5 ms·

Agree - commercials as "30 or 60 second fully produced dramas" is laughable. Native ads can fall to wide adoption of AdBlock. It's like commercial skipping on

by jrkelly 12y ago

Agree - commercials as "30 or 60 second fully produced dramas" is laughable. Native ads can fall to wide adoption of AdBlock. It's like commercial skipping on DVRs. The only "ads" that make sense long term are things like AMZN rankings. That's what GOOG needs to fear. Ads that are valuable to the user because they can't be bought - that breaks the business model.

ryandvm 12y ago
That's a great line of thought. The worst possible future for Google is that the bottom drops out on the valuation of their product - paid ads. The only way that happens is that somebody figures out how to deliver the same quality of advertising at a much lower price point (perhaps a company that isn't employing quite so many PhDs or bankrolling so many moon shots). Or alternatively, somebody comes up with a much higher quality product. Frankly neither of those seem particularly out of reach.
- Animats 12y ago
  The only way that happens is that somebody figures out how to deliver the same quality of advertising at a much lower price point. No, the way that happens is that somebody figures out how to deliver the same services at a lower price point, i.e. with fewer ads. As the cost of computing declines, it becomes cheaper to do what Google or Facebook does. You could probably do Facebook now as a paid no-ads service for about $1/month on your phone bill. We're starting to see new social networks that aren't ad-based. So far, they're somewhat narrow in focus - Ricochet for right-wingers, Ello for drag queens, etc. Maybe someone will figure out a way to federate them into one big interlinked network without the thing becoming a spam magnet. (Diaspora was supposed to do this, but they make GitHub look user-friendly.) Remember what happened to Myspace. Ad revenue started to drop, ad density was increased to compensate, users became fed up and left, company went into a screaming dive and was sold cheaply. Who's in that position now? Twitter? Facebook? Pinterest? We're probably closer to "peak social" than "peak search".
dabei 12y ago
AdBlock is not going to kill Advertising, because most publishers have no better ways to monetize. If AdBlock continue to rise they will have to invest in detecting AdBlock and refuse to serve content when their ads are blocked.
- numbsafari 12y ago
  And that's already happening. If you embed JS necessary to finish delivering the content (or make it visible) along with the Assets for an ad, then Adblock also blocks the content.
  - jthol 12y ago
    I've never understood why you wouldn't proxy the ads through the server providing the content. No more domain black holes.
    - gohrt 12y ago
      Because the X,000 ad servers are far more technically competent at ad serving than the X,000,000 content servers.
  - zem 12y ago
    at which point people give up on your page and go elsewhere.
    - numbsafari 12y ago
      I've stopped watching the Daily Show and Colbert from their respective web sites for that very reason.
- biehl 12y ago
  Its hard to imagine that this is a war advertisers can win. Just as with DRM, you cant win with a concept of wanting to control content on a platform that is not 101% locked down. Browsers are not locked down. The best advertisers can hope for is that users are too lazy to block. Or they can be smart and provide "ads" that provide some kind of value like contextual search result etc.
temuze 12y ago
Nah, as adblock becomes more popular, there will be more effort taken on the part of publishers to detect ad blockers. It really isn't hard to detect. If an asset didn't go through, it was probably blocked. You're already starting to see with Hulu.
- ASneakyFox 12y ago
  Its not hard to detect. Its just hard to reconcile. Hulu can block service since they already have your 10 dollars. And you're unlikely to go elsewhere. there's not many other services streaming new episodes of your favorite sitcom. But free services and websites ( you know the stuff that's supposed to be ad supported) typically value user traffic over ad revenue. Especially if they're still in the growing phase, or if there's lots of easy alternatives to your service (the case of YouTube). They wouldn't want to risk you hopping over to another service.
rudimental 12y ago
I wish AMZN rankings couldn't be bought (or Yelp reviews). I am less naive about their accuracy than I used to be. There are too many stories about manipulation to believe them without a little skepticism.

by jrkelly 12y ago

ryandvm 12y ago

That's a great line of thought. The worst possible future for Google is that the bottom drops out on the valuation of their product - paid ads. The only way that happens is that somebody figures out how to deliver the same quality of advertising at a much lower price point (perhaps a company that isn't employing quite so many PhDs or bankrolling so many moon shots). Or alternatively, somebody comes up with a much higher quality product. Frankly neither of those seem particularly out of reach.

Animats 12y ago
The only way that happens is that somebody figures out how to deliver the same quality of advertising at a much lower price point. No, the way that happens is that somebody figures out how to deliver the same services at a lower price point, i.e. with fewer ads. As the cost of computing declines, it becomes cheaper to do what Google or Facebook does. You could probably do Facebook now as a paid no-ads service for about $1/month on your phone bill. We're starting to see new social networks that aren't ad-based. So far, they're somewhat narrow in focus - Ricochet for right-wingers, Ello for drag queens, etc. Maybe someone will figure out a way to federate them into one big interlinked network without the thing becoming a spam magnet. (Diaspora was supposed to do this, but they make GitHub look user-friendly.) Remember what happened to Myspace. Ad revenue started to drop, ad density was increased to compensate, users became fed up and left, company went into a screaming dive and was sold cheaply. Who's in that position now? Twitter? Facebook? Pinterest? We're probably closer to "peak social" than "peak search".

dabei 12y ago

AdBlock is not going to kill Advertising, because most publishers have no better ways to monetize. If AdBlock continue to rise they will have to invest in detecting AdBlock and refuse to serve content when their ads are blocked.

numbsafari 12y ago
And that's already happening. If you embed JS necessary to finish delivering the content (or make it visible) along with the Assets for an ad, then Adblock also blocks the content.
- jthol 12y ago
  I've never understood why you wouldn't proxy the ads through the server providing the content. No more domain black holes.
  - gohrt 12y ago
    Because the X,000 ad servers are far more technically competent at ad serving than the X,000,000 content servers.
- zem 12y ago
  at which point people give up on your page and go elsewhere.
  - numbsafari 12y ago
    I've stopped watching the Daily Show and Colbert from their respective web sites for that very reason.
biehl 12y ago
Its hard to imagine that this is a war advertisers can win. Just as with DRM, you cant win with a concept of wanting to control content on a platform that is not 101% locked down. Browsers are not locked down. The best advertisers can hope for is that users are too lazy to block. Or they can be smart and provide "ads" that provide some kind of value like contextual search result etc.

temuze 12y ago

Nah, as adblock becomes more popular, there will be more effort taken on the part of publishers to detect ad blockers. It really isn't hard to detect. If an asset didn't go through, it was probably blocked. You're already starting to see with Hulu.

ASneakyFox 12y ago
Its not hard to detect. Its just hard to reconcile. Hulu can block service since they already have your 10 dollars. And you're unlikely to go elsewhere. there's not many other services streaming new episodes of your favorite sitcom. But free services and websites ( you know the stuff that's supposed to be ad supported) typically value user traffic over ad revenue. Especially if they're still in the growing phase, or if there's lots of easy alternatives to your service (the case of YouTube). They wouldn't want to risk you hopping over to another service.

rudimental 12y ago

I wish AMZN rankings couldn't be bought (or Yelp reviews). I am less naive about their accuracy than I used to be. There are too many stories about manipulation to believe them without a little skepticism.