[csydas]

As you're in the industry, I'd like to ask two "aggressive" questions in the spirit of genuine curiosity. That is, I am looking to learn a different POV from my own end-user anti-ad POV.

Regarding point 1:

>They are also working for the Advertiser better now than they did 10 years ago, as we are able to track and measure much better. What people haven't noticed is the fact that they have become more native, less intrusive and more relevant altogether. I am not talking about your flashy ads that you encounter on your various pirating sites and other places that Adsense blocks to begin with.

What is the benefit to the end-user though?

I guess I've seen the opposite as an end-user. Non-pirate websites, common blogs, news papers, etc, push through video ads, pop-over ads, and in the mobile space, positioning ads deliberately close to navigation controls on iOS or with the dismissal moving or being difficult to accurately tap even with a precision tool.

While I know there are "good ads", there is also a huge prevalence of bad ads, and the damage of the bad is far more impactful to the end user than the benefit of the good. I can't really comment on ad relevancy since I use ad-blockers on personal content, but similar systems (amazon's recs, youtube's recs) have an abyssmal "hit" rate for me, in that I rarely find the content worth pursuing.

Re point 2, I've felt for some time that other payment venues would need to be pursued by content creators as I've heard frequently from streamers or vBloggers I've followed that the ad payout is very low, even with high subscription numbers. Most decline to get into actual details, but several game streamers on Twitch have commented that a one time donation of a few $$$ overwhelmingly makes up for adblocking on their stream. Realistically, are the payouts from ads enough for "small" operations with low viewership? It just seems like supplementary income at best, rather than something that a newcomer or casual creator can rely on for support. In fact, it's a frequent occurrence for many vLoggers and web comics for when the creators need to decide are they ready to commit to the project as a job or continue it in their spare time, and often it'd dependent on how popular they're getting.

In other words, I don't think that anyone is denying that adblocking small operations lowers the payout, but are there that many operations that bank soley on ad revenue without other sources of income? It just seems like there's a point, once the viewership increases, that suddenly the project lives or dies by the revenue, instead of the project relying on the revenue from the beginning.

Finally, just a general question, why not use more ad-walls if adblockers are a problem?

I know for whatever reason people are against them, but to a degree I appreciate ad walls - the website is actively putting forth what the arrangement is, they're not trying to sneak an ad past me (native advertising, fake download links, etc), and I have to make a decision on how badly I want to read the content. Often I'll unblock briefly to read something from an unfamiliar site, and if I like the quality of the site, it goes on the whitelist. If not, AB goes back on and it's a reminder to me each time that I did not trust the website. Everyone's wishes get respected.

[t0pz]

Re point 2:

I get where you're coming from. The fact is, that margins on ads are incredibly small. Additionally, the % of people clicking on an ad is understandably low. Usually you get a CTR of 0.3% to 0.6% which for smaller, unpopular content providers isn't much. However, it is often just about enough to make ends meet. The problem is that low popularity is not enough to make anything additional or to even call it a business. With lower popularity you are indeed better off exploring other options like Patreon or well-targeted sponsorships. However, i was mainly talking about SME - type of content providers. Those with 2 to 5 people actually working as a "business". In the end, everyone notices the repercussions of adblocking, but i meant who is actually affected by it so badly that it puts their existence at risk. The lone streamer or blogger will notice it, but for him/her its so low anyways that it doesnt make that big of a difference anyways. The medium sized teams notice it, and for them it might just cut away their small margins so that they are now in the minus and can no longer sustain an actual business. The large corporations/companies certainly notice it, but they can sustain themselves although they are the ones fighting back the most, since they have the resources.

[niij]

Which large company (outside the advertising industry, including Google) relies solely on Internet advertising for their income?

[t0pz]

i never made the claim that any large company relies solely on internet advertising for their income...?

[niij]

> The large corporations/companies certainly notice it, but they can sustain themselves although they are the ones fighting back the most, since they have the resources.

[t0pz]

I totally agree with you on point 1 as i work primarily with non-intrusive ad formats with content that is as relative as possible to the user. There are definitely many "bad" ads and i hate them myself but there is a mismatch between what we perceive and what the data tells us. And this is often the case in Advertising. Consider this: You see an annoying commercial on TV about Butter over and over again, over the course of a month. These are quite intrusive and you certainly wouldn't want to see it again, if you had the choice. Some months later you find yourself in a supermarket with a huuge fridge with a wall of 50 different brands of butter that you never heard of. Whether you believe it or not, the majority of the people will subconsciously grab the butter from the brand of that annoying TV commercial. Why is that? There are several studies on the subject, but a common belief is that we distrust the unknown. This brand, albeit with intrusive, annoying ads has made its way into your "trusted" brands category in your brain. You wouldn't reach for one of the other 49 unknown brands just because you literally know nothing about them. My point being: These annoying/intrusive ads wouldn't continue running if they didn't work for the Advertiser. They are getting a ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend) that tells them, it worked! This is the sad reality. I am in no way justifying that bad ads should continue to exist, but those are the facts.

I do still believe that we can change the Advertising landscape for the better though. There will always be bad apples who don't care as long as they get their revenue goals, profit margins, etc. It's kind of like the movie industry. There are a crap-ton of bad movies out there. I don't believe there's anything wrong with the movie industry itself. It's the individuals in that industry who create bad quality content. But this doesn't mean that all movies/ads are bad. What it really means is that the focus should be shifted to the good/useful/beneficial ads. In the movie industry this is easy. You got critics, ratings, etc. We do not yet have a system that properly educates, empowers and enables users to determine what is a good ad for them. This is probably due to the fact that everyone keeps saying how much they hate ads in general so creating a system to rate, control and criticize them sounds way too risky.

As for "good" ads, i don't think i need to point out the benefit to the end-user. A simple example is something like "price-alert" ads. You visit skyscanner for example and you search for a flight. You dont book it because its too expensive. A week later you see an ad for the same flight for $100 less. You click the ad, book the flight. This is the type of ads that i love. They bring value to the user and value to the company. Everybody wins. Make ads more relevant. This is the mantra in my business. If someone has been searching for a lot of ways how to train his dog, why wouldn't he want to see ads on "dog-training facilities in your area" or if you're reading an article about Red Hot Chili Peppers biography, why not receive an ad about their upcoming tour passing through your city? I see the value for both sides in all of these

[tmptmp]

>>You see an annoying commercial on TV about Butter over and over again, over the course of a month. These are quite intrusive and you certainly wouldn't want to see it again, if you had the choice.

The very big difference between the TV ad and the intrusive web ad is: the web ad can run arbitrary (potentially harmful) code on my computer. So whatever you say adblocks are very important from end-user's POV.

I don't want to and won't sacrifice my safety just because some (shitty or non-shitty) publisher may be saved by playing the ads (malware) on my machine. These publishers may go to hell, I don't care.

Only textual or static image type inline (content) ads (also privacy respecting) are okay, at least for me.

edit: a typo

[ocean3]

TV ad might not run arbitrary code. But its very annoying as well. Hence lots of pirating.

[freehunter]

I'd be curious how many people pirate TV in order to skip the ads vs how many people pirate because they don't have access to the show, don't like the limited time they're able to see the show, or don't want to pay money to subscribe to the network. Seems like ads would be pretty far down the list of reasons to pirate.

[pavel_lishin]

I've downloaded shows before. I mostly do it for control. I don't want to have to show up at exactly 9pm to watch something; I want to be able to watch it around 7 the next day, while I'm doing dishes, then continue watching it at my desk while I'm clearing out my email, or while doing something else.

I could get a DVR, but I can't drag a DVR with me around the house as I'm doing chores.

[csydas]

Thank you for the response - I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted, so sorry for that.

The reason I asked on the benefit to the end-user is because a lot of what was listed about how ads have gotten better is very advertiser/content provider focused. Even relevancy seems more like a symptom of success for the advertiser rather than success for the user.

I am going to assume that I am an outlier case for many of your scenarios, as that's not really how I tend to search for things or decide what to purchase. For things like flights, I almost invariably use ITA Matrix to research and then purchase directly from the airlines, as having relied on site deals in the past either did not provide the promised discount amount or left me standing when the flight got oversold. In other instances, the ads led to a lot of contentless websites.

I guess I'm within the section that is very untrusting of advertisements. Past experience prior to my use of an adblocker left a bad taste in my mouth, and when I work on computers without an adblocker, even for ads that I don't find obtrusive past experience has just taught me to be reluctant. An over-active imagination and some knowledge of how computers work has likely left me in a very mistrusting state.

How would you propose, as an advertiser, to alleviate people in that state? This isn't exclusive to paranoid tech people like myself either (I am calling myself that, not putting words in your mouth), as when I did support for some time, my customers would constantly complain about advertisements, and the times that bad-ads got bad enough to actually infect the computer was enough to convince your average college student that an adblocker was essential. And I am not embellishing when I say "essential"; most wanted to know straight up what to use to keep ads gone.

If this is what you're battling, how do you think the industry should respond (or is?) in order to try to restore trust?

[t0pz]

We're not actually battling this issue, since technically it "works" for us. However, we do not know how much more uplift we potentially could get if we were to actively try to alleviate the mistrust & distaste for Ads, which i honestly do not know how we could. The only way i see it happening is by everyone in the Advertising industry to take quality seriously and try to make Ads as beneficial to both users and Advertisers alike. Unfortunately there are still plenty of money-farming Agencies out there who don't care because they get sent a large Advertising budget by a big client (ex: Nike or Volkswagen) with arbitrary goals like "bring us X more traffic or bring us X more sales) which isn't necessarily in either one's interest. The Agency just rakes in the money with minimum effort placed in the creation of the Ad (ironically, the image in the Ad is called a "Creative" when often times there is very little creativity used).