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Comment by emiliobumachar | Hacker News Reader

Off-topic: the publication is named "staradvertiser". (The adds do seem unusually well-targeted to me.) It's the first time I see a publication whose name is clearly trying to appeal to advertisers rather than viewers. Has anyone else seen any others? Any insights about their counter-intuitive decision?

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The name is a relic of the past. We originally had two newspapers in here, the Honolulu Advertiser and the Star-Bulletin. A while back the two merged into what we now know as the Star Advertiser.

For what it's worth, as the only major newspaper, they don't have to go out of their way to appeal to advertisers. If you want to buy print ads, you don't have much choice.

The name isn't trying to appeal to advertisers, it's just a name that's been inherited via mergers. The "advertiser" part of it came from the "Pacific Commercial Advertiser" which was a daily Hawaii based newspaper formed in 1856. If you look up lists of newspapers[1], you'll see that "Advertiser" was a common name for them in the mid 1800s.

[1] ie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_Alabama

Advertiser was a common name for newspapers at the time. It's an old publication (although I'm pretty sure it was called SomethingElse Advertiser). I'd guess it's using the older definition of advertiser "call attention to". The fact that the ads were well targeted was coincidence.

“Advertiser” is not an uncommon newspaper name or name element.

E.g., https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Advertiser

Honolulu used to have two daily papers: The Star Bulletin, and the Honolulu Advertiser. A while back, they merged and created the "Star-Advertiser."

Australia has one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Advertiser_(Adelaide)

Pretty sure they weren't doing targeted ads in 1856.

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