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Image Ad Blending Works Really, Really Well
- cool-RR 15y agoImages don't load in this post.
- TylerE 15y agoLook, I'm normally pretty easy going, but it's just like to say it's people like YOU that are ruining the internet. I really wish all the SEO-cretins would just go find something else to do with their time.
- tghw 15y agoI disagree. I would rather ads blend in and disappear than be flashing in my face. If I click on something that sounds interesting and it turns out to be an ad, then they did a good job with it, because clearly it's something I'm interested in. If I'm not interested in it, the back button is easy to get to.
- TylerE 15y agoThe issue I take is when they're blatantly trying to makes ads look like legitimate content.
- tghw 15y agoI understand, but when you say "ruining the internet", I would prefer deceptive ads that blend in than those that make my eyes bleed, which is often the case with banner ads.
- TylerE 15y agoThe difference is I can't adblock text.
- tghw 15y agoHuh? The ad is an image. It can easily be adblocked.
- seiji 15y agoI adblock all youtube comment divs. It's quite effective.
- jbigelow76 15y agoIf the inability to block an ad is the primary determinant of "ruining" the internet you probably need to re-evaluate your sense of entitlement.
- lazugod 15y agoPatio11's ad is an image, and would be blocked. But you're still right, in that the closer one gets to mimicking unpaid content (such as Google or Reddit's sponsored ads, which are text) the harder it is to programatically block.
- draggnar 15y agowhat do you mean by "legitimate content"? Something that someone posted out of pure altruism and with no intent to make a profit? We can argue about how big of a percentage of the internet that is
- tptacek 15y agoOr, people like HIM are PAYING for the Internet. Personally, I think it's people who like to tell other people how much they're RUINING the INTERNET that are RUINING the INTERNET, but I spend a lot of my Internet time on message boards, so I'm probably biased. It's probably bad recipe sites that are RUINING the INTERNET.
- TylerE 15y agoHere's why I say ruin. Remember when you could do a search for product reviews, and actually get product reviews, instead of a million template link bait sites?
- zone411 15y agoAt least get your terminology straight, this has nothing to do with SEO.
- Timothee 15y agoHave you thought about trying the yellow background as well based on your comment about how some people think it's the best result? I have to admit I'm split on the ad. On one hand, I feel that it's deceptive, because I expect ads to look like ads. When they start to blend too much, I feel it's "cheating". Similar in a way to how I feel when a crafted-to-become-viral video ends up being an ad for something. On the other hand, I'm thinking "why not?". The site allowed you to have such an ad and people are looking for a product similar to yours, so… It's definitely skirting the line…
- richcollins 15y agoIs This Evil Or Just Evil Genius? Once upon a time I was an engineer totally scornful of effective marketing, but I have gradually gotten over it. After thinking it over, this is aggressive but within my comfort envelope. The ad is honest about being an ad, makes a straightforward commercial proposition (“Sign up for a free trial”) to an audience that I think will respond well to that, and is pretty true by the standards of marketing copy. It is designed to catch clicks only from people interested in signing up for a free trial of Bingo Card Creator, and sends them straight to a landing page where they can do just that. I wish there was a way to dynamically generate the image such that I could provide a more exact star valuation, but in the context of a sponsored placement, “Rated 5 starts by lots” is both non-specific and true. Lots of people have used BCC, and when I ask for star ratings in internal surveys I get something like 4.8 on a volume of hundreds or thousands. I think this compares favorably with “9 out of 10 dentists agree” and other pretty banal marketing copy. Your ad is obviously designed to deceive the user into thinking that it is an organic listing. Evil.
- sp332 15y agoIt says "sponsored placement", which is true because the website put the ad right in the middle of the organic results.
- seiji 15y agoWhat about things like outbrain? http://www.outbrain.com/getwidget http://www.outbrain.com/getwidget They have more deceptive ad units at publishers: http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/23/world/africa/egypt-protests/ http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/23/world/africa/egypt-protests/ (Scroll to pre-comment-box or search for "From around the web")
- Timothee 15y agoFor the lazy, the "From around the web" section looks like relevant articles on other sites and is styled exactly like the links that CNN recommends, but it's actually paid content. A popup under "What's this" gives the following info: "Paid Distribution An Outbrain customer paid to distribute this content. We do our best to ensure that all of the links recommended to you lead to interesting content. To find out more information about driving traffic to your content or to place this widget on your site, visit outbrain.com. We welcome your feedback at feedback@outbrain.com.View our privacy policy here."
- philjackson 15y agoIs this just a ruse to get us all to disable AdBlock for his site? :)
- grecy 15y agoI had to do exactly that just to see what he was talking about. (I didn't click any ads)
- kakuri 15y agoIn related news, AdBlock Works Really, Really Well.
- mrcharles 15y agoIrony of ironies... all the images on his page are blocked by adblock.
- kmm 15y agoApparently, an URL like http://images2.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/ad-blending/blended-ad-example.png http://images2.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/ad-blending/... is blocked by the rule -images/ad- This is a false positive and a surprisingly broad rule.
- bh42222 15y agoIt is a broad rule and I gave on the article because I could not see any of the image. I was about to white list the site when I realized that using Ad Block Plus and NoScript for years has resulted in me experiencing a significantly different Internet. So much of SEO simply does not apply to people like me. But in fact I do spend a lot of money on-line, but the I spend on content. Even if it's a funny shirt from a web comic, something trivial and designed to have shallow commercial appeal, it is still content. So there's things that are hard to distinguish from content, and then there's things that are real content which you can buy. And NoScript and Ad block have never kept me from the latter. I think I'll skip the white listing.
- po 15y agoI actually don't use adblock and the like (although I do actively block flash) for that reason: as someone developing for the web, I don't want to experience a different internet. I want to see it as my users do. Also, if a site is covered in ads, I click away. If I kept reading the site the person reading the analytics of the site would think I approve of what they're doing. I'm not going to get into an arms race with my content providers. I'd rather find and support better content providers. I suppose it's similar to the GNU 'don't use non-free software even if you pirate it' stance although I'm by no means dogmatic about it.
- bdonlan 15y ago
- storborg 15y agoDo you have any solutions for dealing with slight browser rendering differences? E.g. antialiasing on one browser but not another, slight font size / padding differences, etc. What browser are you "targeting" with the image?
- lhnn 15y agoTypically, when a site pulls that kind of thing, I cease to use the site. I'm not interested in buying anything, and by distracting my eyes from legitimate content with your "get a foot in the door" ads, you earn a big red X from me.
- jbigelow76 15y agoThe site owner is probably grateful for that mindset. Development time, servers, bandwidth, these things all cost money. Neither your page view nor your "screw your costs where's the free shit?" attitude pay the bills.
- lhnn 15y agoBah. I pay for the Economist, and I've paid for LWN in the past. I think a subscription model for premium content is more respectable than deceptive advertising.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- tycho77 15y agoIt's actually kinda crazy that I looked at this image http://images2.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/ad-blending/blended-ad-example.png http://images2.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/ad-blending/... for about thirty seconds and literally did not see the ad, at all. I am now impressed/scared of my mind's ability to completely disregard probably unimportant information.
- DiabloD3 15y agoIts funny that there is an almost exact same thing in audio processing called masking, where a loud signal will hide a quieter signal similar in frequency. Maybe this is the visual processing equivalent?
- MartinCron 15y agoIt's "search satisfaction", I think. People expect to look for (and dismiss) the obvious stuff. This is similar to the notion that having the TSA check for liquids at airports is dangerous, because when they find a bottle of shampoo, they stop looking for other stuff.
- DiabloD3 15y agoAre you kidding me? I knew the TSA was security theatre, but holy crap, Batman. The terrorists not only have won, but they have all the cheat codes!
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- blahedo 15y agoThis reminds me of those newspaper ads that are crafted to look exactly like a newspaper article (columns of copy, headline, etc) but only set out with an "Advertisement" in very small print at the top of their enclosing box. I usually can pick them out because the font isn't a perfect match, but once in a while I don't notice until like a third of the way through the "article" when I'm going, "wtf? What was the editor thinking?" And that's the real problem here, and the reason I complain to the editor about those newspaper ads: when they are made to look like a regular article (or in this case, organic results), then they implicitly carry the imprimatur of editorial approval. Someone at this newspaper (/website) has vetted this factually, edited it, and I can put the same trust in this item that I put in any other thing I read here (which might not be 100% but is often reasonably high for edited content on a paper/site I'm familiar with). Ads that are faking their way in violate this assumption and this trust. As a user of that site I'd be annoyed; as an editor of that site I would be furious.
- patio11 15y agoI think they're a UGC site: there isn't a formal editing process., regular users just upload stuff which interests them. The publisher pre-approved the ad.
- blahedo 15y agoEven if the content is user-generated, there is still curation by other users, analogous to editing, that this is short-circuiting. I didn't realise the site publisher had pre-approval, or I wouldn't have said "as an editor of that site I would be furious", I'd've said "as an editor of that side I would never approve something like that."
- damoncali 15y agoThe ad was explicitly approved by the editor. That's how BuySellAds works.
- buro9 15y agoPrecisely. I sell adverts on my sites via https://www.buyads.com/ https://www.buyads.com/ ( iSocket ), and I decline all adverts which are cheap and tacky, but approve adverts which are tastefully done and will appeal to the sector I'm in. Point is: I'm in control. Which is great, as I value my community and it would reduce their experience to take tacky adverts, but if it's something that they want and it integrates well, I'd definitely approve it. The publisher is in control, Patrick gave the publisher the exact kind of thing that they want. Both parties benefit, as do the users. This IS the way to do advertising, where everyone in the equation is very happy with it.
- jongraehl 15y agoScammy. This could fool me if I were in a rush and adblock didn't filter it. Since it works, I'd consider using it (in venues where users aren't as likely to be outraged+vindicitive about being tricked, or even notice being tricked). Thanks for sharing.
- teej 15y agoI'm going to come out in defense of patio11 here. Not because the ad isn't deceptive - it undoubtedly is. But because he fell into the dark side of a grey area and it's worth discussing HOW good people end up there. From a rationalist perspecive, the ad is justified. He is effectively capturing the majority of the market possible through adwords. So what's next? It makes sense to take your know-how in one market and apply it to another. The problem is that the other markets are filled with sharks. Sharks that will stop at nothing to generate leads for scammy, high-value businesses (for-profit ed, weight loss, etc) As a moralist, one would turn their nose up at these shark-filled waters at the start. If scammy people advertise through it, why should I? Personally, I think it's really important to dive in deep to the grey area. Not because you can make more money, but to better understand the inner-workings of the "dark" side of the business. Most of the successful players there use a slathering of evil techniques combined with a wealth of direct marketing experience that whitehat marketers use every day. It's important to test -everything-, learn as much as you can from empirical data, and then move forward with both your knowledge and moral compass in mind. I often say I have the full Zynga playbook at my disposal and the judgement to know when not to use it.
- patio11 15y agoI'm curious as to why you'd draw a distinction between AdWords and scam filled advertising. Google's bread is buttered by credit cards, diet pills, and degrees. Search any relevant keyword if you don't believe me. Most of the advertisers I share pages with on the AdWords Content Network are also not pages you'd want your mother going to. The economics of Internet advertising heavily favor scams. Would it be better for the world and users if a site about teaching activities had off-topic ads inviting people to sign up for weightloss pills (snake oil with a rebill scam) or software which actually makes teaching activities?
- staunch 15y agoYou're reduced to arguing that, since you offer a good product, it's okay to use the same dishonest tactics that the bad guys use. I suppose you're right. Better that a user is tricked into clicking onto Bingo Card Creator than a herbal Viagra affiliate. It's just not a very high moral position to take.
- FJB 15y agoAds that look like content work well. FB's sponsored stories, Twitter's sponsored tweets, Adwords, brand sponsored content on demand media's properties -- it's all the same shit. Let's not jump on our high horse here.
- ig1 15y agoWarning: This type of behaviour may be illegal. For the US see the FTC guidance: http://www.scribd.com/doc/20635261/FTC-Guides-Concerning-the-Use-of-Endorsements-and-Testimonials-in-Advertising http://www.scribd.com/doc/20635261/FTC-Guides-Concerning-the... (the FTC has bought prosecutions on this topic recently) It's also illegal in the UK and presumably a lot of Europe. You can't make an ad look like an legitimate endorsement, it's as simple as that. In this case the small "sponsored placement" text could easily be taken to be about the following ad which looks like an ad.
- sssparkkk 15y agoWhat about when some site is raving about a product, and pointing users to the product's website using an affiliate link. No disclosure at all. Is that also illegal? Because I think it would be great if it was.
- dwwoelfel 15y agoWhy should that be illegal? We already have laws in place for fraud. The situation you've described could be perfectly innocent.
- sssparkkk 15y agoWell, what's the difference between making an ad look like a legitimate endorsement, and endorsing a product even though you're financially benefiting because of the affiliate link?
- ig1 15y agoYes. That's a clear violation of the FTC guidelines. If you're presenting a review as an independent opinion without disclosing the fact you're making money from it, that's pretty much exactly what the FTC guidelines are designed to tackle. If you're just providing links without specific endorsement it's probably fine. Here's an easier read analysis of the FTC guidelines by the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/05/AR2009100503620.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10...
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- extension 15y agoI thought about where exactly patio11 crossed the line into evil territory, and I realized that there is no line. All ads are deceptive, because they are all trying to steal your attention by showing up when you are looking for something else. That we've developed the ability to ignore most of them doesn't change the basic principle. But the degree of deception can certainly vary. By running ads, you are pawning off the user value of your site. The more effective the ads, the more value they are losing. It's a zero-sum game.
- patio11 15y agoAds are clearly not a zero-sum game, any more than links offsite are a zero-sum game. Transfers in attention are like transfers in money. It is entirely possible for both sides of "I give you money, you give me a banana" to end up better off. Similarly, if you're looking at a list of ways to teach kids subtraction, "I give you thirty seconds, you show me subtraction bingo" leaves both sides better off.
- extension 15y agoBut with advertising, the attention transfer is involuntary. The user is always trying to spend their attention on something else, and they aren't getting what they pay for. If attention is currency then advertising is clearly bait-and-switch fraud.
- lftl 15y agoThe user is exchanging some portion of their attention to receive whatever service the publisher is providing. If you want to watch this football game, you give some portion of your attention to our advertisers. If you want to view whatever the regular content is on the site patio11 advertised on, you give some of your attention to patio11. There's nothing involuntary about it. If you don't like ads, don't watch TV shows, or view websites that show ads. The only part that's different from a normal transaction is that you aren't very strongly forced to give up the attention the publisher is asking from you. You can get up during TV ads, run an ad blocker, or develop ad blindness on sites. This extra ability of yours doesn't change the face that you agreed to possibly give up some of your attention to an advertiser to use whatever service you're using.
- ErrantX 15y agoI think where the ad "crosses the line" here is the faux star rating; the other (unpaid) listings have been user rated/ranked and Patrick's ad is misusing the trust that users of the site potentially put into the ratings. I think that if the stars were removed, or, say, greyed out with the "Rated by lots" on top that would be absolutely fine.
- losvedir 15y agoAgreed, though it depends on how the other ratings are established. Communication is ultimately about the semantic information conveyed and not the specific words used. If you intend to convey the wrong information, even by using technically correct words, that still counts as lying to me. Since the other items say "rated by 1" I'm inclined to believe it's a small community that self rates the items. Hence, patio11's co-opting of the styling conveys the information "lots of members of this small community rated BCC 5 stars" rather than "lots of some random group of people rated BCC 5 stars". I agree that graying out the stars would make it more honest.
- danielhodgins 15y agoSo let me get this straight. Critics of this tactic want to get rich doing their own startup, while using the very techniques they just renounced to generate traffic and conversions? Seems a bit hypocritical to me. Wake up folks - business success can be 'seedy' sometimes. As long as your product creates more value than customers are charged, then it's a win-win for everyone. What if these so-called 'seedy' techniques represented the difference between success and failure for your own startup? I'll bet your position on the white/grey/black hat continuum would shift quite promptly. Well done Patrick, and thanks for sharing the details about another valuable marketing tactic that people can try.
- staunch 15y agoIf you want to do naughty things then by all means do them. There's not much harm done when people are slightly deceived into clicking onto a legitimate product. Big deal really. Just for the love of god don't lie to yourself about it or try to rationalize it.
- bambax 15y agoI don't understand who still sees ads. It's apparently a huge majority of Internet users, but I don't understand where they come from. I often set up computers for family and friends and installing AdBlock is one of the first things I do. Who is computer-savvy enough to buy and install their own computer, and yet not computer-savvy enough to get AdBlock? Or do (most) people actually like ads?
- patio11 15y agoI don't understand who still sees ads. It's apparently a huge majority of Internet users, but I don't understand where they come from. This is like that quote for "How could X have won the election? I don't know anybody who voted for him." If you learn one thing from me, learn that male twenty-something techies are not the golden normative standard for all forms of behavior. Some people actually do like ads, a lot. (Even twenty-something techies love some ads. I watch more Old Spice commercials than I watch actual TV!) Most people just don't care enough one way or the other to change the channel. I encourage everyone to see how real people actually use these devices which we're trying to convince real people to use.
- bambax 15y ago> males, twenty-something, techies, etc. My parents are 80 years old. That includes my mother, who is not male (or else I was lied to about EVERYTHING!) They are not techies by a very long shot. I installed Adblock for them on Firefox and Chrome. Sometimes they use IE by accident; inevitably they complain to me that the blocking of ads is broken or inconsistent because they just saw ads all over the place. You're right to say that I'm basing my observation on people I know, but you're wrong to assume they're all male, young and tech-oriented, or that I lend them my own preferences. For example, I'm not on Facebook and will hopefully never be (if that's possible, which is not certain); but everyone I know is on Facebook and they even kind of like it. But the opposite is true for ads. It would be interesting to look at statistics for Adblock. I really don't see why it should be a "male" thing...? - - - Edit: I'm actually a little more annoyed by your answer than I should, because it tries to make me look stupid, without actually saying "I think you're stupid". I was raised by Jesuits and know one when I see one. There are hundreds of situations where you don't personally know people who are of one opinion, but where you're aware they exist because they make themselves heard. I don't think I've ever met a vegetarian but I'm very much aware of their existence. But ads? Who ever speaks publicly in favor of ads (who isn't, like yourself, an advertiser)???
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- revorad 15y agoSo why does image blending for ads work better than contrasting ads, but contrasting (usually red) sign up buttons convert better than blending buttons?
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- patio11 15y ago1) I'm uncertain as to their thought process. Typically, when people sell me stuff at a particular price, my mentally model is "Hmm, they couldn't sell that same stuff to somebody else for more money." Just for a comparable, I generally advertise on remnant inventory at CPCs below a dime, not at a quarter, so I think it is possible that BusyTeacher understands their unit economics a bit better than your guesstimate does. 2) Ask a simple question, get a simple answer: Alexa is clearly wrong.
- csomar 15y agoHe is comparing to Google, but I think there is a huge difference. It's not an Ad blended like a content. It's an Ad faked in a content style. He is copying the exact same style, the same kind of content (title, description, category, photo, rating) and not even mentioning it. There is no way to find out if it's an ad or a real post.
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- iamjustlooking 15y agoLove the fake 5 stars. All that's missing is mimicking the scammy copy those ads always have: "See this weird trick a mom learned about bingo cards"
- xd 15y agoTactics like this are utterly immoral. I hope browser plugins like adblocker become massively mainstream and people start to learn to actively oppose this kind of rubbish. People that spend their "careers" advertising; contribute FUCK ALL to humanity.
- jacquesm 15y agoIf you want to see the ad 'in real life' you can find it here: http://busyteacher.org/classroom_activities-vocabulary-worksheets/ http://busyteacher.org/classroom_activities-vocabulary-works...
- chaosmachine 15y agoI watched that Mixergy video too, and was inspired to try something similar :) BSA is great, but if you need more inventory, you can get this strategy working on Google AdWords, too. You just need to create a new ad group, and use "managed placements" to specify the sites you want to target. Since you probably don't want 100 ad groups, you have to get a bit more generic with your ads, but there are plenty of ways to do that and still get the "this is useful information, not some off-topic ad" effect. Here's another tip: Once you have an ad that exceeds about 0.2% CTR, you'll often get much lower cost-per-click by switching the campaign to CPM bidding. For example, if you're bidding $1 CPM, and getting a 2% CTR, your effective CPC is only $0.05! In CPC mode, you'd often have to bid $0.30 CPC just to show up.
- nirvana 15y agoWow, that's a very valuable insight! Do you need a %0.2 CTR in order to switch to CPM (e.g.: is it disabled before that?) or is it that your bids will not be as good if you don't have at least that high a CTR? Every time I experiment with adwords, something in their policies seems to drive me off (last time it was that I couldn't use the terms "iPhone" or "iPad" in the ad, even though we have a legal license from Apple to use them. This time, the costs seem really high the ads don't seem to run often, and I'm getting outbid even on terms where no ads show up when I do searches. Between google having a mysterious cut, and taking on the roll of "optimizing" the experience, they make it very opaque for people who aren't add placement pros to use their service... and very hard to make it cost effective, which means, we don't use it. A real shame. CPM might make adwords viable again...we still have the incentive to produce a good add to get more clicks for our Mille.
- msellout 15y agoIf your ads aren't showing up for certain word choices, you might want to rethink the type of words you're using to ensure that Google knows your content is appropriate.
- badclient 15y agoAnother trick that works: break your website. When I ran a somewhat large music site(100K uniques/day), we'd make significantly more money from adsense when our streaming server went down. Why? Because when hitting the play button on the player didn't work, people start clicking on the ads.
- md1515 15y agoThat is terrible and hilarious at the same time.
- prawn 15y agoSadly, also effective are having an ugly site and not fully solving the problems of your audience.
- msellout 15y agoReminds me of a company I worked for back in the dot-com boom days. MostChoice.com planned on being some sort of meta insurance company, but that failed and the hundreds of pages of content they'd generated about insurance and financial planning, etc. stayed on the web. I would check on them over the years (to laugh at the fact my code still existed) and it seems they made more money as a static site just on AdSense clicks than they did with the original business idea. Insurance clicks are very nice. It looks like they've redesigned the site now and taken down much of what I wrote. Too bad. I was a sophomore in high school and it was exciting to me to have my financial planning calculators out there on the internet.
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- md1515 15y agoNo wrong done here in my opinion. The content of your post has brought up a topic I have been thinking about recently, which is intensely devoted sponsorship advertising. For example, if you (Patrick) want to write this piece about your positive experience with BuySellAds, then you could write the entire blog post with heavy mention of the product that YOU TRULY LIKE AND PROMOTE. The trust factor will go a long way in helping you. I have watched "This Week In Startups" on Youtube and noticed they use a similar approach. They stop the broadcast so that Mark Suster could talk about how X product has helped him. Most of that is off-topic, but your blog post got me thinking...which it is supposed to do, right? :)
- tagawa 15y agoI always appreciate Patrick's willingness to share information, but won't be using this deceptive tactic. Sad to see it voted to the top of HN.
- dendory 15y agoThis is the kind of attitude that's bad for the Internet overall. Take someone like me, I probably spend more online than most 'casual' users. Yet I use noscript and adblock, so I don't see any ads or SEO crap. I spend money wisely on sites that deserve it by providing good content. The SEO people lose out on the bigger share of the pie, and instead they all go 'dark side' over trying to get as much of the tiny slice as they can.
- zone411 15y agoYou don't know what "SEO" means, do you?
- mikeklaas 15y agoThere is a clear distinction between what Google is doing and what Patrick is doing. Respect diminished.
- aidenn0 15y agoWhat is it?
- jfager 15y agoI think the most jarring part of this ad is something that isn't patio11's fault: it's juxtaposed against an ad that completely stands out as an ad, which makes the 'blending' that much more 'blendy'. Without that other ad in the adjoining slot, I think the visual difference between patio11's ad and regular site content would be more stark, putting it at about the same shade of moral gray as a Google search ad.
- lazugod 15y agoOh. I had assumed that the blatant ad was a fake, tacked on by patio11 for just that reason.
- 7952 15y agojust try looking at the subtle colouring on a slightly tilted laptop display. It just looks white!
- alexhawket 15y agoPatrick is falling into what, I call, the marketing trap. I like some of Patrick's advice, but I wouldn't follow this... ever. Patrick has a nice little niche business but that's all it is, a niche. Niches, by definition are really small, focused and low in demand. In a niche, the stream of new customers eventually dries up and the temptation is to move further and further over to the marketing dark side to keep the ship afloat. Deceptive marketing tactics work, but they shouldn't be necessary. If that's where this is headed, then just go full darkside into scamming and call it a day. Grey and black hat techniques are a bad as crappy products, terrible service, bad systems and stolen ideas. If you wouldn't think of using any of those, then don't use scammy marketing. If you find yourself pursuing deceptive tricks, it's a sign your niche is not big enough and your product is not high enough in demand. This is the most common trap analytic/scientific minded business owners fall into. Many people on HN have voiced concerns that the current crop of startups are increasingly using deceptive practices to boost their businesses. A well planned business should not have to do this. It's one thing to decide to be purposefully evil, but rationalizing it as necessary is amoral and possibly illegal.
- schleyfox 15y agoAnd you are falling into the "if I build it they will come" trap. He definitely has a niche business. Many of us do. For most of us, our niche is tech. Patrick's niche is education. In the tech/startup niche, often the extent of marketing that is required is posting to HN and getting featured by TechCrunch. Trying to expand our niche outside of this is probably a bad sign, and most likely ineffective. I hold this thread as a prime example of how much we hate advertising. The education niche is quite different. You don't reach them by getting coverage for raising a round of financing or writing a blog post on SEO that casually mentions your cloud based retro encabulator. This "deceptive" marketing may be an effective way to raise interest in different segments of his target market. Traditional online advertising is increasingly ineffective because of all the bad ads in that form. Would we be so quick to ignore all ad-like content if we hadn't been tempered with the aversion therapy of flash horrors, scams, and weightloss/white teeth/work at home? The end result is even advertising that might serve a useful purpose can't exist in that environment, so, like bacteria after the invention of penicillin, it has to adapt and change and find a new way to continue. If only "good" ads make the jump, then I think we're better off as a whole. If bad ads make the jump, we'll soon get pretty good at filtering them out as well. Honestly, if scam ads can blend seamlessly into a page, what does that say about the actual content?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- three14 15y agoFunny. I didn't realize that I had Adblock Plus installed until the I noticed the images in the blog post were missing. (Apparently, Chrome syncing will actually install Adblock for you when you switch computers(!), but will leave the default lists set. I had it on without any lists, and just blocked the egregious stuff... except now I suddenly blocked everything.)
- AndyJPartridge 15y ago<PickyMode> Head link looks slightly bolder, and a couple of pixels to the left of where it should be. Stars are 1/4th-1/5th of a star to the left. Text seems slightly lighter. Have to admire the concept!
- viveksec 15y agoHow else can you pull this off unless you design to image to be as close to organic results as possible ? But I wonder what happens if the site owner decides to change the styles, the image would then foolishly look fake. The rating stars however are a different story and are definitely in the dark gray area (say at #333). The "rated by lots" will make users draw a comparison with the other unpaid listings without realizing it is fake, atleast in the sense the other stars arent fake.
- chrisduesing 15y agoI think a fairly important point is that BuySellAds requires the site owner to approve the advertiser. So in effect, the person providing content on the site has agreed that Bingo Card Creator is not so reprehensible that they cannot accept money for what is then essentially a paid/guest listing on their site. OTOH were this Google adwords instead, and there was no human approval, I have to say it would be pretty sketchy.
- asmosoinio 15y agoRandom note: AdBlock blocked the images in the blog post. Screenshots of ads.
- epaga 15y agoDefinitely a darker shade of grey IMHO. Reminds me of the SourceForge ads shown on the download pages that have a big green "download" button. The ads usually display before the actual download button appears, and more than once I have accidentally clicked on it. I end up angry and remembering NOT to deal with whoever was responsible for the ad. However the difference I see to patio11's tactic is that in his case, people are searching for something educationally related and he gives them something related. That's different than me expecting to download a Java library and getting an anti-virus software page. So, still deception and therefore dark-grey, but not as blatant of deception as the ads on SourceForge.
- raghavsethi 15y agoNo it doesn't. It's an awful, deceptive move. You know why? It's because Google makes it easy to spot the sponsored link if you spend more than half a second on it before clicking. A yellow background and text that says 'Sponsored Link' is way less deceiving than the lack of a 'like' button. The devil is in the details. And the significant amount of justification you do in your post shows that you're trying to convince yourself as much as us that it's OK.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- nicpottier 15y agoMy vote is evil, not evil genius. There's a million ways of tricking customers, and a million ways to rationalize it. But if you have ethics you won't go down that path. If you care about money more than your character, then by all means though.
- CodeMage 15y agoAs a user, I really, really dislike this sort of deceptive advertising. I'd like to explain why. The defense I've seen so far starts by "Well, Google does that too, so by your definition they're also evil." Here's the first problem with that defense: appeal to authority. Do you really expect anyone to say, "Oh, Google does it too? Shucks, then, I retract what I said, because we all know Google isn't evil." Second, there are significant differences between how Google "blends" their ads and Patrick's example. The background color distinguishes the ad from the rest of the search results. You might argue that some users have crappy screens or poor vision, but the fact is that the background color is different. The intent was to distinguish the ad clearly. In Patrick's example, there is no such intent. Another thing that has been downplayed is the "Ad - Why this ad?" text. On its own, it probably would have been less noticeable. But when you spot the different background, you automatically look for other differences. The "Why this ad" text is one of those differences and it's prominent not by virtue of its size, but position: it's separated from the rest of the information in the ad. But really, it's not just about the background and the "Ad - Why this ad?" text. It's also about the fact that Google always puts this stuff as the first result, whereas in Patrick's example the ad was snuck into the results. The fake rating is another problem. People try to defend it by saying "It's not fake, it was based on real data." Nobody said the data was fake. The rating is fake, because for every other result the rating was computed by the site, based on the data the site has, while here it was supplied by the advertiser. By the way, if I'm wrong about this, if it is also generated by the site, please let me know. Finally, I'm perfectly happy to adapt to the way Google presents their ads: they're sort of my "doorway" to the rest of the Internet. I'm not as happy to have to research and adapt to every site's unique way of "blending" ads. But this is really a minor point for me. The most important point remains the fact that Google has made at least some effort to distinguish their ads from the content, whereas in Patrick's example the effort was invested in doing the opposite.