4 ms·

What if all Web ads were blocked? 10 speculative scenarios.

16 points by technologizer 17y ago

aw3c2 17y ago
Ha, that url was blocked by my aggressive filters. :) "Scenario #6: Professional content dies almost immediately." is ridiculous. There was a web before advertisements and it was (and still is) full of the finest professional content. If your business model is based on ads, then you have no business model. Internet ad monetization is nothing but a gamble. Let's see how many ad-less "professional" (as in useful and of varying quality) sites I frequently use. wikipedia openstreetmap wolfram alpha media archives of hacker conferences lots of open-source related websites countless other wikis countless sites by people who love doing what they do, be it hacking, creating, analysing or whatever else With no more ads I would anticipate more actual content created out of affection (might not be the correct word, no english native speaker here?) and less "this is where people click on most banners, so let's shove more if it down their throats".
- derefr 17y ago
  I agree, mostly; there are a lot of other business models for sites: donations (Wikipedia), complementary to a pay product (Wolfram Alpha), scratching an itch (many wiki sites), subscriptions, etc. However, on this point: > There was a web before advertisements Was there? How many people used it? What for? What were the business models? I find it hard to believe that people were putting their credit cards out over the web in great numbers back in 1995, so were these sites just operating under the assumption that they were generating brand-awareness, or something like that?
  - pbhjpbhj 17y ago
    Amazon were selling books online in 1995. Not sure how they were advertising, I'm guessing it was mainly offline, though I imagine possibly signature ads on newsgroups may have been part of it.
qw 17y ago
News sites would probably accept articles from companies if they were paid enough. If we were lucky, they would add a small disclaimer somewhere at the bottom of the article. And they would probably also sneak in comments about a company inside their articles and comments. Some of them would be from good companies, such as Amazon. Who would blame them? Amazon is such a great company with reasonable prices and delivery. You can also depend on Amazon unlike some of the no-name competitors. Who would want to trust an unknown company, when they can use a trusted company like Amazon. Where was I... oh, they would certainly integrate paid contents in a sneaky way.
- Retric 17y ago
  Well played. They used to do this all the time in such an obvious way with radio, but the new idea is to causally include the product in movies, books and TV without up selling it. So you blog about your great run yesterday, and happen to mention breaking in your Nike's. Or talk about a date and mention which beer you drank. The idea is to get people to think people like them use product X.
  - jerf 17y ago
    I can't find it in myself to get worked up about straight-up product placement. In some ways it's less disconcerting to see a guy drinking a Coke than drinking Unspecified-Beverage-In-A-Vaguely-Red-Can-With-Electrical-Tape. I also have a hard time imagining that even a quite popular show could survive having the characters in the show repeatedly directly shill for a product, long before we even approach the level of ads television or radio used to carry directly. While I've used television terminology, I think this carries across all media. Any sort of recurring program (TV-like video, blog, newspaper, etc) spend credibility when they do that, unless they are very carefully ensuring that they only talk about products they care about personally, which only works for things that are personal productions. (One clue I use is that a normal person should often get excited about a product that has been out for months or years, rather than one that just came out. Nobody gets everything brand new every day.) Who will read something that is just shilling, over and over again? Perhaps not nobody, but I won't be forced to read it, so I guess I'm still not worried about it.

16 points by technologizer 17y ago

aw3c2 17y ago

Ha, that url was blocked by my aggressive filters. :) "Scenario #6: Professional content dies almost immediately." is ridiculous. There was a web before advertisements and it was (and still is) full of the finest professional content. If your business model is based on ads, then you have no business model. Internet ad monetization is nothing but a gamble. Let's see how many ad-less "professional" (as in useful and of varying quality) sites I frequently use. wikipedia openstreetmap wolfram alpha media archives of hacker conferences lots of open-source related websites countless other wikis countless sites by people who love doing what they do, be it hacking, creating, analysing or whatever else With no more ads I would anticipate more actual content created out of affection (might not be the correct word, no english native speaker here?) and less "this is where people click on most banners, so let's shove more if it down their throats".

derefr 17y ago
I agree, mostly; there are a lot of other business models for sites: donations (Wikipedia), complementary to a pay product (Wolfram Alpha), scratching an itch (many wiki sites), subscriptions, etc. However, on this point: > There was a web before advertisements Was there? How many people used it? What for? What were the business models? I find it hard to believe that people were putting their credit cards out over the web in great numbers back in 1995, so were these sites just operating under the assumption that they were generating brand-awareness, or something like that?
- pbhjpbhj 17y ago
  Amazon were selling books online in 1995. Not sure how they were advertising, I'm guessing it was mainly offline, though I imagine possibly signature ads on newsgroups may have been part of it.

qw 17y ago

News sites would probably accept articles from companies if they were paid enough. If we were lucky, they would add a small disclaimer somewhere at the bottom of the article. And they would probably also sneak in comments about a company inside their articles and comments. Some of them would be from good companies, such as Amazon. Who would blame them? Amazon is such a great company with reasonable prices and delivery. You can also depend on Amazon unlike some of the no-name competitors. Who would want to trust an unknown company, when they can use a trusted company like Amazon. Where was I... oh, they would certainly integrate paid contents in a sneaky way.

Retric 17y ago
Well played. They used to do this all the time in such an obvious way with radio, but the new idea is to causally include the product in movies, books and TV without up selling it. So you blog about your great run yesterday, and happen to mention breaking in your Nike's. Or talk about a date and mention which beer you drank. The idea is to get people to think people like them use product X.
- jerf 17y ago
  I can't find it in myself to get worked up about straight-up product placement. In some ways it's less disconcerting to see a guy drinking a Coke than drinking Unspecified-Beverage-In-A-Vaguely-Red-Can-With-Electrical-Tape. I also have a hard time imagining that even a quite popular show could survive having the characters in the show repeatedly directly shill for a product, long before we even approach the level of ads television or radio used to carry directly. While I've used television terminology, I think this carries across all media. Any sort of recurring program (TV-like video, blog, newspaper, etc) spend credibility when they do that, unless they are very carefully ensuring that they only talk about products they care about personally, which only works for things that are personal productions. (One clue I use is that a normal person should often get excited about a product that has been out for months or years, rather than one that just came out. Nobody gets everything brand new every day.) Who will read something that is just shilling, over and over again? Perhaps not nobody, but I won't be forced to read it, so I guess I'm still not worried about it.