9 ms·
I just uninstalled a game from my mobile phone this morning that had heavy ad usage. It was interesting to note the different ad display strategies. From least
by jason_s 9mo ago
I just uninstalled a game from my mobile phone this morning that had heavy ad usage. It was interesting to note the different ad display strategies. From least to most annoying:
- display a static ad, have the "x" to close appear soon (3-10 seconds)
- display an animated ad, have the "x" to close appear soon (3-10 seconds)
- display a static ad, have the "x" to close appear after 20-30 seconds
- display an animated ad, have the "x" to close appear after 20-30 seconds
- display several ads in succession, each short, but it automatically proceeds to the next; the net time after which the "x" to close appears after 20-30 seconds
- display several ads in succession, each lasts for 3-10 seconds but you have to click on an "x" to close each one before the next one appears
I live in the USA. The well-established consumer product brands (Clorox, McDonalds, etc.) almost all had short ads that were done in 3-5 seconds. The longest ads were for obscure games or websites, or for Temu, and they appeared over and over again, making me hate them with a flaming passion. The several-ads-in-succession were usually British newspaper websites (WHY???? I don't live there) or celebrity-interest websites (I have no interest in these).
It seems like the monkey's-paw curse for this kind of legislation is to show several ads in a row, each allowing you to skip them after 5 seconds.
- DrewADesign 9mo agoMy favorite most annoying ad tactic is the trick slowing down progress bar. It starts off fast making it seem like it’s going to be, say, a ten-second ad so you decide to suffer through it… but progressively slows so you notice at like the 20 second mark you’re only 2/3 of the way through the progress bar, so probably less than halfway done. Murderous rage.
- xoxxala 9mo agoMr. Beast on youtube is guilty of that. Matt Parker of Standup Maths fame did an in-depth look at how that works. Whoever came up with that type of progress bar must hate people in general. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc0OU1yJD-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc0OU1yJD-c
- drcongo 9mo agoNot the only thing he's guilty of.
- red-iron-pine 9mo agoexplain
- drcongo 9mo agoIt's all a scam.
- x187463 9mo agoA fantastic video from Matt, as usual. Yet another data point on why nobody should be wasting a second watching Mr Beast content. Complete algorithmically optimized garbage. I recall Mr Beast showing up in a Colin Furze video for a few minutes and Mr Beast was very clearly incapable of being a normal person. He was obviously out of place, being in full makeup and styled, and couldn't seem to be bothered to actually engage or express real interest in the subject. I think the guy has replaced his real persona with some manifestation of the YouTube algorithm. If he's not actively making money, he's just a shell.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- m4tthumphrey 9mo agoThat Colin Furze cameo was so weird.
- x187463 9mo agoFrom what I can tell, based on an excerpt of an interview with Colin, Mr Beast had a bunker-related video and visited Colin's bunker. As a viewer of Colin's channel and not Mr Beast, it seemed very strange, but makes more sense if there was a more substantial collaboration taking place in a different video stream.
- oneeyedpigeon 9mo agoThere's also the tactic of having different ad behaviours during the same video. The first will be a 30s unskippable ad, the second will be a single skippable one, the third will be 3 ads, one of which you can skip, etc. It's ok on a mobile or if you're at your desk, but if you're watching from a distance it gets really annoying...
- qwertox 9mo agoKind of like a genius idea. Though there should be a special place in hell for app owners who want this in their app.
- Groxx 9mo agoI'm fond of the ones with a fake close button, so tapping it just launches the ad's site. Instant uninstall and 1-star. (Yes, I know it's mostly the ad's fault, but there's no practical way to punish them directly. So force apps to pick better-behaving networks.)
- immibis 9mo agoIME it's a real close button but the ad opens the thing when it closes, regardless of how it closes.
- jordwest 9mo agoA common trick is that the first click on the X will go to the ad, but if you return and click the X again it will close, gaslighting you into thinking you just misclicked the first time. Another trick that I’ve noticed on the Reddit app is that the tappable area is much larger for ads than normal posts. If you tap even near the ad it will visit the ad
- DrewADesign 9mo agoAlso making the hit area smaller than the close graphic itself is a popular one.
- Groxx 9mo agoNo, I mean there are ads with a "close button" in the corner, and then a few seconds later the real close button will appear and it'll weirdly overlap it. Because the first one was fake, just part of the image asset of the ad. They're very very clearly click-fraud tricks, and most platforms will ban them if they're caught. But by clicking on the ad, it closes the ad, and there's no way to go back and report them, nor incentive for ad-viewers to do so. By design, IMO. The whole industry runs on scams like this, there's no incentive for large platforms to proactively block any of them because they lead to money moving through them, where they can extract their rent. They only move against the most egregious, to keep fraud at the same barely-acceptable level as all the others.
- mrbonner 9mo agoYou mean like this: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fs.mltshp.com%2Fr%2F1PAUF%3Fwidth%3D539&f=1&ipt=0e2f42d4fa613209964b08e1f78e568fd839287e0e56e5d5ea306c9f7fda0958 https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
- wumms 9mo agoReminds me of Setup.exe
- btown 9mo agoAs a full mea culpa, I once implemented this years ago for an open-source project (non-ad-related) that could have an unpredictable number of steps with unpredictable timing. We went with an algorithm that would add a % of the remaining progress on each status tick, so, while it would inevitably decelerate, at least users would know that the processing wasn't just frozen. It was a compromise that let us focus our limited attention on the things our project could uniquely do, without needing to refactor or do fast-and-slow-passes to provide subtask-count estimates to the UI. I'd make those same choices again, in that context. But in an ad context, it's inexcusable.
- SoftTalker 9mo agoI've done something similar with a progress bar back in the early days. The task needed to do 10 things, so when each one completed the bar would move 10%. So the bar indicated completion in terms of things that needed to be done but not really in terms of time. It was quick and dirty and we had higher priorities but someone insisted on a "progress bar" so that was the easiest thing.
- layer8 9mo agoThat’s perfectly acceptable, in particular if you also display “step x of 10”, so the user knows the bar doesn’t indicate time.
- layer8 9mo agoIf the only purpose is to show progress and you don’t known the total number of steps in advance, it’s better to show information about the current step and/or substep. Otherwise when your processing actually freezes, the UI would still happily show an advancing progress bar. That’s worse than even just showing a spinner animation or similar.
- btown 9mo agoIf it froze and ceased emitting ticks, it wouldn't advance any more - but the larger point is well taken!
- hiccuphippo 9mo agoThe Windows file copying progress bar prepared me for that one. I don't trust progress bars anymore.
- andrepd 9mo agoUber (and many other apps probably) do a similar thing. A completely deceptive progress bar that's basically an animation that's AB tested for lowest perceived wait, rather than being an actual progress bar in any sense of the word! Everything is trying to scam you nowadays jfc
- laurieg 9mo agoThe positive version of this is clocks in escape rooms. You set the countdown timer to be slightly faster for the first 45 minutes and slightly slower for the last 10, so that people get more of a taste of time pressure towards the end and a higher chance of a "photo finish" which makes for a great fun story.
- sandworm101 9mo agoI have fallen asleep watching youtube many times. I swear i have woken up in the middle of 20+ minute ads. I thought it was a news article about china when it was an ad. Who knows when the skip button appeared. The few times i have seen these, it has always been a literal fake news show about china.
- i_am_jl 9mo agoI've seen these advertisements too, also only when my phone had been playing unattended for some time. I have a (unsupported, unsubstantiated) theory that YT detects phones of "sleepers" and pushes more profitable content with the understanding it won't be skipped. I've got a few spare phones, maybe I'll run an experiment.
- ksaj 9mo agoWith YT, it might be an account-specific metric. Ie: flagged as a frequent sleeper. This would not surprise me, since they track just about every other metric possible against your account. You can have multiple YT accounts on a single gmail acct, but I don't think that'll fool them. They know where you initially logged in from. So you will likely need multiple gmail accounts to do this kind of experiment.
- i_am_jl 9mo agoGood shout. They don't have SIMs, they'll be connected to a VPN router, and I'll create new Gmail accounts for each device, from each device.
- Gabrys1 9mo agoI don't think they specifically target people who tend to go to sleep. But, having worked in the ad engineering, I can imagine they do know how often specific users skip ads and target ads based on that property.
- kube-system 9mo agoI'm not sure why it would specifically be targeting "sleepers"... there are a lot of reasons why someone might not skip ads... people who are sleeping are probably the least valuable of them. It could just as well be something super valuable -- like an unattended kiosk device playing youtube to a crowd of people.
- shaftway 9mo agoI can tell you how the ad companies will implement this. For Rewarded ads (the longest ones, that are at least 30 seconds, and sometimes as high as 60 seconds), they'll move to that succession model, but the succession will take you at least 30 seconds. Oh you skipped an ad after 5 seconds? No worries, here's another ad. You watched the first ad for the full 30 seconds? No more ads for you. It'll probably be a win for them.
- lucianbr 9mo agoIf it's a win they would do it already, no? There's no law against it, is there.
- shaftway 9mo agoI've worked for two companies that did mobile ads, and one other that did web ads. The web ad company was hampered by poor engineering and management that had big glory projects that were poorly conceived or too ambitious; they no longer exist. The first mobile ad company was constrained by ethics and prioritized a better experience over earning that last fraction of a percent (though most people on the outside would disagree on principle). The second mobile ad company had a decent API designer early, and managed to capture a specific role in advertising. That role gave them access to data that ended up being wildly useful for purposes other than it's original intention, and they've done well based on that. But they are completely mired in in-fighting, executives who only bother to come in and be seen for quarterly results, and they don't do *anything* unless someone else does it first. They don't have a functional legal department and engineers are afraid that their head will be on the block if something goes wrong, and everyone is afraid of killing the golden goose. So no, I suspect it hasn't happened because almost nobody thought of it, and the people that did are too afraid to be a trailblazer. And we've already seen the precursors for it. Chaining multiple short ads together to add enough value to be worth it for an in-game reward is the beginning of it. It's not a very far leap.
- ksaj 9mo agoSome "news" sites are so annoying about their ads, I just close the tab and google for someone else's version of the story. I block sites that show up in my news feed often but display more nag than content. I'm sure in their mind, they don't care about me leaving. Apparently more than enough people put up with it to keep the site viable.
- SoftTalker 9mo agolite.cnn.com is the best lightweight news site I know of, though it is still CNN and probably more US-focused.
- inglor 9mo agoYou likely turned off any privacy invading feature and didn’t let the app track across apps. The fact you are getting irrelevant ads is a good thing that indicates that is probably working.
- UltraSane 9mo agoI discovered that the samsung good lock sound assistant lets you mute all sound from specific apps and allow specific apps to never have their sound be interrupted. So it mute games and have audiobook players to always play audio and this lets me listen to audiobooks while playing games and never have the adds interrupt audio.
- immibis 9mo agoWhat about the ones that automatically open the Play Store to the app they're advertising after the ad? I would've thought it's against Play Store ToS to manipulate view count, but clearly Google has a conflict of interest.
- wvenable 9mo agoI have a turn-based game that I play with remote family and after I play my turn, I swipe the app off (force close) so I don't have to see the ads. It used to be that I could just switch away to skip the ads but they must have gotten wise to that because one day it stopped working.
- pluralmonad 9mo agoI know plenty of folks here make lots of money off it, but ad tech is straight up malware. I got lucky and found uBlock Origin many years ago so I did not get slowly boiled in worsening ad tech. I can't believe what people put up with just to not pay a few dollars for software they use daily. Not to even mention that the worst part of it all is ad tech has ruined the internet beyond repair.
- Aerroon 9mo agoBecause a few dollars here and there very quickly adds up, especially for people in poorer countries. It's also much harder to get people to spend money online. I bet if you could physically buy the suffrage for $1-5 people would be far more likely to pay for it.
- lloeki 9mo agoYou missed one of the worst: mandatory interactive ones. My wife is a sucker for these horribly generic flashy F2P puzzle-ish games. There are these ads that pop up every N action or something; some of these look like a mini-game and are actually an ad for another of those F2P games, and you have to play the mini-game that showcases some dumb simple mechanic of the game it advertises for a little bit before you can dismiss the ad. Some come complete with two trivially easy levels ONLY 20% OF PLAYERS CAN PASS SOLVE THIS that glorify you OMG YOU HAVE SUCH HIGH IQ then one impossible that taunts you into installing the game. The predatory dark patterns are so obvious they should be trialed to oblivion but no apparently this kind of abuse is legal.
- jason_s 9mo agowhoa -- I've never run into these. I've seen interactive puzzle ads, but the "X" to close always pops up in 20-30 seconds.
- Melonai 9mo agoI noticed an interesting hybrid – you get an interactive ad, if you interact with it, complete the level, engage with the ad etc. you get the close button immediately, if you idle you have to wait ~30 seconds. Feels very deplorable to me.
- shaftway 9mo agoGoogle's AdMob has been doing these. Often it's something simple like completing a puzzle. I hate that I prefer these ads because it shortens the time until I get back to my game.
- georgefrowny 9mo agoI don't think I'm especially stupid and I try very hard not to interact with ads more then I have to, but I have often found it impossible to escape those ads without ending up being delivered to the app store page. Maybe I didn't notice the X in some part of the display or whatever, but even if by making a concerted effort to not do it, you still "convert", their click though stats must be crazy.
- vunderba 9mo agoMy absolute favorite is the smaller “picture in picture ad” that gives you a way to immediately dismiss it with a “X” that looks like microfiche - the cynic in me assumes that this is so the average user will fat-finger it by mistake making it look like a conversion.
- gtowey 9mo agoThis is why instead of specific legislation that winds up being a cat-and-mouse game with companies, the practice of creating specialized agencies with a general charter and delegating the specifics to them is often employed. But it's also why this administration is dismantling those agencies as fast as it can -- without them the legislature will always be hopelessly behind on proper regulation.
- wizzwizz4 9mo ago"This administration" being the US, I assume. Note that the article is about Vietnam.
- jonplackett 9mo agoThe funny thing is that any company that has their ad displayed to me like this makes me just hate them.
- erfgh 9mo agoSo what? People hate lots of companies but still they give them their money.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 9mo agoIf are using Android, it's easy to block these ads with apps like Netguard or even PCAPDroid Then can use the game without annoyance of ads As it happens, the data collection, surveillance and ad serving strategies of the mobile OS vendors and their unpaid "app developer" independent contractors are still subservient to application firewalls and/or user-controlled DNS This could change one day, it's within the control of the mobile OS vendors, but I have been waiting over 15 years and it still hasn't
- basisword 9mo agoIn a lot of these games you need the 'coins' you get from watching the ads to progress.
- socalgal2 9mo agoI uninstall all games with any ad usage. The latest was "I Love Hue". It let me play 10 levels (nice) and then put ads in. If they had just asked for $1 before showing the first ad I might have paid but as soon as I saw the ads I just uninstalled. Note: IMO "I Love Hue" is a $1 game. I'm happy to pay $$ for bigger games and often do though on Switch/Steam, less on mobile.
- mbirth 9mo agoMy wife played one of those unscrew games which showed lots of ads in between runs. I convinced her to buy the ad-free package for $5, so she doesn’t have to endure those ads. While the game indeed was ad-free after that, there was no progress possible anymore as everything suddenly cost 3x the virtual coins than before. Basically forcing you to shell out even more money to buy their stupid coins. We’ve refunded the IAP and that was that.
- drewg123 9mo agothey appeared over and over again, making me hate them with a flaming passion I wonder how much risk there is to brands due to this sort of thing? I tend to feel the same way; are we just uncommon? The only place I see ads is Amazon Prime Video (b/c I'm still irked they changed the deal and added ads). I've come to hate those companies whose ads I see over and over and over again and I've resolved to never buy anything from them. I even used one of their products regularly and switched to a competitor due to their ads.
- Ntrails 9mo agoCan't measure it thus does not matter (It absolutely matters imo)
- grogenaut 9mo agowhat's sad is that it's not the company who is causing you to see that ad fill, few companies want you to be spammed back to back with the same ad. it's the low ad fill rate on the platform or target for you meaning the company is one of the few ads in the pool. I look at it as they're trying to support the type of content you watch but not many people are. or trying to sell to you specifically. early on in streaming there'd be so little fill you'd be getting mad at say blizzard for spamming ads in a games related place but they were the only one buying ads and supporting those streams. it's not blizzards fault taht the rest of the advertisers didn't trust that channel and.
- elinear 9mo agoA particularly egregious offender is Kalshi ads. They regularly play for a minute, sometimes up to two minutes before they can be closed. I would not be surprised if the incentives are in place for ad networks to push for longer ads and for advertisers to create longer ads.
- BrenBarn 9mo ago> It seems like the monkey's-paw curse for this kind of legislation is to show several ads in a row, each allowing you to skip them after 5 seconds. As is often the case I think that means the restrictions should just get even more strict, e.g., "no ad may ever be longer than X seconds and no app may ever show more than Y seconds of total ads within any 24-hour period". Then add some extra clause like "any attempt to circumvent or subvert these rules is punishable by fines up to 10x the company's gross annual revenue, plus asset forfeiture and prison for executives". People at companies should be deathly afraid of ever accidentally crossing the line into abusive behavior.
- abustamam 9mo agoI'm OK with a unobtrusive banner ad. I hate forced ads that get in the way of my flow (whether it's gaming or reading or work). I hate forced ads that can't be skipped. I understand the reason for these (they often have an IAP that will remove ads, so the more annoying the ads the more likely folks will be tempted to buy it). But doesn't make it ok. I usually just leave a one star review and uninstall.
- Vedor 9mo agoSome time ago, Google AdMob started using a new format ads - two videos, one immediately after another, unskippable for the first 60s, sometimes more. You know how they called them? "High-engagement ads". On some level, it's hilarious.
- jdwithit 9mo agoThere's also the tactic where the layout of the page/app reflows after a second or two, changing where the ads are. It drives me up the wall. Go to tap on a button, SURPRISE, an ad popped in where the button used to be 10ms before you touched the screen and now you're forced into some company's site whether you wanted to see it or not.
- csr86 9mo agoThis is my biggest frustration with ads. It will surely cause fake statistics for ad campaigns too: 99% of time when I click ad, it is by mistake.
- cj 9mo agoAnd just so we're attacking the problem from both sides: the dark pattern on the advertisers side is the inability to easily opt out of in-app ads when advertising on Google's display network. For the reasons you listed, in-app ads generate an incredible amount of low quality clicks, yet Google makes it very hard to exclude yourself from that ad inventory. The only way I've found to do it so far is to manually exclude yourself from every individual app category. IIRC there are over a hundred categories and you need to manually go through and select every category to exclude your ads from mobile apps.
- ulrikrasmussen 9mo ago> It seems like the monkey's-paw curse for this kind of legislation is to show several ads in a row, each allowing you to skip them after 5 seconds. We should just ban all online ads then. I honestly think we would be better off. Yes, some things that used to be completely free would start costing a little bit, but I don't think we would lose much of value, really. And there would still be lots of different ways that consumers could discover goods and services if we didn't have online ads, it would just be via directories where consumers could go and search for products instead of consumers being bombarded with information noise all the time. The freemium ad-revenue model is a local maximum which results in a whole lot of shittiness.
- codetiger 9mo agoMy most favorite annoying thing about ads is the 'x' close button. They make it very small almost impossible to be perfect. I end up clicking the ads 50% of the times. Been running PiHole at home network for almost 8yrs happily. The ads come into play only when I am traveling.
- baxtr 9mo agoFor people with iPhones I recommend an "Apple Arcade" subscription, especially if you have kids. All games included in Arcade are ad free. They have a big enough collection.
- S_Bear 9mo agoMy favorite mobile game ad was for Jeep, which was 3 seconds of the word JEEP on a black background. My wife and I laugh about it, but we remember it. It was actually really effective in that regard. My second favorite was for some pirate game, but the ads were basically the setup for an adult movie, with tons of hammy overacting. I thought they were so funny, I was really sad when they stopped.