[manigandham]

Hey Maciej - maybe this will go better than our twitter exchange a few months back.

This is a much longer discussion than fit for HN but digital advertising is doing better in pretty much every metric: There's more time spent with ads, deeper engagements, more conversions/ROI and better formats than ever before. Take a look at any of the big apps and platforms that have billions of interactions that happen every day for the data to back this up. Adblocking, even at the scale it is today, is still a small percentage of the entire market.

I'm not sure who you're referring to with "everyone" but the situation is definitely not untenable. It's just outdated. Advertising is always a relationship between the advertiser, publisher and consumer but the consumer was never really considered in the past because they had no power or way to provide feedback. Adblocking is changing that dynamic and giving power to the people while letting advertisers know that they need to actually consider the user experience.

Since the advertising model isn't going to go away, the natural evolution is that the implementation and approach will change to create better experiences that fit with the way people consume media along with the expectations around privacy, relevance and value. The market will also re-calibrate and rise up from the artificially low rates of today.

This is a massive industry so it won't be quick and there will be lots of pain in the short term. No way around that, but progress is happening and things will absolutely get better. It might be a hated industry (and for good reason) but there are plenty of good people out there working hard and doing the right thing.

[JoshTriplett]

> Since the advertising model isn't going to go away

There are plenty of people who would like it to, and personally I hope they win. With sufficiently widespread and robust use of adblocking technology, perhaps advertising will become sufficiently unworkable to go away entirely.

[manigandham]

You've said the same thing several times in all the advertising related threads. While I understand some of the sentiment, let me be as blunt as possible: Advertising will never go away.

The fundamental model of advertising giving free access to content is great and works for pretty much everyone. It's fast, simple, egalitarian, requires no commitment and is very scalable.

Adblocking tech will never cover 100% of ads, there will always be workarounds and other developments to either serve ads or refuse adblocking users. With all the adblocking growth we've seen so far, it's still a tiny part of the ad market. Whatever we've lost in adblocked impressions has been more than made up for in all the mobile apps and platforms that take up more and more of people's time.

If you really want to pay for content then there are increasingly more options being offered, but this does not need to be mutually exclusive of ads. It's just a different option and more choice is the real solution.

[lostlogin]

>The fundamental model of advertising giving free access to content is great and works for pretty much everyone. It's fast, simple, egalitarian, requires no commitment and is very scalable.

Is it? Step back from the Internet. How many people keep things laden with adverts? Cars, magazine and appliances come covered in advertising crap. Better quality things suffer a less from this. We throw things away that are covered with adverts, or at a minimum pull them off. Things that come as they are, unadulterated, are things I place a higher value on. By and large adverts mark things out as cheap. I may be different to others in this regard but I like to pay more, lose the crap and that be it.

[manigandham]

Is it what?

> How many people keep things laden with adverts?

I dont know but this doesn't really have anything to do with the advertising model. Ads don't need to be around forever to do their job. Digital ads are by definition very ephemeral and instantaneous.

> Things that come as they are, unadulterated, are things I place a higher value on. By and large adverts mark things out as cheap.

That's because ads do make goods/services cheap(er). If you dont want ads, then you have to make up the cost by paying it yourself. You're just talking about a spectrum on how much of the true cost you want to pay.

> but I like to pay more, lose the crap and that be it.

Ok, you can do that. More publishers are starting to offer paid subscriptions and there are services like patreon, flattr, blendle, optimal, google contributor and more. More choice is good but most will choose ads for free content.

[pavel_lishin]

> We throw things away that are covered with adverts, or at a minimum pull them off.

A former coworker posted a picture of her baby on Instagram wearing a GAP tshirt. That's an advert that's only going to get thrown away when the kid outgrows it.

[roymurdock]

Ads will never disappear entirely, because at a basic level, they are really just packets of information. Some are more obnoxious, targeted, and/or dangerous than others, but seeing as how the internet was created to facilitate the distribution and dissemination of information, selfish ads will always find a way to latch into and ride along on more useful and/or altruistic information.

I'd rather live in a world where billboards/TV commercials serve as clearly delineated frames for ads to exist in, rather than the world we are moving towards, where essays and "news" articles hide behind a facade of objectivity while subtly promoting some sponsor's content.

But submarines/native content is the logical end of all freely-published syndicated content on the web, given the arms race between ad blockers and ad networks. What could be more user-friendly than an ad disguised as an article?

Time to start paying for good content - the free ride for us common consumers is over.

[JoshTriplett]

> What could be more user-friendly than an ad disguised as an article?

An actual article. It's not an "ad" or "submarine content" if it's a legitimate product review or similar.

[mancerayder]

But submarines/native content is the logical end of all freely-published syndicated content on the web, given the arms race between ad blockers and ad networks. What could be more user-friendly than an ad disguised as an article?

So user-friendly, that the mistrust of the Internet is probably higher than ever [1]. Sometimes it's legitimately hard to tell what is real, and what is an ad, whether it's some website about some health concern (my favorite BS ones), some tech review site, or god knows what else. And as a discerning, analytical reader with a scientific mindset, I've trained myself to do my own research via studies and reputable sources (health) or even message forums (tech).

The user-friendliness of the ad industry presently is somewhat terrifying to me, if I'm honest.

1 - I can't back that up. :-) But why would I bother, when I can just state it, like one of those 'Top 3 Tablets [whose manufacturers that paid us ]' or 'Glowing Review of New Macbook [ with softball criticisms] '?

[mancerayder]

I guess the irony/humor was lost in my post.

My non-ironic point: there's tremendous mistrust now on the Net, as information seems more dubious than ever - from the curating of news (recent story with Facebook) to the paid reviews (Amazon finally cracking down on, but which are still quite ubiquitous), to ads that look like articles. If there's a reason I come to this site, it's because I feel like I have a more direct line to the truth, and it's 'curated' by discerning readers and comments. (Some of whom, ahem, are a little aggressive in their downvotes).

Now, how is that not a souring of the good faith of the reader, when the ad industry pursues insidious/sinuous/backhanded tactics, all because the reader doesn't want to see, hear or read something that the ad industry wants them to see, hear or read.