[jayruy]

i've never understood why some are so averse to ads as a business model in new media... it seems as if facebook/twitter are in a real place to sell me stuff i might actually want, which could be a great service in and of itself.

sure - the execution isn't quite there yet - but it seems we'll get there in the next 5 years? i don't work in the industry so i could be misguided - will the actuality be more akin to a bunch of spam in my twitter feed?

[ben1040]

> it seems as if facebook/twitter are in a real place to sell me stuff i might actually want, which could be a great service in and of itself.

As a programmer working in data mining problems, I can certainly concede just don't find the idea of working on an ad platform to be sexy enough to work on.

But when I put my consumer hat on, I think highly relevant ads are just fine and I'm far, far more likely to click them and generate revenue for the person showing them to me.

A few months ago I booked a trip to SF, and alongside the e-ticket confirmation mail in my inbox there was a Gmail context ad for zeppelin tours of Silicon Valley from Airship Ventures. I had absolutely no idea this was available, but it seemed awesome, and immediately went to book a tour.

If you can show me an ad for something I might be interested in (a tour) at the time I'm most likely to make a purchase (I already had my credit card out from booking the airline reservation) then that's awesome. In fact I might even perceive that as a service if the product is something I would have never known about before.

[orangecat]

alongside the e-ticket confirmation mail in my inbox there was a Gmail context ad for zeppelin tours of Silicon Valley from Airship Ventures

That is freaking awesome and the best argument for context-sensitive ads I've seen. How was it?

[ben1040]

My scheduled zeppelin tour ended up getting rained out, but the next time I'm in the bay area and have the time to spare, I'm totally going to give it another try.

[gyardley]

There are people who are adverse to advertising itself, and then there are people who are adverse to working for an advertising company.

I've worked for a variety of online advertising companies, and while no two companies are identical, they do deal with a lot of common problems that some people just might not be interested in implementing.

[jayruy]

isn't the base problem one of collaborative filtering? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_filtering

seems like a fairly interesting problem to me - or am i idealizing? i suppose some developers would rather work on language/framework problems than data analysis problems...

[hariis]

I think the problem is that currently Ads are shown to you Not as a service to you but a way for the companies to sustain themselves.

Ads as a service, that's a nice idea!

[jsharpe]

Why can't ads be both a service and a way of making money?