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by knowaveragejoe 3671 days ago
That is the core of the issue that people keep missing in these discussions. Web advertising in its current state didn't form in a vacuum, it's a byproduct of our expectation that content on the Internet is mostly free.
2 comments
redbeard0x0a 3671 days ago
We aren't missing the point of web advertising. The problems being described, especially with traffic laundering - illegitimate sites are making money from ads, but aren't giving a return to the company buying the ad. When you have a low ROI on making an ad, you stop buying them. At that point, we don't have enough legitimate ads to support the web content we actually want to see survive.

The solution isn't to get rid of the Ads, it is to get rid of the perversion of the system (easier said than done). An efficient ad system is better for everybody.

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jamiequint 3671 days ago
This is true. The problem is stupid buyers. Many people here would be shocked at the lack of sophistication (or 'sophisticated buying theater') some marketers use to deploy 8 figure annual marketing budgets. It's getting better slowly and as it does we'll see less of this kind of crap.

To their credit, many of the DSPs (at least AppNexus) are trying to clean up their own systems as well and automatically block this type of traffic from being purchased. The trend in ad-tech right now around viewability and viewable eCPM metrics is also a step in the right direction.

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lobotryas 3671 days ago
So let's change the expectation. There is a real cost to these "free" services (as has been discussed at length on hn and elsewhere) and this cost is only rising as more and more people block ads. I am looking forward to businesses failing on the ad supported model so that jew approaches are tried instead.

For example, I would pay 99 cents for a full story after reading a teaser if this was easy to do. I'd even buy a membership if I could trust that a news org isn't pushing an agenda (looking at you, NYT, WaPo and many others). Heck, maybe crowdfunding select journalists is the key. I know organizations are trying to think out of the box, but because ads are still giving them a cushion I charge that they are not trying hard enough.

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