ability to strip them out for money. Then everyone can be happy. People can support a creator. People can get a better product by paying. A creator can eat.
jackdh 10y ago
So from that I'm getting is to run it like one of those "Pay to increase download speed" across the site. I mean it makes sense, all content is still available to every user but when you pay you get instant or higher speeds.

J-dawg 10y ago

This might be a stupid question, but is it possible to monetise a website successfully using entirely "dumb" adverts with no ad networks involved? I mean ads which are simply an image inside an <a> tag. Presumably this is how everyone was doing it before the ad networks existed? (I was around in the 90s but never really thought about it.) I guess it would take a lot of extra work and expense to approach potential advertisers and make deals. But on the upside you could host only well-curated ads that are relevant to your audience. Presumably they would also be difficult to block (although I suppose ad blockers could start recognising images, maybe they do this already?) Has anyone had any success doing this? Is it likely to become more common as ad blocking increases? I feel like I'm missing something incredibly obvious!

baby 10y ago
https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/ https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/
imglorp 10y ago
Yes, ads targeted to the viewer's demographic and interests are far more lucrative. Just try searching for "mortgage interest" or "divorce lawyer" and see how long until your adscape changes when browsing.
Kluny 10y ago
Certainly. I had a client who did that (www.greatervictoria.com). He makes decent money at it. I've also seen it on, for example, mrmoneymustache.com and theartofmanliness.com.
GuB-42 10y ago
I've seen it done on some websites. Typically as a partnership with an online shop that sells things of interest for the website audience. It is probably very effective if you have an audience with well targeted interests. For example a site about espresso coffee may partner with a shop that sells high end espresso machines and specialty coffee. However, it is much harder if a website has a broader audience. A news network probably has no clue about what visitors want to spend their money on, so either they use an ad network that does the targeting for them, or they are limited to less beneficial generic partnerships.

Flenser 10y ago

It's interesting how the comments on that page are so respectful. I wonder if it's entirely due to the templated "Dear Editor" and "Sincerely" formatting, i.e. remove those words and I wouldn't infer the same perception of respectfulness, that the templating encourages more respectful comments, or just good moderation and I can't see all the bad comments that have been submitted but not shown.

rampage101 10y ago

I recently tried putting Google ads on one of my websites. Over the course of 10,000 page views Google shows there were only 7 click throughs. It does not even make sense because it means there was basically zero mis-clicks. I don't know how they count a click-through but it seems to be more than just someone clicking on the ad. Also I'm pretty tired of hearing how Google are the good guys and 'do no evil'. It's obvious through their latest YouTube scandals and AdSense they are literally stealing billions of dollars from individuals around the world.

user5994461 10y ago
About 1%, that sounds right. People very rarely click ads.
mrtksn 10y ago
You can improve that with better ad space placing and styling but seems about right. Also 1000 impressions pay about 1 click. The earnings per click will vary wildly depending on your content "quality"(whatever Google's algorithms decide is quality) and category(content about insurance will probably bring better paying insurance ads and content about 9/11 conspiracies will probably bring less paying ads). AdSense has many problems but it's not a scam.

72deluxe 10y ago

The argument appears to be about whether to block adverts and whether this is ethical or not. The real reason for adverts is to pay for the site and its content. I think the real argument should be about how we pay for content on a site and how to solve that problem instead of arguing about the adverts. Why didn't HTTP 402 ever take off?

madshiva 10y ago

Who will pay for my comment? Yeah I make comment I should be pay with Ad. Seriously the Internet was about freedom not money. 99% of journalism article are crap and I will not pay for 40 pages that don't go to the point and summarize. You get all the blablabla for nothing, and can find the info at another place. Tell me where is the value added? Almost everythings that I do I share it for free, it's like that, I don't care, I'm not Mark Z. I don't try to find how to get money first... Let the web free, free of Ads.

epmaybe 10y ago

Is there a group discount for subscriptions to major journalistic outlets?

Practicality 10y ago

So many of these problems go away if we just enforce higher quality (less annoying) ads.

bg0 10y ago

Are you doing any alternative methods of ad revenue or just removing ads from the site entirely?

aws_ls 10y ago

I think this speaks for 1000s and 1000s of small(er) website publishers. All squeezed by Google. For example, we run a website having millions of page views a month. And similarly frustrated. If we can divide the slot between 10 advertisers directly, we might make much more. Perhaps even double than what Adsense pays. The only reason, why we don't attempt that is time and effort getting directed in an unwanted direction. And many small businesses are always struggling for bandwidth to do the core job (and projects that enthuse them). And Google is getting full advantage of this situation.[1] Sometime back, I even wrote to them on falling CPCs (eCPMs) but of course, Google has a culture of not replying. Its amazing to see, Internet living with a broken Ad model, for so long. I can't wait for a browser like Brave to take off. Where we can collect an ultra small amount from users for pageview, and still make more than Adsense. [1] I suspect, this squeeze is happening more recently, because Google itself is feeling the pinch from Facebook. As its stealing a lot of its Ad revenue.

JupiterMoon 10y ago
Unfortunately if your money comes from advertising your core job is advertising. So you should focus on your core business. I don't blame you for not liking this - and I don't like it either. The problem is that I like so many others probably wouldn't pay for your content/service if I had to.
- aws_ls 10y ago
  You may not want to pay for it, if its inconvenient. But you may not mind paying for it in the aggregate, in a way similar to what you pay for Internet access. Especially, if there is a charge back feature built in, i.e. you can exclude some site for payment, if you felt they click baited you. Edit: To add, I am slightly uncomfortable with 'if your money comes for Ad, then you are an Ad business'. People will need to settle for whatever model pays them, so that they can work on better things. On a different note, Google itself is spoken of as Ad company till date. But look at what it has now, possibly a leadership position in self driving cars; Companies working on longevity; Android and several other Alphabet companies.

mtgx 10y ago

Seeing posts like these always send me back to when I was reading comments saying that Google needs to track you all over the web because that's how it serves you "relevant ads". How is that working so far? For all the tracking Google does through Google analytics, Google search, and the Play Android framework, you'd think ads would be a lot better by now. What's funny is that Google seems quick to fire publishers but it's never so quick to fire advertisers.

tke248 10y ago

If malware writers can get toasters to mine bitcoin a browser should be able to do the same for content creators, this would incentize people to make more engaging content the longer people stay on your page the more you make.

reilly3000 10y ago

Those rates are consistent with much of the world. It's typical in the US, Canada, UK, and AU to average about a dollar per thousand visitors. There is very little demand from advertisers for global ad inventory. Part of it is fear of click farms, but mostly corporations are simply interested in reaching consumers and top tier markets.

tabeth 10y ago

If no one would pay money for your service then isn't it inherently valueless? Advertisements is just a scam that's gonna pop eventually. I'd pay a lot of websites a buck a month for access. Multiply this by millions and you see. It's only when you introduce advertisements that the craziness begins.

return0 10y ago
> Multiply this by millions and you see I would be curious to know how many websites have millions of paying subscribers.

nurettin 10y ago

Months ago I was excited to get google ads into my app and monetize a project on google play for the first time ever. After a few dozen bucks, the ads turned into virus scams, +18 hotlines, which I am pretty sure I unchecked the last time I logged into admob's web interface, so I removed it. Good riddance. Now thanks to google (ironically) I sell in-app purchases to enable features.

QuadrupleA 10y ago

It would be interesting to do a study, for a busy site with a big enough sample size, counting ad clicks locally and then comparing with Google's reports. I imagine you could attach your own javascript events etc. to do your own comparative statistics, and see if Google is cheating.

PaulHoule 10y ago

When I started with Google ads, Google was classier than other ad networks. Other ad networks were stuffed with free ringtones, sketchy supplements and other scams. Then at some point Google gave me the option to opt out of various objectionable topics and soon Google ads got as bad as the others. Maybe Google bought the bad ad networks, or partnered with them or something. Quite a bit of subtext is largely unexamined. AT&T and Verizon, two of the biggest advertisers, have pulled out from YouTube. AT&T is the biggest pay TV provider in the US now (DirecTV) and Verizon wishes you would watch Go90 so they could sell ads against it. Both of them benefit if ad spend goes elsewhere than YouTube.

WorldMaker 10y ago
I worried when Google bought DoubleClick many years back if Google would become as bad as DoubleClick. I don't think we can point fingers at any one thing precisely, but that did seem like an omen at the time. I think the problem with ads on the internet is that it will always be a race to the bottom. Ads on TV and in newspapers/magazines have scarcities in play to somewhat help manage them. Ad space on the internet has never been scarce. The ad companies (Google and Facebook especially) see themselves as somehow unbiased market platforms, and I think we are coming to point where the lack of scarcities leaves "neutral" platforms vulnerable to very cheap "attacks". I worry that ad platforms need to exert a lot more editorial control in the face of that and/or start building a lot more artificial scarcity into their platforms, and I don't think any of them are appropriately incentivized to do that. I also worry that Google and Facebook's ad spaces are content spaces: search ads at the top of search results, and sponsored "posts" that have like/share/comment abilities. I think that also requires a custodianship and a moral obligation to editorially control those spaces that neither Google nor Facebook have thus far been inclined to take enough responsibility for. Facebook especially, when liked/shared ads graduate to "real" viral content, entirely blurring the lines between ads and content and giving direct power to cheap micro-targeting attacks without having some editorial immune system to help avoid the worst memetic viruses. (Facebook claims to want to do better, but their fiduciary responsibility incentivizes them not to treat ads as user hostile infection points.)
- 10y ago

wkoszek 10y ago

Google Ads I've put on my koszek.com once. Then while doing some layout changes I saw all sorts of things being displayed. Some really inappropriate -- in my Google Summer of Code writeups I got some ulcer and sex-related ads. And I removed it then, never looked back. Not worth compromising your quality. Right now I only use Amazon Affiliate and I guess only because it's (a) easy to get a link to the books I review (b) they are actually controlled by me, at least in theory. No flipping products Amazon is randomly sending me.

malchow 10y ago

Seven years ago I cofounded a genuine alternative platform to Google Ads (Publir). The company is doing remarkably well and we have many happy publishers (and users). Happy to answer questions here or via PM.

pasbesoin 10y ago

At some point, someone is going to turn static visual (and text, I suppose) ads (back, per the "text" part) into a competitive advantage. Why? Because they actually get through. For the graphics, forcefully stripped of any meta-data and corners of the format that can become mal-ware vectors. I'll put up with ads that don't move or make noise at me. And that don't/can't try to infect me. But, no one wants to do that. Stalemate. My fear is that, in addition to increasingly locking down the web, the new DRM extensions will be used to force (crap-laden) ads upon us. Content and crap will all get packaged up together, as an encrypted binary. Et voilà, no more open Web. P.S. Yeah, I don't want to look at gross medical ads, either. So, I guess I have a few more qualifications, personally.

drumttocs8 10y ago

Well? So why isn't there a better source of ad revenue than Google Ads?

deleted 10y ago

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meatyapp 10y ago

Interesting to see this on HN. I use AdMob in my app. Do my stats seem normal to you guys? ~70-100k impressions a day = ~$4-9, not enough for me to eat... pics of the details can be found here: http://i.imgur.com/NDubFOO.png http://i.imgur.com/NDubFOO.png Please help: https://www.reddit.com/r/reactnative/comments/64wwge/ads_making_little_money_pic_included_any_advice/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reactnative/comments/64wwge/ads_mak...

mack73 10y ago

I have a solution to the problem of having an ad network (Google) as the dictator of the internet. 1. Create a new browser where the concept of a URL is missing. 2a. Make terms, keywords, concepts first-class citizens. Ban URLs alltogether. Search using keywords to get to the places you want to go, not by typing URLs. 2b. Make it so that the browser gets smarter as you go and accustomed to your prose (the way you formulate your queries). 3. Make it so that the internet index is centralized so that all your browsers use the same "lookup URLS through keywords" service. Also let people use a local index version. 4. Create a buzz around this new browser. Start in the tech community of your choice. They will love using something that has a fair chance of becoming a Google-killer. 5. Your mom and dad already want to use this new browser. URLs are not important to them. Today, they google for "www.facebook.com" before starting their internet session. 6. We are done here. Internet has re-booted. We all profit. Point 2b makes this perfect for the [random tech incubator], wouldn't you agree?

nottorp 10y ago
Except you'll replace Google with another Google...

manfredsinger11 10y ago

very interesting. I was thinking of removing Google Ads from my site too. I think websites such as BuySellAds can easily double my site's revenue.

Joberror 10y ago

Haha! In quote, "Google pays a tiny amount each time an ad appears, and a somewhat larger amount if readers click on an ad. To understand exactly how the payment system works requires several PhDs, a four-digit IQ and stay-awake drugs." That's enough for GroundUp to make these decision.

tripzilch 10y ago

That's awesome to hear. In particular reading the comments and finding that this sentiment is echoed among many of us. For what it's worth, some of us just never stopped putting cool and interesting content online, for free, without monetizing it with ads (except perhaps as a short-duration experiment in the early 2000s when this madness started taking off). If I wanted to get paid to let someone shit all over and between that content/media, I'd be writing/designing very different content. ... unless maybe it was an art project to explicitly demonstrate the fragility of excellence (okay maybe that's a cool idea actually--this besides the point :p)

tripzilch 10y ago

Sometimes, I really wonder how the advertising industry actually earns their bread. By which I don't mean how they provide a service, in exchange for monetary compensation, in exchange for goods (bread). I mean I wonder how they earn it.

tracker1 10y ago

If google would simply charge a "review fee" for new adverts, or when a target for an advert changes (via detection), that could cover the cost of manual review. Another fee to "challenge" review, etc... This would allow good advertisers to pay once or twice a month for reviews on new ad campaigns and the spammy throw it all at the wall campaigns less likely. But google isn't interested in quality... but quantity, so they can charge higher rates per view/click.