4 ms·

Breaking news: a huge advertising company would like you to give them as much of your personal information as possible and encourages you to use their services

Breaking news: a huge advertising company would like you to give them as much of your personal information as possible and encourages you to use their services more frequently, for more reasons, and for longer durations each time so they can show you more ads and make more money from the advertisers. I agree with most of this (since it basically says "I dunno, I don't like Google, they have a slim chance of creating a successful social network but there is a chance", otherwise known as "no shit, Sherlock"). But why is advertising depicted so deplorable by all these tech pundits? I honestly don't get why these people lionize the idea of creating good products sold for money and vilify the idea of creating good ads sold for money.

william42 15y ago
Because of the whole «pleasing advertisers becoming more important than pleasing customers» thing, and the fact that tech pundits don't have to worry about having enough money budgeted for something.
- nl 15y ago
  Media has dealt with this problem for years. Some media outlets let the advertising money corrupt them, and some don't. Just because some do doesn't mean all must. Exactly the same argument can be made about product companies. They can become more profitable in the short term by making shoddy products that break after a while. Is that a sensible strategy? I don't know, but I think it's exactly the same as saying that pleasing advertisers becoming more important than pleasing customers.
  - william42 15y ago
    I don't really believe that part(but it's a meme that goes around), but the important part of this is that a tech pundit paid to evaluate a service doesn't really need to consider «Is this product worth its price» the same way you and I do when we decide whether to purchase it, because they're already purchasing it to evaluate it.
stephth 15y ago
Perceptually, ads don't offer value to the users experience, quite the contrary. This sums it up nicely: Another salient difference: Google: Thanks for looking at 100s of ads you hate. Apple: Thanks for buying 100s of dollars of stuff you love. https://twitter.com/#!/hotdogsladies/status/81018502886064128 https://twitter.com/#!/hotdogsladies/status/8101850288606412...
- ignifero 15y ago
  You do realize twitter is a form of promotion, aka advertising. Also, isnt that comparing Apples to oranges
  - stephth 15y ago
    You do realize twitter is a form of promotion, aka advertising. You meant 'marketing', right?
- Kylekramer 15y ago
  But if Google does its job, ads do offer value to the user. I hate bad ads as much as anything in the world, but the whole point of Google is to create good ads. And I think that is a noble goal.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - extension 15y ago
    Google's job is to sell ads to advertisers. Making the ads valuable to you is one strategy to achieve this, but not the only one.
  - stephth 15y ago
    I'm not arguing if it's noble or not. But how often does an ad on Google add value to you as a user? I'm genuinely curious.
    - 15y ago
sudont 15y ago
It sets a precedent that tracking someone's movements is A-OK. Marco also has a stake in a wholly different idea of what advertising is. Notice "The Deck"s advertisement in his sidebar? He doesn't hate advertisements at all. He wants ad networks that are targeted, instead of being spammed out across every site and requiring invasive tracking to determine who and what product to show.
- Kylekramer 15y ago
  Why is The Deck targeting one specific market fine but Google's larger scale targetting attempts spammy and invasive?
  - sudont 15y ago
    I'm going to quote myself: "It sets a precedent that tracking someone's movements is A-OK." Anything that large will require metrics and user tracking to understand what to show. It matches the ads to the user, not to the site, by invading the user's privacy to understand exactly what to show.
    - nl 15y ago
      It sets a precedent that tracking someone's movements is A-OK. Not sure how you get this from Google building a new destination site. Doesn't this mean they'd do less cross-site tracking (since presumably they will spend more time on this new site)?
extension 15y ago
I honestly don't get why these people lionize the idea of creating good products sold for money and vilify the idea of creating good ads sold for money Here are some potential reasons, which I do not necessarily personally endorse: A good faith purchase of a product or service is a transparent and mutually beneficial arrangement. Ideally, each party acquires something more valuable to them than what they gave up and there is no deception necessary. Throw advertising in the deal and it becomes more of a competition. Now you have three or more parties involved and none of them have an explicit agreement on everything they are giving and receiving. The value flowing from consumer to producer to advertiser is left ambiguous. Anyone who has experience with contracts knows that ambiguity = conflict. Also, it could be considered inefficient, in a macro-economic sense, to spend resources just to convince people to buy other things. And finally, we've all seen what happens when advertising goes horribly wrong: spam.

william42 15y ago

Because of the whole «pleasing advertisers becoming more important than pleasing customers» thing, and the fact that tech pundits don't have to worry about having enough money budgeted for something.

nl 15y ago
Media has dealt with this problem for years. Some media outlets let the advertising money corrupt them, and some don't. Just because some do doesn't mean all must. Exactly the same argument can be made about product companies. They can become more profitable in the short term by making shoddy products that break after a while. Is that a sensible strategy? I don't know, but I think it's exactly the same as saying that pleasing advertisers becoming more important than pleasing customers.
- william42 15y ago
  I don't really believe that part(but it's a meme that goes around), but the important part of this is that a tech pundit paid to evaluate a service doesn't really need to consider «Is this product worth its price» the same way you and I do when we decide whether to purchase it, because they're already purchasing it to evaluate it.

stephth 15y ago

Perceptually, ads don't offer value to the users experience, quite the contrary. This sums it up nicely: Another salient difference: Google: Thanks for looking at 100s of ads you hate. Apple: Thanks for buying 100s of dollars of stuff you love. https://twitter.com/#!/hotdogsladies/status/81018502886064128 https://twitter.com/#!/hotdogsladies/status/8101850288606412...

ignifero 15y ago
You do realize twitter is a form of promotion, aka advertising. Also, isnt that comparing Apples to oranges
- stephth 15y ago
  You do realize twitter is a form of promotion, aka advertising. You meant 'marketing', right?
Kylekramer 15y ago
But if Google does its job, ads do offer value to the user. I hate bad ads as much as anything in the world, but the whole point of Google is to create good ads. And I think that is a noble goal.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- extension 15y ago
  Google's job is to sell ads to advertisers. Making the ads valuable to you is one strategy to achieve this, but not the only one.
- stephth 15y ago
  I'm not arguing if it's noble or not. But how often does an ad on Google add value to you as a user? I'm genuinely curious.
  - 15y ago

sudont 15y ago

It sets a precedent that tracking someone's movements is A-OK. Marco also has a stake in a wholly different idea of what advertising is. Notice "The Deck"s advertisement in his sidebar? He doesn't hate advertisements at all. He wants ad networks that are targeted, instead of being spammed out across every site and requiring invasive tracking to determine who and what product to show.

Kylekramer 15y ago
Why is The Deck targeting one specific market fine but Google's larger scale targetting attempts spammy and invasive?
- sudont 15y ago
  I'm going to quote myself: "It sets a precedent that tracking someone's movements is A-OK." Anything that large will require metrics and user tracking to understand what to show. It matches the ads to the user, not to the site, by invading the user's privacy to understand exactly what to show.
  - nl 15y ago
    It sets a precedent that tracking someone's movements is A-OK. Not sure how you get this from Google building a new destination site. Doesn't this mean they'd do less cross-site tracking (since presumably they will spend more time on this new site)?

extension 15y ago

I honestly don't get why these people lionize the idea of creating good products sold for money and vilify the idea of creating good ads sold for money Here are some potential reasons, which I do not necessarily personally endorse: A good faith purchase of a product or service is a transparent and mutually beneficial arrangement. Ideally, each party acquires something more valuable to them than what they gave up and there is no deception necessary. Throw advertising in the deal and it becomes more of a competition. Now you have three or more parties involved and none of them have an explicit agreement on everything they are giving and receiving. The value flowing from consumer to producer to advertiser is left ambiguous. Anyone who has experience with contracts knows that ambiguity = conflict. Also, it could be considered inefficient, in a macro-economic sense, to spend resources just to convince people to buy other things. And finally, we've all seen what happens when advertising goes horribly wrong: spam.