> The problem is that this "engagement" will mostly be just annoyed customers mis-clicking or trying whatever it takes to dismiss the ad and not actually intending to purchase the advertised product

"Amazing! The smaller we make the 'X' button, the more people love them!"

Or make the X button almost the same color as the background.

TuneIn does this.

The best method I've found to increase positive engagement is actually to just have a fake 'x' such that clicking it just triggers the ad. I've noticed this more frequently on the web nowadays, and based on the click through rates, the target demographic is absolutely _obsessed_ over this feature.

Don't get me started on dialog boxes that put the "cancel" button on the wrong side. Much like toilet paper, there is one way to display it, all other methods are heresy worthy of nothing less than immediate exterminatus.

(partially kidding, but only partially.)

If you have cats, the 'proper way' to hang the TP is the opposite way of what you absolutists think is the One True Way.

I'm starting to suspect that the loudest voices are cats who have either learned to type or to pay for lobbyists, trying to push your feline agenda on the rest of us.

Have had two generations of cats in our house, and always the toilet paper the proper way. Never had an issue.

On the other hand, we have to keep the toilet seat down or they'll try to drink toilet water.

Cats are the devil, and I have reasons to believe they've recently entered into an alliance with the human infant community.

I begun suspecting that one day when my wife was preparing dinner. Soon after she took the meat from the fridge to work on it, our baby started crying and making noise for absolutely no reason. My wife immediately dropped everything and went to investigate, and the cat used this opportunity to attempt to steal our dinner meat.

Ever since, I've been noticing many more cases where the baby and the cat are either simultaneously attempting to do things they're not allowed to, or the baby starts distracting us while the cat goes out to carry out some mischief. It's all coordinated too well to be happenstance.

My friend had a pug like this once. Dog was as old as father time. Needed help making it outside to relieve himself before he finally left us. But I SWEAR that dog moved like greased lightning if you left a plate on the table to go check on the kid, as he'd make it from one side of the living room to another in the time it took you to take three steps and check in on the other room, hop up on a chair and your dinner very rapidly became his dinner.

I thought our cats were generally stupid because they could never do the jigsaws I assigned to them, solve a Rubiks cube or see 2cm in front of their faces (they are long-sighted).

But I have come to believe they are far smarter than me, particularly with scheming methods of sneaking around to quietly appear when they can get food. One used to push donut boxes off the side so that they would burst open, and would then run off with a donut. I have no idea why he wanted to eat donuts. He also tried to eat bread through the wrapper. Or they fein illness. Our one cat had an operation on his leg so we put a little box as a stepping stone so that he could get onto the bed, and then onto the window sill. Turns out he didn't need it at all and could jump perfectly fine, but would still use the box all the time.

They're really clever, just not at jigsaws or sudoku.

>Our one cat had an operation on his leg so we put a little box as a stepping stone so that he could get onto the bed, and then onto the window sill. Turns out he didn't need it at all and could jump perfectly fine, but would still use the box all the time.

The problem is cats are really good at hiding pain - being physically able to jump doesn't mean it isn't uncomfortable or painful for him.

We have a pair of very senior cats (18/19ish years old) and make sure the house has little staircases dotted around to make getting on to their regular lounging spots easier, as we noticed they prefer to use a step if something happened to be available - while they are still fairly mobile, I suspect they are developing some level of arthritis. Given they've been good companions for nearly two decades it's the least we can do to make sure they're comfortable.

This is a good point. Sadly our fluffy friend had to be put down due to FIP and I hope we made him as comfortable as possible during his life - we didn't take away his step anyway. I still miss him and it has been years.

Try 3x water dishes, non chlorinated water, change them every day. Stopped mine drinking from the toilet.

Same goes for toddlers. It's harder to unspool the entire roll if it's "the wrong way". I hate it.

But there isn't only one way to order it. Some OS' (I forgot which) had convention dictate that the positive confirmation button was in the rightmost corner, with other lesser buttons to the left. In this order, "Cancel" appears first, but further from the corner.

As long as you're consistent.

Apps which lay their buttons out contrary to the conventions of their platform are evil. Apps which randomize the positions of their buttons are unspeakably worse.

Cancel button is obsolete, the customers want to be reminded later.

No! I detest the dialog boxes that ask a question and then the only options are "Yes" or "Skip for now"/"Set up later". I want to confirm "No".

impossible, statistics show that 0% of customers chose "No" when not given a choice. Ergo you do not exist.

Those stats explain everything! It certainly sums up my experience on the modern web - awful and slow!

Reminds me of Zelda, Ocarina of Time. They switched up the cancel and repeat buttons for different dialogues just to mess with you.

> have a fake 'x' such that clicking it just triggers the ad.

I always, always thought this is what X buttons do, so I was simply closing the tab :))

I've seen a lot of clickbait pages where the next button shows up and 10 seconds later at the end of the page load there's reflow and then an ad is placed where the next button used to be! So you end up clicking through an add on every page unless you wait for a long and random amount of time!

That's the evilest thing I can imagine!

There are a ton of dark patterns in web design about this.

- same color background

- in the wrong corner (users expect the "X" in the upper right hand corner). I've seen the "X" in the wrong corner and some other icon in the right hand corner. People reflexive will click in the upper right hand corner and open the ad by mistake

- I've seen where you have to click on text instead of the "X", clicking on the "X" just opens the ad

- Also very small, 1-2 pixel "X" so literally one pixel off and you've opened the ad

- I don't remember what company did this, but they would pop the ad and after three seconds, it would reload, all but a few pixels higher so when you're in the process of closing the window, it would reload and then you'd open the ad by mistake because the "X" is in the wrong place now.

I've seen a lot more devious stuff but the sad thing is, I have decent vision. How do these dark patterns affect people who have impaired vision or other issues with their vision? How infuriating it is it for them to deal with this BS? I can't imagine.

What kills me is that the only app that I actually engage with ads is an app that has a voluntary button to see ads to support the developer. You click the 'watch ad' button, you watch a 15 second ad, or see a banner ad, and then return to the app when you close the screen.

The app asks once per month if I would consider seeing an ad to support the developer. I usually watch one ad a day, as a rule, because it's the best way to do this. I've clicked on those ads, and have actually made purchases from those ads (it was for a product I was already researching and probably going to buy, but I clicked through the ad when I finally purchased it).

More apps need that level of respect for their users' time.

The god damned cookie consent popups do this. The "Decline" buttons are small and grey, the "Accept all and save" are big and green. They'd show empty checkboxes/iOS-style sliders at the off position that show that you won't be getting non-essential cookies, of course when you click "Accept all" these settings get overridden.

Not only an ad problem, but the sliders reminded me of a really bad UI feature I see everywhere: ambiguous highlighting when there are only two options.

I find some of the sliders for on/off are impossible to read. You can't work out what is on or off.

Windows 3.11 / 95 UI seems such a good idea by comparison to today's UIs - checkboxes with obvious tick marks or X marks in them, radio buttons, buttons that look like actual buttons, scrollbars you can see without having to flail the mouse around just for them to appear, scrollbars that go the right way when you use the mouse wheel (ok that was Windows 98), maximise buttons that actually maximised a window without having to hold alt like on macOS these days...

My dad is colorblind, and the red off/green on looks the same to him; the slight shadow showing the side the toggle is on often isn't dark enough to be obvious, especially when someone gets cute and makes the slider pill-style (the button part takes up exactly half the space, with a vertical line down the middle). I expect this to be less common with mobile OS downtime features that encourage users to get off their screens by going grayscale.

I don't know why everybody went to a flat design. Seriously Apple should have stuck with their it looks like things design.

> Also very small, 1-2 pixel "X" so literally one pixel off and you've opened the ad

Fact check. You cannot make an X with anything less than 3 pixels. ;)

An overlay that covers the whole area opening an add onClick. After some time the overlay is added again (incredibly annoying for video players you might want to pause)

If your ad blocker can't deal with these, set z-index on the main content with a userstyle, so it stays on top. Then you might also want to use a css style to just make everything else invisible:

``` *:not(.videoContainer){ background-color: black!important; color: black!important; } img { display:none!important; } ```

> 1-2 pixel "X"

An x requires at least 3×3 pixels.

Not if it's rendered on subpixels :).

Actually the minimum number of pixels to render a close box is three times the number of close boxes (ie. 3x3 for 1 close box). Any fewer pixels will not allow a functional close box to be reconstructed. This is referered to as the 'Nah-quist limit'.

I think this is also the psychology behind those pop-up like/share button bars at the bottom of web pages, that on mobile just so happen to sit exactly where your navigation bar hides, and if you tap one pixel too high you hit the share button instead of pulling up the navigation bar.

Just this week I had an ad popup with no button. Before I gave up and left the site I tried clicking where the button was supposed to be. Sure enough it worked.

Of course now I'm part of the problem, because some asshole has a graph that shows that (a suspiciously small fraction of) users are able to opt-out so there's no legal liability for having the ads that way.

The fact that they include an X button at all seems like a concession that I'm not sure how long will last

For the moment, running a Pi-hole in the cloud and pointing your mobile devices to it works. As you say, how long? When the adholes start doing ads as part of the content, this may break, but I'm sure the Cold War between the adholes and the blockers will heat up. There is always a way. God bless all the creative programmers who help to keep this crap at bay.

I got rid of TuneIn once they stripped the recording from the Pro version I paid for. Good riddance.

We like slider control to set precise value because we click many time to set correct value, isn't it?

I worked on a very popular free desktop product (BitTorrent/uTorrent) when a major revenue stream was the bundling of crapware in the install path, depending on people clicking the dialogs without reading them. I remember an executive announcing in a meeting that "search engine replacement" (reconfiguring your browser and/or system to a shadier alternative that made us money) was viable because the telemetry data showed that not very many people uninstalled in the 2-3 weeks after this was done to them, so, yay! another revenue stream people don't seem to totally hate! But they had read the tea leaves wrong and the backlash eventually caught up with them. It shows that reading mountains of data (100 million+ active monthly users) and reaching solid conclusions about user sentiment is a black art and numbers can be presented to show whatever point of view you want.

There is a sizable middle ground between "basic intuition" and "black art".

I think anyone with some experience in that type of software would intuitively understand the negative user experience described here.

Seems like a pretty straightforward case of the classic "Unless their salary depends on not understanding" rather than some opaque wall of unknowable unpredictable consequences.

Yeah, the sizable middle ground is I believe what props up most of the adtech industry. The sizable middle ground is occupied by people with minimum understanding of statistics, who bullshit themselves and each other with data - but as long as nobody can obviously tell they're wasting money, they're all happy and the money keeps flowing.

This is so true. It makes me lose faith in humanity, to be honest. My oh my do I detest adverts.

Either that, or the custom search was impossible to remove for non-technical crowd - AKA "the conduit business model"

> reaching solid conclusions about user sentiment is a black art and numbers can be presented to show whatever point of view you want.

Sounds like yet another case of, "Lies, damned lies, and statistics."

> (looking at the companies who buy Google AdWords on their own brand - if someone's searching for your brand on Google your website will already be the top result - a click on the ad is not a true "conversion" in this case and is just wasted money)

Except that Google lets anyone else advertise in that slot above your brand. And as we've seen some companies can confuse the customers and steal them away in such an ad.

If we tacitly accept a search engine allowing such phishing expeditions in those ads, then this kind of spending is the necessary and only step companies can take.

This happened today to me. I searched for the “DigiD” app which is the 2FA app for your social services account with the Dutch government. The app was the second app. Even though it matched fully on the query. The first app was some other document scanning app from some vendor. I can imagine someone paying less intention would install the wrong app.

I’m actually considering whether it would be a good thing if the app stores would verify government applications and perhaps not even allow ads on queries which have results that include governmental apps...

That would be a nice and easy way for any government to censor TikTok.

"Hey, have you seen the new COVID-19 contact tracing app? It's named TikTok-19".

> looking at the companies who buy Google AdWords on their own brand - if someone's searching for your brand on Google your website will already be the top result - a click on the ad is not a true "conversion" in this case and is just wasted money

Could be a true conversion given that all competitors are paying adwords on your brand name search also. If you don't have them you will probably appear after a long list of competitors with really personalized clickbait titles prompting your customers to compare you with them

It's incredibly sad that it's even possible to bid for the top spot above a competitors trademark. The worst blow to the health of the web was likely google's merger with doubleclick.net.

Google has devolved into a shitty search engine even ignoring the advertising. Someone please build a search engine comparable to google in the mid-2000s. No duckduckgo isn't it.

would you tell more about why you think ddg is not good? I'm not using it for some reasons so I'd like to know. Thanks

Not the original commenter, but before Google fully pivoted to their present focus on monetizing search, the results were often strikingly useful, even for obscure searches. DuckDuckGo can’t (yet) replicate this now-lost magic.

In my memory the quality of google searches peaked around 2009 or so I'm not sure I'd refer to it as a "present" effect....

Agreed. This happened with my startup. Basecamp complains about this practice frequently too: https://mobile.twitter.com/jasonfried/status/116898696270498...

Pro tip: if the competitor uses your trademark in their ad copy, you can do a takedown notice and usually the ads will be removed.

The ad/marketing driven economy is based on something simpler: consumers don't have any money, but corporations do. So you don't sell to consumers. You sell stuff at break even or a loss or even give it away to consumers and then sell the consumers to those who actually will pay.

The dominance of this kind of surveillance capitalist or ad-saturated model everywhere is a side effect of extreme wealth inequality and a generally demand constrained economy.

> looking at the companies who buy Google AdWords on their own brand - if someone's searching for your brand on Google your website will already be the top result - a click on the ad is not a true "conversion" in this case and is just wasted money

There are a few good reasons to do this:

1. Competitors will bid on your brand name. Your ad for your own brand name will have a higher quality score and be very cheap, driving up the price for the competitors.

2. So much of a SERP is below the fold that there is value to being as close to the top of the page as possible.

This is all true, and likely necessary, but it's all negative value that Google created and you just have to buy your way back up to zero.

The truth is noone buys anything from any ads... however brand awareness is a real thing. If you see a fancy ad from a company, they must be a profitable company that has a great product so you might be inclined to buy it or suggest it next time you're looking for this category of products.

Oh, yes, brand awareness is a real thing. For example, a lot of people will avoid Samsung TVs right now.

Or avoid Smart TVs altogether if you're a cord cutter anyway, and opt for what I believe is called a "public display".

Even those try to connect to a network now. Look at the spec sheets: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1573436-REG/samsung_l...

I just bought an LG. I’m so glad I dodged this bullet. I would be furious.

While I love my LG tvs, they have had ads on their smart tvs for nearly a decade.

The difference from Samsung is that the ads on the LGs are in the same place they've always been (on the smart tv menu overlay), they've never been obtrusive, and they're always in some way connected to video content (usually VOD movies that you can purchase through one of the streaming apps, or adds for streaming apps you can install on the TV).

I think I can accept that. I honestly don’t use it much. It was more for my better half, as our four year old Samsung killed itself the other day.

I’m more excited about the HDMI 2.1 and variable refresh for the new Nvidia cards.

My old LG "smart" TV would send a web request to LG every time I pressed ANY button on the remote control.

I took that stupid TV off the network as soon as I could.

I think the manufacturers are all as bad as each other. My current Panasonic TV will refuse to load any of the "smart" apps (even Netflix) if it cannot reach Panasonic's servers, which means the entire TV becomes useless as an Internet device (no Netflix or ANY streaming services) if Panasonic has a server issue (which they sometimes do).

Might revert to VHS at this rate.

LGs have ads as well. I had to add a bunch of domains to a DNS blacklist in order to get my $2000 TV to stop spamming me.

Hmm. I shall keep an eye on it. I run Ubnt network gear at home, so if it needs to be taught a lesson I shall be happy to do so.

I'm extremely happy with my HiSense - it runs Roku, so the "smart" stuff is actually maintained by a company that does a pretty good job of it. The only thing you could call ads are promos for shows. I think their revenue is kickbacks from subscriptions people get through Roku, rather than direct advertising.

How do you know LG won’t update the software later to include ads?

Why would I bother updating software for a TV if the TV is already working? Whats the motivation?

On my old Samsung TV, if I inadvertently push the "Smart Hub" button in the center of the remote, the bottom 20% of the screen gets overlaid with what looks similar to a MacOS Dock with the default apps from 2012. Worked OK in 2012 when I bought it and used Netflix a few times, but a month later I bough the original Google Chromecast, plugged that into HDMI 1, unplugged the Ethernet cable, and never intentionally pushed the Smart Hub button again.

I didn't push it again because in about 2015 I found that if you push it, it locks up for exactly 30s, which is how long it takes to hit the network timeout and say "Updates are available for your Samsung Smart TV." and then allow you to use the ancient web browser or Netflix or other smart apps. I did try a couple years ago, on a whim, but apparently the update servers have moved and even when plugged into Ethernet it can't actually update.

Everything currently runs through the Roku, the Blu-ray player, or a component-to-HDMI dongle for the Wii, but if I didn't have the Roku I'd have a motivation to update so that Netflix would work without a 30-second delay (and I'd be unsurprised if Netflix wasn't backwards compatible with their 2012 client from a Samsung TV). However, the picture is fine, so it keeps on chugging.

Think of it as unpatched computer on your network, possibly with a built in microphone and camera.

Why put it on a network?

Are there any open networks in range? How do you know it's not jumping on those?

My Samsung TV auto-updates. It's infuriating as I cannot disable it.

Just disconnect it from your network (change the wifi password or remove the Ethernet cable) and it will be unable to auto-update.

You may want to get an external device (Roku, Chromecast, Apple TV, or other media server) and plug that into your HDMI if you use the network from apps on the TV.

Just wait 'til they get a blanket connection to Amazon Sidewalk for their nefarious deeds, and the only way to disable it will involve a soldering iron.

But if some apps are used that isn’t possible. I’d suggest a few all rule forcing all port 53 traffic through a Pihole, then block Samsung traffic.

Then...don't use the apps?

What can the apps on your TV do that a $40 Amazon Fire stick ($50 if you want 4K) can't?

I'd rather hook up an old laptop to my TV and use that to watch media than use the apps on my TV and deal with all the bullshit that TV manufacturers are doing when you connect the TV to the network.

LG's already also have ads. They're not super obtrusive though, and I'm sure I shut personalization off.

That's who i bought a Panasonic. They cost more but don't have a shitty track record. In fact, my washing machine was the last Samsung here. It broke and got replaced by a German machine. These days I try to avoid the cheapest offering and try to buy quality instead. Upfront cost is higher but I really value my time too much to bother fighting with nonsense like ads on my tv.

I have a Panasonic TV too. Back like 8 years ago, it had an unremoveable ad/app square in it's app menu. Of course, they let me reorganize the apps, and I put it way back on a screen I'd never see, and I haven't noticed it since.

Also, as a side note, Vudu is like the one app from that era that still works.

Does your Panasonic stop loading any smart apps if their servers go down too? Mine refused to load anything (eg. Netflix) if it can't get in touch with Panasonic.

Check what network activity it is engaging in. You'll be disappointed, I am sure. Seems dialling home is the new thing to do on every single device these days. Data vacuuming the entire human population just because they can.

I agree, if we have to have ads for whatever reason, do it in an unobtrusive way that the user is asked about during setup. Now the ads in lg's smart home app are a different matter...

I’ve not seen any as yet. But then I disagreed with all of the tick boxes on setup. That may be why.

My parents were thinking about getting a Samsung TV and I've always been under the impression they make great displays.

Instead I will recommend Sony or LG now

Honestly, there are plenty of complaints about LG around, and I wouldn't trust Sony on about anything...

I have a Philips smart TV, so far it has no ads and just mildly annoying bugs, nothing really disruptive. But mine is an old model, it looks like the new ones aren't like that anymore.

A few years ago I brought some TVs to use as monitors because they were much better fit than the actual thing. Now it looks like the trends reversed, and I'll have to start buying monitors to use as TVs. Is there a good TV receptor that I can plug in a Raspberry Pi?

My 3-year-old Samsung TV is ad-free, because I don't give it network access and never accepted the TOC

I wonder how true the old saying about all publicity being good publicity really is any more. I can't speak for anyone else, but as I've become older, I've also become much less tolerant of unwanted interruptions and distractions. I don't mind a relevant ad that is tastefully integrated into whatever I'm looking at or listening to, but the patterns of behaviour I've developed online or when watching TV or listening to radio are definitely geared to minimising interruptions and disrupting the kinds of security- and privacy-threatening tracking that supports the big ad networks. Pushy ads that manage to break through tend to result in instant closing of browser, changing of channel, etc. so definitely aren't doing the host site/channel any favours, and they tend to leave a bad impression of whoever was advertising if they leave any impression at all.

The kinds of "feature" we are talking about with the Samsung TV here and other so-called smart devices will stop me from buying those products in the first place. But then I also don't use Windows 10 for my main PC because I think I should control my PC and not whoever happened to write the OS I'm running, so apparently I'm an outlier.

I don't buy that for two reasons:

- Brand awareness is one thing, but it feels companies are more interested in saturating consumers with advertising. That saturation is something entirely different.

- Advertising can present information to base purchasing decisions upon, but rarely does in most media. While advertising should never be the sole source of that information, it would be far more effective for brand or product awareness.

Real as in has a real effect on consumers. NOT real as has being a significant predictor for quality of products.

We all know this, but we ignore it. Branding for brandings sake == lying to customers.

I've bought multiple products from mobile ads just this year.

Heck the yoga app I use I saw through a mobile ad. Same deal for the fitness app I use (BodBot, awesome app, check it out!)

I've gotten onboard Kickstarters from ads, and I've bought keto cereal from an ad I saw.

99.999% of most ads I ignore, but sometimes ads are really well targeted and actually show me something I want.

(None of these ads were on a tv in any way...)

OT question, but what the heck is a keto cereal? i tought keto means no/low carb. and I mean everything in cereals has carbs. I mean classic cereals use tons of oatmeal, fruits, differnt types of wheat, joghurt, etc.. like everything with carbs?! so basically the bread and butter ingrident of cereals is oatmeal which has like >60% carbs with other types of carbs?!

Base on the ingredients, lots of whey protein.

Probably made with alternatives like Almond flour.

I mostyly agree, however i recently clicked on a beef jerky ad on instagram and bought a pack, but that is one purchase over the course of 20+ years of seeing online adds, so I think your point still stands.

The MyPillow / Snuggie / "As Seen On TV" people would probably disagree.

ordinarily would agree but i am about to buy an standing desk. never saw it before it popped up as an ad somewhere.

> at least in the short term until the market adjusts

This sounds like customers will eventually choose less shady brands in a year or two, when in reality all brands will actual race to the bottom together.

>I am not convinced that the majority of the advertising & marketing initiatives out there actually translate to more profit.

The big companies have people who check if the ads are working. Every have the clerk ask for your zip code? That is because they are checking if the ad sent to some zip codes worked. It is noisy data, but statistics is all about finding signal in noisy data.

I assume Google cannibalizes more brand power than it actually creates.

You would be dead on. From the marketers themselves:

https://www.adexchanger.com/ad-exchange-news/the-marketers-g...

You're right about most of it, but companies by AdWords on their own brand name so that competitors won't get that spot. Basically, the first 2 results listed by Google are paid ads. So if they don't buy AdWords for their own brand the top 2 displayed results could be any similar item. So that case isn't about increased conversion, it's about not letting competitors snipe their sales by offering a lower price for a comparable item even when searching by brand name.

> I am not convinced that the majority of the advertising & marketing initiatives out there actually translate to more profit.

That’s odd. You’ve never read a valley S-1, I take it?