Comment by lamontcg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lamontcg | Hacker News Reader

"Our belief is that if someone doesn’t like them, and they won’t click on them, any impressions served to them will only annoy them-- plus, serving ads to people who won’t click on them harms campaign performance."

^^^ so much this.

there's this implied assumption that everyone using an adblocker is lost revenue, but a lot of that is going to be shitty ad impressions that never lead to clicks.

like it or not, advertisers can't actually put a gun to my head and force me to click on an ad and buy anything.

even if its a targeted ad that manages to engage me (coincidentally this did actually happen this morning with an ad from one of the rare newsletters that i've allowed to be sent to my e-mail inbox) then it probably doesn't work the way with me that advertisers want it to. i managed to find a product that i was interested in, but it was too expensive for me. so i did a "brandX vs ..." search on google to find brandY and now i've bookmarked the product their competition sells which seems to be more in line with my budget...

if you want to 'game' my purchasing habits you'd be better off not advertising at all in the classical sense, but instead send your product to review sites and/or just buy reviews in order to saturate google results. however, when all i see is obviously bought off review sites i'll go looking for relevant forums and look for user threads. by far the best thing there is to have a social media presence and have a staffer that surfs through forum sites and answers questions.

plus, you know, just have a good product for a good price to get people talking well about it... i realize that's some fucking crazytalk there though...

Most advertising is just general brand awareness. They don't need you to click or to consciously decide "hey that looks cool."

They want you to be standing in the soda isle of the grocery store when you are going to a party and someone asked you to pick up a drink. You don't have a strong preference. But you buy Coke because you know it. Just knowing about it is a huge advantage.

That's why a lot of advertising is priced in "per impression."

A lot of people will claim advertising has no effect on them, but that's BS. It does.

So using adblockers costs the website roughly .2 cents per ad impression.

I don't think you have some moral duty to view the ads, but they don't have some duty to give you a free website either.

This stuff works. Sometimes it seems to me that TV ads must be ineffective. Unlike a Web ad there is no direct link between the ad and a buy. So why does the advertiser bother?

Then I was buying life insurance. So I go to some lead generation website. I see a whole bunch of companies I had never heard of. Then I see Prudential. Rock. I see Metlife. Snoopy. I see ING. They sponsored the NYC Marathon that I ran in.

I didn't get Metlife, so much for Snoopy...but I didn't get a company I had never heard of either. For a few I said "never heard of them" and for others I'm sure my eye just skipped right over them.

Ads work and I bet they do work even on people who say "ads NEVER work on me." Really? When you are buying a new product, all the ad impressions you have had make absolutely NO difference? Are you sure?

"Most advertising is just general brand awareness... you buy Coke because you know it"

Very much true. I worked in a grocery store during my school summer and even though I didn't watch TV, I could know what products were being advertised on it just by watching people's buying habits. I even did a test -- named some products to my friend that watched TV and it was spot on.

Web conversations like this are terrible. Clicks are a very small part of what advertisers are buying, even if that's how it's measured. Just like sometimes when you're at a cafe you buy a cup of coffee, but actually what you want is the nice space to work and an internet connection for a couple hours.

(Some) advertisers are actually smart. They do extensive, scientific research around attribution and effectiveness. Even if you don't click on ads, you're influenced by them (yes, you, too). They can track that, and it's a large part of what they're paying for. Just like TV ads.

That also strikes me as insightful. Even if I were forced to view ads, I would never click on them. Or even hover. If it's something that interests me, I might search in a different window. Basically, I just don't trust ads.

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