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Comment by x0x0 | Hacker News Reader

Alternatively, advertisers (and publishers) could insist on more and more intrusive or unavoidable advertising. Even now, you could pretty reliably detect ad blocking; many sites don't but some do (eg fark). You could simply block users that don't view ads. Or use interstitials exclusively. And if some users complain, well, who cares? It's not like people who skip ads earn you any money, so in a very real sense, they don't matter at all.

I think this will lead to a web experience that I like less and less. I'm willing to pay money to not have to endure advertising but I'm very much in the minority. As blue_beetle said: "If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold."

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Nope. It will go the other direction. I think we'll see an insurgence of astroturfers and their ilk.

Advertisers will realize that no one clicks in-your-face banner ads, but that people can be manipulated to purchase their items through the subtle use of forums and social media. Then we see more research into the field of planting trained individuals into sites like Reddit and HN, and the effectiveness there, then come the sales.

I really hope you're wrong...

Do you see any way around it?

or both. either way, a web experience I like less and less...

I'm pretty sure advertisers are doing it already, definitely on reddit. It would surprise me if HN didn't have a few stealth shills.

Do you have any examples?

http://www.reddit.com/r/HailCorporate/top/ is the subreddit focused on highlighting posts they consider to be onbehalf of corporations.

Advertiser here. This is correct. Social + context is going to be king moving forward. Advertising is going nowhere, it's just taking the form of content as opposed to banner ads.

But there's a bright/flip side to this, in that particularly big brands who approach the problem correctly could create some really good community. I'm thinking of the "maker" space in particular, where tool vendors could sponsor forums, events, etc that would be actually useful to their customers. (Mid-size b2b software vendors actually do a pretty good job here, with their webinars and such.)

Basically, it's the generalization of the sporting event sponsor: you sponsor that skate-boarding competition to inspire more kids to do skate boarding.

The problem of course is that it's hard to imagine the communities that would form around "canned tuna" or "sham wows". But then, I've never really understood those kinds of products, or why they'd even bother advertising. Is there really a difference between Crest and Colgate? Why would either of them bother advertising anywhere, let alone on the web?

> As blue_beetle said: "If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold."

Also if you are paying for it. See cable TV, magazines, cell phones, etc.

The way I'm formulating it these days is: if you can be measured, you can be exploited. Observe, explain, predict, and control---the goals of the scientific method---all work on people too. You might say that people aren't linear systems, which is true---unless they act like them.

yup; a specific individual is hard to predict but large groups of people behave in probablistically predictable ways, and that's useful information

"It's not like people who skip ads earn you any money, so in a very real sense, they don't matter at all."

Publishers aren't apt to turn away traffic they get because the value they receive by you consuming their content is generally more than the cost of serving you that content even if they can't monetize you directly. If they turn you away they lose out on any monetizable traffic you might have referred.

More importantly, publishers aren't willing to risk the massive backlash that might come by banning those who block ads. That said, adblock really is hurting online publishers. I'm excited to see alternative solutions like Patreon fill in the gap.

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