7 ms·

Ask HN: If you wanted to fix advertising, how would you do it?

10 points by mcartyem 15y ago

benologist 15y ago
Assuming this is related to the AdSense thingy on the front page at the moment ... I think a decent amount of the problem is Google has virtually non-existant quality control. I'd start by not approving all the scrapers and spammers and scammers. I'd avoid sites that get the majority of their traffic from reddit/etc, if they don't have natural traffic but they're consistently featured on social media sites they're probably spammers. Once you take all the trashy people and their trashy sites out of the equation I think it would become a lot easier to detect fraud. I would focus on: 1) high quality publishers 2) more interesting formats ... people used to talk about banner blindness, these days AdSense has to be pretty much shoved between sentences to be seen 3) actual support Something probably like The Deck but more open.
- mcartyem 15y ago
  Yes, it is very much related to the front post. Right now advertising is interrupt-driven. Could one do the opposite? What you are suggesting seems like a frontal attack and that may not be the best tactic. What is the goal of advertising anyway? For the ad-buyer, the goal seems to be increasing sales. For the consumer, the goal is ... what?
  - benologist 15y ago
    There's non-interrupt driven advertising - product placement in tv/films, advergames, MochiMedia uses the downloading time at the start of Flash games to present ads etc. When it comes to websites anything that diverts my attention from the page that I came to look at is going to interrupt me so I don't know if that's really a good criteria.
    - mcartyem 15y ago
      Or it could be a schlep. Everyone could be doing it the wrong way, just like Google showing the best search result in 1999 was initially considered the wrong way. Take the easy case of a consumer ready to buy something this minute. Say, they want a colorful winter jacket for men, and they are willing to pay anything for it. Can they find it with advertising? Can they find it with search? One goal of advertising for the consumer is that it helps them make a decision. Which of these X jackets should I consider? Now, is being interrupted the best way to make a decision?
- AznHisoka 15y ago
  If they're featured a lot in social media, aren't they most likely not to be spam sites? I don't know a lot of spammy insurance sites that can get lots of retweets, facebook likes, or reddit votes... On the other hand, if a site gets 99% of their visitors from search engines, it makes you wonder about the quality of the site
  - benologist 15y ago
    The key thing is whether they get all their traffic from social media sites - a good site isn't going to get 99% traffic from reddit (or search engines), they're going to have a diverse mix of sources.
btomorrow 15y ago
Could you do a browser plugin that works like Pinterest, but uses your browsing history to feed data into a recommendation engine like hunch?
- vouch4me 15y ago
  A recommendation engine would ultimately need more data. It would also need a diffing algorithm between different product properties.
  - btomorrow 15y ago
    Not necessarily. A consumer could pin/follow websites where it found close enough results, and a meta-recommendation engine could retrieve the recommendations of the existing product site and present them better. In the end there's some form of an API for most things anyway.
proexploit 15y ago
I'd focus on the honesty in advertising. Something like VeriSign for specific scientifically-proveable claims in ads (e.g. "Kills 99.9% of bacteria in 5 minutes" over "Best ever product").
jordhy 15y ago
I think the Internet needs an open trading platform for ad space. Something like an overarching OpenX. Google has their proprietary bidding system for Adwords, however we need a similar system for blogs, local websites, etc. Competition breeds quality and dynamism. Another thing is that advertisers are tied to the same medium for long periods of time. It would be great to have a platform that could switch an ad (banner ad in this case) from one portal to another, depending on price, date and web traffic conditions.
jcla1 15y ago
Get rid of it!
trienthusiast 15y ago
I wonder why Wordpress does not enter the ad game. A wordpress only marketplace that sells ad space on the wp-powered blogs/websites. Put it there in the installations, if a user wants to monetize his/her blog, it's there at the touch of a button.
J_Darnley 15y ago
No animated gifs, no flash, no javascript. Oh and since everyone here fawns over HTML5, no video, no audio. Really, I'd like the original Google ads back again, you know, the text-only ones. Though perhaps not run by Google any more.
israelyc 15y ago
Adblock plus ff add on.

10 points by mcartyem 15y ago

Assuming this is related to the AdSense thingy on the front page at the moment ... I think a decent amount of the problem is Google has virtually non-existant quality control. I'd start by not approving all the scrapers and spammers and scammers. I'd avoid sites that get the majority of their traffic from reddit/etc, if they don't have natural traffic but they're consistently featured on social media sites they're probably spammers. Once you take all the trashy people and their trashy sites out of the equation I think it would become a lot easier to detect fraud. I would focus on: 1) high quality publishers 2) more interesting formats ... people used to talk about banner blindness, these days AdSense has to be pretty much shoved between sentences to be seen 3) actual support Something probably like The Deck but more open.

mcartyem 15y ago
Yes, it is very much related to the front post. Right now advertising is interrupt-driven. Could one do the opposite? What you are suggesting seems like a frontal attack and that may not be the best tactic. What is the goal of advertising anyway? For the ad-buyer, the goal seems to be increasing sales. For the consumer, the goal is ... what?
- benologist 15y ago
  There's non-interrupt driven advertising - product placement in tv/films, advergames, MochiMedia uses the downloading time at the start of Flash games to present ads etc. When it comes to websites anything that diverts my attention from the page that I came to look at is going to interrupt me so I don't know if that's really a good criteria.
  - mcartyem 15y ago
    Or it could be a schlep. Everyone could be doing it the wrong way, just like Google showing the best search result in 1999 was initially considered the wrong way. Take the easy case of a consumer ready to buy something this minute. Say, they want a colorful winter jacket for men, and they are willing to pay anything for it. Can they find it with advertising? Can they find it with search? One goal of advertising for the consumer is that it helps them make a decision. Which of these X jackets should I consider? Now, is being interrupted the best way to make a decision?
AznHisoka 15y ago
If they're featured a lot in social media, aren't they most likely not to be spam sites? I don't know a lot of spammy insurance sites that can get lots of retweets, facebook likes, or reddit votes... On the other hand, if a site gets 99% of their visitors from search engines, it makes you wonder about the quality of the site
- benologist 15y ago
  The key thing is whether they get all their traffic from social media sites - a good site isn't going to get 99% traffic from reddit (or search engines), they're going to have a diverse mix of sources.

btomorrow 15y ago

Could you do a browser plugin that works like Pinterest, but uses your browsing history to feed data into a recommendation engine like hunch?

vouch4me 15y ago
A recommendation engine would ultimately need more data. It would also need a diffing algorithm between different product properties.
- btomorrow 15y ago
  Not necessarily. A consumer could pin/follow websites where it found close enough results, and a meta-recommendation engine could retrieve the recommendations of the existing product site and present them better. In the end there's some form of an API for most things anyway.

proexploit 15y ago

I'd focus on the honesty in advertising. Something like VeriSign for specific scientifically-proveable claims in ads (e.g. "Kills 99.9% of bacteria in 5 minutes" over "Best ever product").

jordhy 15y ago

I think the Internet needs an open trading platform for ad space. Something like an overarching OpenX. Google has their proprietary bidding system for Adwords, however we need a similar system for blogs, local websites, etc. Competition breeds quality and dynamism. Another thing is that advertisers are tied to the same medium for long periods of time. It would be great to have a platform that could switch an ad (banner ad in this case) from one portal to another, depending on price, date and web traffic conditions.

jcla1 15y ago

Get rid of it!

trienthusiast 15y ago

I wonder why Wordpress does not enter the ad game. A wordpress only marketplace that sells ad space on the wp-powered blogs/websites. Put it there in the installations, if a user wants to monetize his/her blog, it's there at the touch of a button.

J_Darnley 15y ago

No animated gifs, no flash, no javascript. Oh and since everyone here fawns over HTML5, no video, no audio. Really, I'd like the original Google ads back again, you know, the text-only ones. Though perhaps not run by Google any more.

israelyc 15y ago

Adblock plus ff add on.