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Comment by makecheck | Hacker News Reader

I was referring to the way that DaringFireball does ads. I was not talking about any other aspect of DaringFireball.

If Imgur wants ads, there is a way to make ads sane and still make money.

For what anecdotes are worth, DaringFireball’s method is about the only form of ads that has ever worked on me. I actually read what he says about these companies, and I often am curious enough to go learn more. And he’s charging a lot for these ad placements for a week.

Whereas, I have never, ever been interested in something that tried to use trickery to pop up in my face, play audio, play animations, steal my clicks or otherwise force me to acknowledge its existence before continuing. I can’t even remember what those products were; I can only remember the speed at which I searched for a black "X" button to close the things.

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The way that Daring Fireball does ads is a product of the entire way that Gruber runs the site - you can't only talk about ads. Not to mention the point that Gruber can do whatever he wants with his site and does not need to maximize revenue or provide a venture-scale return. He certainly makes a lot of money with ads the way they're set up - he could certainly make more with "better" ads. He deserves a lot of credit for valuing his readers so highly.

Can you point to a single Imgur-like property using the sort of ads you cite to generate any kind of significant revenue to the point where they could possibly offer a return on venture cash? I don't know of a single major web property running that style of ads that does so successfully. In fact, we see progressively worse ads are what publications are choosing to run instead (looking at you WaPo, running inline "videos" on mobile that are really huge GIFs). I agree that it sucks - certainly no argument there. But I am unaware of anywhere where what you're suggesting is working competitively with unobtrusive options.

I just want to chime in with a simpler answer. That's not really how Internet ads work. Ad deals between companies are fairly large and complex, at least the kind that are going to support a site like imgur.

Content is king and imgurs content is random and most likely junk. There's no consistency you could sell to a partner where'd they be willing to pay enough to allow something like DaringFireball does to work. The only way they're making enough is to put the junk we're dealing with now.

>If Imgur wants ads, there is a way to make ads sane and still make money.

There is also "a way" to win at the Olympics.

A lifetime of dedication and training?

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