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I would rather see the cat food. Software products that need advertisement to succeed are either underperforming (because they’ve spent their money on ads inste

I would rather see the cat food. Software products that need advertisement to succeed are either underperforming (because they’ve spent their money on ads instead of devs) or scams.

jasonlotito 9y ago
To be fair, I don't know of a single successful software product that doesn't advertise in some fashion.
- Rjevski 9y ago
  Depends what you consider an advertisement - advertising on something like Read The Docs or sponsoring conferences is one thing and I feel that's acceptable, but buying keywords on Google is just spam. I would not trust any software product (especially a low-level one like a library, as opposed to an out-of-the-box SaaS) that advertises on Google keywords or similar.
  - logicallee 9y ago
    so you love conferences they sponsor. would you ever pay some minimal amount to go to a conference? If so isn't an adword (in your gmail or in your search results) an appropriate place to see you, in the clearly labelled advertising section? Wouldn't you be quite likely to click it, and also be happy that it was served to you?
    - Rjevski 9y ago
      > would you ever pay some minimal amount to go to a conference Yes. My issues with Adwords are the following: 1) they're abused by spam and garbage, so seeing a (potentially good) software product in there immediately turns me off and is actually a red flag. 2) it shows that the developer has no idea of the target market for their product - anyone that has the brains to use a software library would be blocking the Adwords anyway. 3) the above could mean they're instead targeting managers/CTOs as opposed to the actual people who will be using the library (developers), which is also a huge red flag.
      - logicallee 9y ago
        I have no problem at all with your logic for the specific case you mentioned. (In fact it's easy for me to agree with it.) In fact we're arguing/discussing better targeting now! As a developer you don't want to see an open source product advertised. On the other hand, if you're a manager who can't deliver a feature that your customer is begging for because there is no out of the box solution/library for it, and you don't have the personpower - but lo, you can license one for $100/month that's worth tens of thousands to your customer, you'll be thrilled if you can learn about the existence of it. (Just a hypothetical, use a different one if you want: again, we're talking about better targeting.) You didn't answer my question about if you want to see ads for a conference (I took two long sentences to ask you super explicitly) - is it because that's a resounding yes? I get that you don't want to answer the question because it's counter to your philosophy that targeted ads are bad. That philosophy, as we're seeing, is wrong.
        Rjevski 9y ago
        The issue I have with targeting is that the ads should be targeted to the content I see, not to me - this is why ads on platforms like Read The Docs are fine by me as they target based on the content of the page they're displayed on, instead of trying to stalk me around everywhere in order to target better ads to me. I'm happy to see computer-related ads on Read The Docs, but on standard Google I'd rather have cat food advertised (or other generic product). Oh sorry, I totally missed that you were talking about ads for conferences as opposed to conferences themselves - but again the above still applies; more than happy to see conference ads on developer related websites. On Google, especially when I search for a generic keyword? No, give me cat food any day.
        logicallee 9y ago
        I know you say you want it but I am sure that you will love seeing ads for conferences that actually interest you, in your gmail inbox, and you will be annoyed by irrelevant ads (such as cat food when you don't have a cat.) I've never been bothered by ads I see in gmail. they're also super explicit about the way in which they collect and collate data and I understand that maybe I will have to make different Google accounts to be targeted to different things. I guess your and my perspective is just very different. but enjoy your cat food or Amazing skin lightening! (for darker skinned people) ads - they're both very popular products. (the latter is a scam product category.)

I would rather see the cat food. Software products that need advertisement to succeed are either underperforming (because they’ve spent their money on ads instead of devs) or scams.

jasonlotito 9y ago

To be fair, I don't know of a single successful software product that doesn't advertise in some fashion.

Rjevski 9y ago
Depends what you consider an advertisement - advertising on something like Read The Docs or sponsoring conferences is one thing and I feel that's acceptable, but buying keywords on Google is just spam. I would not trust any software product (especially a low-level one like a library, as opposed to an out-of-the-box SaaS) that advertises on Google keywords or similar.
- logicallee 9y ago
  so you love conferences they sponsor. would you ever pay some minimal amount to go to a conference? If so isn't an adword (in your gmail or in your search results) an appropriate place to see you, in the clearly labelled advertising section? Wouldn't you be quite likely to click it, and also be happy that it was served to you?
  - Rjevski 9y ago
    > would you ever pay some minimal amount to go to a conference Yes. My issues with Adwords are the following: 1) they're abused by spam and garbage, so seeing a (potentially good) software product in there immediately turns me off and is actually a red flag. 2) it shows that the developer has no idea of the target market for their product - anyone that has the brains to use a software library would be blocking the Adwords anyway. 3) the above could mean they're instead targeting managers/CTOs as opposed to the actual people who will be using the library (developers), which is also a huge red flag.
    - logicallee 9y ago
      I have no problem at all with your logic for the specific case you mentioned. (In fact it's easy for me to agree with it.) In fact we're arguing/discussing better targeting now! As a developer you don't want to see an open source product advertised. On the other hand, if you're a manager who can't deliver a feature that your customer is begging for because there is no out of the box solution/library for it, and you don't have the personpower - but lo, you can license one for $100/month that's worth tens of thousands to your customer, you'll be thrilled if you can learn about the existence of it. (Just a hypothetical, use a different one if you want: again, we're talking about better targeting.) You didn't answer my question about if you want to see ads for a conference (I took two long sentences to ask you super explicitly) - is it because that's a resounding yes? I get that you don't want to answer the question because it's counter to your philosophy that targeted ads are bad. That philosophy, as we're seeing, is wrong.
      - Rjevski 9y ago
        The issue I have with targeting is that the ads should be targeted to the content I see, not to me - this is why ads on platforms like Read The Docs are fine by me as they target based on the content of the page they're displayed on, instead of trying to stalk me around everywhere in order to target better ads to me. I'm happy to see computer-related ads on Read The Docs, but on standard Google I'd rather have cat food advertised (or other generic product). Oh sorry, I totally missed that you were talking about ads for conferences as opposed to conferences themselves - but again the above still applies; more than happy to see conference ads on developer related websites. On Google, especially when I search for a generic keyword? No, give me cat food any day.
        logicallee 9y ago
        I know you say you want it but I am sure that you will love seeing ads for conferences that actually interest you, in your gmail inbox, and you will be annoyed by irrelevant ads (such as cat food when you don't have a cat.) I've never been bothered by ads I see in gmail. they're also super explicit about the way in which they collect and collate data and I understand that maybe I will have to make different Google accounts to be targeted to different things. I guess your and my perspective is just very different. but enjoy your cat food or Amazing skin lightening! (for darker skinned people) ads - they're both very popular products. (the latter is a scam product category.)