4 ms·

Why does it seem wrong? Internet ads use your internet connection and time. Why should I watch them for free?

by ulzeraj 7y ago

hombre_fatal 7y ago
Presumably you are viewing ads on a website that is giving you some sort of value so you aren't doing it for free.
- mantap 7y ago
  In my experience the most valuable websites have few ads and the most trashy websites have the most.
  - EpicEng 7y ago
    So why are you frequenting these 'trashy' sites? If you are, it must be because they offer some value, right? If you're not... then you don't see any ads from them. Someone else will, because they find value in the site.
    - gpm 7y ago
      Because the trashy sites are also the best at SEO (and google isn't properly incentivized to punish them for their ads) so you end up seeing them by accident.
    - mantap 7y ago
      Maybe trashy is the wrong word, but rather "low-effort" or "repetitive". A whole lot of news articles are just regurgitated Reuters or AP. There's nothing wrong with that and it is a valuable service. But I am completely indifferent to these sites existence. The sites that I would really care about if they went under, like HN, Wikipedia, NYT, etc, either use subscriptions or are donation funded. HN has job ads but they are super low key.
    - piokoch 7y ago
      Not really, sometimes you search for some information (camera review, headphones review, medical information, toys, whatever) and instead of landing on some site that has good information you end up on some crap site with crap content and tons of ads. Why? Because owner of that site had resources to do SEO (if one has money, one can trick Google algorithms without much trouble). How they earned that money? Through ads, obviously. The more ads such site has, the more revenue comes in and more money can be spend on SEO to increase revenue. And so one. Who pays for that? Those who landed on such site, they wasted time, read some potentially infomercial content. This ads -> money -> SEO -> more ads -> money is not particularly beneficial for the economy. This looks like one more incarnation of Gresham-Copernicus law - bad content is pushing away good content. If you spend money on content, you don't spend them on SEO, so you earn less money from ads and finally you end up on 5th Google results page and that's the end.
swebs 7y ago
The real question is: Why should you watch them at all?
- znpy 7y ago
  Because you're probably not paying for 99% of the contents that your web browser loads.
  - nfoz 7y ago
    If you don't want to provide free content then stop publishing on the web, a free medium.
    - EpicEng 7y ago
      Hey, remember OTA television? That is also a free medium. Where did this notion come from?
      - nfoz 7y ago
        And you have the freedom to block/skip ads from your TV, too.
        EpicEng 7y ago
        Or course you do, but you also seem to think no one should be using the web if they want to make ad revenue. >If you don't want to provide free content then stop publishing on the web, a free medium. How would that not also apply to television?
        nfoz 7y ago
        If you want to provide TV content, go for it. But if your content has ads, don't be surprised when people skip all the ads, because ads are offensive, and they're free to skip them. So that's an awkward business model to rely on. The consumers aren't the ones being unethical; you chose to put yourself in an aggressive and dubious position in the first place. I prefer public and collectively-funded broadcasting.

Why does it seem wrong? Internet ads use your internet connection and time. Why should I watch them for free?

hombre_fatal 7y ago

Presumably you are viewing ads on a website that is giving you some sort of value so you aren't doing it for free.

mantap 7y ago
In my experience the most valuable websites have few ads and the most trashy websites have the most.
- EpicEng 7y ago
  So why are you frequenting these 'trashy' sites? If you are, it must be because they offer some value, right? If you're not... then you don't see any ads from them. Someone else will, because they find value in the site.
  - gpm 7y ago
    Because the trashy sites are also the best at SEO (and google isn't properly incentivized to punish them for their ads) so you end up seeing them by accident.
  - mantap 7y ago
    Maybe trashy is the wrong word, but rather "low-effort" or "repetitive". A whole lot of news articles are just regurgitated Reuters or AP. There's nothing wrong with that and it is a valuable service. But I am completely indifferent to these sites existence. The sites that I would really care about if they went under, like HN, Wikipedia, NYT, etc, either use subscriptions or are donation funded. HN has job ads but they are super low key.
  - piokoch 7y ago
    Not really, sometimes you search for some information (camera review, headphones review, medical information, toys, whatever) and instead of landing on some site that has good information you end up on some crap site with crap content and tons of ads. Why? Because owner of that site had resources to do SEO (if one has money, one can trick Google algorithms without much trouble). How they earned that money? Through ads, obviously. The more ads such site has, the more revenue comes in and more money can be spend on SEO to increase revenue. And so one. Who pays for that? Those who landed on such site, they wasted time, read some potentially infomercial content. This ads -> money -> SEO -> more ads -> money is not particularly beneficial for the economy. This looks like one more incarnation of Gresham-Copernicus law - bad content is pushing away good content. If you spend money on content, you don't spend them on SEO, so you earn less money from ads and finally you end up on 5th Google results page and that's the end.

swebs 7y ago

The real question is: Why should you watch them at all?

znpy 7y ago
Because you're probably not paying for 99% of the contents that your web browser loads.
- nfoz 7y ago
  If you don't want to provide free content then stop publishing on the web, a free medium.
  - EpicEng 7y ago
    Hey, remember OTA television? That is also a free medium. Where did this notion come from?
    - nfoz 7y ago
      And you have the freedom to block/skip ads from your TV, too.
      - EpicEng 7y ago
        Or course you do, but you also seem to think no one should be using the web if they want to make ad revenue. >If you don't want to provide free content then stop publishing on the web, a free medium. How would that not also apply to television?
        nfoz 7y ago
        If you want to provide TV content, go for it. But if your content has ads, don't be surprised when people skip all the ads, because ads are offensive, and they're free to skip them. So that's an awkward business model to rely on. The consumers aren't the ones being unethical; you chose to put yourself in an aggressive and dubious position in the first place. I prefer public and collectively-funded broadcasting.