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I guess it’s a suicide to point this out on HN, but not everyone thinks Ad Tech is the opposite of meaningful work. I think it’s a very “limited imagination” po

I guess it’s a suicide to point this out on HN, but not everyone thinks Ad Tech is the opposite of meaningful work. I think it’s a very “limited imagination” point of view if you a) can’t think of anything less meaningful that people spend their time on, b) can’t think of any upside that Ad Tech brings. I’m happy to elaborate, having worked on ad tech for over 3 years, in case this comment doesn’t get downvoted into oblivion.

GoOnThenDoTell 7y ago
I honestly couldn’t think of a positive thing for adtech. Do share
- theaustinseven 7y ago
  How do you think all of the startups on here really achieve the "viral" growth they all talk about? Heavily targeted ads have allowed niche businesses to get off the ground and become profitable in a way that was not previously possible. Agreed there are problems, and agreed they don't allow much(if any) real control over the targeting from the target's side of things, but to say that don't do any real good is unimaginative as the previous comment said.
- scroblart 7y ago
  It is doing the great and worthy work of connecting consumers with the products they desire.
  - na85 7y ago
    That's neither great nor worthy. A truly good product sells itself. All advertising is just manipulation.
    - OmarShehata 7y ago
      "A truly great product sells itself" is one of the most persistent myths engineers believe. I don't understand how people can still believe this when it's so obviously false. It's a nice story, that if you make something great you'll get what you deserve. That sounds fair, but there's no reason to believe the market works this way. A "truly great product" that no one (or not enough people) know about will go out of business and disappear. Good advertising is just communication.
    - mindcrime 7y ago
      A truly good product sells itself. That's completely absurd. How can a product "sell itself" if nobody knows it exists, or knows how great it is? How do they find out those things? Well, in part, by advertising. I heartily agree that some advertising is manipulative and anti-social... but I can't buy this "all advertising is just manipulation" stuff.
  - _bxg1 7y ago
    The problem is with global brands that continue to advertise anyway. You can make the "discovery" argument for upstarts and niche businesses, but when Coke or Exxon are advertising to me, there is no pretense of giving me information I didn't already have. At some point it's purely about associating one's product with vaguely positive imagery and embedding it just a little bit deeper into everyone's consiousness. No end-consumers benefit from that.
  - edflsafoiewq 7y ago
    There is probably some component of that in advertising, but most of it is about selling people Thneeds.
  - drongoking 7y ago
    I think this statement satisfies a working definition of irony: about half the audience is in on the joke, and the other half earnestly believes it. I guess that's also true of trolling. Kudos, I suppose.
- AlexCoventry 7y ago
  BITD, the idea was going to be that ads would connect commercial offerings to people who would actually appreciate them... Hasn't really worked out that way, though.
- xixixao 7y ago
  1. Ad tech is a product which ~10 million businesses and people online are willing to pay for (over $100B/year), for several years now. It’s extremely unlikely that it provides no positive effect to all these customers. 2. Ad Tech is trying to make advertising experience better (even if it might be failing at the moment). People working on it believe that more relevant ads are a better experience (or less annoying), than completely irrelevant ads (which you can easily find on traditional TV or in print media). 3. AdTech (which GP kinda mentioned) pays for a lot of things that are available for free and likely wouldn’t be otherwise, including open source software development (Angular, React) and technology such as video calling or video publishing.
  - cbsks 7y ago
    Serious question: do you use an ad blocker when browsing the internet? Edit: I ask that because I use an ad blocker, as does everyone that I know. And I can’t think of a way to reconcile blocking ads with truly believing that ads are good for me. I am strongly anti-advertising, but I always like to hear from people with an opposite point of view.
    - earthboundkid 7y ago
      I work in publishing. Multiple times I have seen developers who were running ad blockers and then had trouble figuring out why their own sites weren’t loading properly.
    - xixixao 7y ago
      No, I have never used an ad blocker, and I know plenty of people who aren’t bothered to either. I am pretty UX-focused, but I don’t frequent any sites were I would think: god, this is unusable because of the ads. (I do find sites where UX is bad for other reasons) My current biggest annoyance is that I was trying to hack something on iOS, opened bunch of medium articles and now I am being forced to pay for it, which I’m pretty sure would not be warranted given my usage of it. (I do pay for other services where provided value outweighs cost, like say Spotify). I’d take ad-supported Medium over pay-wall Medium any day (as a customer, maybe as a producer ads would not be a viable model).
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jsd1982 7y ago
Please elaborate and also please always feel free to do so!
kortilla 7y ago
Thinking of things less meaningful doesn’t suddenly make something meaningful in the general sense. Both can still be pretty meaningless when it comes to advancing society long term. Optimal auction algorithms for ad placement can be interesting technical work and there can be some interesting economics work in there for price discovery, but in the grand scheme of things it’s not very meaningful to the broader world. You won’t be getting a Nobel prize and your kids and grandkids won’t even be impressed with what you do. Side note: don’t talk about downvotes coming for your post. It’s a sure way to ensure it and it’s boring.
ineedasername 7y ago
You present a false dichotomy to represent my view as one end of "ad tech bad" with the other "ad tech good" or something along those lines. However when contrasted with helping explore the solar system and helping to build an ad-bidding platform, I think there's a clear winner in which pushed humanity forward as a civilization. You also attribute to me beliefs I don't state. Lamenting the tremendous talent that has gone into ad tech instead of what I would consider more worth while endeavors doesn't mean I don't value it at all. Ad tech has facilitated robust sets of nominally "free" tools that certainly have some value. My opinion of the field, however, is that the "hard" problems it contains are neither as hard nor as meaningful as other areas that have attracted less talent. It seems you'd like to attribute to me opinions that are "black or white", but I'm afraid my views on things are not so simple, and as such not so easy a subject for simple rebuttal.
- xixixao 7y ago
  I’m glad that this your view, thanks for the clarification. You did literally write that ad tech is on the “opposite end of meaningful work spectrum”, and we both agree that space exploration is certainly on the positive end of it. This literally mirrors the definition of black and white (ends of the color spectrum). I am sure you are right in that there areas that would deserve more talent given their impact. Care to elaborate which ones stand out in your mind? (Besides space exploration?)

GoOnThenDoTell 7y ago

I honestly couldn’t think of a positive thing for adtech. Do share

theaustinseven 7y ago
How do you think all of the startups on here really achieve the "viral" growth they all talk about? Heavily targeted ads have allowed niche businesses to get off the ground and become profitable in a way that was not previously possible. Agreed there are problems, and agreed they don't allow much(if any) real control over the targeting from the target's side of things, but to say that don't do any real good is unimaginative as the previous comment said.
scroblart 7y ago
It is doing the great and worthy work of connecting consumers with the products they desire.
- na85 7y ago
  That's neither great nor worthy. A truly good product sells itself. All advertising is just manipulation.
  - OmarShehata 7y ago
    "A truly great product sells itself" is one of the most persistent myths engineers believe. I don't understand how people can still believe this when it's so obviously false. It's a nice story, that if you make something great you'll get what you deserve. That sounds fair, but there's no reason to believe the market works this way. A "truly great product" that no one (or not enough people) know about will go out of business and disappear. Good advertising is just communication.
  - mindcrime 7y ago
    A truly good product sells itself. That's completely absurd. How can a product "sell itself" if nobody knows it exists, or knows how great it is? How do they find out those things? Well, in part, by advertising. I heartily agree that some advertising is manipulative and anti-social... but I can't buy this "all advertising is just manipulation" stuff.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  The problem is with global brands that continue to advertise anyway. You can make the "discovery" argument for upstarts and niche businesses, but when Coke or Exxon are advertising to me, there is no pretense of giving me information I didn't already have. At some point it's purely about associating one's product with vaguely positive imagery and embedding it just a little bit deeper into everyone's consiousness. No end-consumers benefit from that.
- edflsafoiewq 7y ago
  There is probably some component of that in advertising, but most of it is about selling people Thneeds.
- drongoking 7y ago
  I think this statement satisfies a working definition of irony: about half the audience is in on the joke, and the other half earnestly believes it. I guess that's also true of trolling. Kudos, I suppose.
AlexCoventry 7y ago
BITD, the idea was going to be that ads would connect commercial offerings to people who would actually appreciate them... Hasn't really worked out that way, though.
xixixao 7y ago
1. Ad tech is a product which ~10 million businesses and people online are willing to pay for (over $100B/year), for several years now. It’s extremely unlikely that it provides no positive effect to all these customers. 2. Ad Tech is trying to make advertising experience better (even if it might be failing at the moment). People working on it believe that more relevant ads are a better experience (or less annoying), than completely irrelevant ads (which you can easily find on traditional TV or in print media). 3. AdTech (which GP kinda mentioned) pays for a lot of things that are available for free and likely wouldn’t be otherwise, including open source software development (Angular, React) and technology such as video calling or video publishing.
- cbsks 7y ago
  Serious question: do you use an ad blocker when browsing the internet? Edit: I ask that because I use an ad blocker, as does everyone that I know. And I can’t think of a way to reconcile blocking ads with truly believing that ads are good for me. I am strongly anti-advertising, but I always like to hear from people with an opposite point of view.
  - earthboundkid 7y ago
    I work in publishing. Multiple times I have seen developers who were running ad blockers and then had trouble figuring out why their own sites weren’t loading properly.
  - xixixao 7y ago
    No, I have never used an ad blocker, and I know plenty of people who aren’t bothered to either. I am pretty UX-focused, but I don’t frequent any sites were I would think: god, this is unusable because of the ads. (I do find sites where UX is bad for other reasons) My current biggest annoyance is that I was trying to hack something on iOS, opened bunch of medium articles and now I am being forced to pay for it, which I’m pretty sure would not be warranted given my usage of it. (I do pay for other services where provided value outweighs cost, like say Spotify). I’d take ad-supported Medium over pay-wall Medium any day (as a customer, maybe as a producer ads would not be a viable model).

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

jsd1982 7y ago

Please elaborate and also please always feel free to do so!

kortilla 7y ago

Thinking of things less meaningful doesn’t suddenly make something meaningful in the general sense. Both can still be pretty meaningless when it comes to advancing society long term. Optimal auction algorithms for ad placement can be interesting technical work and there can be some interesting economics work in there for price discovery, but in the grand scheme of things it’s not very meaningful to the broader world. You won’t be getting a Nobel prize and your kids and grandkids won’t even be impressed with what you do. Side note: don’t talk about downvotes coming for your post. It’s a sure way to ensure it and it’s boring.

ineedasername 7y ago

You present a false dichotomy to represent my view as one end of "ad tech bad" with the other "ad tech good" or something along those lines. However when contrasted with helping explore the solar system and helping to build an ad-bidding platform, I think there's a clear winner in which pushed humanity forward as a civilization. You also attribute to me beliefs I don't state. Lamenting the tremendous talent that has gone into ad tech instead of what I would consider more worth while endeavors doesn't mean I don't value it at all. Ad tech has facilitated robust sets of nominally "free" tools that certainly have some value. My opinion of the field, however, is that the "hard" problems it contains are neither as hard nor as meaningful as other areas that have attracted less talent. It seems you'd like to attribute to me opinions that are "black or white", but I'm afraid my views on things are not so simple, and as such not so easy a subject for simple rebuttal.

xixixao 7y ago
I’m glad that this your view, thanks for the clarification. You did literally write that ad tech is on the “opposite end of meaningful work spectrum”, and we both agree that space exploration is certainly on the positive end of it. This literally mirrors the definition of black and white (ends of the color spectrum). I am sure you are right in that there areas that would deserve more talent given their impact. Care to elaborate which ones stand out in your mind? (Besides space exploration?)