>the entire selling point of online ads, which is giving a chance to smaller players a chance at the game.

Aunt Mae's cookie shop will never be able to compete with Pepsi for airtime

> Aunt Mae's cookie shop will never be able to compete with Pepsi for airtime

It still can’t compete with CPM

Getting 100 or 1000 impressions vs millions of impression is not really competing for air time.

If there's no user information/tracking, what are the chances that any of those ads will be served to a potential customer for the small business? The GP's bottom line is that nobody except large consumer brands should bother advertising.

This is a theoretical interesting point. But it does not withstand even cursory empirical research.

Open a newspaper. Look at page two. What do you see? Ads for local businesses. Watch local TV. More ads for small businesses.

Okay, now go to the websites for those newspapers and TV stations. No local businesses. Literally all scam ads.

>No local businesses. Literally all scam ads.

I was like "ok, is that really true" so I went and checked, and by golly, you're right. And it's 50-50 the "scam ad" I got is a direct result of a doctor leaking my medical records.

The whole online ad industry should be regulated out of existence.

It sounds like your doctor was a big source of trouble; shouldn’t they be the one regulated out of existence?

Actually it was their accountant.

In any case, it's not them who are exploiting the information. The ad industry is like a fence for stolen goods.

It's not that my medical information is top secret; it's that I don't want to see ads about earwax. And I think Google execs should be forced to watch them until they repent and become monks or something.

If you allow for location based ads (eg: city level), there may be a chance.

Except 1000 impressions for a smaller company might still be impactful.

she will just have to buy ads on smaller websites, maybe during lesser traffic time periods.

Small publishing sites are all but dead. The internet used to be a lovely village where everyone was on about the same playing field and now it's a handful of skyscrapers surrounded by slums.

sure, but its only been that way for a little over a decade, it could change back just as quicky.

i would actually consider those towering skyscrapers to be the slums, and the smaller sites to be potential hidden gems.

That's a lovely theory, but the money is in Youtube and its pretty obvious.

Nearly all the major tech reporting sites have died: TechReport, Hardware Canucks, Linux Journal, etc. etc. When you look at who can actually sustain a modern tech reporting site, its the Youtubers: Linus Tech Tips, Gamers Nexus, etc. etc.

Even then: when the tech reporting sites were around, they were mostly on Google Adsense. The others are on Facebook Ads.

----------

The sites that are making it possible for small-style discussion to thrive again are new "networks" like Patreon. A lesser evil for sure, but a "Skyscraper" nonetheless.

Why advertise on TechReport when you can just profile users and show them tech ads wherever they go? Tracking is poison for niche publishers.

The problem is that opening up the market to "Aunt Mae" will also open up the market to malicious players.

The financial barrier of entry of TV & print advertising is a very effective filter against scams. I have yet to see scam ads for fake tech support or "win an iPhone by filling a survey" or some "free" trial which uses unreadable fine print to sign you up for something very expensive, but those are commonplace online.

So the answer to preventing scam ads is only allowing the richest companies have a chance to advertise?

Surely there’s a better way.

I worked at a local TV station a while back, and I programmed the commercials. You would be surprised at how little those slots go for. Off prime time, a 15 or 30 second add spot might sell for a couple dollars. At night they’re only a few cents. It was a mid-sized metropolitan area, so I don’t think this would be so out of the ordinary.

To this day, I have no idea how any TV stations are financially solvent.

Well, higher prices not only allow for people to be paid decent money to review the ads manually but are also a bigger risk for any scam operation as not only is it more difficult to obtain & move that amount fraudulently (you're not going to be able to buy a TV ad with a stolen credit card) but they also have much more to lose should their entire operation be discovered (presumably, a TV network discovering a fraudulent attempt will report it to the relevant authorities and will not just give the money back).

NordVPN's ads have made it onto TV, and a lot of TV ads nowadays are for gambling. Nevertheless it certainly is easier to regulate advertising if it isn't dynamic.

Everyone sits around and talks about their favorite TV ads. It’s the “best part of the Super Bowl” according to common wisdom.

No one has ever had a favorite internet banner ad.

Nobody talks about their favorite TV ads.

The Super Bowl specticle is just that, a one-off event where the ads are more like short films and talked about for maybe a day before entirely forgotten.