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Again, you don't really understand how advertising works. In fact, you've clicked on an ad today without realizing it. Few people will admit to clicking on ad

Again, you don't really understand how advertising works. In fact, you've clicked on an ad today without realizing it. Few people will admit to clicking on ads. And they will probably honestly believe that they don't click on ads. The best ads work when you don't even realize they are an advertisement. The best ads are a service that benefits you. Hacker News is a prime example: In a sense, it is a giant advertisement for YCombinator. We don't think of it as an ad, because it provides value to us as more than an ad. Here you are, in the middle of an ad. Most people, when clicking on an ad, don't think about the fact that it's an ad. They click because the ad offered something interesting to them. It is not always even obvious what is an ad, and what is not. The lines get very blurry. For example, 'guest posts' on a blog, sponsored posts, 'paid links', etc. There are many, many various types of advertisements. But even when ads are obviously ads, such as Google Ads, they aren't necessarily obvious when you are interacting with them. Effective advertisement is transparent. Indeed, there is a blindness to it: You don't even realize it is an ad. Again, think of Hacker News. > No, I understand the ad business perfectly well; that is entirely different from thinking CPM ads make sense on the Internet. So, you're saying CPM ads don't make sense, therefore we should block them as a revenue source for websites? > Once you see which part of the website is "the content", your brain enters a mode (in the vi sense of the term) where anything other than content on the page will be filtered out at a pre-conscious level. If this is how the world worked, then advertising simply would not be effective. For example, in a print magazine it is generally super easy to differentiate between the ads and the content. And yet, magazines such as the New Yorker continue to make money hands over fist. On most of my websites, the ads are very easy to differentiate from the content, and yet people still click on that at alarmingly high rates. (Yes, it is alarmingly high, and I'm thankful for it every day!) "Banner blindness" is a nice theory, but the world simply doesn't work that way. People ignore ads when the ads aren't relevant to them. For general audience websites that have a large amount of CPM advertising, such as Yahoo, this can be a problem. It is a problem they are not addressing very effectively, in my opinion. But the problem is not 'banner blindness', the problem is poorly targeted advertisements. Ad Blockers exist, in my opinion, because of the many scammy/spammy ads that seem to appear in place of well targeted/high quality advertisements. And it IS a problem.

derefr 13y ago
You're ignoring every contextual adjective in each of my sentences. I didn't say that CPM ads don't work; I said that CPM ads don't work on websites. They work in non-interactive media, because you are focused on looking, instead of on interacting. Your brain isn't put into an active searching/hunting/gathering tunnel-vision mode. You aren't thinking "is this paragraph worth tweeting." You're just passively consuming, and so your passive consumption can be paused to deliver a word from our sponsor. > The best ads work when you don't even realize they are an advertisement. To me, Reddit's ads are excellent because they are precisely the opposite of that: they are clearly ads, they clearly sell me something, I can clearly tell what it is, it's definitely something I want, and if I click it, I know I'll get it, quickly and cleanly. And because all those things are true, the ads can afford to be subtle and pretty, instead of harsh and eyecatching. Sometimes it's just a link to another subreddit, and what they're "selling" is more (loss-leading) free membership. Sometimes it's something that costs money. It's always something relevant. And the thing is, CPC ads usually are relevant, because it's very easy to tell as the site-owner when they're "working" on a page, and to split-test different ad-providers to find out whose ads get clicked more (and thereby find out what ads people actually enjoy clicking.) In fact, you have to do this with CPC ads--because irrelevant ads won't get clicked, and so you won't be making any money! This doesn't apply to CPM ads, and so CPM ads are generally irrelevant; there's no feedback loop in place to make them relevant. They're not incentivized to be relevant. And yes, if I could, I'd block them as a "revenue source for websites"--because without the (stupid) option of CPM, advertisers would just switch to offering CPC all the time (it's not like they want to suddenly lose 90% of their placements and go out of business either), and the quality of ads on the internet would improve immesurably. And, having done that, advertising on the Internet becomes as simple as "Do you click on ads? Here are some ads, then." The incentives of that make everyone -- the user, the site-owner, and the advertiser -- much happier. (And no, I'm not using "CPM" to also refer to brand-associated sponsorship/PR like HN; that's fine, and works everywhere, because it works gradually instead of needing to hook you away from the content you're consuming. Instead, I'm using CPM to refer specifically to creatives that could be CPC, but aren't. Those, and those only, are what create the misaligned incentives for sites to run horrible ads their users have absolutely no interest in.)

derefr 13y ago

You're ignoring every contextual adjective in each of my sentences. I didn't say that CPM ads don't work; I said that CPM ads don't work on websites. They work in non-interactive media, because you are focused on looking, instead of on interacting. Your brain isn't put into an active searching/hunting/gathering tunnel-vision mode. You aren't thinking "is this paragraph worth tweeting." You're just passively consuming, and so your passive consumption can be paused to deliver a word from our sponsor. > The best ads work when you don't even realize they are an advertisement. To me, Reddit's ads are excellent because they are precisely the opposite of that: they are clearly ads, they clearly sell me something, I can clearly tell what it is, it's definitely something I want, and if I click it, I know I'll get it, quickly and cleanly. And because all those things are true, the ads can afford to be subtle and pretty, instead of harsh and eyecatching. Sometimes it's just a link to another subreddit, and what they're "selling" is more (loss-leading) free membership. Sometimes it's something that costs money. It's always something relevant. And the thing is, CPC ads usually are relevant, because it's very easy to tell as the site-owner when they're "working" on a page, and to split-test different ad-providers to find out whose ads get clicked more (and thereby find out what ads people actually enjoy clicking.) In fact, you have to do this with CPC ads--because irrelevant ads won't get clicked, and so you won't be making any money! This doesn't apply to CPM ads, and so CPM ads are generally irrelevant; there's no feedback loop in place to make them relevant. They're not incentivized to be relevant. And yes, if I could, I'd block them as a "revenue source for websites"--because without the (stupid) option of CPM, advertisers would just switch to offering CPC all the time (it's not like they want to suddenly lose 90% of their placements and go out of business either), and the quality of ads on the internet would improve immesurably. And, having done that, advertising on the Internet becomes as simple as "Do you click on ads? Here are some ads, then." The incentives of that make everyone -- the user, the site-owner, and the advertiser -- much happier. (And no, I'm not using "CPM" to also refer to brand-associated sponsorship/PR like HN; that's fine, and works everywhere, because it works gradually instead of needing to hook you away from the content you're consuming. Instead, I'm using CPM to refer specifically to creatives that could be CPC, but aren't. Those, and those only, are what create the misaligned incentives for sites to run horrible ads their users have absolutely no interest in.)