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Comment by bazillion | Hacker News Reader

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

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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?"

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 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?

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.

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

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