17 ms·

In some stupid meeting somewhere: A: ...and in conclusion, it's a win-win situation. Users will benefit from ads and our revenue will go up. B: People don't l

by avian 6y ago

In some stupid meeting somewhere: A: ...and in conclusion, it's a win-win situation. Users will benefit from ads and our revenue will go up. B: People don't like ads on their TV. A: But they do. I refer you to slides 18 through 25 where you can see engagement metrics for our ad rollout on the old model. If people wouldn't like ads they wouldn't be clicking on them so much . B: I don't like ads. Do you like ads on your TV? A: No. B: Does anyone here like ads? A: That's not the point. No-one here is in our target group or representative of our user behaviors. C: Ok, if there are no more objections we're going with A's plan then. B, can I see you in my office after we finish here?

tangjurine 6y ago
We're in the middle of transitioning from making decisions based on pure intuition to being purely logical and data-driven... I wonder if that's such a good idea. There was this article a while back I read that talked about how native peoples made poisonous foods edible. Some processes were extremely convoluted and unreasonable, but it worked, and efforts by a "reasonable" man to make the process more efficient would have certainly doomed the whole tribe. Examples like that really make me question the idea that an efficient economy is the best economy (let alone if capitalism and free markets are ideal).
- Siira 6y ago
  This is a general counterargument to anything different from the status quo. You should never trust general counterarguments.
  - jskdvsksnb 6y ago
    > You should never trust general counterarguments. Noted.
- qcq36 6y ago
  There’s something rather extraordinary about this community, in particular, throwing a fit about advertising in products. This discussion has gone from “fuck that guy” — overlooking that almost every employer represented here has one and the larger employers have entire divisions of them — to “capitalism is bad” in three messages. That’s impressive. It’s almost as if the root cause of why these business models are horrible is slowly becoming more obvious to the people who engineer more clever ways to collect data and serve advertisements to enable those business models (or who work in a cost center orbiting such an organization). Samsung learned from the industry represented here and it’s disconcerting to observe the lack of self-awareness in the vitriol being leveled at them from here. Equally disconcerting is that the same people rending their clothes over this probably overlook their Gmail messages being scanned and ads in their inbox, but a television, mein gott, a bridge too far. This is your world, HN. We all live in it now. Sucks, no?
  - pjc50 6y ago
    Fairly sure HN has been complaining about this for years. We're not a hivemind; it's not even the case that most posters work for FAANG, ycombinator or even "startups" per se.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    "Samsung learned from the industry represented here" Not everyone on HN works in adtech, and very likely none of the people in this thread do either.
  - com2kid 6y ago
    Samsung positions themselves as a high end brand. These ads are appearing on higher end tv models. If their $300 bargain basement basement tv was ads supported to keep the price low, eeh, maybe. But that isn't the case here. Consumer Gmail is free. If Office 365 premium ever starts showing ads, people will also become upset.
    - Sohcahtoa82 6y ago
      > If Office 365 premium ever starts showing ads, people will also become upset. And Microsoft will do nothing about it because people will use it anyways.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
    Hm. Maybe. Maybe capitalism in its current form is bad nonetheless? Or an exploiting sham? How do you explain companies like BlackRock, Inc. and similar being on the boards of almost any important corporation? Isn't that a conflict of interest? Or to put it another way, they are implementing communism by other means, with the same bad outcomes for the masses. What difference is "Strategische Konzernentwicklung/corporate development/group development" to a Soviet 5-year plan, aggravated by quarterly reviews and HFT? Gennadiy Gosplanovich would approve with a hysteric laugh. I know. Been in several of them. Fortunately got out :) edit: Of course you could call me a stoned hippie leftover from the 70ies, but that really was before my time. I'd counter that with management is on coke, crack or other medications which influence empathy in a bad way. Simple as that. (Now playing "Ka-Ching!" with a pitchfork on the karmic harp)
- chongli 6y ago
  Was this the essay you were referring to [1]? I think you’re bang on with this comparison. My dad and I have long complained how (for example) grocery stores seem to constantly cancel our favourite products. We know it’s not the manufacturer because the product is still on their website. My dad and I even have a term for the people in the head office who make the decision to phase out our favourite products: spreadsheet guys. It really captures the inanity of a person who just sits around crunching numbers all day and killing off people’s beloved products and showing small percentage quarterly gains... while destroying goodwill and long term customer loyalty in the process. [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret-of-our-success/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret...
  - lsaferite 6y ago
    Number driven vs. people driven is how I usually delineate these things. I find myself strongly in the people driven camp and dealing with purely numbers driven people is highly frustrating.
  - taneq 6y ago
    Hmm. I feel like there's a spiritual connection between your spreadsheet guys and the apocryphal product expert at Campbell's Soups or wherever that tried to focus-test "the perfect soup" that would optimize sales. In the story, they realized that there's no one "perfect soup" and they had to create different varieties. Likewise, there's no such thing as "the best product" at a supermarket. Everyone has their own spread of products and if you cancel low-performing product lines, sometimes it has unexpected effects. (Anecdatum: We used to exclusively do grocery shopping at Woolworths until they stopped selling the cans of chilli beans that we use for nachos. Now we do maybe 1/4 of our grocery shopping at Coles instead, costing Woolworths thousands of dollars a year in lost sales, just because we needed some chilli beans and might as well get the rest of our groceries while we're there.)
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      > Likewise, there's no such thing as "the best product" at a supermarket. I think the core observation behind the job of the spreadsheet guys is that, at scale, the choices within a family of products will approximate a normal distribution - so there will be a "best product" within each family; with a limited shelf space and a lot of different products to sell, this gives them a clear way to optimize for maximum revenue.
- walleeee 6y ago
  So long as a human remains in the loop somewhere no decision is "purely logical and data-driven", although you make a good point about the risks of chasing efficiency over all else
- gmadsen 6y ago
  in what world is removing poison to an acceptable level unreasonable? If the process is complicated and convoluted, but people don't die, then that seems reasonable to me. I don't really follow this line of thinking.
  - nootropicat 6y ago
    I think he meant that the process wasn't explained as 'removing poison' but as 'this is how we do things' or 'it's to appease the spirits'. If the poison was something that's slowly acting (years) 'rational' way that would remove 'superstitions' would poison everyone. Of course, knowing the real reason is preferable, but not always possible, especially in a premodern setting. Before the discovery of prions nobody really knew why cannibalism is dangerous, yet it was a taboo in most of the civilized world.
- dfxm12 6y ago
  It would be more correct to say that today, decisions are being based on increasing short term gain. I think that's the issue more so than transitioning decision making to be based on logic and data and also supports your conclusion about the economy better.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
Nextgrid 6y ago
I suspect that a large part of this ad- and marketing-driven economy is based on this. The reason they predict their revenue will go up (which it will, at least in the short term until the market adjusts) is because they have a lot of customers already lined up to pay them to show ads on their TVs. Those customers' marketing departments decided to pay money to include their ads on TVs because a similar process was followed and they (rightfully) predict that they will get "engagement" on those ads (which the marketing department will rely on to justify or increase their salaries). The problem is that this "engagement" will mostly be just annoyed customers mis-clicking or trying whatever it takes to dismiss the ad and not actually intending to purchase the advertised product, thus not contributing to the company's end goal of selling more product. I am not convinced that the majority of the advertising & marketing initiatives out there actually translate to more profit. Marketing departments will brag about "conversions" all day long but how many of those are either accidental clicks or people who were already determined to purchase your product anyway (looking at the companies who buy Google AdWords on their own brand - if someone's searching for your brand on Google your website will already be the top result - a click on the ad is not a true "conversion" in this case and is just wasted money). Ultimately, people have a finite amount of time and disposable money, and throwing more ads at this "problem" won't solve it. Your conversions will go up because of accidental clicks (and your marketing department will capitalize on that to justify their salaries/raises), but that doesn't magically give the consumer more money to actually go and buy your product so your profits will not increase.
- taneq 6y ago
  > The problem is that this "engagement" will mostly be just annoyed customers mis-clicking or trying whatever it takes to dismiss the ad and not actually intending to purchase the advertised product "Amazing! The smaller we make the 'X' button, the more people love them!"
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    Or make the X button almost the same color as the background. TuneIn does this.
kalleboo 6y ago
Well it's more like "people hate ads, but next time they buy a new TV, the ads will make our TV $10 cheaper than the other guy and they'll buy it anyway" It's the same thing in the airline industry - people will complain all day long about legroom and being treated as cattle, but the next time they buy a ticket they vote with their wallets when they sort the flight list by price and choose the cheapest option.
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago
  I don't know why this comment hasn't been upvoted more since it's absolutely spot on.
- swiley 6y ago
  I'll bet the difference that my $50 projector was way cheaper than whatever TV this is and it doesn't have ads (although it also doesn't seem to have working DPMS but that might just be my Xorg config.)
- defnotashton2 6y ago
  Airlines are controlled and limited by regulation to where its no longer "free" and you can't vote with your dollar cause you are a guarantee. There are very few airlines that offer more legroom and even then it's not comfortable. Same with telecoms. TV industry lacks competition in this regard as well but largely due to the centralized manufacturing. I also blame modern ip law as many of these companies have rediculous protections increasing cost of entry.
  - selectodude 6y ago
    >There are very few airlines that offer more legroom and even then it's not comfortable. American tried. American failed. Nobody was willing to pay more. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/04/business/american-air-to-put-more-room-in-coach.html https://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/04/business/american-air-to-...
    - derekp7 6y ago
cm2187 6y ago
Would be interesting to see how many of the people in that room would buy a Samsung TV for themselves.
EForEndeavour 6y ago
This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes for understanding business and the modern world in general: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." —Upton Sinclair https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair
- mjburgess 6y ago
  I think a better (less cynical) way of interpreting that is this: Jobs which require a belief to perform sincerely, select people who hold that belief sincerely. This principle should undo a lot of cynicism. Yes, eg., people in marketing often "really believe" their efforts are a net-positive, and no it isn't often, "mere cynicism" on their part. Rather, what has happened, is that most who view marketing cynically, do not take a job in it. We often misidentify this process of selecting for sincerity as a psychological-reality in those who are selected. Marketers "make money through cynical means" whilst sincerely believing they don't.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    I've met marketers and product people of both kinds. The cynical ones seemed to half hate their jobs, and justify the SOP clickbait as keeping up with the negative sum game they have to play. The less cynical ones seemed to be kind of detached from externalities, and described their marketing copy as "standard marketing puffery" to justify it to legal.
- acheron 6y ago
  It took seemingly forever, but eventually we (mostly) got HN commenters to stop saying "LOL Betteridge's law of headlines!", along with a Wikipedia link as if we hadn't heard it a hundred times before, to every article. Hopefully we can get to that point with this stupid quote too.
  - EForEndeavour 6y ago
    I guess I don't read HN enough that I don't recall ever seeing it here, but a quick Google search confirms your impression: this quote has been super prolific on the site. I hope I at least reached a few readers who hadn't seen it before.
cleaningcompany 6y ago
Absolutely. Can I have a few minutes before I come to your office in order to come up with a list of things I least like when I see an ad? This is a great opportunity to increase engagement from the likes of me by considering what improvement can be made in your ad campaign.
dangerboysteve 6y ago
You forgot to add: "We need to think of our devices as small hyper local billboards with untapped potential"
barkingcat 6y ago
You have the last part of the conversation wrong: B: I don't like ads. Do you like ads on your TV? A: Yes of course I do. If you don't like ads on your TV why are you working here. B: Does anyone here like ads? A+group: yes of course we all like ads (lying in a meeting is not a crime, and occurs all over the world) C: ok no objections, we love it! Ship it! A, C gets a paycheck at the end of the day. B gets fired if they don't change their mind.
hinkley 6y ago
There's a practically throw-away line in Ready Player One where the Bad Guy says, "And research has found that we can cover 49% of the screen before our customers begin to experience seizures." Yep, sounds about right.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  Sounds like Blipverts in Max Headroom.
  - hinkley 6y ago
    Given that the story is full of 80's nerd culture references, that's probably not an accident, although they may have made it a little too subtle.
deeg 6y ago
I think the reason is slightly different. I worked for a web company that made most of its money on ads. Companies have an army of marketing "specialists" whose job it is to find "incremental revenue". Their performance is rated on how much revenue they can add to the company. The possibility that it may cost users in the long run is not part of their calculus. I learned to hate meetings where someone mentioned "incremental revenue". Big companies need to have an ombudsman department who have the explicit job of reviewing all these schemes and nixing any that will likely lose customers.
tobyhinloopen 6y ago
This is too real. I had discussions like this about a big fat cookie wall we needed to track users. “Why do we need to track users?” “To give them recommendations!” “But this wall you’re using takes 4 seconds to load. Do you think this improves user experience?” “Yes, because the content is adjusted for the user. Besides, we did a test and 96% clicks accept, so the users don’t mind” “Where is the decline button?” “...” “There is no other option. You have accept, or you have to hse settings with 100 checkboxes. I’m surprised 4% even bothered to check these!” “Yeah but most just accept, so they don’t mind, and users really want the targeted content” If I have to add it, I’ll at least make sure it won’t take freaking 4 seconds to load.
fouc 6y ago
"No-one here is in our target group or representative of our user behaviors." is absolutely how marketing turns evil. Basically taking advantage of people that don't know how to avoid ads, etc.
kf 6y ago
It took a really long time but eventually Facebook ads started giving me things I actually wanted to buy and have bought.

by avian 6y ago

tangjurine 6y ago

We're in the middle of transitioning from making decisions based on pure intuition to being purely logical and data-driven... I wonder if that's such a good idea. There was this article a while back I read that talked about how native peoples made poisonous foods edible. Some processes were extremely convoluted and unreasonable, but it worked, and efforts by a "reasonable" man to make the process more efficient would have certainly doomed the whole tribe. Examples like that really make me question the idea that an efficient economy is the best economy (let alone if capitalism and free markets are ideal).

Siira 6y ago
This is a general counterargument to anything different from the status quo. You should never trust general counterarguments.
- jskdvsksnb 6y ago
  > You should never trust general counterarguments. Noted.
qcq36 6y ago
There’s something rather extraordinary about this community, in particular, throwing a fit about advertising in products. This discussion has gone from “fuck that guy” — overlooking that almost every employer represented here has one and the larger employers have entire divisions of them — to “capitalism is bad” in three messages. That’s impressive. It’s almost as if the root cause of why these business models are horrible is slowly becoming more obvious to the people who engineer more clever ways to collect data and serve advertisements to enable those business models (or who work in a cost center orbiting such an organization). Samsung learned from the industry represented here and it’s disconcerting to observe the lack of self-awareness in the vitriol being leveled at them from here. Equally disconcerting is that the same people rending their clothes over this probably overlook their Gmail messages being scanned and ads in their inbox, but a television, mein gott, a bridge too far. This is your world, HN. We all live in it now. Sucks, no?
- pjc50 6y ago
  Fairly sure HN has been complaining about this for years. We're not a hivemind; it's not even the case that most posters work for FAANG, ycombinator or even "startups" per se.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  "Samsung learned from the industry represented here" Not everyone on HN works in adtech, and very likely none of the people in this thread do either.
- com2kid 6y ago
  Samsung positions themselves as a high end brand. These ads are appearing on higher end tv models. If their $300 bargain basement basement tv was ads supported to keep the price low, eeh, maybe. But that isn't the case here. Consumer Gmail is free. If Office 365 premium ever starts showing ads, people will also become upset.
  - Sohcahtoa82 6y ago
    > If Office 365 premium ever starts showing ads, people will also become upset. And Microsoft will do nothing about it because people will use it anyways.
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
  Hm. Maybe. Maybe capitalism in its current form is bad nonetheless? Or an exploiting sham? How do you explain companies like BlackRock, Inc. and similar being on the boards of almost any important corporation? Isn't that a conflict of interest? Or to put it another way, they are implementing communism by other means, with the same bad outcomes for the masses. What difference is "Strategische Konzernentwicklung/corporate development/group development" to a Soviet 5-year plan, aggravated by quarterly reviews and HFT? Gennadiy Gosplanovich would approve with a hysteric laugh. I know. Been in several of them. Fortunately got out :) edit: Of course you could call me a stoned hippie leftover from the 70ies, but that really was before my time. I'd counter that with management is on coke, crack or other medications which influence empathy in a bad way. Simple as that. (Now playing "Ka-Ching!" with a pitchfork on the karmic harp)
chongli 6y ago
Was this the essay you were referring to [1]? I think you’re bang on with this comparison. My dad and I have long complained how (for example) grocery stores seem to constantly cancel our favourite products. We know it’s not the manufacturer because the product is still on their website. My dad and I even have a term for the people in the head office who make the decision to phase out our favourite products: spreadsheet guys. It really captures the inanity of a person who just sits around crunching numbers all day and killing off people’s beloved products and showing small percentage quarterly gains... while destroying goodwill and long term customer loyalty in the process. [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret-of-our-success/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret...
- lsaferite 6y ago
  Number driven vs. people driven is how I usually delineate these things. I find myself strongly in the people driven camp and dealing with purely numbers driven people is highly frustrating.
- taneq 6y ago
  Hmm. I feel like there's a spiritual connection between your spreadsheet guys and the apocryphal product expert at Campbell's Soups or wherever that tried to focus-test "the perfect soup" that would optimize sales. In the story, they realized that there's no one "perfect soup" and they had to create different varieties. Likewise, there's no such thing as "the best product" at a supermarket. Everyone has their own spread of products and if you cancel low-performing product lines, sometimes it has unexpected effects. (Anecdatum: We used to exclusively do grocery shopping at Woolworths until they stopped selling the cans of chilli beans that we use for nachos. Now we do maybe 1/4 of our grocery shopping at Coles instead, costing Woolworths thousands of dollars a year in lost sales, just because we needed some chilli beans and might as well get the rest of our groceries while we're there.)
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    > Likewise, there's no such thing as "the best product" at a supermarket. I think the core observation behind the job of the spreadsheet guys is that, at scale, the choices within a family of products will approximate a normal distribution - so there will be a "best product" within each family; with a limited shelf space and a lot of different products to sell, this gives them a clear way to optimize for maximum revenue.
walleeee 6y ago
So long as a human remains in the loop somewhere no decision is "purely logical and data-driven", although you make a good point about the risks of chasing efficiency over all else
gmadsen 6y ago
in what world is removing poison to an acceptable level unreasonable? If the process is complicated and convoluted, but people don't die, then that seems reasonable to me. I don't really follow this line of thinking.
- nootropicat 6y ago
  I think he meant that the process wasn't explained as 'removing poison' but as 'this is how we do things' or 'it's to appease the spirits'. If the poison was something that's slowly acting (years) 'rational' way that would remove 'superstitions' would poison everyone. Of course, knowing the real reason is preferable, but not always possible, especially in a premodern setting. Before the discovery of prions nobody really knew why cannibalism is dangerous, yet it was a taboo in most of the civilized world.
dfxm12 6y ago
It would be more correct to say that today, decisions are being based on increasing short term gain. I think that's the issue more so than transitioning decision making to be based on logic and data and also supports your conclusion about the economy better.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

Nextgrid 6y ago

I suspect that a large part of this ad- and marketing-driven economy is based on this. The reason they predict their revenue will go up (which it will, at least in the short term until the market adjusts) is because they have a lot of customers already lined up to pay them to show ads on their TVs. Those customers' marketing departments decided to pay money to include their ads on TVs because a similar process was followed and they (rightfully) predict that they will get "engagement" on those ads (which the marketing department will rely on to justify or increase their salaries). The problem is that this "engagement" will mostly be just annoyed customers mis-clicking or trying whatever it takes to dismiss the ad and not actually intending to purchase the advertised product, thus not contributing to the company's end goal of selling more product. I am not convinced that the majority of the advertising & marketing initiatives out there actually translate to more profit. Marketing departments will brag about "conversions" all day long but how many of those are either accidental clicks or people who were already determined to purchase your product anyway (looking at the companies who buy Google AdWords on their own brand - if someone's searching for your brand on Google your website will already be the top result - a click on the ad is not a true "conversion" in this case and is just wasted money). Ultimately, people have a finite amount of time and disposable money, and throwing more ads at this "problem" won't solve it. Your conversions will go up because of accidental clicks (and your marketing department will capitalize on that to justify their salaries/raises), but that doesn't magically give the consumer more money to actually go and buy your product so your profits will not increase.

taneq 6y ago
> The problem is that this "engagement" will mostly be just annoyed customers mis-clicking or trying whatever it takes to dismiss the ad and not actually intending to purchase the advertised product "Amazing! The smaller we make the 'X' button, the more people love them!"
- reaperducer 6y ago
  Or make the X button almost the same color as the background. TuneIn does this.

kalleboo 6y ago

Well it's more like "people hate ads, but next time they buy a new TV, the ads will make our TV $10 cheaper than the other guy and they'll buy it anyway" It's the same thing in the airline industry - people will complain all day long about legroom and being treated as cattle, but the next time they buy a ticket they vote with their wallets when they sort the flight list by price and choose the cheapest option.

ChuckNorris89 6y ago
I don't know why this comment hasn't been upvoted more since it's absolutely spot on.
swiley 6y ago
I'll bet the difference that my $50 projector was way cheaper than whatever TV this is and it doesn't have ads (although it also doesn't seem to have working DPMS but that might just be my Xorg config.)
defnotashton2 6y ago
Airlines are controlled and limited by regulation to where its no longer "free" and you can't vote with your dollar cause you are a guarantee. There are very few airlines that offer more legroom and even then it's not comfortable. Same with telecoms. TV industry lacks competition in this regard as well but largely due to the centralized manufacturing. I also blame modern ip law as many of these companies have rediculous protections increasing cost of entry.
- selectodude 6y ago
  >There are very few airlines that offer more legroom and even then it's not comfortable. American tried. American failed. Nobody was willing to pay more. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/04/business/american-air-to-put-more-room-in-coach.html https://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/04/business/american-air-to-...
  - derekp7 6y ago

cm2187 6y ago

Would be interesting to see how many of the people in that room would buy a Samsung TV for themselves.

EForEndeavour 6y ago

This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes for understanding business and the modern world in general: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." —Upton Sinclair https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair

mjburgess 6y ago
I think a better (less cynical) way of interpreting that is this: Jobs which require a belief to perform sincerely, select people who hold that belief sincerely. This principle should undo a lot of cynicism. Yes, eg., people in marketing often "really believe" their efforts are a net-positive, and no it isn't often, "mere cynicism" on their part. Rather, what has happened, is that most who view marketing cynically, do not take a job in it. We often misidentify this process of selecting for sincerity as a psychological-reality in those who are selected. Marketers "make money through cynical means" whilst sincerely believing they don't.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  I've met marketers and product people of both kinds. The cynical ones seemed to half hate their jobs, and justify the SOP clickbait as keeping up with the negative sum game they have to play. The less cynical ones seemed to be kind of detached from externalities, and described their marketing copy as "standard marketing puffery" to justify it to legal.
acheron 6y ago
It took seemingly forever, but eventually we (mostly) got HN commenters to stop saying "LOL Betteridge's law of headlines!", along with a Wikipedia link as if we hadn't heard it a hundred times before, to every article. Hopefully we can get to that point with this stupid quote too.
- EForEndeavour 6y ago
  I guess I don't read HN enough that I don't recall ever seeing it here, but a quick Google search confirms your impression: this quote has been super prolific on the site. I hope I at least reached a few readers who hadn't seen it before.

cleaningcompany 6y ago

Absolutely. Can I have a few minutes before I come to your office in order to come up with a list of things I least like when I see an ad? This is a great opportunity to increase engagement from the likes of me by considering what improvement can be made in your ad campaign.

dangerboysteve 6y ago

You forgot to add: "We need to think of our devices as small hyper local billboards with untapped potential"

barkingcat 6y ago

You have the last part of the conversation wrong: B: I don't like ads. Do you like ads on your TV? A: Yes of course I do. If you don't like ads on your TV why are you working here. B: Does anyone here like ads? A+group: yes of course we all like ads (lying in a meeting is not a crime, and occurs all over the world) C: ok no objections, we love it! Ship it! A, C gets a paycheck at the end of the day. B gets fired if they don't change their mind.

hinkley 6y ago

There's a practically throw-away line in Ready Player One where the Bad Guy says, "And research has found that we can cover 49% of the screen before our customers begin to experience seizures." Yep, sounds about right.

reaperducer 6y ago
Sounds like Blipverts in Max Headroom.
- hinkley 6y ago
  Given that the story is full of 80's nerd culture references, that's probably not an accident, although they may have made it a little too subtle.

deeg 6y ago

I think the reason is slightly different. I worked for a web company that made most of its money on ads. Companies have an army of marketing "specialists" whose job it is to find "incremental revenue". Their performance is rated on how much revenue they can add to the company. The possibility that it may cost users in the long run is not part of their calculus. I learned to hate meetings where someone mentioned "incremental revenue". Big companies need to have an ombudsman department who have the explicit job of reviewing all these schemes and nixing any that will likely lose customers.

tobyhinloopen 6y ago

This is too real. I had discussions like this about a big fat cookie wall we needed to track users. “Why do we need to track users?” “To give them recommendations!” “But this wall you’re using takes 4 seconds to load. Do you think this improves user experience?” “Yes, because the content is adjusted for the user. Besides, we did a test and 96% clicks accept, so the users don’t mind” “Where is the decline button?” “...” “There is no other option. You have accept, or you have to hse settings with 100 checkboxes. I’m surprised 4% even bothered to check these!” “Yeah but most just accept, so they don’t mind, and users really want the targeted content” If I have to add it, I’ll at least make sure it won’t take freaking 4 seconds to load.

fouc 6y ago

"No-one here is in our target group or representative of our user behaviors." is absolutely how marketing turns evil. Basically taking advantage of people that don't know how to avoid ads, etc.

kf 6y ago

It took a really long time but eventually Facebook ads started giving me things I actually wanted to buy and have bought.