4 ms·

An aside, trying to read the Gizmodo story was like Idiocracy come to life. There was an overlay at the top with an ad. There was an overlay at the bottom with

An aside, trying to read the Gizmodo story was like Idiocracy come to life. There was an overlay at the top with an ad. There was an overlay at the bottom with an ad. And the story, confined to 60% of the remaining space, had a giant ad inline every paragraph or two. I know online media is a tough business, but I just can’t imagine the reasoning that has led to such an absurdly painful user experience.

Terr_ 2y ago
I can only hope that some future generation regards modern advertising/gambling-traps with the same hostility we have today towards indentured servitude or predatory "company stores".
accrual 2y ago
It loaded nicely for me, but NoScript blocked 3 of 5 domains and uBlock blocked 1 item. Reader mode further cleaned up and rendered it like a newspaper article.
- darknavi 2y ago
  And how much money did they make from your viewing of the article? Likely 0. If only companies would learn that tasteful ads are possible and would likely give better returns, but the web has been infested with garbage so most people have their guards up.
  - stackghost 2y ago
    It's a simple risk/reward calculus. The reward of not having to see ads everywhere is absolutely worth the risk that some of these shitty media companies go under. Ads are repulsive. The good companies will find a way to survive.
  - hedora 2y ago
    I've often wondered why the ad blocker can't render the full page to some offscreen buffer to get the ad impression revenue for the site. It could even randomly click an ad or two every few minutes.
    - LightHugger 2y ago
      this exists, it's called AdNauseam: https://adnauseam.io/ https://adnauseam.io/ It's banned from the chrome store
    - ronsor 2y ago
      This is ad fraud, and while it's not a problem for the end user, it could get the site in trouble.
      - tcfhgj 2y ago
        Ad business self destruct
      - Terr_ 2y ago
        > This is ad fraud Or rather, a pattern of activity that may be easily mistaken for someone else committing ad-fraud. The fraudulent part comes from the agreement between the site-owner and the advertising-entity, where the first agrees to provide "organic" clicks for money. As an independent visitor, I'm not a party to that, and I never agreed to "only click on things when I'm sincerely interested in them", or even "only click on things after firmly observing and registering their presence in my mind", etc. If I were to use an army of bots to deliberately ruin someone's advertising budget out of pure spite, that's arguably a different kind of crime.
    - catlikesshrimp 2y ago
      It is only diluting the ads. The paying businesses will notice higher cost per conversion, maybe individual print price will adjust accordingly, then the ad company will need to print even more ads for people who don't use adblockers. Or google finds a way to beat all adblockers everywhere.
  - dahdum 2y ago
    > If only companies would learn that tasteful ads are possible and would likely give better returns, but the web has been infested with garbage so most people have their guards up. For better or worse, many of the brightest minds of the past 25 years have been working in online advertising, if “tasteful ads” worked better that’s all we would see. Consumers must drive the desired outcome with behavior or law.
    - crooked-v 2y ago
      If bright minds working in advertising actually corresponded to advertising effectiveness, I wouldn't have an Amazon front page full of slightly different versions of things I've already bought and don't need to replace.
  - xnx 2y ago
    Gizmodo doesn't need money to reword articles from the Wall Street Journal.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - equestria 2y ago
    But... there's nothing to learn. The publishers measure this, do A/B testing, and most assuredly, they wouldn't be making more money with fewer ads. Most visitors are not blocking ads, and there's money to be made on every impression you cram onto the page. The long-term side effect is that the prevalence of ad blocking is growing fast. But if you look at how Google and others are responding, it's likely that the publishers are going to make ad blockers harder to use, instead of designing delightful ad experiences for the average Joe.
    - rectang 2y ago
      Back in 2003, my boss asked "what if we stack 2 banner ads at the top of each page?". It looked like poo, but I ran it and it increased ad clicks. Stacking 3 banner ads didn't help.
    - MikeTheGreat 2y ago
      As I post here on HackerNews (subtitle: News for Nerds. Stuff that- wait, no - nevermind) I'm kinda ashamed that it took me until now to switch to Firefox. I can't count the number of geeks and IT professionals who have told me to use FireFox over the years, and I'd never followed their advice. Chrome was great, until they killed whatever it was that made ad blocking work on YouTube. But ad-blocking seems to be going strong on Firefox, so maybe that's an option for folks?
driverdan 2y ago
Why would you browse the web without an ad blocker?
- drekipus 2y ago
  Think about the hell that most people go through, who have no concept of an adblocker.
  - jvans 2y ago
    The internet is unusable without ublock origin and privacy bafger. When I use my friend's computers without ad block I have to fix that first
    - Xxfireman 2y ago
      For Iphone users, I have been quite happy browsing in Safari using Wipr. It is incredible how long I went w/o it.
      - iamspoilt 2y ago
        I have been super happy downloading the free adguard dns profile on my iphone and blocking ads across the entire spectrum. Makes reading on internet so much better. Here is the link if anyone is wondering. https://adguard-dns.io/en/public-dns.html https://adguard-dns.io/en/public-dns.html
        Gud 2y ago
        Thanks for sharing, good advice!
      - Hnrobert42 2y ago
        I will check it out. I like Firefox Focus because in addition to built in blocking, it restricts me to one tab. Remarkably, that has never been a problem.
    - 2y ago
bbor 2y ago
It’s less “reasoning” and more “market forces”. This is not intended as an endorsement of the absurd invisible hand of the market. In fact, quite the opposite: any successful firm is expected to leave the “lifestyle business” stage ASAP and grow large returns for investors. It’s just more noticeable in this market (Display Ads) because it’s a terrible, terrible market; Google was definitely going to be found guilty for using its monopoly position in this space to drive up prices for everyone (rip American antitrust…), and even without that, it’s nowhere near as effective as search ads or old-school institutionally-targeted display ads (eg large newspapers, network TV). This, combined with the ever-growing pressures mentioned above and a healthy dollop of conglomeratization, gives us the mad race to the bottom that we’re currently living in. Google thinks they’ll save the industry with some new, slightly less invasive cookies, but I’m dubious. I would personally recommend everyone get comfortable paying directly for services you need, especially journalism.
muixoozie 2y ago
>Idiocracy come to life I'm not the only one think of this movie recently
- rubyfan 2y ago
  You definitely are not the only one.
- poochkoishi728 2y ago
  Lmao thought of this when Trump won
navaed01 2y ago
My thoughts exactly

Terr_ 2y ago

I can only hope that some future generation regards modern advertising/gambling-traps with the same hostility we have today towards indentured servitude or predatory "company stores".

accrual 2y ago

It loaded nicely for me, but NoScript blocked 3 of 5 domains and uBlock blocked 1 item. Reader mode further cleaned up and rendered it like a newspaper article.

darknavi 2y ago
And how much money did they make from your viewing of the article? Likely 0. If only companies would learn that tasteful ads are possible and would likely give better returns, but the web has been infested with garbage so most people have their guards up.
- stackghost 2y ago
  It's a simple risk/reward calculus. The reward of not having to see ads everywhere is absolutely worth the risk that some of these shitty media companies go under. Ads are repulsive. The good companies will find a way to survive.
- hedora 2y ago
  I've often wondered why the ad blocker can't render the full page to some offscreen buffer to get the ad impression revenue for the site. It could even randomly click an ad or two every few minutes.
  - LightHugger 2y ago
    this exists, it's called AdNauseam: https://adnauseam.io/ https://adnauseam.io/ It's banned from the chrome store
  - ronsor 2y ago
    This is ad fraud, and while it's not a problem for the end user, it could get the site in trouble.
    - tcfhgj 2y ago
      Ad business self destruct
    - Terr_ 2y ago
      > This is ad fraud Or rather, a pattern of activity that may be easily mistaken for someone else committing ad-fraud. The fraudulent part comes from the agreement between the site-owner and the advertising-entity, where the first agrees to provide "organic" clicks for money. As an independent visitor, I'm not a party to that, and I never agreed to "only click on things when I'm sincerely interested in them", or even "only click on things after firmly observing and registering their presence in my mind", etc. If I were to use an army of bots to deliberately ruin someone's advertising budget out of pure spite, that's arguably a different kind of crime.
  - catlikesshrimp 2y ago
    It is only diluting the ads. The paying businesses will notice higher cost per conversion, maybe individual print price will adjust accordingly, then the ad company will need to print even more ads for people who don't use adblockers. Or google finds a way to beat all adblockers everywhere.
- dahdum 2y ago
  > If only companies would learn that tasteful ads are possible and would likely give better returns, but the web has been infested with garbage so most people have their guards up. For better or worse, many of the brightest minds of the past 25 years have been working in online advertising, if “tasteful ads” worked better that’s all we would see. Consumers must drive the desired outcome with behavior or law.
  - crooked-v 2y ago
    If bright minds working in advertising actually corresponded to advertising effectiveness, I wouldn't have an Amazon front page full of slightly different versions of things I've already bought and don't need to replace.
- xnx 2y ago
  Gizmodo doesn't need money to reword articles from the Wall Street Journal.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- equestria 2y ago
  But... there's nothing to learn. The publishers measure this, do A/B testing, and most assuredly, they wouldn't be making more money with fewer ads. Most visitors are not blocking ads, and there's money to be made on every impression you cram onto the page. The long-term side effect is that the prevalence of ad blocking is growing fast. But if you look at how Google and others are responding, it's likely that the publishers are going to make ad blockers harder to use, instead of designing delightful ad experiences for the average Joe.
  - rectang 2y ago
    Back in 2003, my boss asked "what if we stack 2 banner ads at the top of each page?". It looked like poo, but I ran it and it increased ad clicks. Stacking 3 banner ads didn't help.
  - MikeTheGreat 2y ago
    As I post here on HackerNews (subtitle: News for Nerds. Stuff that- wait, no - nevermind) I'm kinda ashamed that it took me until now to switch to Firefox. I can't count the number of geeks and IT professionals who have told me to use FireFox over the years, and I'd never followed their advice. Chrome was great, until they killed whatever it was that made ad blocking work on YouTube. But ad-blocking seems to be going strong on Firefox, so maybe that's an option for folks?

driverdan 2y ago

Why would you browse the web without an ad blocker?

drekipus 2y ago
Think about the hell that most people go through, who have no concept of an adblocker.
- jvans 2y ago
  The internet is unusable without ublock origin and privacy bafger. When I use my friend's computers without ad block I have to fix that first
  - Xxfireman 2y ago
    For Iphone users, I have been quite happy browsing in Safari using Wipr. It is incredible how long I went w/o it.
    - iamspoilt 2y ago
      I have been super happy downloading the free adguard dns profile on my iphone and blocking ads across the entire spectrum. Makes reading on internet so much better. Here is the link if anyone is wondering. https://adguard-dns.io/en/public-dns.html https://adguard-dns.io/en/public-dns.html
      - Gud 2y ago
        Thanks for sharing, good advice!
    - Hnrobert42 2y ago
      I will check it out. I like Firefox Focus because in addition to built in blocking, it restricts me to one tab. Remarkably, that has never been a problem.
  - 2y ago

bbor 2y ago

It’s less “reasoning” and more “market forces”. This is not intended as an endorsement of the absurd invisible hand of the market. In fact, quite the opposite: any successful firm is expected to leave the “lifestyle business” stage ASAP and grow large returns for investors. It’s just more noticeable in this market (Display Ads) because it’s a terrible, terrible market; Google was definitely going to be found guilty for using its monopoly position in this space to drive up prices for everyone (rip American antitrust…), and even without that, it’s nowhere near as effective as search ads or old-school institutionally-targeted display ads (eg large newspapers, network TV). This, combined with the ever-growing pressures mentioned above and a healthy dollop of conglomeratization, gives us the mad race to the bottom that we’re currently living in. Google thinks they’ll save the industry with some new, slightly less invasive cookies, but I’m dubious. I would personally recommend everyone get comfortable paying directly for services you need, especially journalism.

muixoozie 2y ago

>Idiocracy come to life I'm not the only one think of this movie recently

rubyfan 2y ago
You definitely are not the only one.
poochkoishi728 2y ago
Lmao thought of this when Trump won

navaed01 2y ago

My thoughts exactly