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Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

The world could really use a good competitor to Adsense, couldn't it? How about some ad network that is based on contextual technology such as Facebook, retargeting, etc.

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>The world could really use a good competitor to Adsense, couldn't it?

Adsense is a lot like PayPal -- conceptually it seems easy to compete, but your biggest challenge has nothing to do with the legitimate product, but instead is preventing and dealing with unending and overwhelming attempts at fraud.

You're exactly right, and there is still a big need for one just as there was for a PayPal competitor.

I've been buying Facebook stock for the past year under the assumption that they're going to release a product like this at some point. It just seems like such a logical business move. I think it's coming, and I think their recent tracking announcement is the first step.

> I've been buying Facebook stock for the past year under the assumption

Good luck with your speculation.

He's made quite a bit of profit over the past year then.

Nasdaq is up 30%. A rising tide lifts all boats but you only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.

Thanks, over 50% return so far!

Nasdaq is up 30%. A rising tide lifts all boats but you only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.

Actually, if you are willing to stack, analyze, evaluate creditworthiness, account for, and collect from several dozen DSPs and ad networks, you really can replicate and improve upon the AdSense offering. Very few instantiations of this strategy -- including the one of which I am founder -- allow open access to the service, though. At mass scale, fraud becomes the limiting factor. But any legitimate site doing 500K pageviews/mo needs to be thinking ahead.

(unfortunately) nobody cares about the desktop ad space anymore, "the future" is mobile

and single-page apps work great on mobile

Come on, they're not that different :)

Hmm... I don't see ads on my Gmail mobile client. I see ads on Facebook mobile client or too small to notice (I do notice the "recommended posts" sometimes). Free iPhone apps come with "ads". I personally don't see how mobile ads are so effective as desktop.

Your mobile gmail client will show ads on the promotions tab. I agree that you might not see those.

People are saying the future of advertising is mobile, not because it presents a good platform for showing ads, but because increasingly that is how people are spending their time, so there is an expectation that advertising dollars will follow.

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