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Comment by bgarbiak | Hacker News Reader

Whenever I noticed that a site I'm visiting is "powered" by DECK, I was whitelisting it in the adblock. I hate ads, but I totally get that they keep things going in the Net, and so if there have to be ads they should be like the DECK: no tracking, no profiling, no being invasive. It's really a shame that an opposite of that triumphs today. In the long term it's gonna be painful for the users, for publishers, for the net, for advertisers as well. Probably for everyone, except for Facebook and Apple.

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They - and Carbon Ads (mentioned below) to a lesser extent - had ads which were actually interesting to me. In a way computer-chosen ads (Google Adwords) never seem to be.

The fact there was no tracking so the same ad didn't follow me around, and wasn't tailored due to my web browsing history made them far more interesting, because they exposed me to new services.

That (for me) is the major annoyance of retargeting in particular. Just because I've looked at something once I'm shown ads; they can't determine whether I looked at it or I'm interested in it.

Computer generated ads (and recommendations in general) are always lame, everywhere: more of what you already like. I really want to explore new things, from the things I already like, well I do already have some of it, so just sth. else that scrolls by.

Tangentially (maybe), the only ads I clicked were the Deck ads and affiliate links in writing that I read. If the rest of the ads that I see are returning profits to the ad-host and ad-network, those profits are fake, as I not only no click them at all (well if not accidentally, and I've clicked, voluntarily, five-six such ads in my 20-odd years of life) the effect is negative, it's a -5 for the ad publisher and the ad host for me. But with Deck, if a website has (had?) Deck ads on it, it was +5 for both. So sad that this sort of value-adding service is going offline.

I'm curious what you think of my ad network[1] -- it allows for native ads that are non-intrusive and actually benefit the user. When you hover over an item in an image, an ad is displayed, but hovering off of it makes it go away.

Here is an example video showing that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_oTtDUV0yI

Although the ads aren't blocked by ad blockers, if they were, would you unblock them? Also would love any feedback!

[1] http://pleenq.com

You linked to an /edit page rather than the video.

This works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_oTtDUV0yI

Oops, good catch! Fixed it.

I'm curious.... is there some sort of crazy image recognition tech going on here or does the website owner need to somehow identify what's in the image for the ads to work? If it's the former then this is seriously impressive.

Unfortunately (in terms of programming credibility), it's done manually. The process is extremely fast though -- just seconds to do a highlight, and a built-in search that hooks into all affiliate networks (Commission Junction, Linkshare, Affiliate Window, Share-a-sale, etc.) along with allowing custom links.

Huh, the startups who tried to do this before you (and died) didn't do it manually. Some crowdsourced it, some did recognition. Do you think your timing is better?

That's interesting, but very jarring.

Like looking at a car out the bus window, and then suddenly someone leaning over your shoulder, whispering "psst, buddy, wanna buy that car?"

Nice job! However, this has been tried hundreds of times before. What makes your service different?

That's neat, though looking at your demo (thru pleenq.com), the discoverability is not that good: I'd not hover things with my cursor if I didn't know that those popups would appear. You should tell that to the user somehow on the ad host.

I'm just about to buy a software whose ad I just saw on this blog post from Deck.

That was probably the first time in recent memory that I've clicked on an ad

So hey, the model at least works.

Me too. I liked Deck and Carbon ads.

Carbon is still there… owned by BuySellAds who also bought Fusion and absorbed it into Carbon, or something. (Fusion's website redirects to Carbon.)

We're very much alive! Thriving, even. And yes, we merged AdPacks, Yoggrt, Fusion, and Carbon into just Carbon. Been growing the network ~20-30% or so year over year. The simplicity of the model still works well.

Where we deviated from The Deck's model is that we made some changes a few years ago that are working quite well. On the advertiser side we started selling on a cost per thousand impression basis vs a fixed monthly price per "slot". And on the publisher side we started paying them a dynamic rate based on traffic and performance of the ads vs. a fixed monthly amount. Hope that doesn't come across the wrong way - just a fundamental difference that I believe is one of the reasons why an otherwise incredibly similar business can work well for one, but not for the other.

Interesting. It appears you guys had seen the writing on the wall and had adapted your business model accordingly.

Thanks for your insider's take but who was the originator of the old business model? The Deck or Carbon?

I believe most businesses have to naturally change and adapt as time goes on. 10 years is a long time, and I expect our model will have to continue to evolve and change to make it another 10 years.

The Deck was first.

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