8 ms·

There's something deeply satisfying about the idea that the annoying tone and shoutiness (and volume increase) of most ads could be used against them for filter

by sambe 7y ago

There's something deeply satisfying about the idea that the annoying tone and shoutiness (and volume increase) of most ads could be used against them for filtering.

smhost 7y ago
at the same time, i don't know how comfortable i feel about incentivizing ad distribution companies to become more stealthy.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Take a closer look at that feeling. If you're not comfortable with what they're trying to do, but also not comfortable with trying to mitigate it, as it'll only incentivize them to do worse - then how comfortable are you with them existing? The problem is ad distribution companies here and now. The problem won't be gone until they're gone.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    The problem is people are willing to pay for certain products with their attention, via ads, but not with money. Given the choice of paying $1 for a podcast or pirating said podcast, sufficient number of people would not choose the first option to make it a viable business.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      That has not been established. In fact, the whole music, video and computer game industries are evidence of the opposite - even before DRM and convenient streaming/store platforms on-line, piracy was still just a drop in a bucket and businesses asking for money up front were perfectly viable.
      - lotsofpulp 7y ago
        People prefer free over paying all the time. Just see all of us wanting to avoid paying for the environmental externalities. The only reason people don’t choose free over paying is if the convenience or cost is worth it. For music, organizing and having easy access to all music files is worth $10/month or less to many people versus risking copyright infringement charges. But raise that to $100/month, and see what people do... The ease of transferring data on the internet and high bandwidth connections tilts the favor in choosing the free version. Perhaps paid podcasts are possible if it’s easy enough, I might not mind 50 cents or $1 via Apple Pay in my podcasts app, or a subscription service that eliminates all ads. Even if we ignore the piracy angle, an additional problem is if a vendor provides a service for free or cheaper with ads, people choose that one over one that is paid. So for items meant for mass consumption, such as podcasts, the more lucrative ones will be the ones with ads. Similar to how no one can compete with free offerings from Google or Facebook.
        endorphone 7y ago
        And people prefer paid over free all the time. Many of us are loaded with a dozen+ subscriptions. I have Netflix, Spotify, Prime Video, HBO, Showtime, Apple Arcade, iCloud Storage, EA Access, Xbox Game Pass, Adobe Creative Cloud, NY Times all as subscriptions, and countless paid apps and solutions. I'm far from alone in this. Clearly millions of people pay enormous sums for good products. The problem is that often it's hard to get anything but an ad-buttressed solution because everyone wants to double-dip (e.g. NYTimes, Hulu). Further the conversation often comes up for things that have lower value, but the creators hope it's their payday. There are countless podcasts that seem low effort -- usually a group of guys chatting with no preparation or work about things -- that I have to imagine people turn on as background noise, but if faced with a pay wall would abandon quickly (examples would be Accidental Tech Podcast or the like, the Daring Fireball one, etc -- the "how can I print money with zero work" podcasts). There are others that are absolutely brilliant that are worth it but have some byzantine, many-islands, poorly supported way of funding them -- Anthropocene Review, 99% Invisible, Hidden Brain, etc. As we get into a small number of large podcast subscription services I expect a lot of them will see great results.
        TeMPOraL 7y ago
      - scumbert 7y ago
        > In fact, the whole music, video and computer game industries are evidence of the opposite Only anecdotally to make us all feel warm and fuzzy. It seems pretty intuitive that people just prefer the thing that costs the least utility, whether that be time or money.
    - criddell 7y ago
      I'll pay with my attention, but not with my data. Radio ads are annoying because of the high volume and fast talking, but I'm not going to try to block them. On the web, put up an add with no tracking (effectively a digital billboard) and I'll stop using my ad blocker. The advertising might be annoying, but the surveillance is a human rights violation (according to the UN).
      - drdeadringer 7y ago
        > but I'm not going to try to block them. Why not?
        criddell 7y ago
        Because the effort and expense of doing so is greater than my annoyance. I watch baseball games on the MLB streaming service and when they go to commercials, the screen goes to a static image with no sound. It's kind of jarring and I think I would prefer to have something still playing. The best thing would be if they just went to a wide shot of the ballpark with ballpark sounds, but the normal ads are better than silence IMHO.
    - abdullahkhalids 7y ago
      > The problem is people are willing to pay for certain products with their attention, via ads, but not with money. 1. People who are adblocking are saying that they are not willing to pay with attention. You can only compare their relative willingness to pay with attention vs money when you provide both options fairly. 2. I don't take it as given that businesses have the right to make money however they want. There are human right principles and I think an important fundamental right missing from the UN Declaration is the right to not be subjected to subtle influence techniques that compromise your beliefs (even if those belief are about which soap you should buy). Any business strategy that goes against this principle should be illegal and if certain industries and businesses die as a result, so be it. I would take no economic growth over compromised human rights any day.
      - pavel_lishin 7y ago
        > 1. People who are adblocking are saying that they are not willing to pay with attention. No. As a person who's adblocking, that is not what I'm saying. I'm perfectly willing to pay with attention; I'm not willing to pay with my data, I'm not willing to be tracked across sites, and I'm not willing to let my browser execute whatever garbage the ad network is sending down the pipe at me.
        TeMPOraL 7y ago
        Ad blocking is like eating apples. Some apple eaters are vegans, some are vegetarians, and some are just regular omnivores. A diverse population with many reasons for doing what they're doing. Myself, I'd prefer to pay with my data if the terms were clear. I have an issue with manipulation, and I'll be blocking all ads I can until the ones that are left are non-attention-grabbing, non-interactive, not manipulative, related to the site I'm in, moderated, and preferably pull, not push.
        snakeOyl 7y ago
        The alternative to advertising is paid subscription content. I don’t see how you’re going to achieve greater privacy by giving someone your credit card number.
    - willis936 7y ago
      In fairness, $1 for a podcast episode is egregious. Almost no one would pay that. Piracy has gone down a lot in the past 15 years because content owners made reasonable decisions.
      - AlexandrB 7y ago
        It's really not egregious. Just like $1/song is not egregious. $1/podcast episode (often 60 minutes or more) is some of the best time/$ value among a-la-carte entertainment products.
        h4waii 7y ago
        A song, ostensibly has a high level of repeatability. How often does one re-listen to a podcast within, say, 6 to 12 months? Maybe a year after, if it had a real impact?
        natosaichek 7y ago
        A song is typically 3-6 minutes, while a podcast is typically 10x that. I think that delta probably can make the difference reasonable.
        mbrock 7y ago
        People routinely pay $3 for a single cup of drip coffee or $6 for a shot of liquor
        TeMPOraL 7y ago
        Coffee and liquor are made of matter, not information, and thus cannot be infinitely copied for near-zero energy expenditure. This is what gives them a practical price floor.
        lotsofpulp 7y ago
        This is all speculation and without knowing concrete numbers, one can't make any definitive statements about why coffee costs $x and a podcast costs $y. I'm sure performing quality research costs many man hours, traveling, opportunity costs for stories that don't pan out, legal costs, etc. At the end of the day, however, all you need is the fact that there are no successful paid podcasts, and the most successful ones use advertising. There's nothing stopping anyone from creating one, and it's not a novel idea. Same with newspapers. The very fact that one doesn't exist, when the alternative (paid version without advertising) is a known idea and easily executable, must mean that there is a problem with the business model itself. Perhaps the problem is that it can't compete in the same environment with media that uses advertising. Perhaps a sufficient number of people simply aren't willing to pay a sufficient price for them to exist without advertising.
    - bduerst 7y ago
      >The problem is people are willing to pay for certain products with their attention, via ads, but not with money. This sounds like projection - are there any numbers or data to back this up? Because the market shows that people prefer to get things for free, either subsidized with ads or by ad blocking. Google also tried this with contributor.google.com but they shut it down due to lack of interest.
    - munk-a 7y ago
      I don't get where people found this expectation to be paid for random crap thrown out into the world. Once upon a time a lot of the things that are ad-supported now would be considered hobbies that people did because they like to do them, there wouldn't be any sort of expectation of recouping losses you were putting money into your activity in exchange for the joy of doing it. Now everything has become much more money focused and rather than sending out a podcast episode to start a discussion or voice your opinion people are doing it to get paid. This is why I love Patreon, it has the possibility to shift us back into the "for the joy of it" production - removing the need to shill on a month-by-month basis. If enough people support you directly then advertising loses it's appeal by spurning potential listeners. Meanwhile your hobby is getting support from the other hobbyists and people with a slight interest can dip their toes in and explore the world.
      - gowld 7y ago
        How do we know which work deserves to be paid for? Will you publish a master list for everyone?
        TeMPOraL 7y ago
        The works GP criticizes still aren't being paid for. If you're serving something as "free with ads", you aren't being paid for your creative work, you're being paid for finding victims and delivering them to advertisers.
    - greggman2 7y ago
      I suppose though I pay $18 to go to the movies and they show me 5-10 minutes of ads followed but another 5-10 minutes of trailers. I generally look forward to the trailers but the ads drive me nuts given I paid (guess I should stop going) Disney back in the 90s threatened to not allow theaters to show their movies if they ran ads. I think that died though https://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/10/business/disney-bans-commercials-at-showings-of-its-films.html https://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/10/business/disney-bans-comm...
  - olalonde 7y ago
    Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one on HN who is not bothered by ads and doesn't like paying for stuff.
    - munk-a 7y ago
      I'd urge you to value your time more, it isn't worth the price of your attention and productivity to be forced to listen to banal advertising.
      - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
        Some reciprocity is warranted when you're getting something for free. The problem isn't advertising itself. Too much will just drive people away. The problem is unnecessarily intrusive advertising.
    - zeta0134 7y ago
      Ehh, I'm kinda on the fence. I'm not bothered by certain kinds of ads. Anything static and non-moving, or advertising that's done tastefully, gets a pass in my book. For example, talk show hosts verbally running an advertisement in their natural voice; that doesn't bother me one bit. Neither do static images on websites, or anything in print media. I'm not that bothered by blog articles that are clearly sponsored reviews, provided the reviewer is still giving their honest opinion. These are, understandably, harder to pull off than simply sticking an iframe on the page and calling it done, but I think it's worth the effort. Where ads starts to bother me is when they get invasive. If it moves, dances, or otherwise gets in the way of the content I am actively trying to consume, then I'd prefer to block it. The third party tracking is a little creepy; I understand the need for analytics, but most ad networks go too far. Even in the real world, when advertising becomes too saturating, like the billboards that blanket my city and blot out the skyline, in my opinion that's crossed a line. So... balance in all things I guess.
- nautilus12 7y ago
  Lol, they will have to start writing songs (again)
tomr_stargazer 7y ago
Carl Sagan, in the novel "Contact" (1985), actually predicted an ad-blocking technology that worked along these lines! He called it "Adnix" [0] [0] http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Content.asp?Bnum=2223 http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Content.asp?Bnum=2223
- WhiteOwlLion 7y ago
  You'd think Google AI could easily block audio ads with TensorFlow. Oh, conflict of interest. Never mind.
  - jasonvorhe 7y ago
    Tensorflow is open source so you can build this at anytime and Google won't stand in your say.

by sambe 7y ago

There's something deeply satisfying about the idea that the annoying tone and shoutiness (and volume increase) of most ads could be used against them for filtering.

smhost 7y ago

at the same time, i don't know how comfortable i feel about incentivizing ad distribution companies to become more stealthy.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
Take a closer look at that feeling. If you're not comfortable with what they're trying to do, but also not comfortable with trying to mitigate it, as it'll only incentivize them to do worse - then how comfortable are you with them existing? The problem is ad distribution companies here and now. The problem won't be gone until they're gone.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  The problem is people are willing to pay for certain products with their attention, via ads, but not with money. Given the choice of paying $1 for a podcast or pirating said podcast, sufficient number of people would not choose the first option to make it a viable business.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    That has not been established. In fact, the whole music, video and computer game industries are evidence of the opposite - even before DRM and convenient streaming/store platforms on-line, piracy was still just a drop in a bucket and businesses asking for money up front were perfectly viable.
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      People prefer free over paying all the time. Just see all of us wanting to avoid paying for the environmental externalities. The only reason people don’t choose free over paying is if the convenience or cost is worth it. For music, organizing and having easy access to all music files is worth $10/month or less to many people versus risking copyright infringement charges. But raise that to $100/month, and see what people do... The ease of transferring data on the internet and high bandwidth connections tilts the favor in choosing the free version. Perhaps paid podcasts are possible if it’s easy enough, I might not mind 50 cents or $1 via Apple Pay in my podcasts app, or a subscription service that eliminates all ads. Even if we ignore the piracy angle, an additional problem is if a vendor provides a service for free or cheaper with ads, people choose that one over one that is paid. So for items meant for mass consumption, such as podcasts, the more lucrative ones will be the ones with ads. Similar to how no one can compete with free offerings from Google or Facebook.
      - endorphone 7y ago
        And people prefer paid over free all the time. Many of us are loaded with a dozen+ subscriptions. I have Netflix, Spotify, Prime Video, HBO, Showtime, Apple Arcade, iCloud Storage, EA Access, Xbox Game Pass, Adobe Creative Cloud, NY Times all as subscriptions, and countless paid apps and solutions. I'm far from alone in this. Clearly millions of people pay enormous sums for good products. The problem is that often it's hard to get anything but an ad-buttressed solution because everyone wants to double-dip (e.g. NYTimes, Hulu). Further the conversation often comes up for things that have lower value, but the creators hope it's their payday. There are countless podcasts that seem low effort -- usually a group of guys chatting with no preparation or work about things -- that I have to imagine people turn on as background noise, but if faced with a pay wall would abandon quickly (examples would be Accidental Tech Podcast or the like, the Daring Fireball one, etc -- the "how can I print money with zero work" podcasts). There are others that are absolutely brilliant that are worth it but have some byzantine, many-islands, poorly supported way of funding them -- Anthropocene Review, 99% Invisible, Hidden Brain, etc. As we get into a small number of large podcast subscription services I expect a lot of them will see great results.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    - scumbert 7y ago
      > In fact, the whole music, video and computer game industries are evidence of the opposite Only anecdotally to make us all feel warm and fuzzy. It seems pretty intuitive that people just prefer the thing that costs the least utility, whether that be time or money.
  - criddell 7y ago
    I'll pay with my attention, but not with my data. Radio ads are annoying because of the high volume and fast talking, but I'm not going to try to block them. On the web, put up an add with no tracking (effectively a digital billboard) and I'll stop using my ad blocker. The advertising might be annoying, but the surveillance is a human rights violation (according to the UN).
    - drdeadringer 7y ago
      > but I'm not going to try to block them. Why not?
      - criddell 7y ago
        Because the effort and expense of doing so is greater than my annoyance. I watch baseball games on the MLB streaming service and when they go to commercials, the screen goes to a static image with no sound. It's kind of jarring and I think I would prefer to have something still playing. The best thing would be if they just went to a wide shot of the ballpark with ballpark sounds, but the normal ads are better than silence IMHO.
  - abdullahkhalids 7y ago
    > The problem is people are willing to pay for certain products with their attention, via ads, but not with money. 1. People who are adblocking are saying that they are not willing to pay with attention. You can only compare their relative willingness to pay with attention vs money when you provide both options fairly. 2. I don't take it as given that businesses have the right to make money however they want. There are human right principles and I think an important fundamental right missing from the UN Declaration is the right to not be subjected to subtle influence techniques that compromise your beliefs (even if those belief are about which soap you should buy). Any business strategy that goes against this principle should be illegal and if certain industries and businesses die as a result, so be it. I would take no economic growth over compromised human rights any day.
    - pavel_lishin 7y ago
      > 1. People who are adblocking are saying that they are not willing to pay with attention. No. As a person who's adblocking, that is not what I'm saying. I'm perfectly willing to pay with attention; I'm not willing to pay with my data, I'm not willing to be tracked across sites, and I'm not willing to let my browser execute whatever garbage the ad network is sending down the pipe at me.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        Ad blocking is like eating apples. Some apple eaters are vegans, some are vegetarians, and some are just regular omnivores. A diverse population with many reasons for doing what they're doing. Myself, I'd prefer to pay with my data if the terms were clear. I have an issue with manipulation, and I'll be blocking all ads I can until the ones that are left are non-attention-grabbing, non-interactive, not manipulative, related to the site I'm in, moderated, and preferably pull, not push.
      - snakeOyl 7y ago
        The alternative to advertising is paid subscription content. I don’t see how you’re going to achieve greater privacy by giving someone your credit card number.
  - willis936 7y ago
    In fairness, $1 for a podcast episode is egregious. Almost no one would pay that. Piracy has gone down a lot in the past 15 years because content owners made reasonable decisions.
    - AlexandrB 7y ago
      It's really not egregious. Just like $1/song is not egregious. $1/podcast episode (often 60 minutes or more) is some of the best time/$ value among a-la-carte entertainment products.
      - h4waii 7y ago
        A song, ostensibly has a high level of repeatability. How often does one re-listen to a podcast within, say, 6 to 12 months? Maybe a year after, if it had a real impact?
        natosaichek 7y ago
        A song is typically 3-6 minutes, while a podcast is typically 10x that. I think that delta probably can make the difference reasonable.
        mbrock 7y ago
        People routinely pay $3 for a single cup of drip coffee or $6 for a shot of liquor
        TeMPOraL 7y ago
        Coffee and liquor are made of matter, not information, and thus cannot be infinitely copied for near-zero energy expenditure. This is what gives them a practical price floor.
        lotsofpulp 7y ago
        This is all speculation and without knowing concrete numbers, one can't make any definitive statements about why coffee costs $x and a podcast costs $y. I'm sure performing quality research costs many man hours, traveling, opportunity costs for stories that don't pan out, legal costs, etc. At the end of the day, however, all you need is the fact that there are no successful paid podcasts, and the most successful ones use advertising. There's nothing stopping anyone from creating one, and it's not a novel idea. Same with newspapers. The very fact that one doesn't exist, when the alternative (paid version without advertising) is a known idea and easily executable, must mean that there is a problem with the business model itself. Perhaps the problem is that it can't compete in the same environment with media that uses advertising. Perhaps a sufficient number of people simply aren't willing to pay a sufficient price for them to exist without advertising.
  - bduerst 7y ago
    >The problem is people are willing to pay for certain products with their attention, via ads, but not with money. This sounds like projection - are there any numbers or data to back this up? Because the market shows that people prefer to get things for free, either subsidized with ads or by ad blocking. Google also tried this with contributor.google.com but they shut it down due to lack of interest.
  - munk-a 7y ago
    I don't get where people found this expectation to be paid for random crap thrown out into the world. Once upon a time a lot of the things that are ad-supported now would be considered hobbies that people did because they like to do them, there wouldn't be any sort of expectation of recouping losses you were putting money into your activity in exchange for the joy of doing it. Now everything has become much more money focused and rather than sending out a podcast episode to start a discussion or voice your opinion people are doing it to get paid. This is why I love Patreon, it has the possibility to shift us back into the "for the joy of it" production - removing the need to shill on a month-by-month basis. If enough people support you directly then advertising loses it's appeal by spurning potential listeners. Meanwhile your hobby is getting support from the other hobbyists and people with a slight interest can dip their toes in and explore the world.
    - gowld 7y ago
      How do we know which work deserves to be paid for? Will you publish a master list for everyone?
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        The works GP criticizes still aren't being paid for. If you're serving something as "free with ads", you aren't being paid for your creative work, you're being paid for finding victims and delivering them to advertisers.
  - greggman2 7y ago
    I suppose though I pay $18 to go to the movies and they show me 5-10 minutes of ads followed but another 5-10 minutes of trailers. I generally look forward to the trailers but the ads drive me nuts given I paid (guess I should stop going) Disney back in the 90s threatened to not allow theaters to show their movies if they ran ads. I think that died though https://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/10/business/disney-bans-commercials-at-showings-of-its-films.html https://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/10/business/disney-bans-comm...
- olalonde 7y ago
  Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one on HN who is not bothered by ads and doesn't like paying for stuff.
  - munk-a 7y ago
    I'd urge you to value your time more, it isn't worth the price of your attention and productivity to be forced to listen to banal advertising.
    - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
      Some reciprocity is warranted when you're getting something for free. The problem isn't advertising itself. Too much will just drive people away. The problem is unnecessarily intrusive advertising.
  - zeta0134 7y ago
    Ehh, I'm kinda on the fence. I'm not bothered by certain kinds of ads. Anything static and non-moving, or advertising that's done tastefully, gets a pass in my book. For example, talk show hosts verbally running an advertisement in their natural voice; that doesn't bother me one bit. Neither do static images on websites, or anything in print media. I'm not that bothered by blog articles that are clearly sponsored reviews, provided the reviewer is still giving their honest opinion. These are, understandably, harder to pull off than simply sticking an iframe on the page and calling it done, but I think it's worth the effort. Where ads starts to bother me is when they get invasive. If it moves, dances, or otherwise gets in the way of the content I am actively trying to consume, then I'd prefer to block it. The third party tracking is a little creepy; I understand the need for analytics, but most ad networks go too far. Even in the real world, when advertising becomes too saturating, like the billboards that blanket my city and blot out the skyline, in my opinion that's crossed a line. So... balance in all things I guess.
nautilus12 7y ago
Lol, they will have to start writing songs (again)

tomr_stargazer 7y ago

Carl Sagan, in the novel "Contact" (1985), actually predicted an ad-blocking technology that worked along these lines! He called it "Adnix" [0] [0] http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Content.asp?Bnum=2223 http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Content.asp?Bnum=2223

WhiteOwlLion 7y ago
You'd think Google AI could easily block audio ads with TensorFlow. Oh, conflict of interest. Never mind.
- jasonvorhe 7y ago
  Tensorflow is open source so you can build this at anytime and Google won't stand in your say.