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> These are viewers who are least inclined to buy anything. How do you figure? No one likes ads and everyone thinks they are personally immune to them. But the

> These are viewers who are least inclined to buy anything. How do you figure? No one likes ads and everyone thinks they are personally immune to them. But they are still effective, somehow. I seriously doubt whether someone has an ad blocker installed is indicative of some characteristic about them that makes them not worth advertising to. In fact we can gauge from advertiser actions that probably the most relevant fact about them is simply the ad blocker, which is why they want to get rid of the blockers and advertise to them. They know ads work on us, even when we believe otherwise.

nottorp 3y ago
You think so? What if the ad industry is stuck in a bubble and has no idea what works and what doesn't? All they need to do is keep their customers (not us) convinced that ads do something for them, and push to maintain the status quo (anti ad blocker solutions). There was this article on HN in the past few days [1] about a company that gave up on the use of cookies on their site. Go look how full of jargon and dubious inferences it is. Even if they're trying to do a good thing, they still seem isolated in their own marketer's bubble. There was also an article about some new Google anti email spam protections (lol, Google protecting us from marketing). I'm not going to try and link to that one. Edit: surprising but i found it [2]. If you look at the comments here on HN you'll see some people either honestly believing or pretending to believe that their email newsletters are something that people want. Again, bubble. [1] https://blog.sentry.io/we-removed-advertising-cookies-heres-what-happened/ https://blog.sentry.io/we-removed-advertising-cookies-heres-... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38935048 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38935048
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  Honestly I do waffle between these two views of it. That they do work and so we should avoid them or they don't work and the entire internet is a bubble built on top of a fake idea and so we should avoid them. I don't see how both can be true and I find both equally compelling, with comparable explanatory power of different things I see. But for the specific purpose of deciphering the actions and motivations of ad companies I think assuming they work is a more useful view. Presumably ad companies are acting as if ads work, and are assuming they work equally well on people running ad blockers, if they can get them past the ad blockers. I find them corrosive to my soul and culture either way, and ad companies are acting towards me as if they work. So in this context I think it makes sense to also act as if they do.

nottorp 3y ago

You think so? What if the ad industry is stuck in a bubble and has no idea what works and what doesn't? All they need to do is keep their customers (not us) convinced that ads do something for them, and push to maintain the status quo (anti ad blocker solutions). There was this article on HN in the past few days [1] about a company that gave up on the use of cookies on their site. Go look how full of jargon and dubious inferences it is. Even if they're trying to do a good thing, they still seem isolated in their own marketer's bubble. There was also an article about some new Google anti email spam protections (lol, Google protecting us from marketing). I'm not going to try and link to that one. Edit: surprising but i found it [2]. If you look at the comments here on HN you'll see some people either honestly believing or pretending to believe that their email newsletters are something that people want. Again, bubble. [1] https://blog.sentry.io/we-removed-advertising-cookies-heres-what-happened/ https://blog.sentry.io/we-removed-advertising-cookies-heres-... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38935048 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38935048

giraffe_lady 3y ago
Honestly I do waffle between these two views of it. That they do work and so we should avoid them or they don't work and the entire internet is a bubble built on top of a fake idea and so we should avoid them. I don't see how both can be true and I find both equally compelling, with comparable explanatory power of different things I see. But for the specific purpose of deciphering the actions and motivations of ad companies I think assuming they work is a more useful view. Presumably ad companies are acting as if ads work, and are assuming they work equally well on people running ad blockers, if they can get them past the ad blockers. I find them corrosive to my soul and culture either way, and ad companies are acting towards me as if they work. So in this context I think it makes sense to also act as if they do.