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Comment by uptown | Hacker News Reader

"Maybe there's a different model out there but as far as I'm aware no-one has found it yet"

Sure they have. Sites just need to host the ads natively instead of outsourcing that responsibility. But they don't want to do that, because they don't want to take on that responsibility.

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This is how my site works and it works well. In theory I might be able to make a bit more via an ad network, but I like treating my site like a magazine and have highly relevant and high-quality ads.

I just looked at http://officesnapshots.com/ and I agree -- that's what advertising should be. Congrats.

Two questions: how much time do you spend selling/negotiating with advertisers? And you say you could earn more from a network: have you researched at all exactly how much more?

Naively, it seems that maybe advertisers would pay you more because 100% of the visitors to your site are relevant to their products (but admittedly I'm out of my realm of expertise).

>Naively, it seems that maybe advertisers would pay you more because 100% of the visitors to your site are relevant to their products

The fact that a website is about interior design is already enough information for advertisers to show you relevant ads.

I think all this tracking is pointless. They still show me ads about fridges weeks after I've bought one.

Thanks for the kind words!

It is difficult to say how much time I spend on that side of things since it has been built up over time and have pretty high advertiser loyalty - total guess, but maybe 5-20% depending on the time of year. Most of my time is spent acquiring, editing, and categorizing content as well as adding new features to the site.

I haven't really done much research into the various networks, but I do get sales pitches from time to time. My first question is always wondering which advertisers using the network are relevant to my readers (almost always the answer is none). Plus at this point I have a direct relationship with marketing departments, so there isn't really a need for a middleman.

Edit: for people here interested in tech offices, here's the best link: http://officesnapshots.com/offices/?fwp_industry=technology

This is more or less the old print model - take a topic, create quality content, take money from very specific relevant advertisers.

It's such an obvious model that it's amazing the ad industry hasn't understood how well it works. Instead they persist in using crappy non-functional trackers and ad blocker blockers and all kinds of other bullshit techniques - because apparently they'd rather game readers than provide something good and useful.

Postscript: a minor bug. I'm using OS X Chrome, and the ad bar keeps twitching when I reach the end and try to scroll down further.

Yeah, I basically think about the site as being a magazine with enhanced features. Unfortunately news sites like CNN don't have a narrow audience and therefore use technology to slice and dice the visitors into narrow groups.

Is that scroll bug on all pages with the ad sidebar? Do you run any script blockers?

You guys should add a search text box, so you can search for specific companies.

Here's the megalist of them all: http://officesnapshots.com/companies/

There is also http://officesnapshots.com/search/

I seem to recall seeing an article indicating that is what StackOverflow do - and it works out p well for them

Yeah, someone else in the comments mentioned the link: https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2016/02/why-stack-overflow-do...

I genuinely wondered if those were even advertisements. They look professional, pretty and placed well. Your site is a lesson for the entire advertising industry. It is not often that I see an advert and do not immediately go to edit my Privoxy blocking lists.

I'll second `oaktowner's comment: the adds fit right in. They fit in naturally and it feels curated. If this is what we were immersed in, web ads would be a much more relevant. the ads don't smack you and stand out as ADS! And instead blend in nicely.

Hey, I want you to know that I read a few of your articles and clicked on the ads, because they were relevant to the content and theme of your site.

They weren't ads for Amazon products I looked at last week, or ads for jobs. Good job, it's a really well done site.

The thing that astounds me is that Forbes and most magazines would never not take the option to curate the ads in their print magazines. You think Forbes would let a "one weird trick..." ad anywhere near their print magazine? (Caveat: perhaps they do now, I've not picked up a print copy of Forbes in years.) Back in the day when I would purchase ad space in a magazine, I'd deal directly with someone from that magazine's organization. My ads were always pretty bland, but I've heard of print magazines turning away ads.

But it looks like all bets are off when things go to the web, and even the most high-brow magazines take their web properties and make it look like the web equivalent to something next to the chewing gum at the grocery checkout stand.

IMHO, if content providers/content hosts are going so far, in some cases, as to threaten law suits about ad blocking, they're putting themselves on the hook for liability when ads served for them cause harm to visitors' systems. I have no idea if there's any legal precedent for that, but morally it seems like two sides to the same coin.

You make money by putting me at risk? We share that money (and more) if you actually harm me.

I'm imagining the ultimate approach will be server-side includes of raw content from the ad networks so that the ad content is served from the content server and not sent off to a 3rd party.

From a security standpoint this is horrifying because it means that attempts to sandbox ad javascript away from site javascript in the browser will become impossible, since the sandbox will tell the browser what to block.

I block javascript. I whitelist very few sites. Ads - like sites themselves - need to work without javascript. Then we can all get along. Running random, unsigned, untested, unwanted code from strangers on my own computer doesn't really work for me, thanks. No, I don't care if your business model depends on it. I'm more than happy for every single site which depends on advertising to go bust. There'll always be another news site, and those failing sites will have no impact on the social media, shopping, banking etc sites which comprise most of most people's surfing. Really, ad-blocking just isn't that big a deal; the fact that it's got people talking and having big players like Apple get involved really speaks volumes about the sheer, gross violation of trust that's gone on all this time, as well as how security is being taken much more seriously than ever before.

More importantly than hosting the ads natively is handling media sales themselves. I think offloading that work to ad networks and ad exchanges is the first step in giving up responsibility for what gets shown to a user/viewer.

That works for niche or locally scoped/focused sites. The problem is that Google & Facebook offer a one-stop shopping experience that advertisers like.

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