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Ask HN: What ads would you like to be shown online?
Granted this is an odd question and most of us would probably say no to ads in general.
But unless we want to start paying $5 for access to this newsletter, another $5 for another subscription and so on and so forth, ads on websites will be a standard way to generate revenue.
Now with all the privacy and user data that has been pillaged over the years, poor performance from an ad spend perspective and consistently poor delivery of remarketing ads we are essentially living in an era of a cesspit of ad options.
Curious to know what HN prefers when visiting websites:
- Do you prefer targeted ads OR website theme relevant/related ads (more discovery focused)?
- Is it preferable to have clearly visible ads or less intrusive such as Google Ads and Quora which effectively blends in with organic results?
- Text-based or image-based ads?
Having spent 8 years working across the marketing 'stack' one thing for sure is that ad-tech needs improvements for both the website user, owner and advertiser too.
- missedthecue 6y agoI prefer native ads that are targeted and relevant to my interests.
- melomal 6y agoThank you for the feedback. Native ads in my opinion are key and ultimately need to try and match up even more so with the content. As in style, colours, fonts etc.
- Triv888 6y agoI dont like targeted ads because they create yet another content bubble...
- melomal 6y agoThank you for the feedback! Targeted ads seem to get a love/hate relationship for many people.
- aww_dang 6y agoI like to see what people are selling. Ads don't bother me. Always interested to see new products. Retargetting etc. bores me because I'm already familiar with the product. The pitches can be obnoxious. All in all it is never a big deal for me with display ads, I can just scroll away.
- melomal 6y agoFirst hand experience retargeting gets <1% CR. But it's so cheap, like honestly so so cheap to run and forget about it that people just don't bother with the fine tuning. Thank you for the input, this is something that I would say is at the top of my list.
- forgotmypw17 6y agoI can host a website for 10 bucks a month, or 100 a year. Even a fregan like myself can scrape together that much. What exactly do I need to pay for that requires "monetizing"? If people like reading my drivel, they'll visit. Trying to monetize a newsletter or a blog with ads is a surefire way to join the race to the bottom of the quality space.
- melomal 6y agoCompletely agree but the reality of it is, most people want to monetize but they cannot outside of ads or ebooks etc. Your drivel may only reach X number of people but when you are getting Y amount of readers, I guarantee you will look to find a way to monetize, because your time is money. What about ads that have to adhere to a style guide of the website/blog? As it, the font styles, colours etc do not have to be exact match, but close enough that it would fit into the website. The other side of this is that Google has done this and so has Quora and sometimes it feels a little crappy that they do this.
- forgotmypw17 6y agoI don't agree, I will not look to find a way to monetize, because I do not work for money. My time is not money, my time is worth a lot more than that. In part, it is because I have been tempted by monetization before, after achieving a large readership on several websites I administered in the past, and it never worked out in my favor. Even when I received 10K USD in a year running non-tracking, text-only ads on one site, I think I was doing myself a disservice, cheapening the apparent/perceived value of the content. I don't want ads on my website, ever. And I think any website with ads is lowering its own value and the quality of the website and the perceived value of the content as well, and getting very little in return. Only large content aggregators who compile huge piles of content can make ads worth it. I don't see how font styles and colors affect the cost of the website. Could you elaborate on that, please? Quora has crap content, and I don't read it, nor click their links. Their entire objective is monetization and lock-in, and it is very rare that I see a Quora article that's worth the trouble of obtaining it. Putting text which you wrote into Quora is doing yourself a disservice, because it is immediately placed behind a monetization barrier, and made inaccessible to many. Google has a very good content engine, but they are a content aggregator, as mentioned above. They are also just barely balancing out between making content more accessible vs placing it behind a barrier inaccessible to many.