[aviraldg]

As soon as ad supported free services start shutting down because of ad blocking and lowered clickthrough rates on ads because of targeting being blocked, most people will probably start changing their minds. (The alternative being maintaining 10-20+ paid subscriptions.) For now, all this change means is that users who are opted-in to tracking are subsidising those who aren't.

[masswerk]

How about tracking back to content related advertising rather than tracking based advertising? All related studies are showing that the latter isn't working anyway. And, as these metrics (and ethics) suggest, it has been an illegitimate invasion, right from the beginning. The fancy "conversion rate" dashboards are just not worth it.

Bonus: Maybe this will be an opportunity for content providers to reset the decline of advertising prices that has happened over the last decade. (Remember the blooming blogger scene in the 2000s, when you could still make substantial revenues? Remember the thriving online news papers? We could get back there, if advertising became less invasive and less aggressive and also more profitable for content providers, e.g., how it had been in print.)

[aerosmile]

> All related studies are showing that the latter isn't working anyway.

This is very common on HN these days - stating something with a lot of confidence that turns out to be some self-constructed mental model that has nothing to do with reality. Then, add the obligatory "all related studies are showing it" and you have met the publishing standards.

Legally or illegally, morally or immorally, for better or worse, Facebook has created the most sophisticated ad targeting engine the world has ever seen. You want proof? Look at their financial statements. You want more proof? Look at all the companies that went public on the back of Facebook's ad targeting engine. Again, perhaps it shouldn't exist in the first place, but trust me, it works.

[masswerk]

Disclaimer: I studied media theory and publishing, but well before the Web became the all-decisive factor. Meaning, I have some idea about those things and have still an interest in them. (Also, I actually programmed ad embedding mechanisms for ad networks, but quit this field, when things became too invasive and ads too aggressive and I couldn't justify this any longer. – At this time, tracking was commonly done for multistage campaigns only.)

That said, I've never come upon a study that showed significant gains due to targeting, rather to the contrary. – So, after a decade, I'm still waiting for any proof in favor of targeting. (The suspicion must be still that targeting is rather a lazy alternative to media analysis and its perceived advantage is rather rooted in minimising efforts than in effectiveness.)

Regarding "Facebook has created the most sophisticated ad targeting engine", this is a rather biased proposition. It has enforced Facebook as a broker, made advertising cheap, while less effective, and has driven ad revenues for content providers downhill. (Google is to blame, as well.)

[renewiltord]

* There is a pervasive belief on HN that marketing teams are making easy errors, i.e. there is low hanging fruit

* Consultancies that improve marketing campaign efficacy make lots of money

* HN users are making small fractions of that money and constantly complaining about it

* Any HN user capable of picking this low hanging fruit could do this for two years and retire for life

* They are not

* Conclusion: Either there is no low hanging fruit, or the HN users observing this are making millions of dollars, or these HN users do not care for money at all and get greater utility from complaining about money.

[masswerk]

Maybe, there's a biased view in ad business and some of the perceived benefits and effects are rather tautological? (This is why we have studies.)

You could also conclude from your remarks that there is a pervasive idea around ad teams that former generations (in the times of media analysis) were just delivering complete failures. However, this model had delivered for more than a century. How could this model perform with todays instruments and data?

[renewiltord]

The best thing about startups is that they test questions like that in a way that these studies can't. Because the participants have a very real and strong incentive to succeed they will perform that continuous search and hypothesis adjustment till they hit gold or die. If you truly have a Thiel hypothesis, you're going to get very rich.

In software, we call this "talk is cheap; show me the code", but of course here you don't need to show me the code. It's just that you're letting this golden opportunity go to waste. Up to you, I guess.

[aerosmile]

Alternative conclusion: as with all things in a capitalist society, there is a small minority of people that is killing it, and they are not making it easy for everyone else to discover their playbooks.

[renewiltord]

That doesn’t work because we’re assuming that most marketers are making easy mistakes. The playbook is so simple that people on HN could write it, supposedly.

[ClumsyPilot]

>"You want proof? Look at their financial statements."

Homeopathy peddlers make a killing, so does the agile consultants and th catholic Church, if this is proof they must both be right?

Just because someone made loads of money doesnt mean their claims are sciebtifivally valid.

[aerosmile]

I went out of my way not to give Facebook any moral high ground, and yet you still managed to get offended.

[ClumsyPilot]

Your 'proof' doesn't make sence, what does 'offense' or 'moral high ground' have to do with it?

[pseudalopex]

Snark isn't a sign of offense.

[aerosmile]

Call it what you want, the outcome is the same. You want to say [A], but before you say it, you have to start with [B] just not to get the conversation derailed by call-it-what-you-wants. And it turns out, the call-it-what-you-wants are still going to do their thing, pretending this is Reddit.

[saint_abroad]

Indeed, maybe it's about time advertisers got back to sponsoring quality content their target audience enjoys, rather than direct marketing through the back door on the lowest common denominator.

[bserge]

Still not sure why that didn't become predominant. Dynamic content based ads seemed to be the new fad in late 00's, then it kinda disappeared, with user tracking becoming the norm.

[PaulHoule]

Tracking is necessary for the advertising economy to control bad behavior on the part of publishers and advertisers, not just to serve targeted ads.

No matter what there would be discrepancies in the numbers (publisher says it sent 75 clicks, advertiser says it got 70) and that breeds mistrust. Participants have a reason to lie. Having multiple third party watch the whole thing helps them trust each other.

[masswerk]

This has been possible before. Google was built around content based advertising. Also, maybe click-through rates are not that important? Maybe exposure is a more decisive metric? As a side-effect, we may reduce social bubble effects and maybe even return to a shared reality? (Many of the unwanted effects of the Web are really due to targeted advertising and its consequences.)

[aerosmile]

You're clearly under the impression that all that Facebook does is get you good click-through rates and low conversion rates. Similarly, you're under the impression that Google's conversion rates are through the roof. Did you ever stop to ask yourself if your world view might be limited to a small sample size (eg: your own experiences)? I know plenty of businesses where the conversion rates are exactly the opposite of what you described. It turns out, the right marketing platform is related to the product you're selling. For example, if you want to buy a vacuum, Google will do a great job in connecting you with the right advertiser. But what if you just started a new hobby and don't yet know what it is that you need in that hobby? Eg, you started racing, but have no idea that upgrading your suspension will get you more performance than upgrading your exhaust? The advertiser selling suspension components will use Facebook to share this information with you (and Facebook will do a much better job than Google of identifying the person who needs that component but doesn't know it yet), and they will also advertise on Google as well, but Google will only be relevant once the buyer starts researching suspension solutions. Kind of nice to be the first one to pitch a suspension solution to a willing buyer, don't you think?

[masswerk]

On the other hand, if I'm not on FB, I probably miss those vendors of suspension components all together. Advertising "in the bubble", as opposed to "in the world", comes with its disadvantages. With content based advertising (media analysis), you'll probably catch me at the related watering holes and communities. Also, excluding non-targeted audiences doesn't exactly benefit a shared world view.

P.S.: The general idea of targeted advertising misses the concepts of state of mind and focus of interest entirely. There's a (significant) difference in delivering a message in context and out of context. (The latter may have even adversarial effects.)

[aerosmile]

> Advertising "in the bubble", as opposed to "in the world"

Is this an argument for the open web, or is this an argument for Google being more popular than Facebook? If the former, I am with you. If the latter, the gap is not as big as you might think - 4 billion worldwide users of Google Search vs 2.85 for Facebook [1]. Slight advantage to Google, but how many US advertisers really care about international buyers? When it comes to advertising, you want people with money burning holes in their pockets. Facebook's financial results show that they plenty of access to this demographic.

> The general idea of targeted advertising misses the concepts of state of mind and focus of interest entirely. There's a (significant) difference in delivering a message in context and out of context.

You're slightly lagging with this argument. This exact reason was why Google was so dismissive of paid social back in the formative years of Facebook ("who gives a shit about what college students talk about on social networks?"). And then the oh shit moment happened in 2011. Eric Schmidt had to step down and Larry Page tied bonus payouts to the success of Google Plus. You have to give Larry some credit here - while a bit slower than Zuck, he did see the writing on the wall before the rest of the world did. If you tried advertising on both platform in 2011, Google would just crush you with their results. By 2016, Facebook was already competitive with their interest and lookalike targeting for a large group of advertisers (and even enabled Trump to win the presidency), and by 2018 the game had advanced to the new concept of "creative targeting" which is basically entirely driven by the algorithm and takes minimal targeting input from advertisers. At that point, paid social became so good that it got creepy and turned the public sentiment to negative and incentivized Apple to jump on the band wagon with iOS 14.

So I wouldn't agree with your argument that Facebook has a fundamental problem with recognizing intent. If anything, they are too good at it for their own sake.

[1] https://review42.com/resources/google-statistics-and-facts/

[PaulHoule]

Some kind of verification is necessary for impression-based advertising too.

For instance, there are discontents around Nielsen (they've had scandals in India, and I infuriate people in the TV industry with the suggestion that a Nielsen home got bribed to blast MTV in an empty room) but the participants believe in Nielsen: people know probability-based sampling basically works.

[masswerk]

P.S.: An interesting experiment may be an ad-blocker with an option "block animated ads and tracking only" (or rather, "show static ads only"). And maybe another option "filter ads to greyscale".

I guess, reducing distraction and moving towards a client-based and user-controlled "ads manager" may have a decisive impact on overall blocking habits.

[makecheck]

This is not destroying the whole concept of ads, it is only pushing back against awful variants.

It is definitely possible to have “nice” ads, like simple text or images, with no creepy or CPU-draining elements in them. Nothing is preventing those ads from supporting free services.

[derefr]

However, the reason companies looking to place ads, will choose modern-adtech-platform-X (Google, Facebook, etc.) over traditional advertising medium Y (billboards, TV, etc.) is that the former promises to be more targeted (using the ad”tech”) than the latter, such that there’s higher value-per-click or value-per-impression.

Without that promise, there’s no reason to favor advertising on these platforms over other platforms. Which, if you flip it around, means that there’s no reason that these platforms should be valued in excess of the traditional-advertising-impression-value of their MAU. (Which is, to be clear, a lot lower than the value these companies currently have!)

[Retric]

Many companies are prohibited from doing stuff that they would profit from. I am sure soda companies would love to be able to add heroin to their products etc. However, maximizing random companies profits isn’t societies only concern.

[derefr]

My point wasn't so much about maximizing profits; it was more that these free-service companies might not even be tenable (at least at their current scales, or anything like them) with the drastically lower profit-margins of traditional ad impressions.

The GP comment said:

> Nothing is preventing those ads from supporting free services.

And my thought is, a zero-or-negative profit margin might very well be. It costs a lot to run Google/Facebook/etc. — probably a lot more than it costs to run the types of services they compete with. For the companies to not go bankrupt, their ad clicks/impressions need to be of at least as much value as their CapEx+OpEx. With adtech type ads, they certainly are at least that valuable. With only traditional type ads, would they still be?

I'm not arguing that these companies should be allowed to do this because they have some fundamental right to exist, mind you. Just pointing out that taking adtech out of the equation could "pop the bubble" drive margins negative, and just erase the whole free-ad-supported-services market entirely.

(Consider: why don't traditional-ads companies offer free web services supported by said traditional ads? Is it only because nobody cares about buying placement with them when targeted placements are available from Google/Facebook/etc.? Or is it because, even with full dealflow, it's still negative-margin?)

[Retric]

Tracking doesn’t actually add that much to how much they can sell advertising for. As to traditional advertising companies it’s simply a question of competence, you may as well ask why they don’t sell vacuum cleaners.

[hedora]

> Without that promise, there’s no reason to favor advertising on these platforms over other platforms.

Precisely. Instead, there will (again) be reason to favor advertising on high quality content.

Redistribution of income away from ad platforms and content spam mills to original journalism and high-quality entertainment would be an unambiguous win for society.

[alkonaut]

Yes! So money will flow back to magazine ads, billboards, radio, tv, and other media that has seen money flow away the last decades. Because their untargeted ad model is now not much worse.

[nicoburns]

Consider how much profit a company like facebook makes. Ad value could take drop a lot and they'd still be a viable company. They's lose, but from a societal perspective I'd argue that probably a positive.

[rascul]

I vaguely recall that Google used to use text ads. Not sure if they still do, or if I recall correctly.

[handrous]

That used to be all they did. You'd see a lot of "of course I block all ads—except Google's, they're fine".

They also didn't used to trick unsophisticated or distracted users into clicking ads by putting them inline with search results.

Both changed, I assume, when someone was allowed to run an experiment and the projected profit trend line went from "exceptionally good" to "holy shit, it's all the money in the world". And all it took was being evil. Go figure.

Some tie this to internal fallout from the the DoubleClick acquisition, which checks out pretty well timeline-wise.

[LorenPechtel]

And we don't even know if their measurement is right--they probably got a high rate at first because people weren't used to them and were deceived. As people wise up the effectiveness will drop.

[handrous]

All the non-tech-nerds I see use phones or computers hit the inline ads at a very high rate. As in, on most searches. They do not realize they are ads, mostly, or do but aren't paying attention.

[als0]

From a Google search I made in the last hour, the top 6 search results were all text ads.

[rchaud]

I think the OP meant AdSense (now Google Ads), which is when publishers display ads from Google's advertiser inventory. Those are a combination of text-only or banner ads. Although I mostly see banner ads on the rare occasions I turn off my adblocker.

[rascul]

I wasn't sure, I haven't used Google search (directly) for years now. I guess I could have checked. I didn't realize that until I saw your comment.

[als0]

Actually your sibling's comment made me realise that you were talking about the old style of ads in web pages.

Within the Google search itself, I was surprised by the number of ads that are disguised as search results. It's grown significantly. Now I have to scroll to get real results...

[umanwizard]

Simple text and image ads can't provide enough revenue to keep something like Facebook running.

(Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on your perspective.)

[cheschire]

If subscriptions were always as easy to manage in one place like they are on an iPhone, I would have absolutely no problem with 20 subscriptions.

Where’s the subscription management startup model?

[Workaccount2]

I've thought about this a lot, but the stumbling block for me is getting services onboard.

The problem is that subscription services make billions annually on forgotten subscriptions. None of them want an easy "disable" slider next to their name in a convenient app. It also makes à la carte subing easy, where you sub for a month every few months to "catch up".

Basically, good luck getting an API with an easy unsubscribe command from any subscription based service.

[fullstop]

> where you sub for a month every few months to "catch up".

Make introductory rates low and let people lock in. If they unsub and then resub they will have to do so at a higher rate.

[addingnumbers]

> Where’s the subscription management startup model?

https://patreon.com/

[bin_bash]

I highly doubt that most users would be comfortable paying for 20 subscriptions—or even 1.

[fouric]

I think that this happens to be the case now, but is not an intrinsic property of humans. I think that we're living in an age where most consumers have been "programmed" to expect things for no financial cost and only a privacy cost.

The key word here is "programmed" - and what has been programmed can be deprogrammed. I honestly believe that we can re-rehabilitate people to no longer automatically give away their privacy for a service, and instead consciously and carefully assess the financial cost vs. utility of a service.

This could lead to both a reduction in the amount of available services (as smaller ones go out of business because people realized that it wasn't really worth it for them) and an increase in the number of services people are actually willing to pay real money for.

Also, if the subscriptions were far cheaper (say, $2/month), I think that 20 concurrent subscriptions would be acceptable to many people.

[_greim_]

Brave's BATs (Basic Attention Tokens) spring to mind.

[alkonaut]

If sites can’t fund their content with ads based information I’m willing to give up, then they can beg me for money, or charge for the content, or beg me to look at ads or whatever. But I want that transaction to be transparent and deliberate. And I don’t care if 90% of content online just disappears because we click the privacy button. Then it was never a viable business model to begin with.

[rchaud]

> Then it was never a viable business model to begin with.

I think there's much more evidence to the contrary than there is for your position.

Facebook is absurdly, staggeringly profitable. Uber and WeWork by comparison are the BS business models, needing to break local laws and requiring nation-state levels of VC backing and still nowhere near profitability.

[alkonaut]

I didn’t mean “it doesn’t work” I mean it only works because one end of the transaction doesn’t really understand what they are paying, and if they did - they wouldn’t. That’s not viable. It’s similar to a business model that relies on people mistyping a search term or forgetting to cancel a subscription. It only “works” (is profitable) because of the lack of transparency

[ClumsyPilot]

>"Facebook is absurdly, staggeringly profitable."

Because it is stealing - the transactions were not voluntary and informed. most users are only now catching on to what they've been robbed of.

[rchaud]

Ad account managers do not care about impressions that the FB application reports (unless they're Coca-Cola or J&J). They care about the actual conversions, i.e. sales. Those are happening on their internal ecommerce platform, so those aren't stats FB can juice. You can see where the converting traffic is coming from.

If FB's targeting wasn't working, then nobody would have a reason to move away from paying Google and Bing to post ads on search results. FB and Google now own the online ads market, and FB got there in well under a decade.

[JKCalhoun]

Yes, if Facebook goes away due to lack of ads and no paid subscribers it means it simply was not worth paying for in enough people's minds.

Imagine that your entire business is only appealing to people if it is free.

I mean a lot of crappy 70's sitcoms would not exist if people had to buy tickets to watch. Honestly, I would not mind that world. :-)

[jfengel]

It seems that the news is only appealing to people when it's free. In part that's because it's competing with a lot of other things that are free -- including "news" subsidized by those who want to influence what news you consume.

People really like free. When it's there, it will tend to suck the air out of almost everything else. Including things that are almost-but-not-quite-free.

[JKCalhoun]

Yeah, I admit news might be the exception here.

[JKCalhoun]

I don't know. I think when ad supported free services start shutting down people will move on with their lives. We'll find out instead how really unimportant Facebook, etc. was in people's lives. Put another way, how on earth did people get along without Facebook before there was a Facebook?

I'm reminded of a comment from the guy that created the TV-B-Gone. He would turn off TV's in public places like self-service laundromats, etc. He said he was surprised by the general reaction of those that had just recently been transfixed by the flickering 60Hz cathode glow. Mostly they just turned away form the TV and went back to quiet thoughts or whatever.

It was like the TV could go away and people would be like, "okay".

[b3morales]

This might just be me, but I've always found that TVs in public have this weird pull to them. Even if I have no feelings at all about what's on the screen (a soap opera I've never seen?) my gaze is still repeatedly drawn to it. If there's one around I generally try to position myself so it's not in my peripheral vision or I have to spend some effort ignoring it. It feels like whatever it is that keeps kids, as we say, "glued to the screen" doesn't always go away in adulthood.

I would definitely find it relieving if someone showed up with a TV-B-Gone and clicked it off.

[tatersolid]

Humans are genetically programmed to focus on motion. This has its advantages for a hunter-gatherer out on the savannah.

[8ytecoder]

You seem to think it’s a bad thing. I’d argue “Free” products destroy innovation. It’s extremely hard to beat gmail or Facebook without massive VC funding.

[JohnFen]

Yes, and just to underline your use of quote marks there, those "free" products aren't even remotely free. You're just paying with a different currency, and -- in my view -- it's absurdly expensive.

[fleddr]

Underrated comment, well said. The "free" model supports billionaires and mega big tech.

When paid services are normalized, it opens up a huge amount of potential for smaller players to innovate.

[yarcob]

You are making a few assumptions:

1) People want the services more than they value their privacy. Maybe they'll just not use the service if they can't use it without tracking

2) That invasive tracking is required to sell ads. The media industry made billions (trillions?) of revenue from ads before tracking became a thing.

3) That platform ads are the only way to make services that are free for consumers. For example, Vimeo offers an ad free video delivery service that the content creator pays for. If Youtube was no longer free, maybe content creators would just pay for content delivery instead of having consumers indirectly pay for deliver with ads. Content creators have no issue selling ads / sponsorships without any tracking whatsoever. The result would be the same as now (content free for consumers) only that now non-targeted ads would pay for everything.

4) And finally, you are assuming that targeting via tracking actually works well enough to make it worthwhile. From what I've read, ad targeting is nowhere near as good as Facebook et al would have advertisers believe. Maybe invading your users privcy just doesn't make such a big difference in the end.

[suction]

At least then they'll be aware of the deal they're agreeing to.

[Iv]

Mark my words: as soon as the world starts to turn their back on advertisement, there will be several micropayement unicorns flourishing in the next 6 months.

20+ paid subscriptions make no sense, but checking a box with your ISP to get a 2 USD monthly credit to use on the articles you click on, could work.

[kalleboo]

I'm still disappointed that Flattr never took off

[Iv]

I still have an account!

[naravara]

> As soon as ad supported free services start shutting down because of ad blocking and lowered clickthrough rates on ads because of targeting being blocked, most people will probably start changing their minds.

Or they'll just go outside and find better uses for their time.

[_zzaw]

Or these ad companies could come up with ways of making money that people don't want to block.

I despise ads, and generally approve of anything that makes ad companies sweat, but it didn't have to be that way. We are where we are because those ad companies have a sociopathically disrespectful attitude towards the people whose attention they need. With tactics like auto-playing videos, popovers, animated ads, and hideously obtrusive design, it was simply inevitable that people would try to get rid of that garbage. That approach to advertising is borne of greed and laziness, and it deserves to fail.

But there are tech blogs I read that do not adopt that approach. They have small, tasteful, non-animated ads. They don't need to violate my privacy to have a good idea of the kinds of things I'd be interested in; the fact that I'm on a tech blog means I'm more receptive to ads for tech-related tools and services. The people who run these sites have more respect for their visitors, so they choose a more respectful approach to ads.

Like I said: most companies' approach to ads is rooted in abject contempt for the people they need. If your business strategy is based on treating people badly, you have no grounds to complain when they decide not to put up with that anymore. You can either whine about how unfair it is and fail, or you can identify an approach that is appealing enough to be sustainable.

This could be a chance for that much-vaunted market-force-shaped innovation. Facebook's current strategy—whining—suggests they're still stuck in the old way of thinking: greed and laziness.

[abruzzi]

This sums up my thoughts perfectly. I would add a comment--all of the anti-apple voices in the article talk only about the poor business that will be hurt. The never talk about the benefit or drawback to the people being tracked. Their approach can be summed up as "we have a right to this data and telling people about our tracking and asking if it is alright with them is not alright." So businesses have rights but individuals don't.

Personally, I hope things like this start to kill off the "free internet." I'd much rather pay for the things that I use.

[shadilay]

Or people will realize the service isn't as valuable as what's being charged. No one asked for 80% of facebooks features, it could be run/maintained by a much smaller team.

[wintermutestwin]

So much this. All I wanted was a simple way to share pics and updates with family and friends. Instead, I got an anal probe and mind control. Seriously, it is harder and harder to actually find my family and friends on their convoluted mess of a site.

[handrous]

It's hard to know what the Web, social media, and tech generally might look like if the spyvertising money-spigot gets shut off. Paid and fully-free-and-open alternatives to spying-paid "free" services & content are nearly impossible in the former case, and discouraging to participate or work on in the latter, in the current environment. There may be other models, too, that are in some sense better or preferable, or at least acceptable or sufficient, but currently not viable.

[pyronik19]

I loose no sleep if these products go paid only and facebook loses its influence massively and with it their ability to censor and manipulate information and our elections.

[walkedaway]

Ads still exist. Advertising has existed for a long time, effectively, without personal tracking. This will weed out the players from the wannabes.

[lkrubner]

"Users who are opted-in to tracking are subsidising those who aren't"

Which gives them leverage. If they were better organized, they could make demands based on that leverage.

[ggggtez]

The problem with this kind of thinking is that if Cable TV is any indication, things that start as subscription services will slowly begin to double-dip and you'll be paying money upfront and watching ads anyway.

[Workaccount2]

At least now we have piracy as a counter balance for that.

[wolpoli]

Do you have any examples of ad supported free services that you think are at risk of shutting down?