9 ms·

When things are this broken, it's an opportunity. Maybe it's time for someone to start an AdSense competitor whose focus is customer service. It seems to be de

by pg 15y ago

When things are this broken, it's an opportunity. Maybe it's time for someone to start an AdSense competitor whose focus is customer service. It seems to be deeply embedded in Google's DNA not so much to abuse AdSense users as to treat them like components in a machine. They treat AdSense users much as they do servers. Uncertain about a server? Toss it; the system is designed to be fault tolerant. Maybe Google thinks they have to behave this way to scale. But my gut tells me they could get away with being a lot nicer and still scale. If so there is an opportunity for a competitor to move in here and surprise people with better customer service, as Zappos did in shoes. It could help to have better fraud detection technology. The more accurately you can tell the innocent from the guilty, the less draconian you need to be with the innocent. And while it sounds unlike Google to have left room to do significantly better, the way they treat the innocent implies their technology may be insufficient.

mgkimsal 15y ago
This is probably a great opp for regional newspapers - they have the ability to have feet on the ground, they are 'local' (ad spends keep money in the region/state/etc) - they should know something about the local/regional players/economy, etc. But... it would require an investment in technology and a commitment to customer service that most newspaper orgs probably don't have and don't want to make. Bit of a shame, as many will go away without adapting, and there are still opportunities for them to adapt/pivot and carve out new niches. Instead, they're happier to outsource all their ad stuff to big players like google.
- shortlived 15y ago
  To the people down-voting. I'd love to hear your criticism against this idea.
  - larrys 15y ago
    "they have the ability to have feet on the ground" This is very expensive compared to an automated online system like google has. But more importantly the local papers don't have the traffic necessary in order to make this a success. And people aren't doing searches on their local newspaper website for "plumber topeka kansas" they are doing it on google.
    - seanp2k2 15y ago
      No, but plumbers in Topeka, Kansas with ads in the paper might want in on websites too. The whole "print adapting to the Internet" is a whole other problem domain, but I think it's a great idea. Now just convince the local papers :)
      - smcnally 15y ago
        Having spent more than a year "convincing the local papers" how they could expand into local digital, and mostly having very smart people nod sagely then do nothing, Google has little to fear from them IMO.
        mgkimsal 15y ago
        I'm guessing most of them were probably already in Google's pocket - having their ad inventory controlled by Google and collecting a monthly check. Classic short term vs long term strategy. Short term, the company can stay in business, long term, you're around solely at Google's pleasure.
        smcnally 15y ago
        Some had been working with GOOG already. Some with YHOO. (this was '07-08) There was healthy skepticism all around - the deadliest aspect was where they (claimed to have) felt more comfortable handling the design and development themselves rather than working with any partner. "Healthy" as they rightly felt they could self-implement and wondered at motivations behind partners' help offers. "Deadliest" as there was a track record of "needing to do it in-house" and yet not doing it at all. Our motivation to help was straightforward: we'd been partnering with hundreds of newspapers for decades. Their vitality - circulation, reach, revenue - directly effected same for our products. We had the resources and incentive to build and "give away" products and services to our partners as it was clearly in our interest. Lessons learned included 1) even gratis is not sufficient positioning for adoption. "Gratis with guaranteed revenue generation" wasn't either: high-touch execution support and hand-holding through the process is what made it work where it did. 2) just because people are smart and capable of executing doesn't mean they will; if they were capable and still hadn't yet executed, they almost certainly would not without some fundamental shift. Illogical, IMO, but those realizations have made other opportunities recognizable.
larrys 15y ago
PG I'm not defending google but there's a tremendous amount of fraud in this business. Any solution has to account for the fraud factor. From my experience neither Yahoo or Google has the correct algorithms to prevent fraud. I know this because we have parked domains and I can tell when various parked domains get spidered and all the sudden we get a check in the mail for the revenue that bots must have created. The reason google/yahoo don't do a better job is that the fraud clicks earn them money. But when they are alerted (by the advertiser) they come down hard and fast (as show by the OP)
- adsenseclient 15y ago
  PG is absolutely right re: treating publishers as servers: this is NOT just about fraud, please take a look at this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803981 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803981
  - larrys 15y ago
    Your link goes to ycombinator.org not .com Requires a separate login to that to vote or reply. At first I thought you were potentially man in the middle. While the whois says the domain is owned by "Paul Graham" at the appropriate address I don't separately even know if this information is correct as anyone can put anything in whois owner info.
    - MiguelHudnandez 15y ago
      For what it's worth, the two names resolve to the same IP address for me. My recommendation for developers who might have this issue on their own site is to set up a redirection script at all the non-canonical names. The redirection script should redirect to the canonical name and include the full path and query string if they exist. I also take that opportunity to log the traffic so I can report on which names are generating traffic. That can help when you are deciding wether to allow names to lapse.
      - larrys 15y ago
vaksel 15y ago
There are hundreds of alternatives...none of them seem to get any major traction. Most of it is due to the fact that only a tiny portion of people are actually affected...and because these alternatives offer much lower quality of advertisers...and much lower earnings.
ajross 15y ago
But who are the "customers"? There are no less than FOUR parties at play here: Google, the ad buyer, the content provider, and the consumer. And none of their interests are very well aligned. Being "nice" to questionably fraudulent activity (because let's be clear: delaying a fraud ban means that on the margins, they will miss some valid bans and thus lose money for themselves and their advertisers) hurts Google and the consumer at the expense of the interests of smaller content vendors. I think the audience here is skewed. People here (pg included) are too wiling to see through their web site admin glasses and not think things through from the other perspectives.
- chc 15y ago
  It hurts Google, the consumer and the advertiser. Some individual site owners are the only ones who benefit from a more lenient stance on fraud.
  - Steko 15y ago
    Please don't miscategorize asking for honest business practices as "a more lenient stance on fraud". What's Google's alleged to have done here -- deprived payment for services rendered -- is morally equivalent to fraud.
    - ajross 15y ago
      Indeed. And what Hatchlings is alleged to have done is likewise fraud (or perhaps accessory to fraud). We have no evidence either way (though as I've mentioned, I'm on the whole not predisposed to believing spammy Facebook games companies), yet you've jumped in on one side. Why? Look, this isn't "PayPal vs. regretsy" here. It's one company in a business area rife with (pseudo-)fraud trying to make a living and getting into a tussle with another company which is badly exposed to risks from the same fraud. Yawn.
      - yeldarb 15y ago
        I just want to jump in here and say that we (Hatchlings) are also not asking for more leniency on fraud. We've been on the opposite side of the advertiser/publisher fence too and fraud on the campaigns we run is not acceptable. It's not even necessarily false-positives that we're against either. Mistakes happen. The real issue is that we've been doing everything possible for the last year to get this issue resolved and have been willfully ignored. We, a small 5 person startup, take care to provide personal support for our 3.5 million users (yes, even to the non-paying ones) and we don't think it's too much to ask for Google to do the same especially with an issue as big as this. PS - the "spammy Facebook games companies" is a whole different issue. We try not to be spammy either and the FB platform is a similar situation where there are bad actors who tend to ruin it for everyone else.
seanp2k2 15y ago
Google has always been awful at customer relations; maybe it has a lot to do with why they don't "get" social media.
robomartin 15y ago
The sheer mass Google has and their control of search represents a huge barrier to entry in this field. Like it or not, they are a monopoly. The majority of advertisers are familiar with Google's advertising platform as search users. Given a choice between an unknown startup and Google to advertise their own business they'll choose Google, hands-down. You and other investors would have to throw tens of millions of dollars (ore more) at a startup in order to mount a serious challenge to Google's supremacy. If you can beat them at search you can probably mount an attack on their advertising business. Without that it'll probably be very difficult to convince publishers and advertisers to switch sides.
- gcp 15y ago
  This is far from obvious to me. For brokering a deal between publisher and advertiser, Google has nothing that presents a technological, or even much business, advantage. Maybe some prior experience in fraud detection. The existence of this thread shows it can't be that good. Yes, an advertiser might want or have a business relation with Google for search advertisements. But for others? What does Google have there that makes them special? Their brand might be worth something, but thinking this is unovercomable seems strange to me.
  - robryan 15y ago
    Inventory size and larger returns generally than anyone else is able to offer due to more data for better targetting.
    - gcp 15y ago
      Excellent point - and different from the original poster - and I feel silly for forgetting about it. Google knows your interests and who you are...and what you'd buy. Would be nice if Facebook would offer Adsense.
      - robryan 15y ago
        Yeah, Facebook is probably in the best position to break Google's dominance in the area. Seems like a pretty natural extension to from having things like likes and comments on 3rd party sites.
zupreme 15y ago
That sounds like a great idea, (the "opportunity" you mention) but how does one avoid becoming "just another ad network"? There are so many fringe players out there who provide low value and poor customer service that many website owners (myself included) prefer to avoid them. I'd love to see ideas in this space. I'd even collaborate with other hackers to build something along these lines if there was a clear vision of what success looks like.
desireco42 15y ago
Agreeing with people who criticize google, I have to say it is really beautiful to see PG response where he is seeing opportunity in everything. Me too :).
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

by pg 15y ago

mgkimsal 15y ago

This is probably a great opp for regional newspapers - they have the ability to have feet on the ground, they are 'local' (ad spends keep money in the region/state/etc) - they should know something about the local/regional players/economy, etc. But... it would require an investment in technology and a commitment to customer service that most newspaper orgs probably don't have and don't want to make. Bit of a shame, as many will go away without adapting, and there are still opportunities for them to adapt/pivot and carve out new niches. Instead, they're happier to outsource all their ad stuff to big players like google.

shortlived 15y ago
To the people down-voting. I'd love to hear your criticism against this idea.
- larrys 15y ago
  "they have the ability to have feet on the ground" This is very expensive compared to an automated online system like google has. But more importantly the local papers don't have the traffic necessary in order to make this a success. And people aren't doing searches on their local newspaper website for "plumber topeka kansas" they are doing it on google.
  - seanp2k2 15y ago
    No, but plumbers in Topeka, Kansas with ads in the paper might want in on websites too. The whole "print adapting to the Internet" is a whole other problem domain, but I think it's a great idea. Now just convince the local papers :)
    - smcnally 15y ago
      Having spent more than a year "convincing the local papers" how they could expand into local digital, and mostly having very smart people nod sagely then do nothing, Google has little to fear from them IMO.
      - mgkimsal 15y ago
        I'm guessing most of them were probably already in Google's pocket - having their ad inventory controlled by Google and collecting a monthly check. Classic short term vs long term strategy. Short term, the company can stay in business, long term, you're around solely at Google's pleasure.
        smcnally 15y ago
        Some had been working with GOOG already. Some with YHOO. (this was '07-08) There was healthy skepticism all around - the deadliest aspect was where they (claimed to have) felt more comfortable handling the design and development themselves rather than working with any partner. "Healthy" as they rightly felt they could self-implement and wondered at motivations behind partners' help offers. "Deadliest" as there was a track record of "needing to do it in-house" and yet not doing it at all. Our motivation to help was straightforward: we'd been partnering with hundreds of newspapers for decades. Their vitality - circulation, reach, revenue - directly effected same for our products. We had the resources and incentive to build and "give away" products and services to our partners as it was clearly in our interest. Lessons learned included 1) even gratis is not sufficient positioning for adoption. "Gratis with guaranteed revenue generation" wasn't either: high-touch execution support and hand-holding through the process is what made it work where it did. 2) just because people are smart and capable of executing doesn't mean they will; if they were capable and still hadn't yet executed, they almost certainly would not without some fundamental shift. Illogical, IMO, but those realizations have made other opportunities recognizable.

larrys 15y ago

PG I'm not defending google but there's a tremendous amount of fraud in this business. Any solution has to account for the fraud factor. From my experience neither Yahoo or Google has the correct algorithms to prevent fraud. I know this because we have parked domains and I can tell when various parked domains get spidered and all the sudden we get a check in the mail for the revenue that bots must have created. The reason google/yahoo don't do a better job is that the fraud clicks earn them money. But when they are alerted (by the advertiser) they come down hard and fast (as show by the OP)

adsenseclient 15y ago
PG is absolutely right re: treating publishers as servers: this is NOT just about fraud, please take a look at this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803981 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803981
- larrys 15y ago
  Your link goes to ycombinator.org not .com Requires a separate login to that to vote or reply. At first I thought you were potentially man in the middle. While the whois says the domain is owned by "Paul Graham" at the appropriate address I don't separately even know if this information is correct as anyone can put anything in whois owner info.
  - MiguelHudnandez 15y ago
    For what it's worth, the two names resolve to the same IP address for me. My recommendation for developers who might have this issue on their own site is to set up a redirection script at all the non-canonical names. The redirection script should redirect to the canonical name and include the full path and query string if they exist. I also take that opportunity to log the traffic so I can report on which names are generating traffic. That can help when you are deciding wether to allow names to lapse.
    - larrys 15y ago

vaksel 15y ago

There are hundreds of alternatives...none of them seem to get any major traction. Most of it is due to the fact that only a tiny portion of people are actually affected...and because these alternatives offer much lower quality of advertisers...and much lower earnings.

ajross 15y ago

But who are the "customers"? There are no less than FOUR parties at play here: Google, the ad buyer, the content provider, and the consumer. And none of their interests are very well aligned. Being "nice" to questionably fraudulent activity (because let's be clear: delaying a fraud ban means that on the margins, they will miss some valid bans and thus lose money for themselves and their advertisers) hurts Google and the consumer at the expense of the interests of smaller content vendors. I think the audience here is skewed. People here (pg included) are too wiling to see through their web site admin glasses and not think things through from the other perspectives.

chc 15y ago
It hurts Google, the consumer and the advertiser. Some individual site owners are the only ones who benefit from a more lenient stance on fraud.
- Steko 15y ago
  Please don't miscategorize asking for honest business practices as "a more lenient stance on fraud". What's Google's alleged to have done here -- deprived payment for services rendered -- is morally equivalent to fraud.
  - ajross 15y ago
    Indeed. And what Hatchlings is alleged to have done is likewise fraud (or perhaps accessory to fraud). We have no evidence either way (though as I've mentioned, I'm on the whole not predisposed to believing spammy Facebook games companies), yet you've jumped in on one side. Why? Look, this isn't "PayPal vs. regretsy" here. It's one company in a business area rife with (pseudo-)fraud trying to make a living and getting into a tussle with another company which is badly exposed to risks from the same fraud. Yawn.
    - yeldarb 15y ago
      I just want to jump in here and say that we (Hatchlings) are also not asking for more leniency on fraud. We've been on the opposite side of the advertiser/publisher fence too and fraud on the campaigns we run is not acceptable. It's not even necessarily false-positives that we're against either. Mistakes happen. The real issue is that we've been doing everything possible for the last year to get this issue resolved and have been willfully ignored. We, a small 5 person startup, take care to provide personal support for our 3.5 million users (yes, even to the non-paying ones) and we don't think it's too much to ask for Google to do the same especially with an issue as big as this. PS - the "spammy Facebook games companies" is a whole different issue. We try not to be spammy either and the FB platform is a similar situation where there are bad actors who tend to ruin it for everyone else.

seanp2k2 15y ago

Google has always been awful at customer relations; maybe it has a lot to do with why they don't "get" social media.

robomartin 15y ago

The sheer mass Google has and their control of search represents a huge barrier to entry in this field. Like it or not, they are a monopoly. The majority of advertisers are familiar with Google's advertising platform as search users. Given a choice between an unknown startup and Google to advertise their own business they'll choose Google, hands-down. You and other investors would have to throw tens of millions of dollars (ore more) at a startup in order to mount a serious challenge to Google's supremacy. If you can beat them at search you can probably mount an attack on their advertising business. Without that it'll probably be very difficult to convince publishers and advertisers to switch sides.

gcp 15y ago
This is far from obvious to me. For brokering a deal between publisher and advertiser, Google has nothing that presents a technological, or even much business, advantage. Maybe some prior experience in fraud detection. The existence of this thread shows it can't be that good. Yes, an advertiser might want or have a business relation with Google for search advertisements. But for others? What does Google have there that makes them special? Their brand might be worth something, but thinking this is unovercomable seems strange to me.
- robryan 15y ago
  Inventory size and larger returns generally than anyone else is able to offer due to more data for better targetting.
  - gcp 15y ago
    Excellent point - and different from the original poster - and I feel silly for forgetting about it. Google knows your interests and who you are...and what you'd buy. Would be nice if Facebook would offer Adsense.
    - robryan 15y ago
      Yeah, Facebook is probably in the best position to break Google's dominance in the area. Seems like a pretty natural extension to from having things like likes and comments on 3rd party sites.

zupreme 15y ago

That sounds like a great idea, (the "opportunity" you mention) but how does one avoid becoming "just another ad network"? There are so many fringe players out there who provide low value and poor customer service that many website owners (myself included) prefer to avoid them. I'd love to see ideas in this space. I'd even collaborate with other hackers to build something along these lines if there was a clear vision of what success looks like.

desireco42 15y ago

Agreeing with people who criticize google, I have to say it is really beautiful to see PG response where he is seeing opportunity in everything. Me too :).

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]