What I learned in ten years of blogging

Re:What I learned in ten years of blogging by ta3216 on Wednesday December 19, 2018 @10:58AM (#18716500)

I thought I read somewhere that ads make a blog seem more authoritative so I disagree about not having ads.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:What I learned in ten years of blogging by gwern on Wednesday December 19, 2018 @12:54PM (#18717664)

I don't know about 'authoritative', but ads do seem to hurt. The existing experimental and quasi-experimental literature shows very bad effects on user behavior:

1. "Measuring Consumer Sensitivity to Audio Advertising: A Field Experiment on Pandora Internet Radio", Huang et al 2018: https://davidreiley.com/papers/PandoraListenerDemandCurve.pd... [experimental]

2."The Effect of Ad Blocking on [Firefox] User Engagement with the Web", Miroglio et al 2018: https://research.mozilla.org/files/2018/04/The-Effect-of-Ad-... [quasi]

3. and my own A/B test: https://www.gwern.net/Ads [experimental]

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:What I learned in ten years of blogging by ta3216 on Wednesday December 19, 2018 @02:05PM (#18718318)

I think it depends on the audience. Looking at your blog I can see how ads may not work as well. My blog is focused more on dining out, shopping etc where viewers think nothing of ads and I think they would even think it weird if there weren’t ads.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:What I learned in ten years of blogging by gwern on Wednesday December 19, 2018 @04:20PM (#18719760)

You could say that about both Pandora (radio is expected to have ads) and Mozilla's general Internet sampling frame (the Internet is expected to have ads), but they still find a large average harm.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:What I learned in ten years of blogging by ta3216 on Wednesday December 19, 2018 @10:00PM (#18722161)

My site is focused on shopping and dining out therefore I don’t think the conclusions in those papers apply in my case. The audio interruptions noted in the Pandora test are far more intrusive than in-page display ads. If I used interstitials then I would agree.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:What I learned in ten years of blogging by ghaff on Wednesday December 19, 2018 @12:07PM (#18717155)

I really question that. I can't believe that in this day and age anyone thinks that having AdSense on a blog site is some indicator of superior quality. And affiliate links at least raise the possibility of conflicts of interest.

Way back when I experimented with ads and links but I came to the conclusion that the money was pretty trivial in the scheme of things and it took away from the otherwise non-commercial nature of my site.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:What I learned in ten years of blogging by ta3216 on Wednesday December 19, 2018 @09:53PM (#18722129)

Firstly my readers would have no idea what Adsense even is. But if they see accompanying ads like Swarovski, Nordstrom, local restaurant, then yes, I believe it would positively impact their impression on an intuitive level. If they actively thought about it then no. I can see how it wouldn’t appeal to other sites though.

[ Parent | on HN ]