i'm curious what will happen to online ads as more and more internet traffic is done by bots. eventually, advertisers will catch on that humans are driving their impressions and will pull back, right?
as soon as people realize the diminishing value of buying ads on random internet platforms... what next? ads have subsidized almost everything online. will we start paying for basic services, or will there be some other new mechanism for us to sell our attention in exchange for somebody else's web hosting?
A lot of sites are essentially unreadable. There are things flashing at you, videos that autoplay, and the page will reload every 30 seconds and you lose your place.
And even if ads are respectful of user experience, there is a cognitive load to having the content you want to consume bombarded with unrelated content, especially when it’s trying to manipulate your emotions in some way.
Site owners don’t have a right to complain about people using ad blockers because their insistence on money over user experience is the reason everyone is installing them.
A lot of the time I just read sites in Reader Mode. There are no ads or distractions and it seems that site owners haven’t figured out how to block or detect it yet.
I use an adblocker and I have for a while now. Every so often I hear a moral argument about why adblockers are bad (ads support free internet, etc) but to be completely honest, I simply don't care anymore. Advertising is in such a malicious state that yes, I'm going to put my own experience quality over whatever collective good there is in watching ads.
I just simply do not load, let alone look at ads. Physical ads are pretty virtually the only ads I actually have to see, but there are not thaaat many here.
Even my daughter's dance recital this weekend had them. In between dances they frequently paused to play an ad on the big screen to the right. It was incredible.
Modern tech companies think the solution for ad relevance is data collection. This is the justification used by Google, Meta, and others for trying to learn as much about a user as possible.
I think the golf magazine example is the way ads should be. Eliminate all data collection and advertise based on context. It doesn’t make any sense that a YouTuber making construction videos is advertising for AG1 and VPNs, but it would make sense to advertise for Home Depot. This is more in line with how advertisements work on traditional broadcast TV.
I know a guy who used to run a forum for the saltwater fish tank hobby. He was mostly regional people. His site had ads from local businesses that these people actually used. Each year he’d host various events and these same companies would show up to sell coral and whatever else. It was a 2 way relationship, connecting willing buyers with local businesses. Exactly what marketing and advertisement should be.
I don’t see a lot of ads thanks to using Kagi, YouTube Premium, and some other paid services. I won’t subscribe to a streaming service that will also show me ads, I draw a hard line on this. I think I’d be slightly less opposed to ads if the business of data collection behind them wasn’t so creepy and off-putting. The ad-to-content ratio also has to be reasonable. I think everyone of a certain age has had the experience of flipping through a magazine and finding out it’s 80% ads. That’s not pleasant.
Ads not only need to be relevant to me. They also have to be presented to me only when I am interested in the category of the advertised product or service. Otherwise they're just spam.
(Consider the typical "you just bought a new fridge, so let's show you ads of fridges".)
The only kind of ad I don't find objectionable is the kind where someone makes a genuine recommendation, with no money changing hands. Or if money did happen to change hands, the same recommendation would've been made without it.
As a random example of the latter, it doesn't bother me too much when electronics youtubers are sponsored by PCB manufacturing companies.
I agree with you, and think that despite all the hype about targeting and data mining, platforms like YouTube are horrible at determining people’s interests. Re-targeting does seem to ‘work’ better, but it is also extremely wasteful because many of the people seeing the ads have already made their purchase decision.
I see some tenuous connection between advertising and extinction of our species. It goes something like:
One: Human psychology tends to ascribe more weight to negative things than positive things in the short term. In the long term this generally balances out, but in the short term it's more prudent in a biological sense to pay attention to the rustling in the bushes than the berries you might pick from them. This is known as the [negativity bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias).
Two: The modern gatekeepers of social interaction, Big Tech, employ blind algorithms that attempt to steer your attention towards spending more time on their platforms. These companies are the arbiters of the content we experience daily and what you do and don't see is mostly at their discretion. The techniques they employ, in simple terms, are designed to provoke what they call 'engagement'. They do this because at the end of the day FAANG have not only a financial interest, but a fiduciary duty to sell advertisements at the behest of their shareholders. The more they can engage you, the more ads they can sell. They employ live A-B testing, divide people into cohorts and poke and prod them with psychological techniques to try and glue your eyeballs to their ads.
Extrapolated conclusion:
These companies have a financial and legally binding interest to divide the population against itself, obstructing politics and social interaction to the point where we might not be able to achieve any of the goals that we need to reach to prevent oblivion.
Same, for same reason i refuse pay for services, in past paying for service would mean they wouldn't track you and sell your data, but thats not longer the case. Since that's additional profits for companies.
Luckily there's few exemptions services which im happily paying since its proven they dont collect your data so advertisers can't prey on you when you're at lowest.
Like did you know, just by obtaining credit card, your shopping history is sold? And you can't reject this, at least i haven't managed to do so. Yet in EU we're banning cash, where's option so i can buy my grocies without insurances knowing i bought candies for weekends so they'll hike insurance up.
There are still physical printed ads on billboards you can't really avoid, as well as all the branding from anything else you encounter in the streets: cars, bicycle, shops, drink coasters at the bar/pub, etc which are by essence advertising.
As much as I do to avoid ads (using adblocker, priorizing gemtext caches of news sites, avoiding FM radio and buying my own music) I can't say I avoid it completely.
Advertisers end up corrupting ad supported media, too. Before ads, Google keyword search was ok. After ads, it decayed, because catering to advertisers was how they got payed.
i'm curious what will happen to online ads as more and more internet traffic is done by bots. eventually, advertisers will catch on that humans are driving their impressions and will pull back, right?
as soon as people realize the diminishing value of buying ads on random internet platforms... what next? ads have subsidized almost everything online. will we start paying for basic services, or will there be some other new mechanism for us to sell our attention in exchange for somebody else's web hosting?
A lot of sites are essentially unreadable. There are things flashing at you, videos that autoplay, and the page will reload every 30 seconds and you lose your place.
And even if ads are respectful of user experience, there is a cognitive load to having the content you want to consume bombarded with unrelated content, especially when it’s trying to manipulate your emotions in some way.
Site owners don’t have a right to complain about people using ad blockers because their insistence on money over user experience is the reason everyone is installing them.
A lot of the time I just read sites in Reader Mode. There are no ads or distractions and it seems that site owners haven’t figured out how to block or detect it yet.
I use an adblocker and I have for a while now. Every so often I hear a moral argument about why adblockers are bad (ads support free internet, etc) but to be completely honest, I simply don't care anymore. Advertising is in such a malicious state that yes, I'm going to put my own experience quality over whatever collective good there is in watching ads.
I just simply do not load, let alone look at ads. Physical ads are pretty virtually the only ads I actually have to see, but there are not thaaat many here.
Even my daughter's dance recital this weekend had them. In between dances they frequently paused to play an ad on the big screen to the right. It was incredible.
I will point out at no point in the article does he complain about seeing advertisements for golfing tees in his Golf magazine subscription.
IMO, the real problems with ads are
1) They just aren't relevant to you. No I'm not going to start drinking AG1 ...
2) There's no information about the product. How do I even know if AG1 is a good idea?
Modern tech companies think the solution for ad relevance is data collection. This is the justification used by Google, Meta, and others for trying to learn as much about a user as possible.
I think the golf magazine example is the way ads should be. Eliminate all data collection and advertise based on context. It doesn’t make any sense that a YouTuber making construction videos is advertising for AG1 and VPNs, but it would make sense to advertise for Home Depot. This is more in line with how advertisements work on traditional broadcast TV.
I know a guy who used to run a forum for the saltwater fish tank hobby. He was mostly regional people. His site had ads from local businesses that these people actually used. Each year he’d host various events and these same companies would show up to sell coral and whatever else. It was a 2 way relationship, connecting willing buyers with local businesses. Exactly what marketing and advertisement should be.
I don’t see a lot of ads thanks to using Kagi, YouTube Premium, and some other paid services. I won’t subscribe to a streaming service that will also show me ads, I draw a hard line on this. I think I’d be slightly less opposed to ads if the business of data collection behind them wasn’t so creepy and off-putting. The ad-to-content ratio also has to be reasonable. I think everyone of a certain age has had the experience of flipping through a magazine and finding out it’s 80% ads. That’s not pleasant.
Ads not only need to be relevant to me. They also have to be presented to me only when I am interested in the category of the advertised product or service. Otherwise they're just spam.
(Consider the typical "you just bought a new fridge, so let's show you ads of fridges".)
The only kind of ad I don't find objectionable is the kind where someone makes a genuine recommendation, with no money changing hands. Or if money did happen to change hands, the same recommendation would've been made without it.
As a random example of the latter, it doesn't bother me too much when electronics youtubers are sponsored by PCB manufacturing companies.
I agree with you, and think that despite all the hype about targeting and data mining, platforms like YouTube are horrible at determining people’s interests. Re-targeting does seem to ‘work’ better, but it is also extremely wasteful because many of the people seeing the ads have already made their purchase decision.
I see some tenuous connection between advertising and extinction of our species. It goes something like:
One: Human psychology tends to ascribe more weight to negative things than positive things in the short term. In the long term this generally balances out, but in the short term it's more prudent in a biological sense to pay attention to the rustling in the bushes than the berries you might pick from them. This is known as the [negativity bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias).
Two: The modern gatekeepers of social interaction, Big Tech, employ blind algorithms that attempt to steer your attention towards spending more time on their platforms. These companies are the arbiters of the content we experience daily and what you do and don't see is mostly at their discretion. The techniques they employ, in simple terms, are designed to provoke what they call 'engagement'. They do this because at the end of the day FAANG have not only a financial interest, but a fiduciary duty to sell advertisements at the behest of their shareholders. The more they can engage you, the more ads they can sell. They employ live A-B testing, divide people into cohorts and poke and prod them with psychological techniques to try and glue your eyeballs to their ads.
Extrapolated conclusion: These companies have a financial and legally binding interest to divide the population against itself, obstructing politics and social interaction to the point where we might not be able to achieve any of the goals that we need to reach to prevent oblivion.
Lord Dunsany, 1915, wrote "WHAT WE HAVE COME TO":
When the advertiser saw the cathedral spires over the downs in the distance, he looked at them and wept.
"If only," he said, "this were an advertisement of Beefo, so nice, so nutritious, try it in your soup, ladies like it."
That is literally the entire short story. The second last from "Fifty-One Tales". See here at Gutenberg: https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/7838
Same, for same reason i refuse pay for services, in past paying for service would mean they wouldn't track you and sell your data, but thats not longer the case. Since that's additional profits for companies.
Luckily there's few exemptions services which im happily paying since its proven they dont collect your data so advertisers can't prey on you when you're at lowest.
Like did you know, just by obtaining credit card, your shopping history is sold? And you can't reject this, at least i haven't managed to do so. Yet in EU we're banning cash, where's option so i can buy my grocies without insurances knowing i bought candies for weekends so they'll hike insurance up.
I’ve used Adblock aggressively for the last 10 or 15 years. I don’t have a TV, don’t read magazines or the newspaper, don’t listen to the radio.
I essentially don’t see or hear ads in my life.
There are still physical printed ads on billboards you can't really avoid, as well as all the branding from anything else you encounter in the streets: cars, bicycle, shops, drink coasters at the bar/pub, etc which are by essence advertising.
As much as I do to avoid ads (using adblocker, priorizing gemtext caches of news sites, avoiding FM radio and buying my own music) I can't say I avoid it completely.
Advertisers end up corrupting ad supported media, too. Before ads, Google keyword search was ok. After ads, it decayed, because catering to advertisers was how they got payed.
It looks like ads will corrupt our only hope, AI.