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> Pushy pop-ups, "do it now", flashy colors, and all that stuff. Things that work like a charm in e-commerce or fashion will most likely not work on devs. Not

> Pushy pop-ups, "do it now", flashy colors, and all that stuff. Things that work like a charm in e-commerce or fashion will most likely not work on devs. Not just 'not work', but 'actively repel'. A popup chat bot or a survey form request (during or after using a website or software product) or anything not germane to the task that has a shadow or notification highlight has slowly but surely become a form of wart that elicits a deep, instinctual disgust from me. I'd even say an unhealthy and unreasonable level of disgust. It's enough to get me to instantly despise a product almost nomatter how well it does its original job. But 100 folks who actually click ads or interact with these distraction baubles (mistakenly or otherwise) are worth thousands of people like me, so I understand why it won't ever change for the better out of a company's own volition. --- When it comes to advertising, say, developer tooling, I think a large part of the problem is that there's just not going to be a lot of relevant tools out there, for my job or hobbies, that I either don't already know about (and aren't using because I have already evaluated its prospects) or... I am already using it. Conversely, seeing ads for something I am already using has potential for negative effects (see above). Tasteful advertising is thus useful for the rare case of something I don't know about, but I don't think it's worth it when 999/1000 of these ads are detrimental and irrelevant.

paskozdilar 4y ago
> Not just 'not work', but 'actively repel'. A popup chat bot or a survey form request (during or after using a website or software product) or anything not germane to the task that has a shadow or notification highlight has slowly but surely become a form of wart that elicits a deep, instinctual disgust from me. I'd even say an unhealthy and unreasonable level of disgust. Same here. I've even setup a bunch of Firefox extensions just to keep the annoying ad-like stuff away from me. Sometimes, when I open up a browser on a computer I don't own, I get surprised by how filled internet is with annoyances. It feels like I've put on the glasses from They Live and can suddenly see all the bullsh-t.
mike_hock 4y ago
There's no form of marketing that I "like" or actively reward, at most there's marketing that I fell for. Anything that comes from the primary source is an automatic nope, I'll only take positive accounts from third-party sources. Unfortunately, not even that is enough, so I've become wary of HN comments praising any particular product. What's even more unfortunate is that you have to apply the same skepticism to open source "products" these days as it has become common even for open source projects to exaggerate the project's capabilities and be dishonest about its limitations.
- nonameiguess 4y ago
  I used to be a bar manager 16 years ago and would often see the Anheuser-Busch marketing rep for our region out and about, and she would never fail to use her corporate credit card to buy me some free drinks. I liked that form of marketing.
  - mgdlbp 4y ago
    TIL open-source beer… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Beer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Beer
  - esun 4y ago
    I liked it when they took me to Nashville every year. I went exclusive. I could have flown myself to Nashville every weekend. But they made me feel special with a plane ticket and a few bar bills. I guess it's the difference between 'marketing' and 'sales'.
- retcon 4y ago
  >There's no form of marketing that I "like" or actively reward, at most there's marketing that I fell for. For very high value software licensing agreements there's huge financial rewards for performing the marketing dance with the vendor. Paying list for enterprise software doesn't happen. Customers who even know what Oracle RAS is , or SQL SERVER Parallel, are numbered in the hundreds. The expenditure on manpower to design and commission a new major database installation is two to three orders of magnitude greater than the license costs. That's per database not enterprise wide. You embark upon a courtship from the outset. This isn't what the article nor what most everyone's discussing, but I thought it worthwhile to offer a real illustration of a very viable means of sales and marketing that can be made to work if you have a high value application or service and can identify a small finite number of customers. Edit: I probably should have said the number of customers who know what they're doing with the most sophisticated databases is very likely in the hundreds. Arguably the market is rather larger but if the behaviour F500 generally is any indication, there's a lot of nameplate and marquee buying driven by C suite egos. If you're selling a unique and expensive application this is where your margins are. And where tales of sales excess and bad reputation / hubris attaching to your product originate.
lysp 4y ago
> Not just 'not work', but 'actively repel'. Exactly. If I see something like that I'll often add a custom ad-block rule so it never shows again.
throw10920 4y ago
It'd be very interesting to see the results of some A/B tests where they looked at the effectiveness of a marketing funnel with some of these distracting features on and off. I mean, I think we all know what the results would be, but I think that a lot of bean-counter types will only listen to beans counted...
- edmundsauto 4y ago
  I think everyone would be surprised at the results. Humans are so good at thinking they are representative of other people. The marketers would be surprised because they believe people need the shit they advertise. Some devs would be surprised because this stuff is effective at getting a larger N - total sales funnel volume, not efficiency, is most of their goal. Most devs would be surprised that it’s even something people talk about. And the regular citizen like my mom would be surprised that such a thing even exists.
  - JoshTriplett 4y ago
    > Some devs would be surprised because this stuff is effective at getting a larger N - total sales funnel volume, not efficiency, is most of their goal. This is a short-term/long-term tradeoff. If you have the choice between: - N people into the funnel, 10% decide to join, the rest go away without a negative opinion, some of them even with a "not right now but maybe later" opinion - 10*N people into the funnel, 2% decide to join, the rest go away with varying degrees of negative opinion Short-term, the second choice will give you 2x the users joining. Long-term, the second choice will give your company a bad reputation.
    - naniwaduni 4y ago
      Fortunately(?), most companies aren't expecting to survive long enough to see a bad reputation come back to bite them.
      - e3bc54b2 4y ago
        When it does, they can just buy good reputation for pittance. (Looking at you, Microsoft..)
groestl 4y ago
> or... I am already using it. For something I am already using and actively repel (because I have to use it but hate it) I do the following: I click on every ad I can find, because they advertise a lot, to make them pay 1.30 usd per click for nothing. I'm only seeing this ad now, everywhere.
- dexterdog 4y ago
  Why are you seeing ads?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
TimTheTinker 4y ago
> Not just 'not work', but 'actively repel'. Anything connected to ads or marketing triggers a visceral response of disgust in me. Not just towards products or companies that try to show me an ad, but for the advertising/marketing industry itself, the very concept of ads, and all the professions staffed with people who make it their life's work to promulgate it all. It reeks to me of hot air and lies. Any I don't trust any company (looking at you, Google and Facebook) whose revenue comes primarily from ads - such income poisons everything it touches.

paskozdilar 4y ago

> Not just 'not work', but 'actively repel'. A popup chat bot or a survey form request (during or after using a website or software product) or anything not germane to the task that has a shadow or notification highlight has slowly but surely become a form of wart that elicits a deep, instinctual disgust from me. I'd even say an unhealthy and unreasonable level of disgust. Same here. I've even setup a bunch of Firefox extensions just to keep the annoying ad-like stuff away from me. Sometimes, when I open up a browser on a computer I don't own, I get surprised by how filled internet is with annoyances. It feels like I've put on the glasses from They Live and can suddenly see all the bullsh-t.

mike_hock 4y ago

There's no form of marketing that I "like" or actively reward, at most there's marketing that I fell for. Anything that comes from the primary source is an automatic nope, I'll only take positive accounts from third-party sources. Unfortunately, not even that is enough, so I've become wary of HN comments praising any particular product. What's even more unfortunate is that you have to apply the same skepticism to open source "products" these days as it has become common even for open source projects to exaggerate the project's capabilities and be dishonest about its limitations.

nonameiguess 4y ago
I used to be a bar manager 16 years ago and would often see the Anheuser-Busch marketing rep for our region out and about, and she would never fail to use her corporate credit card to buy me some free drinks. I liked that form of marketing.
- mgdlbp 4y ago
  TIL open-source beer… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Beer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Beer
- esun 4y ago
  I liked it when they took me to Nashville every year. I went exclusive. I could have flown myself to Nashville every weekend. But they made me feel special with a plane ticket and a few bar bills. I guess it's the difference between 'marketing' and 'sales'.
retcon 4y ago
>There's no form of marketing that I "like" or actively reward, at most there's marketing that I fell for. For very high value software licensing agreements there's huge financial rewards for performing the marketing dance with the vendor. Paying list for enterprise software doesn't happen. Customers who even know what Oracle RAS is , or SQL SERVER Parallel, are numbered in the hundreds. The expenditure on manpower to design and commission a new major database installation is two to three orders of magnitude greater than the license costs. That's per database not enterprise wide. You embark upon a courtship from the outset. This isn't what the article nor what most everyone's discussing, but I thought it worthwhile to offer a real illustration of a very viable means of sales and marketing that can be made to work if you have a high value application or service and can identify a small finite number of customers. Edit: I probably should have said the number of customers who know what they're doing with the most sophisticated databases is very likely in the hundreds. Arguably the market is rather larger but if the behaviour F500 generally is any indication, there's a lot of nameplate and marquee buying driven by C suite egos. If you're selling a unique and expensive application this is where your margins are. And where tales of sales excess and bad reputation / hubris attaching to your product originate.

lysp 4y ago

> Not just 'not work', but 'actively repel'. Exactly. If I see something like that I'll often add a custom ad-block rule so it never shows again.

throw10920 4y ago

It'd be very interesting to see the results of some A/B tests where they looked at the effectiveness of a marketing funnel with some of these distracting features on and off. I mean, I think we all know what the results would be, but I think that a lot of bean-counter types will only listen to beans counted...

edmundsauto 4y ago
I think everyone would be surprised at the results. Humans are so good at thinking they are representative of other people. The marketers would be surprised because they believe people need the shit they advertise. Some devs would be surprised because this stuff is effective at getting a larger N - total sales funnel volume, not efficiency, is most of their goal. Most devs would be surprised that it’s even something people talk about. And the regular citizen like my mom would be surprised that such a thing even exists.
- JoshTriplett 4y ago
  > Some devs would be surprised because this stuff is effective at getting a larger N - total sales funnel volume, not efficiency, is most of their goal. This is a short-term/long-term tradeoff. If you have the choice between: - N people into the funnel, 10% decide to join, the rest go away without a negative opinion, some of them even with a "not right now but maybe later" opinion - 10*N people into the funnel, 2% decide to join, the rest go away with varying degrees of negative opinion Short-term, the second choice will give you 2x the users joining. Long-term, the second choice will give your company a bad reputation.
  - naniwaduni 4y ago
    Fortunately(?), most companies aren't expecting to survive long enough to see a bad reputation come back to bite them.
    - e3bc54b2 4y ago
      When it does, they can just buy good reputation for pittance. (Looking at you, Microsoft..)

groestl 4y ago

> or... I am already using it. For something I am already using and actively repel (because I have to use it but hate it) I do the following: I click on every ad I can find, because they advertise a lot, to make them pay 1.30 usd per click for nothing. I'm only seeing this ad now, everywhere.

dexterdog 4y ago
Why are you seeing ads?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

TimTheTinker 4y ago

> Not just 'not work', but 'actively repel'. Anything connected to ads or marketing triggers a visceral response of disgust in me. Not just towards products or companies that try to show me an ad, but for the advertising/marketing industry itself, the very concept of ads, and all the professions staffed with people who make it their life's work to promulgate it all. It reeks to me of hot air and lies. Any I don't trust any company (looking at you, Google and Facebook) whose revenue comes primarily from ads - such income poisons everything it touches.