News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on What media companies don’t want you to know about ad blockers. Parent comment

Re:What media companies don’t want you to know about ad bloc... by CyberDildonics on Thursday June 30, 2016 @08:46AM (#12008105)
One thing that is starting to become more common knowledge is that ad space is a commodity. Typically commodities are auctioned or sold on exchanges. I would think it should be entirely possible to not have any backfill by having the prices for ad impressions fluctuate on an exchange (I realize ad exchanges already exist, it seems they just need to make it into these situations).
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:What media companies don’t want you to know about ad bloc... by madeofpalk on Thursday June 30, 2016 @08:51AM (#12008129)
Exchanges are these backfills.

When we don't have a big sponsor for a section of our site, or haven't had enough direct sales for certain placements, it goes out to the ad exchange to action the spot off. That's where the problem is. That's somewhere we could start enforcing certain quality.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:What media companies don’t want you to know about ad bloc... by zapt02 on Thursday June 30, 2016 @08:58AM (#12008170)
Exactly! Larger ad inventory purchases are still largely sold by salespeople with written contracts.

Ad exchanges and real-time bidding (RTB) are only causing a problem for people working in the media space because on the one hand if you don't have them you lose money, but on the other hand it's like gambling in regards to the quality of ads that will be served.

[ Parent | on HN ]