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This is the big idea I always pitched at hackathons (like startup weekend). I think it’s a great idea. 100% opt-in ads. My tagline was “a sufficiently relevant

This is the big idea I always pitched at hackathons (like startup weekend). I think it’s a great idea. 100% opt-in ads. My tagline was “a sufficiently relevant ad is indistinguishable from content.” It’s meant to be aspirational. The idea is that if you are looking to buy something, awareness of choices or information about that choice should be so valuable that it’s considered to be a benefit by the user. It’s basicallt an inversion of control approach to ads. The cpc’s and cpm’s would be amazing. :)

Hnrobert42 8y ago
Unless I specifically seek them out, I have no interest in learning about new products or services ever. Thus, an ad would never be relevant enough to be content for me.
- Y_Y 8y ago
  But you read HN don't you? Can you tell articles from ads here? What about Paul Graham's submarines?
  - freeone3000 8y ago
    Being tricked by false headlines and articles published as news when secretly advertisement doesn't lead me to opt in to more ads.
    - snaky 8y ago
      It depends on how useful the advertising is. It's not the tracking or privacy the regular user is most concerned about, it's the everyday experience that tells him advertising is still stupid and annoying. Despite all the billion dollars ML systems with gazillion of factors analyzed on petabytes of data, all we've got is 'hey, you googled for a 10uA accuracy bench multimeter yesterday! now for two weeks we will show you all the $15 multimeters ever existed!'. Look at this (don't worry, it's short one-page) thread for example of how it might be instead - https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/benchtop-dmm-advise-needed-%281-ua-to-10-a-2w4w-ui-dual-display-labview%29/ https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/benchtop-dmm-advise-n... - and what if the message from Tek engineer that closed a deal was actually advertising? He just posted a link to relevant appnote, that's it. What if automatical advertising system showed the same link to the same appnote as an advertising to the same user?
  - Hnrobert42 8y ago
    Yes. I don’t know. I don’t know what those are.
- magicalhippo 8y ago
  Well I do. Sometimes there's a product or a service that can provide value in a way I haven't thought about, or I haven't come around to specifically seek out yet. I don't mind seeing ads for such things. What I do mind is seeing ads for stuff I don't care about at all, and if the ads get in the way of what I'm doing.
  - simias 8y ago
    I've been considering buying a 3D printer lately. I don't have a lot of experience in the domain and I'm not sure where to start, so clearly I'm actively looking about information regarding 3D printers. What I'm definitely not looking for is ads. Actually I try to avoid anything that might remotely look like one, from official websites (obviously) to comparisons of 3D printers that look like they could be biased one way or an other. Because obviously every company selling 3D printers is going to tell you that theirs is the best you could ever find. Even if they don't outright lie they'll put the emphasis on their strong points while conveniently forgetting to mention the drawbacks. I really think ads are useless from a consumer perspective. I can believe that there was a time where the best way to reach potential buyers was buying an ad in the newspaper but with the ultra-connected society we're in it's just a waste. Make a great product, send it to a bunch of influential bloggers in the market share you target to review and if it's good the word of mouth will do the rest. In a society where you can find reviews and recommendations for basically anything online, why on earth would I ever want to see ads? If you need to convince your potential customers that they need your product by spamming them, maybe your product is not that useful in the first place. Of course the dark side of this is that of course marketing has caught on, now we have "native advertising" and people getting paid to pretend that they like something.
    - falcor84 8y ago
      >...people getting paid to pretend that they like something If I remember my history correctly, this is how the very first radio sponsorships started as.
    - yorwba 8y ago
      I think ads are useless when you want to decide within a product category ("Which 3D printer should I buy?") but they can help you become aware of it in the first place ("There are affordable 3D printers now? Maybe I should get one.") Unfortunately the majority of the consumer market revolves around a few common products and so most ads are about shifting revenue between functionally identical brands. But I do occasionally see ads for relatively obscure stuff that might cause such an "I didn't know that existed." experience for other people. (I'm apparently hard to target.) For example https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=viva64.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=viva64.com are essentially ads, but they are still interesting to read, and afterwards you might be in the market for a code analysis tool.
- bryanrasmussen 8y ago
  Do you ever look at HN without knowing what you're going to see?
- kromem 8y ago
  So when a friend talks to you about a product they recently used and loved and think you'd love as well (and I don't mean a friend on MLM payroll), you aren't interested in hearing about that recommendation? And I'm guessing you skip over any HN posts that are about a new product or service you weren't already aware of? There's a reason word of mouth is the most influential medium for converting to a sale, and it's because a recommendation from a friend is typically not "polluted" by advertisers lacking scruples - so the "pitches" you hear are about things someone who knows you decently well thinks you'll like, and only for products/tv shows/services that the person actually thinks are good. It's also part of why recommendations motivated by affiliate rewards or MLM sales are seen with such disdain, as it's behavior from a friend that crosses a love for acceptable behavior. If we only saw ads online for things that matched our interests AND are very good products, we'd have a different attitude about advertising (but that will never happen, as it requires prisoner's dilemma type agreement across too many parties).
  - Hnrobert42 8y ago
    >If we only saw ads online for things that matched our interests AND are very good products I see your point, but for me, even this is not true. I don’t need to buy things, yet I am susceptible to advertisements. Ads just convince me to buy things I don’t need. The ads you describe would be even worse. I would prefer instead to never hear about new products or services.
mtgx 8y ago
The cheap CPC and cpm is why Google and Facebook would never consider doing that. Especially Google I've noticed recently that they try to be as misleading as possible to new advertisers to get them to pay a lot of money for crap as targettng. For instance they call what are effectively as interactions as clicks and refer to the cost as CPC even though in all of Google's other as types CPC refers to click to website. But in Gmail campaigns it means ad interactions which convert to almost an order of magnitude fewer clicks to website but the advertisers pay at best only half the cost of regular clicks.
idiomatic1 8y ago
This is the idea behind the Brave browser, right?

Hnrobert42 8y ago

Unless I specifically seek them out, I have no interest in learning about new products or services ever. Thus, an ad would never be relevant enough to be content for me.

Y_Y 8y ago
But you read HN don't you? Can you tell articles from ads here? What about Paul Graham's submarines?
- freeone3000 8y ago
  Being tricked by false headlines and articles published as news when secretly advertisement doesn't lead me to opt in to more ads.
  - snaky 8y ago
    It depends on how useful the advertising is. It's not the tracking or privacy the regular user is most concerned about, it's the everyday experience that tells him advertising is still stupid and annoying. Despite all the billion dollars ML systems with gazillion of factors analyzed on petabytes of data, all we've got is 'hey, you googled for a 10uA accuracy bench multimeter yesterday! now for two weeks we will show you all the $15 multimeters ever existed!'. Look at this (don't worry, it's short one-page) thread for example of how it might be instead - https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/benchtop-dmm-advise-needed-%281-ua-to-10-a-2w4w-ui-dual-display-labview%29/ https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/benchtop-dmm-advise-n... - and what if the message from Tek engineer that closed a deal was actually advertising? He just posted a link to relevant appnote, that's it. What if automatical advertising system showed the same link to the same appnote as an advertising to the same user?
- Hnrobert42 8y ago
  Yes. I don’t know. I don’t know what those are.
magicalhippo 8y ago
Well I do. Sometimes there's a product or a service that can provide value in a way I haven't thought about, or I haven't come around to specifically seek out yet. I don't mind seeing ads for such things. What I do mind is seeing ads for stuff I don't care about at all, and if the ads get in the way of what I'm doing.
- simias 8y ago
  I've been considering buying a 3D printer lately. I don't have a lot of experience in the domain and I'm not sure where to start, so clearly I'm actively looking about information regarding 3D printers. What I'm definitely not looking for is ads. Actually I try to avoid anything that might remotely look like one, from official websites (obviously) to comparisons of 3D printers that look like they could be biased one way or an other. Because obviously every company selling 3D printers is going to tell you that theirs is the best you could ever find. Even if they don't outright lie they'll put the emphasis on their strong points while conveniently forgetting to mention the drawbacks. I really think ads are useless from a consumer perspective. I can believe that there was a time where the best way to reach potential buyers was buying an ad in the newspaper but with the ultra-connected society we're in it's just a waste. Make a great product, send it to a bunch of influential bloggers in the market share you target to review and if it's good the word of mouth will do the rest. In a society where you can find reviews and recommendations for basically anything online, why on earth would I ever want to see ads? If you need to convince your potential customers that they need your product by spamming them, maybe your product is not that useful in the first place. Of course the dark side of this is that of course marketing has caught on, now we have "native advertising" and people getting paid to pretend that they like something.
  - falcor84 8y ago
    >...people getting paid to pretend that they like something If I remember my history correctly, this is how the very first radio sponsorships started as.
  - yorwba 8y ago
    I think ads are useless when you want to decide within a product category ("Which 3D printer should I buy?") but they can help you become aware of it in the first place ("There are affordable 3D printers now? Maybe I should get one.") Unfortunately the majority of the consumer market revolves around a few common products and so most ads are about shifting revenue between functionally identical brands. But I do occasionally see ads for relatively obscure stuff that might cause such an "I didn't know that existed." experience for other people. (I'm apparently hard to target.) For example https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=viva64.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=viva64.com are essentially ads, but they are still interesting to read, and afterwards you might be in the market for a code analysis tool.
bryanrasmussen 8y ago
Do you ever look at HN without knowing what you're going to see?
kromem 8y ago
So when a friend talks to you about a product they recently used and loved and think you'd love as well (and I don't mean a friend on MLM payroll), you aren't interested in hearing about that recommendation? And I'm guessing you skip over any HN posts that are about a new product or service you weren't already aware of? There's a reason word of mouth is the most influential medium for converting to a sale, and it's because a recommendation from a friend is typically not "polluted" by advertisers lacking scruples - so the "pitches" you hear are about things someone who knows you decently well thinks you'll like, and only for products/tv shows/services that the person actually thinks are good. It's also part of why recommendations motivated by affiliate rewards or MLM sales are seen with such disdain, as it's behavior from a friend that crosses a love for acceptable behavior. If we only saw ads online for things that matched our interests AND are very good products, we'd have a different attitude about advertising (but that will never happen, as it requires prisoner's dilemma type agreement across too many parties).
- Hnrobert42 8y ago
  >If we only saw ads online for things that matched our interests AND are very good products I see your point, but for me, even this is not true. I don’t need to buy things, yet I am susceptible to advertisements. Ads just convince me to buy things I don’t need. The ads you describe would be even worse. I would prefer instead to never hear about new products or services.

mtgx 8y ago

The cheap CPC and cpm is why Google and Facebook would never consider doing that. Especially Google I've noticed recently that they try to be as misleading as possible to new advertisers to get them to pay a lot of money for crap as targettng. For instance they call what are effectively as interactions as clicks and refer to the cost as CPC even though in all of Google's other as types CPC refers to click to website. But in Gmail campaigns it means ad interactions which convert to almost an order of magnitude fewer clicks to website but the advertisers pay at best only half the cost of regular clicks.

idiomatic1 8y ago

This is the idea behind the Brave browser, right?