7 ms·

Maybe this is just a generational thing, but I still have never clicked on an ad. I hate ads. I don't know anyone who likes them. I don't know anyone who has in

Maybe this is just a generational thing, but I still have never clicked on an ad. I hate ads. I don't know anyone who likes them. I don't know anyone who has intentionally clicked on them. I have literally never met anyone who places any value in advertising at all. Everyone hates it with 100% of their being. It is the garbage we all just sort of accept exposure to as some sort of fee for existing online. Who are all these people that subverted technology and turned it into advertising-tech?

Ididntdothis 7y ago
I never click on ads either but when I see an ad often enough (even if I don’t pay attention) my mind gives that product more credibility.
- didericis 7y ago
  That effect seems highly relative to the context in which you see an ad, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was intentionally exaggerated when studied. Certain contexts increase credibility with certain people, others decrease credibility. What it does do is actually put the product in front of your face. People won’t buy your thing if they’ve never seen or heard of it. So I agree there’s value to ads even if people don’t click on them in that moment. That doesn’t mean their value isn’t inflated.
riffraff 7y ago
I keep ublock on all the time except on some sites. Sometimes, there is a worthy ad (e.g. one month free audible, cause I visited the site). I don't resent ads, I am totally fine with them, and if they help sustain some site I use, I am happy. The problem is when they are taking over the whole experience.
jasode 7y ago
>I have literally never met anyone who places any value in advertising at all. Everyone hates it with 100% of their being. I like ads -- but only if they're relevant to my interests. There lies the problem: 99% of all ads are not relevant to my interests. For online ads, 99.99% of ads are not relevant to me. So, I use a DNS blocker to filter out ads.
- MuffinFlavored 7y ago
  > So, I use a DNS blocker to filter out ads. If everybody used a DNS blocker to filter out ads, would online advertising exist as a business?
  - criddell 7y ago
    Sure. The ads don't have to come from a third party.
  - jasode 7y ago
    >If everybody used a DNS blocker to filter out ads, would online advertising exist as a business? Absolutely. Companies would get more clever about cloaking advertising with inscrutable domain names that's hard to filter with regex. Youtube is a good example of ads that are hard to block using pure DNS. (But that doesn't stop people from trying new variations of regexes for pihole that youtube eventually breaks.[0]) The other technique is native advertising. (But native ads are actually more "relevant" so somewhat more tolerable and more people would actually pay attention to them.) E.g. I just saw a Linus Tech Tips (the computer tech channel) and the pre-roll ad is for D-CON mouse traps (not relevant to me since I don't have a mouse infestation that requires rodent traps) or girls dolls[1] -- but the native ad is Linus acting as spokesperson for the Ring Doorbell Camera Kit[2]. That's more relevant since it's a techie gadget. I won't buy the Ring kit but it's more relevant than the mouse trap ad. [0] last time I tried many of these DNS regex ideas, youtube stopped working: https://www.google.com/search?q=pihole+regex+block+youtube+ads https://www.google.com/search?q=pihole+regex+block+youtube+a... [1] ads for girls dolls probably ignored by 99% of audience demographic of Linus' video: https://imgur.com/a/gPcxOJ3 https://imgur.com/a/gPcxOJ3 [2] https://youtu.be/hiLlNzxDfAg?t=19m12s https://youtu.be/hiLlNzxDfAg?t=19m12s
- azinman2 7y ago
  If you really do like ads, there are plenty of platforms that will let you input your interests and customize your ads — Facebook, google, and I believe even Hulu will let your do so (I think there’s a 3rd party service called AdChoice or so that will do the same across smaller networks). Something tells me that still won’t be enough to have you undo ad blocking...
doctorpangloss 7y ago
The kind of person who clicks on ads also buys stuff. The negative, "if you don't click on ads, you don't buy stuff," may not be true in the strictest sense, but may be true for so many ways that matter. Facebook is full of ads, you know Facebook users. Instagram has the most effective ads on the planet, maybe the only inventory on Earth where brand advertising works. You know plenty of Instagram users. YouTube's ad value is an open question, but I think their brand advertising also works. You can't block their ads in the apps, which is how people use them. Sure, I get it, you're talking about banner ads. The kind of person who clicks on banner ads buys stuff!
- excursionist 7y ago
  > The kind of person who clicks on ads also buys stuff. Everybody who has money buys stuff. People that click on ads are probably more easily persuaded into buying shit they don't need. I don't have any data on this, but it's highly questionable whether an ad-clicker buys more stuff in general.
- hnick 7y ago
  Yeah I think Facebook and Instagram ads work great because people are there trying to fill empty time. They don't mind where it leads them. Whereas on YouTube they often want to watch that particular video and they will view advertising as a greater annoyance. In my experience (helping a family member with a small niche e-commerce store) FB advertising works. To the point that if the ads stop, the revenue stops almost entirely. We tried it last month when stock ran low and sales dried up until the supplier came through and the ads started again.
stvswn 7y ago
But, you like accessing content for free, correct? That content doesn't exist and then ads are layered on, the context exists BECAUSE of ads. Like, no one would produce the content without the plan to make their money back via ads. This is how mass media has worked from the get-go. Radio stations were built by advertisers for the purpose of advertising. Entire genres of popular music wouldn't have happened otherwise. Online advertising did not create the notion of advertising being the predominant media funding model. And, just because you'd rather ads not exist, it doesn't mean there's something "evil" or whatever about a business promoting itself. I'm going to guess that if you ever find yourself needed to market a business you'll be happy if there's an option to advertise effectively.
- criddell 7y ago
  Advertising isn't the big problem (IMHO), it's the tracking and surveillance. We give up too much for what we get back.
- ACow_Adonis 7y ago
  Your post is literally the content I'm reading that you claim no one would produce without ads, and it's unsupported by ads. And again (I feel like a broken record on this site), that's a totally inaccurate history of the internet. Content arrived first, THEN the advertising companies arrived.
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    Hacker News is not mass media. Plus don't forget Y Combinator funded many ad-based platforms. HN isn't free either.
    - ACow_Adonis 7y ago
      A fair point. So I see two takeaway questions: would we be fine/better off without mass media funded by advertising(it's obvious what my answer to this would be since I don't generally listen to it or watch it, though I acknowledge it going away won't likely happen). And the second, would content we like to consume/ be worthy of consumption be produced anyway, and my contention is that it would still, just like it did in the past and continues in the current (some free, some paid for), as can be seen in the history of books, early internet, street art, leisure, bloggers, hobbyists, cinema, documentaries, etc. There might be a third point of mine, which is that we're actually suffering from a glut of content and competition for eyeballs: so to me, worrying about that content disappearing is a bit like worrying about dying of thirst while drowning in a freshwater lake.
bigYahnz 7y ago
They're called Jews.
frozenport 7y ago
It's an extortion racket. You need to buy Google ads to get better Google SEO.
gerbilly 7y ago
> but I still have never clicked on an ad Do you use Instagram and follow accounts on it? If so you're clicking on ads.
saalweachter 7y ago
It's not really generational; people have always hated advertising. They hated it in the newspapers, on buildings, on TV, before movies, inside of movies, in magazines. I don't really see advertising in general going away short of legislation preventing it; that doesn't mean that online advertising will always be as profitable as it is now, but there's a question of "where else will people advertise?" People advertise where people are; online advertising will lose its value when people spend time elsewhere.
notelonmusk 7y ago
Annoyance is one thing. Weaponization is another. Can Ads Read My Password?: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20638662 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20638662 for example. Malvertising for another. Fingerprinting...
colechristensen 7y ago
I have clicked on ads. I wish ads were better or more relevant, I find myself spending unreasonable amounts of time looking for things which should be more easily found - a problem which could be solved with better advertising. You could advertise books/shows/movies to me (based on your current search, your wish list, your past purchases, you might be interested in ...) because I'm certain there are plenty of books I would be interested in which I don't know exist ... but you would have to actually have a good model for what I would like and not just some NYT best seller / top 40 / whatever crap is popular and overpromoted. The problem there is I'm generally only going to be interested in long tail items, and those are much harder to target and often nobody is interested in promoting them. If I'm searching for restaurants or coffee shops, likewise I would be happy to see paid advertisements along with organic search results. If I'm reading an electronics design blog, I would be happy to see ads for electronics tools, new components, suppliers, etc. There are lots of potential ads I would click, many I wouldn't mind seeing at all. The problem I have with advertising is that what I get exposed to most is either completely irrelevant (become a member of AARP today!), promoting obvious products (drink Coke!), or promoting shoddy products or outright scams. Here's an example of a site with sidebar ads I appreciate: https://www.eevblog.com/ https://www.eevblog.com/ >Who are all these people that subverted technology and turned it into advertising-tech? Microsoft who started bundling "free" things with Windows to squash their competition. Everyone else who had to find a way to compete with them (and in turn everyone who wanted to compete with those companies, etc). Every customer who expects things to be "free".
- graycat 7y ago
  > there are plenty of books I would be interested in which I don't know exist ... > The problem there is I'm generally only going to be interested in long tail items, ... Yup. For that problem, did some original applied math based on some advanced pure math prerequisites and wrote the software for the math and for the corresponding Web site -- software appears to run as intended. Need to add some data and do an alpha test. So, I am regarding your problem as a need for better Internet content (yes, including information about books, etc. not strictly ON the Internet) discovery and recommendation, and I'm regarding those as special cases of a much more general approach to Internet content search. My work is to give you the content with the meaning -- artistic, utilitarian, political, technical, etc. -- you have in mind. So, I believe I've made progress on the meaning of content; a key here is some of the pure math. Yes, my techniques should do much better at getting you the meaning YOU (extreme personalization) want than any top 40 style lists. My view is that Google and Bing do REALLY well on about 1/3rd of the problem; I'm going for the other 2/3rds. Where Google and Bing work well, my work is NOT better. My work should be better in the 2/3rds. I intend to announce an alpha test here on HN ASAP. Will look forward to the HN reactions. At least initially, my site won't be very comprehensive. I intend to concentrate initially on fine arts, finance, nature, and a few more. Yes, my Web site will be free to users and ad supported with my unique (methods and data) and hopefully especially effective ad targeting. Yes, my work stands to be relatively good on user privacy: There are no logins; I make no use of HTTP cookies; and search results for a user have nothing to do with any history about the user; e.g., any two users doing the same search at the same time (before I update the data, say, say once a week) will get the same results. Maybe someone will like it!!
slg 7y ago
When people say that advertising doesn't work on them they are generally only focused on being immediately motivated to action by the ad. However advertising serves a wide range of functions beyond that. No one sees one Mercedes ad and goes out to purchase a $75k car. That doesn't mean that Mercedes is stupid for still buying TV ads. The ad is instead meant to do things like keep consumers updated on the latest product line, establish the brand of the company, and to keep that brand in the back of consumer's mind when an eventual buy decision does come up potentially years down the road.
- mehh 7y ago
  Aspiration is a large part of advertising. It's not just that you won't go out but that Mercades, most of us never will be able to afford one, but we all know its a luxurious product, a sign of wealth and 'doing well'. That's in large part because of the brand image, if you bought the same car with a Ford badge would they be able to charge as much?
- graycat 7y ago
  Yes, and it would be good to try to measure that effect also, and for that the statistics and optimization stand to be more difficult and advanced. E.g., the main input is not just some ads and clicks but a stochastic process, that is, random variables indexed by time. Uh, go measure something and get a number. You now have the value of a random variable. The sense in which the number is random or unknowable in advance, unpredictable, independent of something else, etc. is left open. Collect such data once, say, over 3 months, and now have a sample path of the stochastic process. Do it again and get another sample path, etc.
jermaustin1 7y ago
> I don't know anyone who has intentionally clicked on them. Hi there! Glad to meet you. My name is Jeremy! I click on ads when I see something that makes me want to click on it. Could be a retargeting pixel picked me up after I left some random ecomm site after not buying (but still intending to), or more likely a new direct-to-consumer brand that looks appealing (allbirds, freshly, barkbox, etc). I don't hate ads. I don't like ads. Ads are ads. If I didn't get ads, I would really have no way of knowing that something out there exists that I had no idea I might want.
thrower123 7y ago
The only ads I ever click are from sales flyers that I have signed up for that show up in my email inbox. Those are genuinely useful. Display ads? Meh. I find that they generate more distaste for the advertised service in me than anything else.
sp332 7y ago
Not that many people click banner ads. Banner ad click-through rate in North America is about 0.14% https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/290285/north-america-banner-click-through-rate-up-to-014.html https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/290285/north-... 60% of those clicks are mistakes https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/268266/60-of-all-mobile-banner-ad-clicks-are-accidents.html https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/268266/60-of-... 1/3 of clicks are by bots. https://adage.com/article/digital/ad-fraud-eating-digital-advertising-revenue/301017 https://adage.com/article/digital/ad-fraud-eating-digital-ad... 8% of users account for 85% of all banner ad clicks https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2101163 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2101163
rifung 7y ago
I'm not sure what generation you're a part of but I appreciate ads when they actually tell me something I didn't know about that I do want to buy. For example I've been shopping for beds and dont mind ads for brands I hadn't heard of. Some of them I would have bought had they been in my budget but this to me isn't so much a problem with ada in general as it is about as targeting.
- magashna 7y ago
  If I'm diving into buying something like a bed, I'm never looking at regular advertising. I'm trawling through forums and old message boards, looking at sites that do direct sales, reading reviews, looking at pictures, going to an actual store to touch and see a thing. Advertising is a skewed view of something I want to buy where they try to convince me it's 110% beyond my wildest dreams and expectations. It's not, never will be. I just want something that's about 80% there and to confidently know it's good enough.
- alkonaut 7y ago
  I’m way past accepting ad-network ads. If an ad shows for a product I’m really interested in I’d rather google it on a different browser/device than click the ad. But mostly I’m disappointed that the company in question even uses ad-network (ie tracking/targeted) ads. (I’m from the 70’s and TV didn’t have ads when I grew up, that could make a difference I don’t know?) I want to be shown no ads or ads for products completely irrelevant to me because seeing (well-)targeted ads makes me feel watched and tracked.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > I appreciate ads when they actually tell me something I didn't know about that I do want to buy. I can't remember the last time I even saw an ad that did this (at all, not just online). Oh wait, I lie, I do remember -- ads for electronics and computers in the technical journals of old used to do this, because they included actual information about the products they were selling. I haven't seen a useful ad in decades, though.
nitwit005 7y ago
You have to keep in mind how cheap advertising is. An ad campaign that affects one in a hundred thousand can be successful. In some areas, you'll find a ton of billboards for personal injury lawyers. Right off the bat, maybe only one in several thousand people is a potential client, and it's totally irrelevant to the remainder. Of the relevant population, most of them have the common sense not to hire a lawyer purely based on an advertisement. But those billboards are still worth it. They know because they ask people how they learned about them, making it simple to calculate their value.
buboard 7y ago
> that subverted technology and turned it into advertising-tech What actually happened is that technology replaced the publishing industry. Publishing always had ads.
JohnFen 7y ago
I have never clicked on an ad, and I can't imagine anything that would get me to be willing to click on an ad. But I don't hate ads. I only hate the tracking that comes with them.
perl4ever 7y ago
I have clicked on an ad now and then. I can't remember the last time, though. Probably cars, but of course I can't buy a new car every day. The thing is, though, if something is truly new to me, even if it seems like just the thing, I'm not going to buy it without doing market research. It's ingrained in me that anything that is brought to you is almost certainly garbage.

Ididntdothis 7y ago

I never click on ads either but when I see an ad often enough (even if I don’t pay attention) my mind gives that product more credibility.

didericis 7y ago
That effect seems highly relative to the context in which you see an ad, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was intentionally exaggerated when studied. Certain contexts increase credibility with certain people, others decrease credibility. What it does do is actually put the product in front of your face. People won’t buy your thing if they’ve never seen or heard of it. So I agree there’s value to ads even if people don’t click on them in that moment. That doesn’t mean their value isn’t inflated.

riffraff 7y ago

I keep ublock on all the time except on some sites. Sometimes, there is a worthy ad (e.g. one month free audible, cause I visited the site). I don't resent ads, I am totally fine with them, and if they help sustain some site I use, I am happy. The problem is when they are taking over the whole experience.

jasode 7y ago

>I have literally never met anyone who places any value in advertising at all. Everyone hates it with 100% of their being. I like ads -- but only if they're relevant to my interests. There lies the problem: 99% of all ads are not relevant to my interests. For online ads, 99.99% of ads are not relevant to me. So, I use a DNS blocker to filter out ads.

MuffinFlavored 7y ago
> So, I use a DNS blocker to filter out ads. If everybody used a DNS blocker to filter out ads, would online advertising exist as a business?
- criddell 7y ago
  Sure. The ads don't have to come from a third party.
- jasode 7y ago
  >If everybody used a DNS blocker to filter out ads, would online advertising exist as a business? Absolutely. Companies would get more clever about cloaking advertising with inscrutable domain names that's hard to filter with regex. Youtube is a good example of ads that are hard to block using pure DNS. (But that doesn't stop people from trying new variations of regexes for pihole that youtube eventually breaks.[0]) The other technique is native advertising. (But native ads are actually more "relevant" so somewhat more tolerable and more people would actually pay attention to them.) E.g. I just saw a Linus Tech Tips (the computer tech channel) and the pre-roll ad is for D-CON mouse traps (not relevant to me since I don't have a mouse infestation that requires rodent traps) or girls dolls[1] -- but the native ad is Linus acting as spokesperson for the Ring Doorbell Camera Kit[2]. That's more relevant since it's a techie gadget. I won't buy the Ring kit but it's more relevant than the mouse trap ad. [0] last time I tried many of these DNS regex ideas, youtube stopped working: https://www.google.com/search?q=pihole+regex+block+youtube+ads https://www.google.com/search?q=pihole+regex+block+youtube+a... [1] ads for girls dolls probably ignored by 99% of audience demographic of Linus' video: https://imgur.com/a/gPcxOJ3 https://imgur.com/a/gPcxOJ3 [2] https://youtu.be/hiLlNzxDfAg?t=19m12s https://youtu.be/hiLlNzxDfAg?t=19m12s
azinman2 7y ago
If you really do like ads, there are plenty of platforms that will let you input your interests and customize your ads — Facebook, google, and I believe even Hulu will let your do so (I think there’s a 3rd party service called AdChoice or so that will do the same across smaller networks). Something tells me that still won’t be enough to have you undo ad blocking...

doctorpangloss 7y ago

The kind of person who clicks on ads also buys stuff. The negative, "if you don't click on ads, you don't buy stuff," may not be true in the strictest sense, but may be true for so many ways that matter. Facebook is full of ads, you know Facebook users. Instagram has the most effective ads on the planet, maybe the only inventory on Earth where brand advertising works. You know plenty of Instagram users. YouTube's ad value is an open question, but I think their brand advertising also works. You can't block their ads in the apps, which is how people use them. Sure, I get it, you're talking about banner ads. The kind of person who clicks on banner ads buys stuff!

excursionist 7y ago
> The kind of person who clicks on ads also buys stuff. Everybody who has money buys stuff. People that click on ads are probably more easily persuaded into buying shit they don't need. I don't have any data on this, but it's highly questionable whether an ad-clicker buys more stuff in general.
hnick 7y ago
Yeah I think Facebook and Instagram ads work great because people are there trying to fill empty time. They don't mind where it leads them. Whereas on YouTube they often want to watch that particular video and they will view advertising as a greater annoyance. In my experience (helping a family member with a small niche e-commerce store) FB advertising works. To the point that if the ads stop, the revenue stops almost entirely. We tried it last month when stock ran low and sales dried up until the supplier came through and the ads started again.

stvswn 7y ago

But, you like accessing content for free, correct? That content doesn't exist and then ads are layered on, the context exists BECAUSE of ads. Like, no one would produce the content without the plan to make their money back via ads. This is how mass media has worked from the get-go. Radio stations were built by advertisers for the purpose of advertising. Entire genres of popular music wouldn't have happened otherwise. Online advertising did not create the notion of advertising being the predominant media funding model. And, just because you'd rather ads not exist, it doesn't mean there's something "evil" or whatever about a business promoting itself. I'm going to guess that if you ever find yourself needed to market a business you'll be happy if there's an option to advertise effectively.

criddell 7y ago
Advertising isn't the big problem (IMHO), it's the tracking and surveillance. We give up too much for what we get back.
ACow_Adonis 7y ago
Your post is literally the content I'm reading that you claim no one would produce without ads, and it's unsupported by ads. And again (I feel like a broken record on this site), that's a totally inaccurate history of the internet. Content arrived first, THEN the advertising companies arrived.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  Hacker News is not mass media. Plus don't forget Y Combinator funded many ad-based platforms. HN isn't free either.
  - ACow_Adonis 7y ago
    A fair point. So I see two takeaway questions: would we be fine/better off without mass media funded by advertising(it's obvious what my answer to this would be since I don't generally listen to it or watch it, though I acknowledge it going away won't likely happen). And the second, would content we like to consume/ be worthy of consumption be produced anyway, and my contention is that it would still, just like it did in the past and continues in the current (some free, some paid for), as can be seen in the history of books, early internet, street art, leisure, bloggers, hobbyists, cinema, documentaries, etc. There might be a third point of mine, which is that we're actually suffering from a glut of content and competition for eyeballs: so to me, worrying about that content disappearing is a bit like worrying about dying of thirst while drowning in a freshwater lake.

bigYahnz 7y ago

They're called Jews.

frozenport 7y ago

It's an extortion racket. You need to buy Google ads to get better Google SEO.

gerbilly 7y ago

> but I still have never clicked on an ad Do you use Instagram and follow accounts on it? If so you're clicking on ads.

saalweachter 7y ago

It's not really generational; people have always hated advertising. They hated it in the newspapers, on buildings, on TV, before movies, inside of movies, in magazines. I don't really see advertising in general going away short of legislation preventing it; that doesn't mean that online advertising will always be as profitable as it is now, but there's a question of "where else will people advertise?" People advertise where people are; online advertising will lose its value when people spend time elsewhere.

notelonmusk 7y ago

Annoyance is one thing. Weaponization is another. Can Ads Read My Password?: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20638662 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20638662 for example. Malvertising for another. Fingerprinting...

colechristensen 7y ago

I have clicked on ads. I wish ads were better or more relevant, I find myself spending unreasonable amounts of time looking for things which should be more easily found - a problem which could be solved with better advertising. You could advertise books/shows/movies to me (based on your current search, your wish list, your past purchases, you might be interested in ...) because I'm certain there are plenty of books I would be interested in which I don't know exist ... but you would have to actually have a good model for what I would like and not just some NYT best seller / top 40 / whatever crap is popular and overpromoted. The problem there is I'm generally only going to be interested in long tail items, and those are much harder to target and often nobody is interested in promoting them. If I'm searching for restaurants or coffee shops, likewise I would be happy to see paid advertisements along with organic search results. If I'm reading an electronics design blog, I would be happy to see ads for electronics tools, new components, suppliers, etc. There are lots of potential ads I would click, many I wouldn't mind seeing at all. The problem I have with advertising is that what I get exposed to most is either completely irrelevant (become a member of AARP today!), promoting obvious products (drink Coke!), or promoting shoddy products or outright scams. Here's an example of a site with sidebar ads I appreciate: https://www.eevblog.com/ https://www.eevblog.com/ >Who are all these people that subverted technology and turned it into advertising-tech? Microsoft who started bundling "free" things with Windows to squash their competition. Everyone else who had to find a way to compete with them (and in turn everyone who wanted to compete with those companies, etc). Every customer who expects things to be "free".

graycat 7y ago
> there are plenty of books I would be interested in which I don't know exist ... > The problem there is I'm generally only going to be interested in long tail items, ... Yup. For that problem, did some original applied math based on some advanced pure math prerequisites and wrote the software for the math and for the corresponding Web site -- software appears to run as intended. Need to add some data and do an alpha test. So, I am regarding your problem as a need for better Internet content (yes, including information about books, etc. not strictly ON the Internet) discovery and recommendation, and I'm regarding those as special cases of a much more general approach to Internet content search. My work is to give you the content with the meaning -- artistic, utilitarian, political, technical, etc. -- you have in mind. So, I believe I've made progress on the meaning of content; a key here is some of the pure math. Yes, my techniques should do much better at getting you the meaning YOU (extreme personalization) want than any top 40 style lists. My view is that Google and Bing do REALLY well on about 1/3rd of the problem; I'm going for the other 2/3rds. Where Google and Bing work well, my work is NOT better. My work should be better in the 2/3rds. I intend to announce an alpha test here on HN ASAP. Will look forward to the HN reactions. At least initially, my site won't be very comprehensive. I intend to concentrate initially on fine arts, finance, nature, and a few more. Yes, my Web site will be free to users and ad supported with my unique (methods and data) and hopefully especially effective ad targeting. Yes, my work stands to be relatively good on user privacy: There are no logins; I make no use of HTTP cookies; and search results for a user have nothing to do with any history about the user; e.g., any two users doing the same search at the same time (before I update the data, say, say once a week) will get the same results. Maybe someone will like it!!

slg 7y ago

When people say that advertising doesn't work on them they are generally only focused on being immediately motivated to action by the ad. However advertising serves a wide range of functions beyond that. No one sees one Mercedes ad and goes out to purchase a $75k car. That doesn't mean that Mercedes is stupid for still buying TV ads. The ad is instead meant to do things like keep consumers updated on the latest product line, establish the brand of the company, and to keep that brand in the back of consumer's mind when an eventual buy decision does come up potentially years down the road.

mehh 7y ago
Aspiration is a large part of advertising. It's not just that you won't go out but that Mercades, most of us never will be able to afford one, but we all know its a luxurious product, a sign of wealth and 'doing well'. That's in large part because of the brand image, if you bought the same car with a Ford badge would they be able to charge as much?
graycat 7y ago
Yes, and it would be good to try to measure that effect also, and for that the statistics and optimization stand to be more difficult and advanced. E.g., the main input is not just some ads and clicks but a stochastic process, that is, random variables indexed by time. Uh, go measure something and get a number. You now have the value of a random variable. The sense in which the number is random or unknowable in advance, unpredictable, independent of something else, etc. is left open. Collect such data once, say, over 3 months, and now have a sample path of the stochastic process. Do it again and get another sample path, etc.

jermaustin1 7y ago

> I don't know anyone who has intentionally clicked on them. Hi there! Glad to meet you. My name is Jeremy! I click on ads when I see something that makes me want to click on it. Could be a retargeting pixel picked me up after I left some random ecomm site after not buying (but still intending to), or more likely a new direct-to-consumer brand that looks appealing (allbirds, freshly, barkbox, etc). I don't hate ads. I don't like ads. Ads are ads. If I didn't get ads, I would really have no way of knowing that something out there exists that I had no idea I might want.

thrower123 7y ago

The only ads I ever click are from sales flyers that I have signed up for that show up in my email inbox. Those are genuinely useful. Display ads? Meh. I find that they generate more distaste for the advertised service in me than anything else.

sp332 7y ago

Not that many people click banner ads. Banner ad click-through rate in North America is about 0.14% https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/290285/north-america-banner-click-through-rate-up-to-014.html https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/290285/north-... 60% of those clicks are mistakes https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/268266/60-of-all-mobile-banner-ad-clicks-are-accidents.html https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/268266/60-of-... 1/3 of clicks are by bots. https://adage.com/article/digital/ad-fraud-eating-digital-advertising-revenue/301017 https://adage.com/article/digital/ad-fraud-eating-digital-ad... 8% of users account for 85% of all banner ad clicks https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2101163 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2101163

rifung 7y ago

I'm not sure what generation you're a part of but I appreciate ads when they actually tell me something I didn't know about that I do want to buy. For example I've been shopping for beds and dont mind ads for brands I hadn't heard of. Some of them I would have bought had they been in my budget but this to me isn't so much a problem with ada in general as it is about as targeting.

magashna 7y ago
If I'm diving into buying something like a bed, I'm never looking at regular advertising. I'm trawling through forums and old message boards, looking at sites that do direct sales, reading reviews, looking at pictures, going to an actual store to touch and see a thing. Advertising is a skewed view of something I want to buy where they try to convince me it's 110% beyond my wildest dreams and expectations. It's not, never will be. I just want something that's about 80% there and to confidently know it's good enough.
alkonaut 7y ago
I’m way past accepting ad-network ads. If an ad shows for a product I’m really interested in I’d rather google it on a different browser/device than click the ad. But mostly I’m disappointed that the company in question even uses ad-network (ie tracking/targeted) ads. (I’m from the 70’s and TV didn’t have ads when I grew up, that could make a difference I don’t know?) I want to be shown no ads or ads for products completely irrelevant to me because seeing (well-)targeted ads makes me feel watched and tracked.
JohnFen 7y ago
> I appreciate ads when they actually tell me something I didn't know about that I do want to buy. I can't remember the last time I even saw an ad that did this (at all, not just online). Oh wait, I lie, I do remember -- ads for electronics and computers in the technical journals of old used to do this, because they included actual information about the products they were selling. I haven't seen a useful ad in decades, though.

nitwit005 7y ago

You have to keep in mind how cheap advertising is. An ad campaign that affects one in a hundred thousand can be successful. In some areas, you'll find a ton of billboards for personal injury lawyers. Right off the bat, maybe only one in several thousand people is a potential client, and it's totally irrelevant to the remainder. Of the relevant population, most of them have the common sense not to hire a lawyer purely based on an advertisement. But those billboards are still worth it. They know because they ask people how they learned about them, making it simple to calculate their value.

buboard 7y ago

> that subverted technology and turned it into advertising-tech What actually happened is that technology replaced the publishing industry. Publishing always had ads.

JohnFen 7y ago

I have never clicked on an ad, and I can't imagine anything that would get me to be willing to click on an ad. But I don't hate ads. I only hate the tracking that comes with them.

perl4ever 7y ago

I have clicked on an ad now and then. I can't remember the last time, though. Probably cars, but of course I can't buy a new car every day. The thing is, though, if something is truly new to me, even if it seems like just the thing, I'm not going to buy it without doing market research. It's ingrained in me that anything that is brought to you is almost certainly garbage.