7 ms·

Google ad exec: “it is a worse user experience to not have ads on the page”

83 points by r721 3y ago

TheChaplain 3y ago
I believe this quote explains the situation well; "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
- jjoonathan 3y ago
  I like this one too: > The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. - Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine
  - tommica 3y ago
    Damn, now I feel like a fool. Of course google is in the ad business, but I never considered that they could compromise the quality of their results to boost up ads, but it's absolutely possible.
    - candiodari 3y ago
      The central defining quality of Google search was that they didn't do that. That's what that quote refers to. Google wasn't the first search engine. It wasn't the best, at least not initially. But Google, the first decade, refused to destroy it's own relevance for a buck, and all the others did. From Yahoo to Altavista. It now appears it was a delay tactic. 2-3 ads on the side, next to 10-20 "organic" search results, like Google in 2005, was great and nice. And it's certainly true that occasionally the ads were useful. The ads, like the search results, were high quality. Now Google barely has one organic search result visible. I just checked for the search "credit card", which I know is bad, but ... The first organic search result is the fifth, with only 2 results actually visible when you do the search, both "sponsored". 3 and 4, not on the first page, are sponsored too. And if you don't want commercial search results for that search (excluding wikipedia that seems to get very special treatment) the first organic result, the first result not trying to get you to put yourself into debt ... well, I gave up after scrolling though at least 20 pages. It just isn't there anymore. Hell, it isn't even that long ago that in-line ads were on the first page of Google ... now they take up 80% of the space on every page of Google results. So organic results have been banned from the 2nd page to at least the 21st page or so. There's no more point to "Googling". Google now really does look like Yahoo looked in 2000. And last year they did layoffs, just like yahoo. What I don't understand is how investors fool themselves into believing the stock price won't do the exact same thing. 5-10 more years and Google gets sold to Verizon for 10 billion. And why? Because no manager at Google will risk their career on getting 1% less out of their customers than they did last quarter ... and they do that like everyone else: by accepting every last dollar every last scummy advertiser makes to Google.
- sayrer 3y ago
  I think it can be true in some situations. If you think of magazines, it would be a disappointment for Rolling Stone to contain no ads. Same for camera magazines. News content really doesn't benefit, though. Just clickbait stuff.
  - CharlesW 3y ago
    > If you think of magazines, it would be a disappointment for Rolling Stone to contain no ads. I'll bite…because they're pretty? Or because how else would one stay on top of the latest Axe body spray releases?
    - saalweachter 3y ago
      Woodworking magazines are 1/3 about shop organization, 1/3 about project ideas & techniques, and 1/3 about the latest and oldest woodworking tools and where to buy them.
    - keepper 3y ago
      Because who then pays for the content? Time and time again, the average person has shown that they will rather spend X times more on a trivial thing than content. This is more acute on hard news. Where a single page article may cost 100k to produce, yet wont be able to be monetized per its "cost to produce". So yes, it would be a disappointment to lose "great content". now, here lies in the kicker. You get to decide great content with your patronage ( or lack there of)
  - chankstein38 3y ago
    I don't know man I've never turned to an ad in a magazine and been thankful it was there. Ads could evaporate completely from existence tomorrow and I'd miss absolutely nothing.
    - lesuorac 3y ago
      Isn't that almost the whole point of the magazine? I guess for something a bit more catch-all like "Rolling Stone" Ads would detract. But for something like USA Hockey, honestly the Ads are more interesting than half the actual content. Although seeing the same 4 ads for home skating rinks has gotten old. Although I guess this would be more akin to searching Google for "new hockey products" and then it would make a lot of sense to return pure ads.
asah 3y ago
Before HN jumps all over this, I worked at Google and other ads and search companies... and this is technically true (in selected cases) ! There are certain categories of websites and search results pages, where ads actually improve user experience, measured by nearly any metric you want to pick, from user perception to CTR/conversion, etc. There's lots of random categories, but the obvious ones are commercial/product searches where you're looking to buy something. And this isn't new: over history, there've been magazines and other media where the ads dominated the content, e.g. trade publications such as _Computer Shopper_ during the 1980's PC revolution. Thanks for listening to my TED talk, let the downvoting begin!
- Terretta 3y ago
  Ads improve conversion? You don't say.
  - asah 3y ago
    don't be snarky - I mean compared with lower quality free/organic content.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- chinathrow 3y ago
  > There are certain categories of websites and search results pages, where ads actually improve user experience, measured by nearly any metric you want to pick, from user perception to CTR/conversion, etc. I'm left for words, is this satire?
- jrockway 3y ago
  I don't think you deserve any downvotes, but there is also somewhat of a tragedy of the commons effect at play. I hear people Google "Facebook" to find the Facebook login page. No doubt, Facebook has ads for that search so that people click the right link. This ends up being expensive; people should have just clicked their bookmark, but don't really understand URLs, so there is just a tax on big companies to have that link available. I don't think this is particularly evil, but I also don't think it's amazing. At the end of the day, you're providing value for not making people type "www" and "com", but many think that should just be free. (Of course, before search was integrated into the address bar, I feel like typing "example" in there went to www.example.com. That feature mysteriously disappeared when browser vendors realized you could make money by displaying an unrelated webpage with ads instead.) Meanwhile the alternative is mobile apps and an icon on your homescreen, an effect that makes Apple and Google rich for taking a % of the revenue from those apps, and one of the largest job programs ever for software engineers. At the end of the day, I can see why people are uncomfortable with the whole situation, but I also don't see an easy solution. It is fun to railroad rich people in front of Congress, but at the end of the day, what really changes? The rich person has slightly less money, the politicians get a photo op, and some lawyer has a little more cash. Only better technology will end today's quirks. (Remember when Microsoft got sued for anti-trust violations? Did the government end IE's reign on the Internet, or did Chrome?)
baja_blast 3y ago
Anyone else feel that Google as a search engine has gotten really bad these past few years? Finding information outside of looking up restaurants, songs or products the results are often times completely irrelevant and limited now.
- RankingMember 3y ago
  There was a post yesterday about the literal operator (double-quotes around a word) no longer working. I had noticed weirdness like that but hadn't thought much about it. I've noticed a lower quality experience in general searching for things on Google, though, yes.
  - janalsncm 3y ago
    That seems like a weird thing for Google to intentionally break. I’m guessing there’s a more technical reason. For example Google probably directly indexes by keyword. So “foo bar” probably searches the union of all “foo” and all “bar” pages for “foo bar”. But if the page changes since indexing, they will serve matches that aren’t actually matches. Or websites might game the indexer so that “foo bar” isn’t actually visible but it shows up on the Google search page.
- ToDougie 3y ago
  In my 24 years of use, my google-fu has improved significantly. However, I can no longer keep up with how drastically google search results have deteriorated.
- justrealist 3y ago
  It's an adversarial environment.
- drawkward 3y ago
  Today, I was googling for some methodology discussions on how to execute a type of market analysis I'd never previously undertaken. Instead of finding what I was looking for, I got a bunch of SEO-optimized corporate garbage trying to get me to hire Nielsen or IRI to do it for me. Corporate "blogs" suck a$$.
jrockway 3y ago
I think my favorite part of this thread is the people replying saying "I did a report on this, click to listen to my podcast or watch my video". One wonders why they chose those particular media for sharing their story, rather than just replying inline or writing an article. Could it be that they want people to watch higher cost ads? "Google is terrible for having ads! Please come watch my ads." deserves at least a little bit of an eye roll.
timeon 3y ago
They should implement leet-code interview also for exec positions next time.
valine 3y ago
It’s disappointing to see google lacking basic self awareness like this. Ten years ago they seemed highly competent and nearly unstoppable.
- RankingMember 3y ago
  I wonder if bringing Larry and Sergey back into day-to-day leadership roles would help. They've been out of the day-to-day so long I wonder how long the ramp-up time would be, though.
  - graypegg 3y ago
    I don't know the specifics, but I can only imagine Google is too big to have a single "thought leader" at this point. The many layers of middle management that are already implemented are probably the source of a lot of this. It is shocking to hear the higher ups saying this stuff, but I don't think swapping them out would change much.
    - zelphirkalt 3y ago
      My guess is, that people simply do not get into management positions at G, if they are not fully onboard or brainwashed enough or greedy enough for the next paycheck, to state obvious nonsense, if that is what is good for G.
  - plorkyeran 3y ago
    The rumor is that neither of them has even the slightest interest in ever being involved in running Google again.
- camtarn 3y ago
  Ten-ish years ago, Google was still trying to make Google Plus work. I don't think it's been a particularly competent company for a long time.
  - dvngnt_ 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jsisto 3y ago
This reminds me of having to disable pihole for my wife because she is shopping and wants to click on the ads
artursapek 3y ago
Cigarette executive: "your lungs are actually worse off without cigs"
- Terretta 3y ago
  Cigarette Exec "Starter Pack": 1. Lung Inflammation: Nicotine in cigarettes may have anti-inflammatory effects, potentially aiding conditions like COPD or asthma. 2. Stress Relief: Smoking can provide temporary relief from stress-induced shortness of breath. 3. Pollutant Resilience: Constant exposure to cigarette pollutants might hypothetically increase lung resilience to other environmental toxins. 4. Parkinson's Disease: Some studies suggest a correlation between smoking and reduced risk of Parkinson's, possibly due to nicotine's neuroprotective properties. 5. Weight Management: Cigarettes can suppress appetite and increase metabolism, potentially aiding in weight control. 6. Mental Health: Nicotine may temporarily alleviate symptoms of mental health conditions like schizophrenia or depression, acting as a form of self-medication.
  - artursapek 3y ago
    Actually as an occassional tobacco enjoyer (pipe, cigars) some of this is actually true lol
greatpostman 3y ago
Imagine the internet without google. It would be bad at first, then a Cambrian explosion
adamsvystun 3y ago
Does anyone have the context in which this was said? The question that was asked?
- CaptainFever 3y ago
  My thoughts too. This just seems like such a ridiculous thing that it must be out of context. Perhaps it's about in comparison to paywalls?
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
FWIW, I used to enjoy ads on Google's search page (or at least weren't bothered by them), but importantly, when they were clearly identified by (a) a yellow background, with at most one or two entries at the top, and (b) an unobtrusive sidebar (random example I found online, https://www.avidlyagency.com/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/search_old-1.png https://www.avidlyagency.com/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/searc...). What I despise now is that for most remotely-commercial searches every entry above the fold is an ad, and it's barely marked with a tiny "ad" box (otherwise the visual treatment is the same as organic results). I especially hate it when I search for a particular branded item, and the first 5 results I get back are competitors' ads, in addition to an ad from the brand because they have to pay "the Google tax".
- solarkraft 3y ago
  I don't use Google for this type of search at all. The results obviously aren't relevant. Since I already use DuckDuckGo by default, I just skip the !g.
alwaysrunning 3y ago
Honestly, who here sees ads? My son owns a marketing firm and anytime I see his display it's shocking to me how different it looks than mine.
- graypegg 3y ago
  I worked a short while at Mindgeek (The pornhub holding company) and it was the first time I had every faced the internet without adblockers in a very long time. (Most of the work I was doing involved ads themselves.) Definitely was not "great" but also not the worst thing. Pretty quickly I regained whatever sky-scraper ad-blindness I had in the early 2000s.
  - tennisflyi 3y ago
    They changed names recently, but yeah.
- dgrin91 3y ago
  > Honestly, who here sees ads? Your problem is selection bias. Here is HN, a group of mostly tech-oriented people who all have adblockers. The majority of people actually _don't_ have ad blockers, especially the older crowd.
  - alwaysrunning 3y ago
    Agreed, but I was referring to those who visit HN.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- yreg 3y ago
  I see ads when watching YouTube on my TV, since I have been too lazy to set up a pi hole so far. To be honest, I don't even mind it that much. At least I have some contact with what's going on out there in the ad space. But I watch 90+% of YT videos on other devices, not the TV.
siliconc0w 3y ago
I imagine, to a certain extent a willingness to bid highest for an ad display is itself a pretty good sign of relevance. I can imagine alternatives though, like a real time auction to donate the most to charity and the platform maybe gets a set fee or a %. This would still generate a useful signal but remove some of the current negative incentives.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
cosmotic 3y ago
What do they think people are searching for where the ads are valuable? I've never clicked an ad and it be what I wanted, except when it's like a search for "target" and I wanted "target.com" and Target paid for the top ad spot (which would have been the first link if there were no ads)
DueDilligence 3y ago
[dead]

83 points by r721 3y ago

I believe this quote explains the situation well; "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

jjoonathan 3y ago
I like this one too: > The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. - Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine
- tommica 3y ago
  Damn, now I feel like a fool. Of course google is in the ad business, but I never considered that they could compromise the quality of their results to boost up ads, but it's absolutely possible.
  - candiodari 3y ago
    The central defining quality of Google search was that they didn't do that. That's what that quote refers to. Google wasn't the first search engine. It wasn't the best, at least not initially. But Google, the first decade, refused to destroy it's own relevance for a buck, and all the others did. From Yahoo to Altavista. It now appears it was a delay tactic. 2-3 ads on the side, next to 10-20 "organic" search results, like Google in 2005, was great and nice. And it's certainly true that occasionally the ads were useful. The ads, like the search results, were high quality. Now Google barely has one organic search result visible. I just checked for the search "credit card", which I know is bad, but ... The first organic search result is the fifth, with only 2 results actually visible when you do the search, both "sponsored". 3 and 4, not on the first page, are sponsored too. And if you don't want commercial search results for that search (excluding wikipedia that seems to get very special treatment) the first organic result, the first result not trying to get you to put yourself into debt ... well, I gave up after scrolling though at least 20 pages. It just isn't there anymore. Hell, it isn't even that long ago that in-line ads were on the first page of Google ... now they take up 80% of the space on every page of Google results. So organic results have been banned from the 2nd page to at least the 21st page or so. There's no more point to "Googling". Google now really does look like Yahoo looked in 2000. And last year they did layoffs, just like yahoo. What I don't understand is how investors fool themselves into believing the stock price won't do the exact same thing. 5-10 more years and Google gets sold to Verizon for 10 billion. And why? Because no manager at Google will risk their career on getting 1% less out of their customers than they did last quarter ... and they do that like everyone else: by accepting every last dollar every last scummy advertiser makes to Google.
sayrer 3y ago
I think it can be true in some situations. If you think of magazines, it would be a disappointment for Rolling Stone to contain no ads. Same for camera magazines. News content really doesn't benefit, though. Just clickbait stuff.
- CharlesW 3y ago
  > If you think of magazines, it would be a disappointment for Rolling Stone to contain no ads. I'll bite…because they're pretty? Or because how else would one stay on top of the latest Axe body spray releases?
  - saalweachter 3y ago
    Woodworking magazines are 1/3 about shop organization, 1/3 about project ideas & techniques, and 1/3 about the latest and oldest woodworking tools and where to buy them.
  - keepper 3y ago
    Because who then pays for the content? Time and time again, the average person has shown that they will rather spend X times more on a trivial thing than content. This is more acute on hard news. Where a single page article may cost 100k to produce, yet wont be able to be monetized per its "cost to produce". So yes, it would be a disappointment to lose "great content". now, here lies in the kicker. You get to decide great content with your patronage ( or lack there of)
- chankstein38 3y ago
  I don't know man I've never turned to an ad in a magazine and been thankful it was there. Ads could evaporate completely from existence tomorrow and I'd miss absolutely nothing.
  - lesuorac 3y ago
    Isn't that almost the whole point of the magazine? I guess for something a bit more catch-all like "Rolling Stone" Ads would detract. But for something like USA Hockey, honestly the Ads are more interesting than half the actual content. Although seeing the same 4 ads for home skating rinks has gotten old. Although I guess this would be more akin to searching Google for "new hockey products" and then it would make a lot of sense to return pure ads.

asah 3y ago

Before HN jumps all over this, I worked at Google and other ads and search companies... and this is technically true (in selected cases) ! There are certain categories of websites and search results pages, where ads actually improve user experience, measured by nearly any metric you want to pick, from user perception to CTR/conversion, etc. There's lots of random categories, but the obvious ones are commercial/product searches where you're looking to buy something. And this isn't new: over history, there've been magazines and other media where the ads dominated the content, e.g. trade publications such as _Computer Shopper_ during the 1980's PC revolution. Thanks for listening to my TED talk, let the downvoting begin!

Terretta 3y ago
Ads improve conversion? You don't say.
- asah 3y ago
  don't be snarky - I mean compared with lower quality free/organic content.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
chinathrow 3y ago
> There are certain categories of websites and search results pages, where ads actually improve user experience, measured by nearly any metric you want to pick, from user perception to CTR/conversion, etc. I'm left for words, is this satire?
jrockway 3y ago
I don't think you deserve any downvotes, but there is also somewhat of a tragedy of the commons effect at play. I hear people Google "Facebook" to find the Facebook login page. No doubt, Facebook has ads for that search so that people click the right link. This ends up being expensive; people should have just clicked their bookmark, but don't really understand URLs, so there is just a tax on big companies to have that link available. I don't think this is particularly evil, but I also don't think it's amazing. At the end of the day, you're providing value for not making people type "www" and "com", but many think that should just be free. (Of course, before search was integrated into the address bar, I feel like typing "example" in there went to www.example.com. That feature mysteriously disappeared when browser vendors realized you could make money by displaying an unrelated webpage with ads instead.) Meanwhile the alternative is mobile apps and an icon on your homescreen, an effect that makes Apple and Google rich for taking a % of the revenue from those apps, and one of the largest job programs ever for software engineers. At the end of the day, I can see why people are uncomfortable with the whole situation, but I also don't see an easy solution. It is fun to railroad rich people in front of Congress, but at the end of the day, what really changes? The rich person has slightly less money, the politicians get a photo op, and some lawyer has a little more cash. Only better technology will end today's quirks. (Remember when Microsoft got sued for anti-trust violations? Did the government end IE's reign on the Internet, or did Chrome?)

baja_blast 3y ago

Anyone else feel that Google as a search engine has gotten really bad these past few years? Finding information outside of looking up restaurants, songs or products the results are often times completely irrelevant and limited now.

RankingMember 3y ago
There was a post yesterday about the literal operator (double-quotes around a word) no longer working. I had noticed weirdness like that but hadn't thought much about it. I've noticed a lower quality experience in general searching for things on Google, though, yes.
- janalsncm 3y ago
  That seems like a weird thing for Google to intentionally break. I’m guessing there’s a more technical reason. For example Google probably directly indexes by keyword. So “foo bar” probably searches the union of all “foo” and all “bar” pages for “foo bar”. But if the page changes since indexing, they will serve matches that aren’t actually matches. Or websites might game the indexer so that “foo bar” isn’t actually visible but it shows up on the Google search page.
ToDougie 3y ago
In my 24 years of use, my google-fu has improved significantly. However, I can no longer keep up with how drastically google search results have deteriorated.
justrealist 3y ago
It's an adversarial environment.
drawkward 3y ago
Today, I was googling for some methodology discussions on how to execute a type of market analysis I'd never previously undertaken. Instead of finding what I was looking for, I got a bunch of SEO-optimized corporate garbage trying to get me to hire Nielsen or IRI to do it for me. Corporate "blogs" suck a$$.

jrockway 3y ago

I think my favorite part of this thread is the people replying saying "I did a report on this, click to listen to my podcast or watch my video". One wonders why they chose those particular media for sharing their story, rather than just replying inline or writing an article. Could it be that they want people to watch higher cost ads? "Google is terrible for having ads! Please come watch my ads." deserves at least a little bit of an eye roll.

timeon 3y ago

They should implement leet-code interview also for exec positions next time.

valine 3y ago

It’s disappointing to see google lacking basic self awareness like this. Ten years ago they seemed highly competent and nearly unstoppable.

RankingMember 3y ago
I wonder if bringing Larry and Sergey back into day-to-day leadership roles would help. They've been out of the day-to-day so long I wonder how long the ramp-up time would be, though.
- graypegg 3y ago
  I don't know the specifics, but I can only imagine Google is too big to have a single "thought leader" at this point. The many layers of middle management that are already implemented are probably the source of a lot of this. It is shocking to hear the higher ups saying this stuff, but I don't think swapping them out would change much.
  - zelphirkalt 3y ago
    My guess is, that people simply do not get into management positions at G, if they are not fully onboard or brainwashed enough or greedy enough for the next paycheck, to state obvious nonsense, if that is what is good for G.
- plorkyeran 3y ago
  The rumor is that neither of them has even the slightest interest in ever being involved in running Google again.
camtarn 3y ago
Ten-ish years ago, Google was still trying to make Google Plus work. I don't think it's been a particularly competent company for a long time.
- dvngnt_ 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jsisto 3y ago

This reminds me of having to disable pihole for my wife because she is shopping and wants to click on the ads

artursapek 3y ago

Cigarette executive: "your lungs are actually worse off without cigs"

Terretta 3y ago
Cigarette Exec "Starter Pack": 1. Lung Inflammation: Nicotine in cigarettes may have anti-inflammatory effects, potentially aiding conditions like COPD or asthma. 2. Stress Relief: Smoking can provide temporary relief from stress-induced shortness of breath. 3. Pollutant Resilience: Constant exposure to cigarette pollutants might hypothetically increase lung resilience to other environmental toxins. 4. Parkinson's Disease: Some studies suggest a correlation between smoking and reduced risk of Parkinson's, possibly due to nicotine's neuroprotective properties. 5. Weight Management: Cigarettes can suppress appetite and increase metabolism, potentially aiding in weight control. 6. Mental Health: Nicotine may temporarily alleviate symptoms of mental health conditions like schizophrenia or depression, acting as a form of self-medication.
- artursapek 3y ago
  Actually as an occassional tobacco enjoyer (pipe, cigars) some of this is actually true lol

greatpostman 3y ago

Imagine the internet without google. It would be bad at first, then a Cambrian explosion

adamsvystun 3y ago

Does anyone have the context in which this was said? The question that was asked?

CaptainFever 3y ago
My thoughts too. This just seems like such a ridiculous thing that it must be out of context. Perhaps it's about in comparison to paywalls?

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

FWIW, I used to enjoy ads on Google's search page (or at least weren't bothered by them), but importantly, when they were clearly identified by (a) a yellow background, with at most one or two entries at the top, and (b) an unobtrusive sidebar (random example I found online, https://www.avidlyagency.com/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/search_old-1.png https://www.avidlyagency.com/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/searc...). What I despise now is that for most remotely-commercial searches every entry above the fold is an ad, and it's barely marked with a tiny "ad" box (otherwise the visual treatment is the same as organic results). I especially hate it when I search for a particular branded item, and the first 5 results I get back are competitors' ads, in addition to an ad from the brand because they have to pay "the Google tax".

solarkraft 3y ago
I don't use Google for this type of search at all. The results obviously aren't relevant. Since I already use DuckDuckGo by default, I just skip the !g.

alwaysrunning 3y ago

Honestly, who here sees ads? My son owns a marketing firm and anytime I see his display it's shocking to me how different it looks than mine.

graypegg 3y ago
I worked a short while at Mindgeek (The pornhub holding company) and it was the first time I had every faced the internet without adblockers in a very long time. (Most of the work I was doing involved ads themselves.) Definitely was not "great" but also not the worst thing. Pretty quickly I regained whatever sky-scraper ad-blindness I had in the early 2000s.
- tennisflyi 3y ago
  They changed names recently, but yeah.
dgrin91 3y ago
> Honestly, who here sees ads? Your problem is selection bias. Here is HN, a group of mostly tech-oriented people who all have adblockers. The majority of people actually _don't_ have ad blockers, especially the older crowd.
- alwaysrunning 3y ago
  Agreed, but I was referring to those who visit HN.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
yreg 3y ago
I see ads when watching YouTube on my TV, since I have been too lazy to set up a pi hole so far. To be honest, I don't even mind it that much. At least I have some contact with what's going on out there in the ad space. But I watch 90+% of YT videos on other devices, not the TV.

siliconc0w 3y ago

I imagine, to a certain extent a willingness to bid highest for an ad display is itself a pretty good sign of relevance. I can imagine alternatives though, like a real time auction to donate the most to charity and the platform maybe gets a set fee or a %. This would still generate a useful signal but remove some of the current negative incentives.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

cosmotic 3y ago

What do they think people are searching for where the ads are valuable? I've never clicked an ad and it be what I wanted, except when it's like a search for "target" and I wanted "target.com" and Target paid for the top ad spot (which would have been the first link if there were no ads)

DueDilligence 3y ago

[dead]