"Ad"fully Awful | Hacker News Reader

"Ad"fully Awful

appicurious.com

20 pointshristiank23 comments

It makes me happy to see more advertising networks such as The Deck and InfluAds spring up.

If you run the numbers on the rate card, number of advertisers, and number of impressions (all public knowledge), The Deck works out at somewhere around $2.50 CPM and I bet not all advertisers are paying ratecard. $2.50CPM won't pay anyone's wages on a niche site unless they're getting silly traffic. I love The Deck philosophically but from a business point of view, I wouldn't run their ad unit even if I were invited.

Not many people outside of media circles are talking about the real trend that's going on nowadays (although Monocle magazine keeps sharing the secrets, but their circulation is small ;-)): advertising/editorial crossover and product development. The real money is in building audience loyalty and producing your own premium products or services targeted at them (and not a paywall that just locks up the previously free stuff). Keep an eye out for sites that advertise their own stuff (training courses, merchandise, reports, premium subscriptions) rather than other people's - it's a growing trend.

Thanks for pointing out this new trend. After reading your comment quite a few such "niche" advertising websites and models came to mind. Maybe I will write an article about it in the near future.

On a personal note as a user I'm more inclined to purchase a course or a report from such a website rather than from an ad on a big website.

Thanks

EDIT: Also what I tried pointing to is relevant advertising. The networks I mention are probably one of the many but at least they target specific niches.

Not many people outside of media circles are talking about the real trend that's going on nowadays (although Monocle magazine keeps sharing the secrets

Interesting. I had a look at the Monocle website but couldn't find anything. Do you have any useful links ?

I say this as a huge fan, but Monocle's Web site is.. not good. They're very much focused on their print magazine. They're definitely living by their word, though, a loyal subscriber base (a subscription costs more than news-stand and we lap it up!) and highly profitable.

Perhaps I'll take some time to distil the philosophy into a blog post sometime, since it does take a lot of effort to get into a print magazine if it's not at a newsstand near you. It's only a must read for international business and media types.

You're way way off the mark with your thoughts on these new "ad networks". DF is not a good example, gruber is a brand, DF isn't just a website and his use of a small ad network is proof of nothing. He would make a lot more with adsense etc, but money isn't his goal. You have to assume money is someone's goal when they run adverts, otherwise why run adverts?

We tried out one of the fancy curated ad networks (projectwonderful) and if our experience is anything to go by they suck, they absolutely suck. Unless you are in a very specific niche they will not do anything but make your revenue tank.

There's a reason these advert displays are not widely popular, it's because they pay nothing. Sure on a blog with a few thousand visits what's the difference between $100 and $50? Larger sites will hurt a lot.

Yes, I agree that Gruber is not the best example but is just that an example. I am trying to prove a point which is that there are ways to make money online from advertising.

I do not have any experience with the networks first hand but from what I can gather from their websites and other places they are a step in the right direction.

I know most "big" websites will not change but at least if smaller blogs and sites start experimenting with something other than AdSense I think it would create a better experience for the end user (us).

It's not a better experience for the end user if there's not enough revenue to create the content for the end user in the first place.

Advertising is awful because the incentive system is fundamentally broken. The only thing a publisher has to risk by showing crappy ads is you going to another site. Even the sites with the most annoying ads will only lose a small percentage of visitors if the ads become more annoying. They have nothing to gain by making ads appealing.

The problem with online advertising is that the system is entirely skewed to the advertisers. Since they are the ones injecting money into the system, they get whatever they want. If they want to annoy you, then they get to annoy you. And there's nothing wrong with that. They are the customers.

The Deck is really cool, and so is InfluAds. But those solutions don't seem to scale. Exclusivity doesn't solve the underlying problem, it just passes it along to someone else.

The solution to the problem lies in finding a way to make money from a website that doesn't involve doing whatever an advertiser tells you to do. The details of this solution are left as an exercise for the reader.

Yes, unfortunately the system is fundamentally broken and skewed towards advertisers. Although as another commenter here pointed out there are ways to make it better and create a system more independent of advertisers.

In my article a left out a big portion of alternatives but I'm researching and writing a follow up with 4 or 5 ways to substitute display advertising.

Thanks

Use adblock[1] or advertban[2] if you are annoyed by ads. IMHO, neither publishers nor advertisers loose a penny if you _consciously_ use ad blocking solutions, because this means the probability of your _intentional_ click on annoying ads tends towards zero even if you'll see all these ads. In other words, you don't belong to the target audience of these ads. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/ [2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adban/

tl;dr version: many websites have far too many adverts.

Exactly the point I try to make in the article.

Unfortunately the article provides no real extra benefit beyond the tl;dr version.

I am new at this whole blogging thing and It is a work in progress. I try to write about things that interest me and hopefully I will get better at it with time.

What do you think would provide real benefit for this article?

You identified a well-known problem without providing a solution. For example you could have talked about the reason for things being like they are and alternative methods for them achieving that. But you'd have to provide some new ideas, don't just drag up micropayments again without adding something new.

I will try to keep these ideas in mind for my next article. I would try to provide more alternatives (where possible) and new ways to achieve goals.

Thanks

Also take criticism with a grain of salt. Often it's much easier to complain than to create. If you don't have a critic you might be doing something wrong.

I have no problem taking criticism when it is productive. In this case I also believe the article does not cover all the alternatives, which is a good point. In the future I will try to make my articles better by not only pointing out the obvious but also giving more relevant examples of how to change something for better.

I'll happy run the deck ads, its pretty much invite only though right? The reason the Internet is covered in adsense is because pretty much everyone can join and the cpc from my experience is better than similar providers.

Yes, as far as I know these are all invite only networks. It is what makes them special and good respectively. There is a good business model in these kinds of networks and if more such networks can come into existence then blogers like us will have an option.

As always I would like to hear the community comments on my article.

Cheers

Grammar issue: "peeked my interest" is incorrect; it's "piqued my interest". Sorry, it's a pet peeve of mine.

I fixed it. Thanks

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