Comment by robbrown451 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by robbrown451 | Hacker News Reader

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I suspect that this is a bit skewed by the fact that targeted ads, as they are typically done, are a horrible experience that has little transparency and that the user has very little control over.

Some people are just going to hate all ads no matter what. I'd guess a much larger number (including me) would see them as a reasonable way to support web sites and services that they like, if those ads were to give them much better experience, and that mostly means more control. For one, I suggest that ads have a way you can express, with a couple clicks (and without leaving the page) one of the following:

- I already purchased this

- I already purchased a competing product

- I am not interested in this anymore

- I was never interested in this

- This ad is too creepy or personal or otherwise makes me uncomfortable

- this ad is obnoxious / distracting / ugly / disturbing

- I don't want this displayed because it might reveal something private to an onlooker (example: gift purchase for spouse)

- I'm not interested in this product but I might be interested in competing products

- I'm in the market for ______________ and I don't mind getting ads for them

- Thanks for the reminder, not now but maybe later

- Ads that track me really annoy me

Of course, in addition to collecting this information, it should act on it in a reasonable way. It would also be nice if it was accompanied by an option to pay a small, reasonable amount to remove ads.

For whatever reason, ad companies don't seem to want to do this sort of thing. It may take legislation, which I would certainly get behind.

It makes a lot of sense and I'm sure advertisers would very much like it as much as you do (in this specific context that is).

I mean, there's a reason this infamous quote is still relevant today: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.”

The real issue is the ad-ecosystem is afraid (and rightly so if I may) that people might try to game the system and would rather not bother.

That and realising that out of your X thousands / millions monthly unique visitors, only a small percentage are an adequate audience will pelase neither the publisher nor the ad exchanges. Sure you could fall back to branding adverts but those are usually of lesser value.

Just curious, how would you imagine it being gamed? I could certainly imagine advertisers or competitors gaming it one way or another (which is true today), but what about regular people? Do you think there is a rational reason someone would not want to express what they really think?

Well, the main thing I can think off would be people constantly rejecting ads up until you only get the untargeted ads which means :

1) Less valuable and therefore bad for publishers. 2) Remove users from the pool available to those ad-tech providers and therefore is a big nono for them.

I could very well be wrong, so take it for what is worth.

This being said I'd like to highlight that there are 2 main concerns I have with completely killing the targeted ad industry, namely :

1) The big players will probably find workarounds and be able to sustain themselves, whereas the smaller players ( local news, niche website etc..) will probably get decimated or at the very least severely diminished.

2) A shift towards more sneaky advertising, something that isn't clearly identified as such. For all their issues, display advertising as it stands today tends to be pretty obvious. If you kill this segment, something else will fill the gap. It has already started and it might need to be heavily regulated (as the FTC did for those Instagram / Youtube folks promoting things).

I honestly believe that there's some room for improvements and it is in the best interest of the industry to get a grip and rein itself in. But the greed will prevail I'm afraid and therefore all those scandals might bring in (much needed tbh) regulations.

Thanks for the response, and yeah I share your concerns and personally am not against targeted ads if done well. Many ads I see kind of make me smile, because they are for things that I actually want I they are "happy things". (typically amazon or ebay ads: skateboard parts, digital pianos, etc)

I'll bet that the sort of people who just keep insisting on untargeted ads probably aren't ones to bother with too much. So my hope is that if a system like I proposed gets adopted (possibly due to regulation) that the great majority of people would accept targeted ads as long as they "play nice" and are pretty transparent.

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