6 ms·

Just curious, why are you opposed to search ads? They are already targeted by your search query, so don't fundamentally rely on tracking data.

toddmorey 5y ago
Honestly, ads clearly marked as ads and contained just to the results page would be fine. But in the race for better ad performance, they introduced tracking & retargeting & profile building while at the same time both minimizing the visual difference between ads & organic as well as nearly pushing organic of the first page.
travoc 5y ago
Search ads have become visually almost indistinguishable from legitimate search results on most search engines, including DuckDuckGo. That's why I try to avoid them whenever possible. DuckDuckGo allows you to turn them off completely.
zzyzxd 5y ago
IMHO search ads are bad search results, and in 99% of time they are not something I would want to click. So they are doing nothing useful but only adding friction to my search experience. I am not against privacy friendly ads in free services, but if there's an option to pay to get rid of ads, I will pay.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  I'm in eCommerce, run ads (on eBay, not Google) and would have to agree 100%. The only products we put paid promotion on are common and overpriced, and the demographic of the customers is very different to what we'd find through our products sold through organic search. Based solely on anecdata through the messages we receive and the addresses we ship to, the people who click on ads are somewhat more likely to be lower-socio, much more likely to have low literacy skills, and a couple of orders of magnitude more likely (not an exaggeration) to live in a remote Aboriginal community. It feels somewhat dirty/exploitative, but it's what the customer wants. They have the choice of saving $50+ by scrolling past the first 3-4 results, but they choose not to. I just don't understand.
ocdtrekkie 5y ago
Since they're nearly indistinguishable from real organic search results, people click on them assuming the search engine found them the best result. This leads to two major problems: 1. Search ads are the primary source of malware and fraud on the Internet today. (Phishing emails are second.) Sites pretend to be other sites all the time, and to allow tracking and landing page behaviors, every major search ad provider allows ads to "lie" about the destination domain. So you may see an Amazon ad, it says it goes to Amazon.com, but actually directs through to realamazonlinkipromise.biz instead. Fraud's really profitable, so fraudsters win ad slots easily, and are adtech companies' best customers, so there's really little incentive to crack down on this. 2. Search ads use this placement as a form of extortion. If you run, say, Best Buy, you shouldn't have to buy search ads for "best buy", because obviously you're the best result. However, they have to, because if they don't, the search engine will sell ads to their competitors using their keyword, so people searching "best buy" get "Circuit City" as the top result instead. (Yes, I chose that reference in part because I don't want to shame any real current companies in this example for sleezy practices.) And since users click the top result (the ad), not the first organic result, Best Buy ends up paying for every click for every user who goes through Google/Bing/etc. to get to Best Buy. The second reason is why browsers are so obsessed with combining the search and address bars: They want you to search "best buy" or "bestbuy" or etc. because that's ad revenue, whereas actually typing bestbuy.com nets Google nothing.
- ec109685 5y ago
  Google only charges users once per user per click.
- dheera 5y ago
  > every major search ad provider allows ads to "lie" about the destination domain. This seems like the real problem, not search ads as a concept > So you may see an Amazon ad, it says it goes to Amazon.com, but actually directs through to realamazonlinkipromise.biz Just disallow that? Problem solved. If you want yet another filter, only allow public companies or companies that have raised >10M on Crunchbase to advertise, and have them verify that they are really who they are by asking them to put some string of your choosing in their DNS records.
tomjen3 5y ago
I can't answer him, but there is a peace of mind not having ads talk (is not the right word) to you, even absent everything else. As in I can actually set my attention to something and finish a coherent whole without having to give any attention to ads. I didn't realize this until I installed Sponsorblock which got rid of the last ads I was seeing there. Suddenly I could focus on whatever they were creating and the video was talking about without having my attention diverted to something else. Maybe that is just me, but that is why I now mind ads.
spullara 5y ago
Since the brave search results are so thin, maybe put them on the right to be less confusing.

toddmorey 5y ago

Honestly, ads clearly marked as ads and contained just to the results page would be fine. But in the race for better ad performance, they introduced tracking & retargeting & profile building while at the same time both minimizing the visual difference between ads & organic as well as nearly pushing organic of the first page.

travoc 5y ago

Search ads have become visually almost indistinguishable from legitimate search results on most search engines, including DuckDuckGo. That's why I try to avoid them whenever possible. DuckDuckGo allows you to turn them off completely.

zzyzxd 5y ago

IMHO search ads are bad search results, and in 99% of time they are not something I would want to click. So they are doing nothing useful but only adding friction to my search experience. I am not against privacy friendly ads in free services, but if there's an option to pay to get rid of ads, I will pay.

AussieWog93 5y ago
I'm in eCommerce, run ads (on eBay, not Google) and would have to agree 100%. The only products we put paid promotion on are common and overpriced, and the demographic of the customers is very different to what we'd find through our products sold through organic search. Based solely on anecdata through the messages we receive and the addresses we ship to, the people who click on ads are somewhat more likely to be lower-socio, much more likely to have low literacy skills, and a couple of orders of magnitude more likely (not an exaggeration) to live in a remote Aboriginal community. It feels somewhat dirty/exploitative, but it's what the customer wants. They have the choice of saving $50+ by scrolling past the first 3-4 results, but they choose not to. I just don't understand.

ocdtrekkie 5y ago

Since they're nearly indistinguishable from real organic search results, people click on them assuming the search engine found them the best result. This leads to two major problems: 1. Search ads are the primary source of malware and fraud on the Internet today. (Phishing emails are second.) Sites pretend to be other sites all the time, and to allow tracking and landing page behaviors, every major search ad provider allows ads to "lie" about the destination domain. So you may see an Amazon ad, it says it goes to Amazon.com, but actually directs through to realamazonlinkipromise.biz instead. Fraud's really profitable, so fraudsters win ad slots easily, and are adtech companies' best customers, so there's really little incentive to crack down on this. 2. Search ads use this placement as a form of extortion. If you run, say, Best Buy, you shouldn't have to buy search ads for "best buy", because obviously you're the best result. However, they have to, because if they don't, the search engine will sell ads to their competitors using their keyword, so people searching "best buy" get "Circuit City" as the top result instead. (Yes, I chose that reference in part because I don't want to shame any real current companies in this example for sleezy practices.) And since users click the top result (the ad), not the first organic result, Best Buy ends up paying for every click for every user who goes through Google/Bing/etc. to get to Best Buy. The second reason is why browsers are so obsessed with combining the search and address bars: They want you to search "best buy" or "bestbuy" or etc. because that's ad revenue, whereas actually typing bestbuy.com nets Google nothing.

ec109685 5y ago
Google only charges users once per user per click.
dheera 5y ago
> every major search ad provider allows ads to "lie" about the destination domain. This seems like the real problem, not search ads as a concept > So you may see an Amazon ad, it says it goes to Amazon.com, but actually directs through to realamazonlinkipromise.biz Just disallow that? Problem solved. If you want yet another filter, only allow public companies or companies that have raised >10M on Crunchbase to advertise, and have them verify that they are really who they are by asking them to put some string of your choosing in their DNS records.

tomjen3 5y ago

I can't answer him, but there is a peace of mind not having ads talk (is not the right word) to you, even absent everything else. As in I can actually set my attention to something and finish a coherent whole without having to give any attention to ads. I didn't realize this until I installed Sponsorblock which got rid of the last ads I was seeing there. Suddenly I could focus on whatever they were creating and the video was talking about without having my attention diverted to something else. Maybe that is just me, but that is why I now mind ads.

spullara 5y ago

Since the brave search results are so thin, maybe put them on the right to be less confusing.