Re:Smokescreen - a Flash player written in Javascript and HT...
by raganwald on Wednesday June 02, 2010 @07:30AM
(#1397644)
I agree with your basic premise--that people deserve to get paid for providing me with value--but not with the mechanism of ads embedded in content.
A few reasons:
If the creator deserves to get paid, he can put up a pay wall and we can do business or I can go elsewhere. If that basic business model doesn't work, that is a strong hint that something is fundamentally broken about advertising.
Also, you pose it as giving me a choice of going elsewhere. How does that work when given a link on HN or in an email or whatever? On some sites, there's an ad right away and I can click a link to skip the ad, I can click "back," or I can look at the ad if it's interesting. Fine.
But if ads are embedded in content willy-nilly, I am blasted with them before I get to make the choice of whether to read the content. Again, there's something broken about the model if the content producer can't set up a simple gate where I can choose whether to do read their content+ads or go elsewhere.
Finally, ads in content are a deeply broken model. The reason Google is worth a zillion dollars is that ads at the moment of search are hitting me when I'm making a decision and they are providing value, even if they are biased. Ads in most types of content are hitting me when I'm not trying to make a decision.
There are some exceptions, and I'll bet they survive. An ad in StackOverflow for a programming tool that matches the answer to a question might work when I'm trying to solve a problem. If sites like that do a good job of working with ad networks to deliver the right ads, they might survive.
Almost all other content-based ads are going to continue to git shriller and shriller as they try to maximize dwindling attention. The attention is dwindling precisely because they are trying to work around a deeply broken interaction.
A few reasons:
If the creator deserves to get paid, he can put up a pay wall and we can do business or I can go elsewhere. If that basic business model doesn't work, that is a strong hint that something is fundamentally broken about advertising.
Also, you pose it as giving me a choice of going elsewhere. How does that work when given a link on HN or in an email or whatever? On some sites, there's an ad right away and I can click a link to skip the ad, I can click "back," or I can look at the ad if it's interesting. Fine.
But if ads are embedded in content willy-nilly, I am blasted with them before I get to make the choice of whether to read the content. Again, there's something broken about the model if the content producer can't set up a simple gate where I can choose whether to do read their content+ads or go elsewhere.
Finally, ads in content are a deeply broken model. The reason Google is worth a zillion dollars is that ads at the moment of search are hitting me when I'm making a decision and they are providing value, even if they are biased. Ads in most types of content are hitting me when I'm not trying to make a decision.
There are some exceptions, and I'll bet they survive. An ad in StackOverflow for a programming tool that matches the answer to a question might work when I'm trying to solve a problem. If sites like that do a good job of working with ad networks to deliver the right ads, they might survive.
Almost all other content-based ads are going to continue to git shriller and shriller as they try to maximize dwindling attention. The attention is dwindling precisely because they are trying to work around a deeply broken interaction.