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As someone who has founded and runs an adserver for a living (we deal only with legitimate publications, nothing sketchy), I found this thought provoking. Sinc

As someone who has founded and runs an adserver for a living (we deal only with legitimate publications, nothing sketchy), I found this thought provoking. Since I deal mostly in niche/local advertising, I might have a unique perspective. It turns out that the more relatable a banner ad is, the less offended the reader is. That may sound obvious, and it probably is. But the general effect is that users engage with and are sometimes genuinely interested in banner ads for their favorite restaurants, venues, and other spots. Local and niche advertisers are part of the community. A Ford or Chevy ad is generally much less relatable. So my overall point is that the nature of the publication and its advertising clients is going to impact whether some readers are turned off - so it's difficult to derive a rule of thumb for banner advertising as a whole.

Terr_ 9y ago
I imagine the worst advertising is where it feels both unfeelingly-impersonal yet also spyingly-specific.
stemuk 9y ago
Maybe a site like gwern.net is generally less suited for A/B experiments like that because of the unique look and speed 'HTML only' sites have. Sites like cnn.com or yahoo.com are generally much more crowded and colorful, so banner ads blend in much better. This might in return result in a higher user acceptance rate for banner ads and probably a different engagement rate too.
HugThem 9y ago
Where do your ads appear? On your site I do not see a publisher signup page.
hanbura 9y ago
I think a most of the problems with ads are just caused by how Google and other big players run online advertising. Somewhere along the way "let's add an image of some company our readers might be interested in" turned into "let's serve a huge Javascript that perceivably slows the browser in order to serve an ad from the highest bidder who might or might not run a criminal enterprise. Also make sure the ads show off the vast amounts of data we collect, we have to appear as creepy as possible". Small ad networks or sites that organize their adverts themselves sometimes have great ads. But I am not sure if the reputation of online ads isn't already damaged beyond repair. Add to that the small revenue from ads (the author makes $30/month from ads and $700/month from patreon)
- bartread 9y ago
  ^^^This. I run Adsense on https://arcade.ly https://arcade.ly. The pages are heavy anyway because they implement games, and much of the payload is music and, to a lesser extent, sound effects. As an experiment I tried loading the pages without music and was nothing short of appalled by the amount of crap Adsense downloads. Thing is, it's not Adsense itself that's the problem: it's the adverts themselves and the lack of control/moderation Google chooses to exert over ad providers. They serve up tons - I mean really a lot - of JavaScript, which tries to track you in N different ways, all so they can display a hyperlinked image with the most basic of animations and mouse over effects. This payload, often running to well over 1MB, measurably slows load and execution performance on the page. The creepiness infuriates me, but it's the overall shittiness of the development practice that produces so much bloat for so little value I find most offensive. I mean these people go in to work, half-ass throwing together a bunch of code and assets in the worst way imaginable, and then carelessly spooge their effluent all over the web... and then they have the audacity to start whingeing about people running ad-blockers. What do they expect? My site gets next to no traffic at the moment but if/when it's grown a bit I'm going to start looking at non-ad ways to earn money from it. I'm even considering ditching them at the moment to see if that might help grown traffic in itself.
  - prawn 9y ago
    I don't remember it being like this before they tied it in with DoubleClick?
AJ007 9y ago
The other side to this is users see the ads, relate to the ads, click the ads, and thus leave your site. Your pageviews will drop. Whether or not one agrees with the outcome, if you have a large site you definitely should be doing independent testing. Google's ad reps, much less reps from other networks, will tell you to do things that harm your site.
- katzgrau 9y ago
  Well, most ads open in a new window. And most serious publishers barely have the resources to survive let alone do A/B testing. The publishers I work with thankfully shy away from network advertising and only deal with clients they have a direct relationship with. Regardless, it really isn't easy or very lucrative running a digital content based business. There are outliers, sure, but the long tail paints a much different story in my experience.
majani 9y ago
This is the biggest problem I have with Adsense. Most of the time it seems like they couldn't find an ad that fits me but their system decided to just throw me a random ad for Forex Trading or whatever. This turns their supposedly sophisticated ad system into a random generator as far as I'm concerned. They could fix this by: 1. Just showing blanks if they can't get something targeted to my preferences 2. Not allowing advertisers to be too general in their targeting if they are doing performance campaigns(CPC and CPA). Only allow CPM advertisers to target broad categories.
- init-as 9y ago
  I just wanted to say that it’s actually nice not to be the only one who is harassed by forex trading ads around the web. Them and Mobile Strike are pretty much all of the ads I see. (I do have Adblock but can’t block for YouTube mobile etc.)
  - def_true_false 9y ago
    There are other apps for youtube. E.g. newpipe.
- huac 9y ago
  Your concerns are typically addressed by: 1. Reserve pricing - if no ad is 'good enough', e.g. no advertiser is willing to bid above a certain threshold for you, then no ad is shown 2. ePCM pricing - Adsense predicts what the likelihood of clickthrough/conversion is for a given ad and user, and includes that in its auction algorithm. Roughly, eCPM bid = cost per click / probability of click. This addresses the typical problem of high CPC/CPA bid but low engagement probability ads crowding out otherwise good CPM-based ads. In general responsible advertisers have aligned incentives with viewers. Intrusive or obnoxious (or malicious) advertisements hurt viewers, who are less likely to return.
  - emn13 9y ago
    I think a high reserve price is actually a really neat idea - you'd think that might have the knock-on consequence of reducing the attractiveness of adblockers, and furthermore of reducing viewer fatigue (so that the ads you do show have more impact). If you're smart enough, and take into account the "damage" to your relationship with the viewer when choosing an ad (i.e. aiming primarily for the ad the viewer is most likely to appreciate, and only secondarily other effects such as how likely they are to click and how much the advertiser is willing to pay), you might even be able to make ads the viewer actually wants to see; which in the long run is probably a very good place to be. I wonder if part of the reason that never happened is simply that ads are in a sense "reserved" layout space that need to be filled consistently and cannot be filled later on (due to layout jumpiness).
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
badrabbit 9y ago
As a user,I am most offended by ads that target me. I would rather see a completely unrelatable ad. It feels like learning new information that way,as opposed to being stalked and preyed upon.
- kzrdude 9y ago
  I would love to see more ads that instead target the content of the page. When I'm reading about machine learning, it should be books close to that topic, and other related things. I can't believe little that happens.
  - majewsky 9y ago
    Considering the sprawl of sponsored content, maybe because it's cheaper/easier to just buy the author?
  - pault 9y ago
    It has the added benefit of having a high probability that you'll be interested in the product, since you wouldn't be on the page if you didn't find the topic interesting. Instead we get tracking networks showing you ads for TVs because you bought a TV last week.
    - human 9y ago
      I think the problem with that is that most browsing is done on pages that do not target a valuable topic: news, weather, memes, etc. For that reason, it's better to remind you about that Amazon product still in your cart while you're browsing for random stuff.
  - spc476 9y ago
    I used to to that with Amazon. About a decade ago, I added an Amazon banner, and the link included a search term. So I would add an appropriate search term (related to the top blog entry on the page, which is where the Amazon banner appeared). Sometime in the past few months, Amazon removed that and only allows generic sales banners to be presented.
smsm42 9y ago
> It turns out that the more relatable a banner ad is, the less offended the reader is. This is of course true, and kinda obvious, but I am not sure this is workable as business model. I mean, here are not a lot of ads that are immediately relevant for me. Maybe once or twice per month there's something that I buy that ad could sway my decision at least potentially (i.e. expose me to some provider I wasn't aware of, or some brand I haven't considered). The rest is basically wasted on me. How much 2 clicks per month (with unknown conversion rate) are worth to advertisers? I have no idea, but I wonder whether it is possible to support a site on that revenue? I, of course, could be wildly atypical case (for one, I use adblockers and rarely impulse-buy) and maybe typical visitor would be much more engaged with ads. Or it could be that ad buyer industry (not ones that make the ads, but ones that order them - Fords and Chevys of the world) do not have proper tools to see how effective their ads are and just throw a chunk of budget to the wind, get some traffic from it and feel good about it.
- katzgrau 9y ago
  It's true — but advertising has two sides. You can of course be running a campaign that you're hoping for immediate ROI on, like a flash sale. In that case, you really want clicks and some sort of immediate indicator that the campaign is working, like conversions. But sometimes as a business owner you're also campaigning for visibility / mindshare. At the minimum you want to distribute a message and let people know you exist. That's why people still buy billboards. It's a type of advertising that will probably never go away - especially because it's relatively low cost to implement for all sides - just need a designer to create the ad and you're good to go. It doesn't seem like the most dependable business model but it's pretty timeless even in the digital age. The advertiser has an ego and instinct and is ultimately going to buy what they feel is going to work for their business.
lactinfo 9y ago
What the hell is a relatable advertisement?

Terr_ 9y ago

I imagine the worst advertising is where it feels both unfeelingly-impersonal yet also spyingly-specific.

stemuk 9y ago

Maybe a site like gwern.net is generally less suited for A/B experiments like that because of the unique look and speed 'HTML only' sites have. Sites like cnn.com or yahoo.com are generally much more crowded and colorful, so banner ads blend in much better. This might in return result in a higher user acceptance rate for banner ads and probably a different engagement rate too.

HugThem 9y ago

Where do your ads appear? On your site I do not see a publisher signup page.

hanbura 9y ago

I think a most of the problems with ads are just caused by how Google and other big players run online advertising. Somewhere along the way "let's add an image of some company our readers might be interested in" turned into "let's serve a huge Javascript that perceivably slows the browser in order to serve an ad from the highest bidder who might or might not run a criminal enterprise. Also make sure the ads show off the vast amounts of data we collect, we have to appear as creepy as possible". Small ad networks or sites that organize their adverts themselves sometimes have great ads. But I am not sure if the reputation of online ads isn't already damaged beyond repair. Add to that the small revenue from ads (the author makes $30/month from ads and $700/month from patreon)

bartread 9y ago
^^^This. I run Adsense on https://arcade.ly https://arcade.ly. The pages are heavy anyway because they implement games, and much of the payload is music and, to a lesser extent, sound effects. As an experiment I tried loading the pages without music and was nothing short of appalled by the amount of crap Adsense downloads. Thing is, it's not Adsense itself that's the problem: it's the adverts themselves and the lack of control/moderation Google chooses to exert over ad providers. They serve up tons - I mean really a lot - of JavaScript, which tries to track you in N different ways, all so they can display a hyperlinked image with the most basic of animations and mouse over effects. This payload, often running to well over 1MB, measurably slows load and execution performance on the page. The creepiness infuriates me, but it's the overall shittiness of the development practice that produces so much bloat for so little value I find most offensive. I mean these people go in to work, half-ass throwing together a bunch of code and assets in the worst way imaginable, and then carelessly spooge their effluent all over the web... and then they have the audacity to start whingeing about people running ad-blockers. What do they expect? My site gets next to no traffic at the moment but if/when it's grown a bit I'm going to start looking at non-ad ways to earn money from it. I'm even considering ditching them at the moment to see if that might help grown traffic in itself.
- prawn 9y ago
  I don't remember it being like this before they tied it in with DoubleClick?

AJ007 9y ago

The other side to this is users see the ads, relate to the ads, click the ads, and thus leave your site. Your pageviews will drop. Whether or not one agrees with the outcome, if you have a large site you definitely should be doing independent testing. Google's ad reps, much less reps from other networks, will tell you to do things that harm your site.

katzgrau 9y ago
Well, most ads open in a new window. And most serious publishers barely have the resources to survive let alone do A/B testing. The publishers I work with thankfully shy away from network advertising and only deal with clients they have a direct relationship with. Regardless, it really isn't easy or very lucrative running a digital content based business. There are outliers, sure, but the long tail paints a much different story in my experience.

majani 9y ago

This is the biggest problem I have with Adsense. Most of the time it seems like they couldn't find an ad that fits me but their system decided to just throw me a random ad for Forex Trading or whatever. This turns their supposedly sophisticated ad system into a random generator as far as I'm concerned. They could fix this by: 1. Just showing blanks if they can't get something targeted to my preferences 2. Not allowing advertisers to be too general in their targeting if they are doing performance campaigns(CPC and CPA). Only allow CPM advertisers to target broad categories.

init-as 9y ago
I just wanted to say that it’s actually nice not to be the only one who is harassed by forex trading ads around the web. Them and Mobile Strike are pretty much all of the ads I see. (I do have Adblock but can’t block for YouTube mobile etc.)
- def_true_false 9y ago
  There are other apps for youtube. E.g. newpipe.
huac 9y ago
Your concerns are typically addressed by: 1. Reserve pricing - if no ad is 'good enough', e.g. no advertiser is willing to bid above a certain threshold for you, then no ad is shown 2. ePCM pricing - Adsense predicts what the likelihood of clickthrough/conversion is for a given ad and user, and includes that in its auction algorithm. Roughly, eCPM bid = cost per click / probability of click. This addresses the typical problem of high CPC/CPA bid but low engagement probability ads crowding out otherwise good CPM-based ads. In general responsible advertisers have aligned incentives with viewers. Intrusive or obnoxious (or malicious) advertisements hurt viewers, who are less likely to return.
- emn13 9y ago
  I think a high reserve price is actually a really neat idea - you'd think that might have the knock-on consequence of reducing the attractiveness of adblockers, and furthermore of reducing viewer fatigue (so that the ads you do show have more impact). If you're smart enough, and take into account the "damage" to your relationship with the viewer when choosing an ad (i.e. aiming primarily for the ad the viewer is most likely to appreciate, and only secondarily other effects such as how likely they are to click and how much the advertiser is willing to pay), you might even be able to make ads the viewer actually wants to see; which in the long run is probably a very good place to be. I wonder if part of the reason that never happened is simply that ads are in a sense "reserved" layout space that need to be filled consistently and cannot be filled later on (due to layout jumpiness).

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

badrabbit 9y ago

As a user,I am most offended by ads that target me. I would rather see a completely unrelatable ad. It feels like learning new information that way,as opposed to being stalked and preyed upon.

kzrdude 9y ago
I would love to see more ads that instead target the content of the page. When I'm reading about machine learning, it should be books close to that topic, and other related things. I can't believe little that happens.
- majewsky 9y ago
  Considering the sprawl of sponsored content, maybe because it's cheaper/easier to just buy the author?
- pault 9y ago
  It has the added benefit of having a high probability that you'll be interested in the product, since you wouldn't be on the page if you didn't find the topic interesting. Instead we get tracking networks showing you ads for TVs because you bought a TV last week.
  - human 9y ago
    I think the problem with that is that most browsing is done on pages that do not target a valuable topic: news, weather, memes, etc. For that reason, it's better to remind you about that Amazon product still in your cart while you're browsing for random stuff.
- spc476 9y ago
  I used to to that with Amazon. About a decade ago, I added an Amazon banner, and the link included a search term. So I would add an appropriate search term (related to the top blog entry on the page, which is where the Amazon banner appeared). Sometime in the past few months, Amazon removed that and only allows generic sales banners to be presented.

smsm42 9y ago

> It turns out that the more relatable a banner ad is, the less offended the reader is. This is of course true, and kinda obvious, but I am not sure this is workable as business model. I mean, here are not a lot of ads that are immediately relevant for me. Maybe once or twice per month there's something that I buy that ad could sway my decision at least potentially (i.e. expose me to some provider I wasn't aware of, or some brand I haven't considered). The rest is basically wasted on me. How much 2 clicks per month (with unknown conversion rate) are worth to advertisers? I have no idea, but I wonder whether it is possible to support a site on that revenue? I, of course, could be wildly atypical case (for one, I use adblockers and rarely impulse-buy) and maybe typical visitor would be much more engaged with ads. Or it could be that ad buyer industry (not ones that make the ads, but ones that order them - Fords and Chevys of the world) do not have proper tools to see how effective their ads are and just throw a chunk of budget to the wind, get some traffic from it and feel good about it.

katzgrau 9y ago
It's true — but advertising has two sides. You can of course be running a campaign that you're hoping for immediate ROI on, like a flash sale. In that case, you really want clicks and some sort of immediate indicator that the campaign is working, like conversions. But sometimes as a business owner you're also campaigning for visibility / mindshare. At the minimum you want to distribute a message and let people know you exist. That's why people still buy billboards. It's a type of advertising that will probably never go away - especially because it's relatively low cost to implement for all sides - just need a designer to create the ad and you're good to go. It doesn't seem like the most dependable business model but it's pretty timeless even in the digital age. The advertiser has an ego and instinct and is ultimately going to buy what they feel is going to work for their business.

lactinfo 9y ago

What the hell is a relatable advertisement?