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Discussion on this topic after the more recent call from civil rights groups here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27619030 https://news.ycombinator.com/it

Discussion on this topic after the more recent call from civil rights groups here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27619030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27619030 It's important that commercial companies get behind this and a coalition like this of browser, search, mail, analytics and other web service companies is a big step forward. What type of digital ad future might we imagine? Let's look at some types of digital ads: 1) "Personalised": surveillance based, on HN almost all of us are familiar with the consequences 2) Cohort: still involves surveillance based data collection (FLoC, PARAKEET, ATT) 3) Subscribed: this still, almost invariably, involves surveillance based practices based on first party data (eg NYT, eCommerce) 4) Contextual: based on expressed or implicit intent (search) or interest (display) 5) Solicited: for instance an ads-free, and/or ads-turn off option with a subscription service 6) Ban Ads: Prohibitions can backfire. Besides ads can be an economic signal and part of an effective market giving a chance to challengers As a search engine, we are fortunate you might say, as search queries so often expresses intent; and we can use location. We will never store nor share IP address; not even with the last octet stripped off, as some do. And as a search engine, rather than search syndication partner, we do not need to pass on data. So it's easy for us to say that, if a challenge to scale up, privacy-first no-tracking contextual ads are the best solution. What is your view on the best type of advertising in different contexts?

tomjen3 5y ago
I have long blocked ads on youtube because they are annoying, I finally installed SponsorBlock, which use crowd sourced info to skip the sponsored sections of the video. Sure I could do that myself, but then I would see that there was an ad and mentally process it enough to jump over it. With Sponsorblock I can focus on the video and forget there was a sponsor in the first place. I thought I would get to skip a few ads, but what it came down to was that I have a new peace of mind that I didn't have before. I didn't suspect this. So my answer would be a variation of 6 where there is one place online where you can post ads and then I can come by and fill in what products I might be interested in and then I will be shown ads there for products related to this.
freediver 5y ago
"Ad-supported" business models are a fundamental problem of the web. No matter in what shape or form they come, tracking or non-tracking, a billion devices with an ad-blocker are a strong signal that users of the web simply do not want to see ads on web pages. They slow down page load times, make content more difficult to comprehend, incentivize the creation of low quality/spam content (spray and pray), are terribly inefficient way to monetize creative work and use CPU, RAM and bandwidth for very little or most often no benefit for the user (as quantified by atrociously low ad click-through rates). In any other software product if a click through rate for a button was <0.0001% that button/feature would be removed. Nobody likes or wants ads, and even people making a living through ads install ad-blockers. The sooner we start thinking about different business models for sustaining the web, the better.

tomjen3 5y ago

I have long blocked ads on youtube because they are annoying, I finally installed SponsorBlock, which use crowd sourced info to skip the sponsored sections of the video. Sure I could do that myself, but then I would see that there was an ad and mentally process it enough to jump over it. With Sponsorblock I can focus on the video and forget there was a sponsor in the first place. I thought I would get to skip a few ads, but what it came down to was that I have a new peace of mind that I didn't have before. I didn't suspect this. So my answer would be a variation of 6 where there is one place online where you can post ads and then I can come by and fill in what products I might be interested in and then I will be shown ads there for products related to this.

freediver 5y ago

"Ad-supported" business models are a fundamental problem of the web. No matter in what shape or form they come, tracking or non-tracking, a billion devices with an ad-blocker are a strong signal that users of the web simply do not want to see ads on web pages. They slow down page load times, make content more difficult to comprehend, incentivize the creation of low quality/spam content (spray and pray), are terribly inefficient way to monetize creative work and use CPU, RAM and bandwidth for very little or most often no benefit for the user (as quantified by atrociously low ad click-through rates). In any other software product if a click through rate for a button was <0.0001% that button/feature would be removed. Nobody likes or wants ads, and even people making a living through ads install ad-blockers. The sooner we start thinking about different business models for sustaining the web, the better.