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I'm in advertising and I'm not sure I get the hate towards ads. I mean, anyone here does not have a business? Do you really expect to build a company based on

I'm in advertising and I'm not sure I get the hate towards ads. I mean, anyone here does not have a business? Do you really expect to build a company based on product quality and the ocasional blog post? I guarantee you that 99% of postmorten posts posted in HN are because said startup couldn't figure out their marketing strategy. Anyways, isn't this click fraud?

hkai 8y ago
Judging by the writing style on the ad nauseam website, it is written by a college kid who probably never tried selling anything. Tracking by government is dangerous, tracking of your interests to get you better, more relevant advertising is good. I keep finding very useful stuff via ads served to me by Facebook, and my own little side business would not survive if I couldn't target my ads properly.
- anoncake 8y ago
  > tracking of your interests to get you better, more relevant advertising is good. Tracking of my interest so advertisers can manipulate me better is not good. It also means that advertising is more profitable, so it occurs more often, and websites get less usable as a result.
- malka 8y ago
  >Tracking by government is dangerous, tracking of your interests to get you better, more relevant advertising is good. No.
- pixl97 8y ago
  Companies, by proxy, are agents of the government. Anything a company collects and saves can come to be held by the government. Some companies even require a warrant before they give the government said information.
  - captainredbeard 8y ago
    That's ridiculous and it's not a stretch to take what you're saying and turn it into: "People, by proxy, are agents of the government. Anything a person collects and saves can come to be held by the government" While the government can strong-arm entities (fictitious or natural), it doesn't make its victims "agents".
    - Nasrudith 8y ago
      Unnecessary recording still serves surveillance - the best way to keep data private is to never gather or record it.
      - captainredbeard 8y ago
        That's a fantastic point and I agree 100%.
elcomet 8y ago
The problem is that advertising is shifting towards manipulation. Facebook and co can target so well their users, and do brain research to understand how to most effectively make someone want a product, or click on an ad, or buy a service.. Also, we suspect cases of political manipulations through advertisement channels (remember cambridge analytica ?) Before, advertisement was just sensitization to a brand, making people know it. Today, it's much more, and I find it absolutely horrifying. Also, ads are very annoying when they prevent you to enjoy the content, and block half of the page, as it is the case in a lot of sites. (please excuse the language, not native speaker)
- frostburg 8y ago
  It was almost always manipulation; recall all the old cigarette ads featuring doctors.
  - elcomet 8y ago
    This is more a lie than a manipulation (and is punished by law, at least in some country). But you are right that even without targeting, ads could hurt people.
    - frostburg 8y ago
      That's now illegal in many countries (not that tactic, just advertising for cigarettes). Faking legitimacy by implication of (spurious) association with something seen as trustworthy is unfortunately entirely legal, as far as I know.
frostburg 8y ago
If they weren't outcompeted by inferior products with better ads, due to ads being banned due to being universally hated by anyone not making money from ads, maybe they could be able to build a company on product quality. What a nightmare scenario.
pawelk 8y ago
I used to work in advertising. On the rare occasion we were deploying display ads the most common complaint was: it doesn't show up. The reason was that literally everyone, from developers, designers, to project managers, account managers and the client has been blocking ads. In Poland ~90% of desktop browsers, and >50% of all browsers (desktop+mobile+tablets) have some kind of ad blocking enabled. Only 9% of users will allow ads when the website asks them to, most will always (43%) or usually (30%) leave the the website. Anyways I agree this plugin is just click fraud.
- anoncake 8y ago
  > In Poland ~90% of desktop browsers, and >50% of all browsers (desktop+mobile+tablets) have some kind of ad blocking enabled. That's surprisingly high. Do you know if ad blocking is more common in Poland than elsewhere?
  - pawelk 8y ago
    Yes, Poland has one of the highest percentages of ad blocking users in the world. Historically it was also a bastion of Firefox - in pre-Chrome days it has had >50% market penetration, and Opera was also widely popular compared to other countries, AFAIR peaking at ~15% (ironically, even when it had a paid and ad-supported versions, many users were using the ad-supported Opera). Even now Firefox has 15% market share in Poland vs ~5% globally. I don't know if it's related or has a common cause, but this just higlights that some local markets can be very specific. Edit: January stats for desktop browsers: Chrome 50.52%, Firefox 31.02%, Opera 7.30%, Edge 4.66%, IE 4.15% Overall stats (incl. mobile devices): Mobile Chrome 33.69%, Desktop Chrome 26.16%, Firefox 14.94%, Safari Mobile 5.80%, Samsung Browser 4.87%
pdkl95 8y ago
> Anyways, isn't this click fraud? Absolutely not. We don't have any sort of contractual or business relationship. The only way this could be "click fraud" is if someone hosting ads used adnauseam to fraudulently enrich themselves. > I'm not sure I get the hate towards ads. Advertising shifted into an industry based on tracking literally everything they are able to track. This has started shifting our economy from the traditional forms of capitalism that were built on mass-production, finance, etc into surveillance capitalism, which is currently undermining democracy[1]. > I'm in advertising Then please, read [1] and maybe consider the long-term, far-reaching "unintended consequences" of creating an economy based on ubiquitous surveillance. [1] http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/shoshana-zuboff-q-and-a-the-age-of-surveillance-capital.html http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/shoshana-zuboff-q-and...
sanxiyn 8y ago
This is not click fraud because it's users clicking, not publishers.
908087 8y ago
Peter Popoff probably had a hard time understanding why people had a problem with his activities as well.

hkai 8y ago

Judging by the writing style on the ad nauseam website, it is written by a college kid who probably never tried selling anything. Tracking by government is dangerous, tracking of your interests to get you better, more relevant advertising is good. I keep finding very useful stuff via ads served to me by Facebook, and my own little side business would not survive if I couldn't target my ads properly.

anoncake 8y ago
> tracking of your interests to get you better, more relevant advertising is good. Tracking of my interest so advertisers can manipulate me better is not good. It also means that advertising is more profitable, so it occurs more often, and websites get less usable as a result.
malka 8y ago
>Tracking by government is dangerous, tracking of your interests to get you better, more relevant advertising is good. No.
pixl97 8y ago
Companies, by proxy, are agents of the government. Anything a company collects and saves can come to be held by the government. Some companies even require a warrant before they give the government said information.
- captainredbeard 8y ago
  That's ridiculous and it's not a stretch to take what you're saying and turn it into: "People, by proxy, are agents of the government. Anything a person collects and saves can come to be held by the government" While the government can strong-arm entities (fictitious or natural), it doesn't make its victims "agents".
  - Nasrudith 8y ago
    Unnecessary recording still serves surveillance - the best way to keep data private is to never gather or record it.
    - captainredbeard 8y ago
      That's a fantastic point and I agree 100%.

elcomet 8y ago

The problem is that advertising is shifting towards manipulation. Facebook and co can target so well their users, and do brain research to understand how to most effectively make someone want a product, or click on an ad, or buy a service.. Also, we suspect cases of political manipulations through advertisement channels (remember cambridge analytica ?) Before, advertisement was just sensitization to a brand, making people know it. Today, it's much more, and I find it absolutely horrifying. Also, ads are very annoying when they prevent you to enjoy the content, and block half of the page, as it is the case in a lot of sites. (please excuse the language, not native speaker)

frostburg 8y ago
It was almost always manipulation; recall all the old cigarette ads featuring doctors.
- elcomet 8y ago
  This is more a lie than a manipulation (and is punished by law, at least in some country). But you are right that even without targeting, ads could hurt people.
  - frostburg 8y ago
    That's now illegal in many countries (not that tactic, just advertising for cigarettes). Faking legitimacy by implication of (spurious) association with something seen as trustworthy is unfortunately entirely legal, as far as I know.

frostburg 8y ago

If they weren't outcompeted by inferior products with better ads, due to ads being banned due to being universally hated by anyone not making money from ads, maybe they could be able to build a company on product quality. What a nightmare scenario.

pawelk 8y ago

I used to work in advertising. On the rare occasion we were deploying display ads the most common complaint was: it doesn't show up. The reason was that literally everyone, from developers, designers, to project managers, account managers and the client has been blocking ads. In Poland ~90% of desktop browsers, and >50% of all browsers (desktop+mobile+tablets) have some kind of ad blocking enabled. Only 9% of users will allow ads when the website asks them to, most will always (43%) or usually (30%) leave the the website. Anyways I agree this plugin is just click fraud.

anoncake 8y ago
> In Poland ~90% of desktop browsers, and >50% of all browsers (desktop+mobile+tablets) have some kind of ad blocking enabled. That's surprisingly high. Do you know if ad blocking is more common in Poland than elsewhere?
- pawelk 8y ago
  Yes, Poland has one of the highest percentages of ad blocking users in the world. Historically it was also a bastion of Firefox - in pre-Chrome days it has had >50% market penetration, and Opera was also widely popular compared to other countries, AFAIR peaking at ~15% (ironically, even when it had a paid and ad-supported versions, many users were using the ad-supported Opera). Even now Firefox has 15% market share in Poland vs ~5% globally. I don't know if it's related or has a common cause, but this just higlights that some local markets can be very specific. Edit: January stats for desktop browsers: Chrome 50.52%, Firefox 31.02%, Opera 7.30%, Edge 4.66%, IE 4.15% Overall stats (incl. mobile devices): Mobile Chrome 33.69%, Desktop Chrome 26.16%, Firefox 14.94%, Safari Mobile 5.80%, Samsung Browser 4.87%

pdkl95 8y ago

> Anyways, isn't this click fraud? Absolutely not. We don't have any sort of contractual or business relationship. The only way this could be "click fraud" is if someone hosting ads used adnauseam to fraudulently enrich themselves. > I'm not sure I get the hate towards ads. Advertising shifted into an industry based on tracking literally everything they are able to track. This has started shifting our economy from the traditional forms of capitalism that were built on mass-production, finance, etc into surveillance capitalism, which is currently undermining democracy[1]. > I'm in advertising Then please, read [1] and maybe consider the long-term, far-reaching "unintended consequences" of creating an economy based on ubiquitous surveillance. [1] http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/shoshana-zuboff-q-and-a-the-age-of-surveillance-capital.html http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/shoshana-zuboff-q-and...

sanxiyn 8y ago

This is not click fraud because it's users clicking, not publishers.

908087 8y ago

Peter Popoff probably had a hard time understanding why people had a problem with his activities as well.