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It's not just Google, I've noticed this across all the major ad platforms: Instagram, Twitter, FB, etc, have all cranked up the number of ads to prop up revenue

It's not just Google, I've noticed this across all the major ad platforms: Instagram, Twitter, FB, etc, have all cranked up the number of ads to prop up revenues. I stopped using IG & Twitter largely because it went from having relatively few ads to where I started seeing an ad nearly every other post. The value of the platform proportionally declined significantly and I no longer bother using them. Google is slowly becoming useless (even with an ad blocker) because you have to hack search terms in order to get useful results. For example, I append words like "wiki" or "reddit" to get results that aren't SEO'd. Search for something generic like "computer" and you can see an example of how hard it is to get information instead of ads. It feels like ads are definitely a bubble, and I suspect the next big tech companies will not be ad based.

haekjre 7y ago
Do you even notice the instagram ads? I'm so blind to them while I flick through I can't even tell if they are for a bank or for clothes or whatever. > Search for something generic like "computer" and you can see an example of how hard it is to get information instead of ads. To be fair, "computer" is such a generic term, I can't even imagine what you expect to see when you search for it.
- brenden2 7y ago
  I don't actually use Instagram anymore but when I did I definitely noticed the ads. They were always irrelevant, annoying, and obnoxious.
- zwieback 7y ago
  Isn't that the idea? The Instagram ads are supposed to look like the posts you're looking at and hopefully your lizard brain stores the ad image as you scroll by.
  - wutbrodo 7y ago
    I wonder to what extent this is a function of how one uses Instagram: ie, perhaps the parent comment's feed contains posts superficially similar to ads, while the composition of yours makes ads stand out in content and caption (my experience is closer to yours on Twitter and upon occasionally IG use). Tangentially, I find IG's place in the social media panoply to be fascinating. It's the only service that everyone seems to feel positively about: it doesn't inspire the loathing that Facebook and Twitter does or the mockery that Snapchat does (even by their users). But watching people use Instagram is the closest I see people coming to the popular addict/junkie metaphor and the stereotype of smartphones and social media turning us into slackjawed automatons in thrall to a colorful Skinner Box. It's really eerie.
    - behindsight 7y ago
      > It's the only service that everyone seems to feel positively about: it doesn't inspire the [...] mockery that Snapchat does (even by their users) Well there is actually some mockery about the lengths some people go to alter their perceived appearance[0]. 0: https://www.reddit.com/r/Instagramreality/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Instagramreality/
- mynegation 7y ago
  I do not notice Instagram ads for a simple reason that I am yet to see a single one. It probably has to do with whom I follow: a very limited number of people I personally know, no brands, no influencers, no company grams etc. As a software developer I sometimes wonder what are the thresholds or criteria in Instagram systems to show ads.
- chrisco255 7y ago
  I've bought several products as a result of Instagram ads. They are usually related to companies I follow or interests I have, like camping or some household goods. But I don't hate the ads. They are easy to scroll past and I don't have to engage with them. They don't seem too intrusive and sometimes they are interesting products to look at.
asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
> Google is slowly becoming useless That is not the thesis of this article. In fact, the opposite. The article claims that despite the increase in advertising, for the given exemplar (hotel search), the ads actually make Google more useful compared to the ten-blue-link baseline.
- Galaxeblaffer 7y ago
  It's becoming better for finding products and other stuff to spend your money on. Digging out real information on topics is what is becoming useless
  - squiggleblaz 7y ago
    Welcome to the free market!
- pasttense01 7y ago
  You can divide searches into 1. Shopping searches where you want to buy something and 2. Non shopping searches. This article is about a type of shopping search. Lots of us have little interest in doing shopping searches on Google--we search directly on Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Target or whatever. With respect to non-shopping searches for a huge proportion of queries the top page of results are dominated either by shopping responses or fluff articles.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
    The guidelines say "Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." IMO it's not useful or interesting to repeat the generic, endlessly belabored complaint that Google results are getting less relevant. It's much more interesting to discuss the article on its merits.
    - Guest42 7y ago
      The response is related and non-tangential. The “endlessly belabored” argument that results are less relevant is an important discussion with many merits. It is true that there is value in shopping results and information results. However, there is a more optimal balance between the 2 that will improve the usefulness of the internet for many users.
thewarrior 7y ago
I'm sure things like this are A/B tested to the moon and back to see the exact impact on usage.
cobookman 7y ago
Startups can disrupt because the major public companies need to show growth for w-street. If there's no growth then the ask is on profits, which cause the company to start gutting teams. meanwhile a startup can focus on building a great product, sometimes while not needing to be profitable. Amazon.com took advantage of this, with Jeff Bezos famous quote of, "Your margin is my opportunity".
mark_l_watson 7y ago
I don't use IG, but I do both use Twitter and agree with you that the increased percentage of promoted material is a bummer. I would pay Twitter $3 to $4 per month to get a "premium" ad-free account. I wonder if they ever considered this, and what the economics would be.
- gbear605 7y ago
  Per https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2018/04/02/a-look-at-twitters-valuation/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2018/04/02/a-... they make about $7.50 per user per year, so even a dollar a month should be better
  - mark_l_watson 7y ago
    +1, thanks for the link. Since the original article is more about Google, I would like to say that while Google's paid gmail+office is a compelling product that I liked paying for until I realized that there was no way I could merge services bought with my "free" Google account with the paid account. I think this is a lesson for Twitter if they ever do offer a paid service: integrate well with the old free account or convert old account and history smoothly.
  - hellomyguys 7y ago
    Yeah, but there's a good chance the parent poster is worth more the $7.50 ARPU to Twitter. They can also probably increase their ARPU more than they can increase a hypothetical subscription cost, which is why these comments about ad-based companies providing a subscription service aren't actually these no-brainer ideas. Now with that being said, it would be nice if companies cared more about having sustainable businesses with healthy, non-intrusive user experiences than revenue growth.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    The people willing and able to pay to opt out of ads are worth much more than $7.50.
- nkingsy 7y ago
airstrike 7y ago
Problem with Instagram is that even "legitimate" posts are sponsored by companies paying influencers to soft peddle their stuff. The overlap between the HN crowd and the crowd following influencers is probably minimal, but as far as a % of the platform, I'd wager most people are going through these soft ads unwittingly.
- Abishek_Muthian 7y ago
  Apparently, Cristiano Ronaldo makes more from Instagram posts than what he makes from soccer. Also, instagram is supposedly the platform with highest organic conversions & so I expect instagram come up with a way to monetize this off-platform Ad deals if not already. Does any country have a law telling these influencers need to inform their followers about their sponsorship? Such laws exist for affiliate marketing.
  - im3w1l 7y ago
    I'd argue that instagram posts are a way to monetize his soccer playing, so that money come from soccer too if you look at it like that.
  - Red_Leaves_Flyy 7y ago
    "Does any country have a law telling these influencers need to inform their followers about their sponsorship? Such laws exist for affiliate marketing." The U.S. does.[1] 1. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2017/04/ftc-staff-reminds-influencers-brands-clearly-disclose https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2017/04/ftc-s...
    - dylz 7y ago
      it doesn't seem to get properly enforced.
      - maigret 7y ago
        Actually there have been a couple of lawsuits in Germany that changed the practice locally: https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=12d4d756-d753-4d0e-be47-4fd70c62acad https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=12d4d756-d753... Now most are very careful and even "overdisclose" advertising as a result (they disclose even for products they mention that they are not paid for it).
buboard 7y ago
It's not becoming useless (what's better overall?) but increasingly more difficult to use. It's not the inflation of the content of the web causing it, it IS google (e.g. they make anyting that is > a few years old almost invisible). I don't know what is the endgame of this , though. There is clearly a failure of competition here, it is disheartening to use another engine and get the same results
runn1ng 7y ago
I’m wishing there was a search engine that was not filled with ads that does not suck. And don’t give me duckduckgo, that one regularly ranks spam domains and typo domains higher than the real results
swtrs 7y ago
>Search for something generic like "computer" and you can see an example of how hard it is to get information instead of ads. Panel for computer sales at top. A maps menu showing computer shops near me. A Bestbuy link. Another panel for computer sales. Walmart, amazon, newegg. A wiki. And another sales panel.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  More damning. The only non-commerce related link is the one for Wikipedia. On DDG mobile, there is one Best Buy link and everything else is a site delivering some form of information on the topic.
- deleted 7y ago
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komali2 7y ago
Huh, I'm realizing with your comment that I was doing that and not really aware of that. Now that I think about it, my information, depending on subject, typically comes from either reddit, wikipedia, or stackoverflow, and I just use google to find the exact page on those websites that I need.
ckastner 7y ago
> I stopped using IG & Twitter largely because it went from having relatively few ads to where I started seeing an ad nearly every other post. The increase appears to be dramatic. I signed up for YouTube Premium long ago simply because I couldn't stand the occasional ad anymore. I recently was at a friend's, and I wanted to show him a particular cooking video that I liked, on his iPad. It was a 16-minute video and it was interrupted three times by an ad. mid-video. Unbearable. The thing is, through Premium, I was actually looking forward to discovering new music with the YouTube Music app. Was I wrong. The recommendations are crap. They are repetitive to the point of nausea. I have a few hundred "liked" songs, but the recommendations are heavily skewed towards a few, mostly recently "liked" songs. This has actually lead to me dreading marking a song as "liked", as it inevitably leads to this repetition and, much worse, to unending recommendations of the same artist's other songs, even if I "dislike" every. single. one. of. them.
- TaylorAlexander 7y ago
  I’ve had good luck with Spotify recommendations! I’m finding a lot of cool music.
  - ckastner 7y ago
    That echoes what a I've heard from a few others. It just bugs me that an entity with such a forte in data mining can err that much, to the point where they're losing a losing customer to the competition.
  - spats1990 7y ago
    The feature Spotify has where artists curate their own playlists is also amazing in my experience. (for new music discovery)
    - blaser-waffle 7y ago
      Indeed. Big fan of the Arcade Fire ones
  - shostack 7y ago
viburnum 7y ago
A friend who’s a translator told me he uses every kind of ad block, VPN, and language settings and it makes Google basically usable again. I’ve noticed that I use Google a lot less now because all the ads and baloney stress me out. Turns out a lot of the stuff I used to search for isn’t that important.
laurentdc 7y ago
Same. When I search for a product I always append reddit e.g. "what video card 4k 120hz reddit" because otherwise the search results are flooded with fake comparison pages spamming Amazon referral links
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  I'm sure the fake subreddits with amazon referral links are a work in progress as we speak.
  - zamubafoo 7y ago
    They are. If you look at /r/suggestalaptop they already have people who suggesting laptops and link with Amazon referral links. I'm half convinced that they are just bots.
  - shostack 7y ago
    Sure, but presumably you hone your senses as to which subs are trustworthy and which are not. For many classes of queries, there are some well-established subs already. Then it is a simple matter of parsing the comments, and the signal-to-noise ratio tends to be fairly decent for lots of things still.
    - throwaway2048 7y ago
      Thats not really the issue, its obvious these crap sites are crap, the problem is them polluting google results.
  - Agenttin 7y ago
    Most subs ban Amazon referral links for this reason.
- trevor-e 7y ago
  FWIW, in this case it might be better to use `site:reddit.com` for more accurate results. I tried your example and it narrowed down 264k results -> 12k results, although I'm not sure how much stock should be put into that figure because after reloading the first page it went down to 93k results. ‾\_(ツ)_/‾ For both searches, the first page was largely the same just in a different order. The big difference comes on the later pages of results.
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Waterluvian 7y ago
I noticed this big time with Twitch.tv. There's now ads I cannot avoid or skip all over the place. I'm also finally noticing ads when watching YouTube on Chromecast. There used to be zero ads (which was a little confusing) but now there's ads.
perseusprime11 7y ago
I see an ad every two minutes of video on youtube. It has become very hard for me to watch anything on Youtube.
- vocatus_gate 7y ago
  Install uBlock Origin, a plugin for Chrome and Firefox, and enjoy never seeing an ad on YouTube again. Takes like 3 seconds to install.
hyperpallium 7y ago
"forum" still helps too
not_a_cop75 7y ago
It's the beginning of the end. Internet advert is probably going to collapse again, as soon as the economy goes to crap. It will come back, but after people start getting hijacked from ads, I doubt it will be the same.
mcnichol 7y ago
I have been imagining a plugin that would automatically append '- {criteria}' to all my searches. #1 in my list would be anything from w3 domain. God bless their souls but that thing is the SEO plague
- 0x00000000 7y ago
  Fun fact, search result ads ignore “-term”. It is so infuriating trying to get away from some SEO bullshit only to have the first 5 results be ads for the thing you are explicitly trying to filter out.
prepend 7y ago
I think lots of ad buys aren’t very smart. Companies seem to be pumping too much money into ads because they have money. Last week I saw an SAP ad over a twitch stream showing on a wall monitor in an esports bar. That’s either the smartest targeted ad ever (3 out of our table were software types who would be involved in an SAP purchase decision), or just some campaign manager clicking a box that means “put my ad anywhere you want.” The next ad was for twix. I think if we face a downturn where all of a sudden there’s not money and smart people are trying to spend on ads that have real return, these platforms will really get slammed. I’m not sure what multiplier it is. But I think their leverage in the “BS ad” domain will be more than 1x whatever the downturn is.
- Proziam 7y ago
  I get targeted ads all the time from big consulting companies. It's not about SAP purchasing decisions, they want people to pursue SAP as a career option. In my case, their targeting is right on the money - I just have a better job at the moment
- puranjay 7y ago
  I live in India and I get ads all the time for products and services that aren't even available in my country. Like real estate brokers in Texas and car dealerships in Ohio and property investments in Abu Dhabi. I'm not using a VPN and haven't mucked around with my location settings. Some of the worst targeted ads I've ever seen are on Reddit and Imgur
  - ufuft 7y ago
    On Facebook, spending 5 dollars on promoting a post in India/Pakistan will get you a ton of likes and comments (some of them not great). It's a very easy and cheap way to make your post/ad look more legit or popular, faking "social proof"
tinyhouse 7y ago
I don't use IG so cannot comment. I do use Twitter. I haven't noticed significantly more ads but one thing I dislike about Twitter is that they make the ads appear like normal posts.
FussyZeus 7y ago
Don't forget having to add "-pinterest" to literally any image search.
sl1ck731 7y ago
Spent the last couple days trying to gather information for an LDAP/AD/Samba project for a multi-tenant MSP setup. Literally the top 3 or 4 results of every query were from Jumpcloud and just pure, low-effort blog posts that you can just tell were SEO driven to get them on the top of every keyword to sell you a product that isn't even really the same thing. I just discovered the "reddit"/"hackernews" trick while doing this for actual content I want to read. As far as I'm concerned I will never recommend Jumpcloud or any other service I find doing this.
on_and_off 7y ago
Just searched for computers First I get a large map card with a couple of stores with computer in their names nearby. I don't know how useful that is since I don't have a real search intent. Next I get the computer page for best buy (I am in the USA) and the computer wikipedia article. I have just tried duck duck go. I just get a full page of computers on best buy, amazon, etc I don't think the google results are any worse than the ddg ones here. If anything, trying to match with a 2 nearby places which are partial matches (computer in their names) is relevant. And at least it gives me the wikipedia article. On ddg, it can be seen on the right side widget or at the bottom of the second page
netwanderer3 7y ago
I'm not seeing what you described at all. Google search results are still serving me quite well personally, at least for the information that I was looking for. Google has recently launched one of its biggest updates (BERT) which should improve the understanding of your keywords tremendously. By utilizing the power of NLP (Natural Language Processing) technology, it will now be able to provide more relevant and accurate search results for everyone. You can read more about the update via the company's blog: https://www.blog.google/products/search/search-language-understanding-bert/ https://www.blog.google/products/search/search-language-unde...
NotATroll 7y ago
> I append words like "wiki" or "reddit" to get results that aren't SEO'd I'm not sure what you expect. I mean, yeah. I have to put OSRS in any search for "murder mystery" to get the result I wanted. But that's not a huge deal. Who searches for generic "computer" that isn't a 70 year old lady probably looking for a new computer. Google in that scenario is just serving up what they're most likely looking for. And heck, it's not like the wikipedia link was that far down. It was under a couple of store links and then bam. Wiki for computers.
Koremat6666 7y ago
> Google is slowly becoming useless (even with an ad blocker) because you have to hack search terms in order to get useful results. For example, I append words like "wiki" or "reddit" to get results that aren't SEO'd. Search for something generic like "computer" and you can see an example of how hard it is to get information instead of ads. When you say useless does that mean you think the gap between Google and (other engine of your choice) is narrowing ? Do you see yourself switching to say Bing for better search results anytime soon ?
- aaroncruz12452 7y ago
  Yeah. I noticed that too even my site https://appen.com/services/data-collection/ https://appen.com/services/data-collection/ got affected
baroffoos 7y ago
I have been hearing people talk about google results becoming useless regularly but it never made sense to me until you mentioned the part about adding wiki and reddit to terms which I do all the time to get real information and not paid blog articles by people who just read the box of the product they are reviewing.
swiley 7y ago
Holy cow I thought you were exaggerating! Apart from a single Wikipedia article near the bottom every result for the search “computer” is an ad!! Not even a bad article full of SEO crap but a straight up ad!
hesarenu 7y ago
"Search for something generic like "computer" and you can see an example of how hard it is to get information instead of ads" I see ads panel for computers, followed by wiki, videos about computer, questions, map with computer shop and list of links related to computer terminology. I don't use ad blocker. Still get relavent results.
shostack 7y ago
What's fascinating to me is how Reddit is arguably at the tail end of "the pack" of major publishers. They struggle to monetize, yet possess one of the few remaining bastions of decent quality reviews depending on what you're looking for. Arguably this is because there is still "full" organic reach possible, and the users govern the subreddits. If there were to be a major throttling of organic reach such that the only way to get prominent visibility on Reddit was to pay based on reach, or mods lost the ability to control and curate their communities, I wouldn't be surprised to see Reddit drop in quality and user base.
- sireat 7y ago
  Anecdotally one gets better quality reviews using `foobar review site:reddit.com` than any other method. You can weed out the fake reviews on reddit better than say on amazon because of other users. Just use some common sense and if you see an echo chamber subreddit then take the review with some salt.
  - piva00 7y ago
    I've been doing this for years now, it works even better for niche products (or not massively produced). The last example was the Smarthalo, a friend of mine asked me what I thought about it as I'm into biking, I had seen some ads and their Kickstarter campaign but didn't give much thought, the only way I could find reliable user reviews was by appending "site:reddit.com" after my Google Search as the other user reviews would be from Amazon or other e-commerce websites that I really don't trust.
  - ralfd 7y ago
    Absolutely! Yesterday I wanted to buy some inear headphones on Amazon and the user experience on the site itself is abysmal with countless no name China wares and suspect reviews. A search on fitness related subreddits what people actually use and how (water damage through sweating seems common) was much more useful.
- maest 7y ago
  I wouldn't say Reddit is all organic nowadays. Plenty of accounts gaming the website.
otabdeveloper4 7y ago
'Ads' are not a bubble, don't be silly. That's like saying that 'money' is a bubble because of the subprime crisis. That said, yes, there is definitly a downward spiral where placing more ads drives your viewership away, which in turn lowers your revenue and makes you place more ads, which drives away viewership, etc. This isn't really a problem with 'ads', this is a generic problem of management driving a thriving property into the ground in the name of short-term profit.
thaumasiotes 7y ago
> Search for something generic like "computer" and you can see an example of how hard it is to get information instead of ads. I tried this. The wikipedia page for "computer" was the second result. Above that, oddly, a store page for "computers" at Best Buy. Above that, some suggested questions like "what is a computer?" ("A computer is a machine or device that performs processes, calculations and operations based on instructions provided by a software or hardware program.") And above that, at the top, several advertisements and a map of where the advertising locations are. I don't understand what you think should come up in a search for the word "computer". I already know what a computer is, and I think it's safe to say that's true of almost everyone using the internet.
tripzilch 7y ago
I made an Instagram account for the first time a few months ago, the first two weeks it had zero ads. It was just long enough to draw me in, if it had had that amount of ads when I signed up, I might have chosen a different platform to display my computer generated art. On the plus side, it has been very cool chatting with people from all over the world doing the same things, and getting compliments (like, actual comments, not just likes).

haekjre 7y ago

Do you even notice the instagram ads? I'm so blind to them while I flick through I can't even tell if they are for a bank or for clothes or whatever. > Search for something generic like "computer" and you can see an example of how hard it is to get information instead of ads. To be fair, "computer" is such a generic term, I can't even imagine what you expect to see when you search for it.

brenden2 7y ago
I don't actually use Instagram anymore but when I did I definitely noticed the ads. They were always irrelevant, annoying, and obnoxious.
zwieback 7y ago
Isn't that the idea? The Instagram ads are supposed to look like the posts you're looking at and hopefully your lizard brain stores the ad image as you scroll by.
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  I wonder to what extent this is a function of how one uses Instagram: ie, perhaps the parent comment's feed contains posts superficially similar to ads, while the composition of yours makes ads stand out in content and caption (my experience is closer to yours on Twitter and upon occasionally IG use). Tangentially, I find IG's place in the social media panoply to be fascinating. It's the only service that everyone seems to feel positively about: it doesn't inspire the loathing that Facebook and Twitter does or the mockery that Snapchat does (even by their users). But watching people use Instagram is the closest I see people coming to the popular addict/junkie metaphor and the stereotype of smartphones and social media turning us into slackjawed automatons in thrall to a colorful Skinner Box. It's really eerie.
  - behindsight 7y ago
    > It's the only service that everyone seems to feel positively about: it doesn't inspire the [...] mockery that Snapchat does (even by their users) Well there is actually some mockery about the lengths some people go to alter their perceived appearance[0]. 0: https://www.reddit.com/r/Instagramreality/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Instagramreality/
mynegation 7y ago
I do not notice Instagram ads for a simple reason that I am yet to see a single one. It probably has to do with whom I follow: a very limited number of people I personally know, no brands, no influencers, no company grams etc. As a software developer I sometimes wonder what are the thresholds or criteria in Instagram systems to show ads.
chrisco255 7y ago
I've bought several products as a result of Instagram ads. They are usually related to companies I follow or interests I have, like camping or some household goods. But I don't hate the ads. They are easy to scroll past and I don't have to engage with them. They don't seem too intrusive and sometimes they are interesting products to look at.

asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago

> Google is slowly becoming useless That is not the thesis of this article. In fact, the opposite. The article claims that despite the increase in advertising, for the given exemplar (hotel search), the ads actually make Google more useful compared to the ten-blue-link baseline.

Galaxeblaffer 7y ago
It's becoming better for finding products and other stuff to spend your money on. Digging out real information on topics is what is becoming useless
- squiggleblaz 7y ago
  Welcome to the free market!
pasttense01 7y ago
You can divide searches into 1. Shopping searches where you want to buy something and 2. Non shopping searches. This article is about a type of shopping search. Lots of us have little interest in doing shopping searches on Google--we search directly on Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Target or whatever. With respect to non-shopping searches for a huge proportion of queries the top page of results are dominated either by shopping responses or fluff articles.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
  The guidelines say "Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." IMO it's not useful or interesting to repeat the generic, endlessly belabored complaint that Google results are getting less relevant. It's much more interesting to discuss the article on its merits.
  - Guest42 7y ago
    The response is related and non-tangential. The “endlessly belabored” argument that results are less relevant is an important discussion with many merits. It is true that there is value in shopping results and information results. However, there is a more optimal balance between the 2 that will improve the usefulness of the internet for many users.

thewarrior 7y ago

I'm sure things like this are A/B tested to the moon and back to see the exact impact on usage.

cobookman 7y ago

Startups can disrupt because the major public companies need to show growth for w-street. If there's no growth then the ask is on profits, which cause the company to start gutting teams. meanwhile a startup can focus on building a great product, sometimes while not needing to be profitable. Amazon.com took advantage of this, with Jeff Bezos famous quote of, "Your margin is my opportunity".

mark_l_watson 7y ago

I don't use IG, but I do both use Twitter and agree with you that the increased percentage of promoted material is a bummer. I would pay Twitter $3 to $4 per month to get a "premium" ad-free account. I wonder if they ever considered this, and what the economics would be.

gbear605 7y ago
Per https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2018/04/02/a-look-at-twitters-valuation/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2018/04/02/a-... they make about $7.50 per user per year, so even a dollar a month should be better
- mark_l_watson 7y ago
  +1, thanks for the link. Since the original article is more about Google, I would like to say that while Google's paid gmail+office is a compelling product that I liked paying for until I realized that there was no way I could merge services bought with my "free" Google account with the paid account. I think this is a lesson for Twitter if they ever do offer a paid service: integrate well with the old free account or convert old account and history smoothly.
- hellomyguys 7y ago
  Yeah, but there's a good chance the parent poster is worth more the $7.50 ARPU to Twitter. They can also probably increase their ARPU more than they can increase a hypothetical subscription cost, which is why these comments about ad-based companies providing a subscription service aren't actually these no-brainer ideas. Now with that being said, it would be nice if companies cared more about having sustainable businesses with healthy, non-intrusive user experiences than revenue growth.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  The people willing and able to pay to opt out of ads are worth much more than $7.50.
nkingsy 7y ago

airstrike 7y ago

Problem with Instagram is that even "legitimate" posts are sponsored by companies paying influencers to soft peddle their stuff. The overlap between the HN crowd and the crowd following influencers is probably minimal, but as far as a % of the platform, I'd wager most people are going through these soft ads unwittingly.

Abishek_Muthian 7y ago
Apparently, Cristiano Ronaldo makes more from Instagram posts than what he makes from soccer. Also, instagram is supposedly the platform with highest organic conversions & so I expect instagram come up with a way to monetize this off-platform Ad deals if not already. Does any country have a law telling these influencers need to inform their followers about their sponsorship? Such laws exist for affiliate marketing.
- im3w1l 7y ago
  I'd argue that instagram posts are a way to monetize his soccer playing, so that money come from soccer too if you look at it like that.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 7y ago
  "Does any country have a law telling these influencers need to inform their followers about their sponsorship? Such laws exist for affiliate marketing." The U.S. does.[1] 1. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2017/04/ftc-staff-reminds-influencers-brands-clearly-disclose https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2017/04/ftc-s...
  - dylz 7y ago
    it doesn't seem to get properly enforced.
    - maigret 7y ago
      Actually there have been a couple of lawsuits in Germany that changed the practice locally: https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=12d4d756-d753-4d0e-be47-4fd70c62acad https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=12d4d756-d753... Now most are very careful and even "overdisclose" advertising as a result (they disclose even for products they mention that they are not paid for it).

buboard 7y ago

It's not becoming useless (what's better overall?) but increasingly more difficult to use. It's not the inflation of the content of the web causing it, it IS google (e.g. they make anyting that is > a few years old almost invisible). I don't know what is the endgame of this , though. There is clearly a failure of competition here, it is disheartening to use another engine and get the same results

runn1ng 7y ago

I’m wishing there was a search engine that was not filled with ads that does not suck. And don’t give me duckduckgo, that one regularly ranks spam domains and typo domains higher than the real results

swtrs 7y ago

>Search for something generic like "computer" and you can see an example of how hard it is to get information instead of ads. Panel for computer sales at top. A maps menu showing computer shops near me. A Bestbuy link. Another panel for computer sales. Walmart, amazon, newegg. A wiki. And another sales panel.

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
More damning. The only non-commerce related link is the one for Wikipedia. On DDG mobile, there is one Best Buy link and everything else is a site delivering some form of information on the topic.
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komali2 7y ago

Huh, I'm realizing with your comment that I was doing that and not really aware of that. Now that I think about it, my information, depending on subject, typically comes from either reddit, wikipedia, or stackoverflow, and I just use google to find the exact page on those websites that I need.

ckastner 7y ago

> I stopped using IG & Twitter largely because it went from having relatively few ads to where I started seeing an ad nearly every other post. The increase appears to be dramatic. I signed up for YouTube Premium long ago simply because I couldn't stand the occasional ad anymore. I recently was at a friend's, and I wanted to show him a particular cooking video that I liked, on his iPad. It was a 16-minute video and it was interrupted three times by an ad. mid-video. Unbearable. The thing is, through Premium, I was actually looking forward to discovering new music with the YouTube Music app. Was I wrong. The recommendations are crap. They are repetitive to the point of nausea. I have a few hundred "liked" songs, but the recommendations are heavily skewed towards a few, mostly recently "liked" songs. This has actually lead to me dreading marking a song as "liked", as it inevitably leads to this repetition and, much worse, to unending recommendations of the same artist's other songs, even if I "dislike" every. single. one. of. them.

TaylorAlexander 7y ago
I’ve had good luck with Spotify recommendations! I’m finding a lot of cool music.
- ckastner 7y ago
  That echoes what a I've heard from a few others. It just bugs me that an entity with such a forte in data mining can err that much, to the point where they're losing a losing customer to the competition.
- spats1990 7y ago
  The feature Spotify has where artists curate their own playlists is also amazing in my experience. (for new music discovery)
  - blaser-waffle 7y ago
    Indeed. Big fan of the Arcade Fire ones
- shostack 7y ago

viburnum 7y ago

A friend who’s a translator told me he uses every kind of ad block, VPN, and language settings and it makes Google basically usable again. I’ve noticed that I use Google a lot less now because all the ads and baloney stress me out. Turns out a lot of the stuff I used to search for isn’t that important.

laurentdc 7y ago

Same. When I search for a product I always append reddit e.g. "what video card 4k 120hz reddit" because otherwise the search results are flooded with fake comparison pages spamming Amazon referral links

throwaway2048 7y ago
I'm sure the fake subreddits with amazon referral links are a work in progress as we speak.
- zamubafoo 7y ago
  They are. If you look at /r/suggestalaptop they already have people who suggesting laptops and link with Amazon referral links. I'm half convinced that they are just bots.
- shostack 7y ago
  Sure, but presumably you hone your senses as to which subs are trustworthy and which are not. For many classes of queries, there are some well-established subs already. Then it is a simple matter of parsing the comments, and the signal-to-noise ratio tends to be fairly decent for lots of things still.
  - throwaway2048 7y ago
    Thats not really the issue, its obvious these crap sites are crap, the problem is them polluting google results.
- Agenttin 7y ago
  Most subs ban Amazon referral links for this reason.
trevor-e 7y ago
FWIW, in this case it might be better to use `site:reddit.com` for more accurate results. I tried your example and it narrowed down 264k results -> 12k results, although I'm not sure how much stock should be put into that figure because after reloading the first page it went down to 93k results. ‾\_(ツ)_/‾ For both searches, the first page was largely the same just in a different order. The big difference comes on the later pages of results.

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Waterluvian 7y ago

I noticed this big time with Twitch.tv. There's now ads I cannot avoid or skip all over the place. I'm also finally noticing ads when watching YouTube on Chromecast. There used to be zero ads (which was a little confusing) but now there's ads.

perseusprime11 7y ago

I see an ad every two minutes of video on youtube. It has become very hard for me to watch anything on Youtube.

vocatus_gate 7y ago
Install uBlock Origin, a plugin for Chrome and Firefox, and enjoy never seeing an ad on YouTube again. Takes like 3 seconds to install.

hyperpallium 7y ago

"forum" still helps too

not_a_cop75 7y ago

It's the beginning of the end. Internet advert is probably going to collapse again, as soon as the economy goes to crap. It will come back, but after people start getting hijacked from ads, I doubt it will be the same.

mcnichol 7y ago

I have been imagining a plugin that would automatically append '- {criteria}' to all my searches. #1 in my list would be anything from w3 domain. God bless their souls but that thing is the SEO plague

0x00000000 7y ago
Fun fact, search result ads ignore “-term”. It is so infuriating trying to get away from some SEO bullshit only to have the first 5 results be ads for the thing you are explicitly trying to filter out.

prepend 7y ago

I think lots of ad buys aren’t very smart. Companies seem to be pumping too much money into ads because they have money. Last week I saw an SAP ad over a twitch stream showing on a wall monitor in an esports bar. That’s either the smartest targeted ad ever (3 out of our table were software types who would be involved in an SAP purchase decision), or just some campaign manager clicking a box that means “put my ad anywhere you want.” The next ad was for twix. I think if we face a downturn where all of a sudden there’s not money and smart people are trying to spend on ads that have real return, these platforms will really get slammed. I’m not sure what multiplier it is. But I think their leverage in the “BS ad” domain will be more than 1x whatever the downturn is.

Proziam 7y ago
I get targeted ads all the time from big consulting companies. It's not about SAP purchasing decisions, they want people to pursue SAP as a career option. In my case, their targeting is right on the money - I just have a better job at the moment
puranjay 7y ago
I live in India and I get ads all the time for products and services that aren't even available in my country. Like real estate brokers in Texas and car dealerships in Ohio and property investments in Abu Dhabi. I'm not using a VPN and haven't mucked around with my location settings. Some of the worst targeted ads I've ever seen are on Reddit and Imgur
- ufuft 7y ago
  On Facebook, spending 5 dollars on promoting a post in India/Pakistan will get you a ton of likes and comments (some of them not great). It's a very easy and cheap way to make your post/ad look more legit or popular, faking "social proof"

tinyhouse 7y ago

I don't use IG so cannot comment. I do use Twitter. I haven't noticed significantly more ads but one thing I dislike about Twitter is that they make the ads appear like normal posts.

FussyZeus 7y ago

Don't forget having to add "-pinterest" to literally any image search.

sl1ck731 7y ago

Spent the last couple days trying to gather information for an LDAP/AD/Samba project for a multi-tenant MSP setup. Literally the top 3 or 4 results of every query were from Jumpcloud and just pure, low-effort blog posts that you can just tell were SEO driven to get them on the top of every keyword to sell you a product that isn't even really the same thing. I just discovered the "reddit"/"hackernews" trick while doing this for actual content I want to read. As far as I'm concerned I will never recommend Jumpcloud or any other service I find doing this.

on_and_off 7y ago

Just searched for computers First I get a large map card with a couple of stores with computer in their names nearby. I don't know how useful that is since I don't have a real search intent. Next I get the computer page for best buy (I am in the USA) and the computer wikipedia article. I have just tried duck duck go. I just get a full page of computers on best buy, amazon, etc I don't think the google results are any worse than the ddg ones here. If anything, trying to match with a 2 nearby places which are partial matches (computer in their names) is relevant. And at least it gives me the wikipedia article. On ddg, it can be seen on the right side widget or at the bottom of the second page

netwanderer3 7y ago

I'm not seeing what you described at all. Google search results are still serving me quite well personally, at least for the information that I was looking for. Google has recently launched one of its biggest updates (BERT) which should improve the understanding of your keywords tremendously. By utilizing the power of NLP (Natural Language Processing) technology, it will now be able to provide more relevant and accurate search results for everyone. You can read more about the update via the company's blog: https://www.blog.google/products/search/search-language-understanding-bert/ https://www.blog.google/products/search/search-language-unde...

NotATroll 7y ago

> I append words like "wiki" or "reddit" to get results that aren't SEO'd I'm not sure what you expect. I mean, yeah. I have to put OSRS in any search for "murder mystery" to get the result I wanted. But that's not a huge deal. Who searches for generic "computer" that isn't a 70 year old lady probably looking for a new computer. Google in that scenario is just serving up what they're most likely looking for. And heck, it's not like the wikipedia link was that far down. It was under a couple of store links and then bam. Wiki for computers.

Koremat6666 7y ago

> Google is slowly becoming useless (even with an ad blocker) because you have to hack search terms in order to get useful results. For example, I append words like "wiki" or "reddit" to get results that aren't SEO'd. Search for something generic like "computer" and you can see an example of how hard it is to get information instead of ads. When you say useless does that mean you think the gap between Google and (other engine of your choice) is narrowing ? Do you see yourself switching to say Bing for better search results anytime soon ?

aaroncruz12452 7y ago
Yeah. I noticed that too even my site https://appen.com/services/data-collection/ https://appen.com/services/data-collection/ got affected

baroffoos 7y ago

I have been hearing people talk about google results becoming useless regularly but it never made sense to me until you mentioned the part about adding wiki and reddit to terms which I do all the time to get real information and not paid blog articles by people who just read the box of the product they are reviewing.

swiley 7y ago

Holy cow I thought you were exaggerating! Apart from a single Wikipedia article near the bottom every result for the search “computer” is an ad!! Not even a bad article full of SEO crap but a straight up ad!

hesarenu 7y ago

"Search for something generic like "computer" and you can see an example of how hard it is to get information instead of ads" I see ads panel for computers, followed by wiki, videos about computer, questions, map with computer shop and list of links related to computer terminology. I don't use ad blocker. Still get relavent results.

shostack 7y ago

What's fascinating to me is how Reddit is arguably at the tail end of "the pack" of major publishers. They struggle to monetize, yet possess one of the few remaining bastions of decent quality reviews depending on what you're looking for. Arguably this is because there is still "full" organic reach possible, and the users govern the subreddits. If there were to be a major throttling of organic reach such that the only way to get prominent visibility on Reddit was to pay based on reach, or mods lost the ability to control and curate their communities, I wouldn't be surprised to see Reddit drop in quality and user base.

sireat 7y ago
Anecdotally one gets better quality reviews using `foobar review site:reddit.com` than any other method. You can weed out the fake reviews on reddit better than say on amazon because of other users. Just use some common sense and if you see an echo chamber subreddit then take the review with some salt.
- piva00 7y ago
  I've been doing this for years now, it works even better for niche products (or not massively produced). The last example was the Smarthalo, a friend of mine asked me what I thought about it as I'm into biking, I had seen some ads and their Kickstarter campaign but didn't give much thought, the only way I could find reliable user reviews was by appending "site:reddit.com" after my Google Search as the other user reviews would be from Amazon or other e-commerce websites that I really don't trust.
- ralfd 7y ago
  Absolutely! Yesterday I wanted to buy some inear headphones on Amazon and the user experience on the site itself is abysmal with countless no name China wares and suspect reviews. A search on fitness related subreddits what people actually use and how (water damage through sweating seems common) was much more useful.
maest 7y ago
I wouldn't say Reddit is all organic nowadays. Plenty of accounts gaming the website.

otabdeveloper4 7y ago

'Ads' are not a bubble, don't be silly. That's like saying that 'money' is a bubble because of the subprime crisis. That said, yes, there is definitly a downward spiral where placing more ads drives your viewership away, which in turn lowers your revenue and makes you place more ads, which drives away viewership, etc. This isn't really a problem with 'ads', this is a generic problem of management driving a thriving property into the ground in the name of short-term profit.

thaumasiotes 7y ago

> Search for something generic like "computer" and you can see an example of how hard it is to get information instead of ads. I tried this. The wikipedia page for "computer" was the second result. Above that, oddly, a store page for "computers" at Best Buy. Above that, some suggested questions like "what is a computer?" ("A computer is a machine or device that performs processes, calculations and operations based on instructions provided by a software or hardware program.") And above that, at the top, several advertisements and a map of where the advertising locations are. I don't understand what you think should come up in a search for the word "computer". I already know what a computer is, and I think it's safe to say that's true of almost everyone using the internet.

tripzilch 7y ago

I made an Instagram account for the first time a few months ago, the first two weeks it had zero ads. It was just long enough to draw me in, if it had had that amount of ads when I signed up, I might have chosen a different platform to display my computer generated art. On the plus side, it has been very cool chatting with people from all over the world doing the same things, and getting compliments (like, actual comments, not just likes).