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Comment by manigandham | Hacker News Reader

We already built this - https://instinctive.io

It's the fastest ad network around. Simple, fast, static, all user-initiated, and we only focus on content (articles, videos, etc that you read on the same site you're already on). We also don't work with any 3rd parties so there's no security or malware risk. Happy to share any technical details.

There are good ad networks out there but in this strange industry, it's all about politics and connections, not tech or UX (which is why we're in this mess in the first place). This is the biggest battle we're fighting with everyone from advertisers and agencies to publishers.

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You had me quite intrigued, at least until I saw native advertising being mentioned so prominently on the front page. Unbridled resource consumption and tracking are far from the only ethical concern around the modern ad industry. The breakdown of the barrier between journalistic content and paid content is another big one.

Our site is years old and needs a refresh but there's a lot of nuance in this.

Native is a complicated term that gets overused but the way we see it is a combination of look/feel + context + behavior. Most "native" ads today are just the look/feel but crappy irrelevant content that makes no sense on the site or isn't content at all but just takes you to some sales landing page like any other banner ad.

However, there can be good quality content (educational, informative, entertaining, and not just primarily selling) that happens to be sponsored by a brand. Native isn't about tricking the user but about being unobtrusive. The same way you would skip a news headline you're not interested in, you would skip a native ad placement as well (at least this is how it should work).

People read what they want to read and sometimes it's advertising. There's nothing wrong with that. What we do is make sure everything is properly labeled (to FTC standards) and user-initiated so that users know what it is and make their own choice - and I believe transparency and choice are the best things we can offer.

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