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Comment by omginternets | Hacker News Reader

>Often they're absolutely wrong.

You misunderstand the expression, I think. The expression means "do you really want to get into a moral argument over trivial matters with your clientelle... really? Because that's not good for you."

>The sponsorhip message on Troy's site is unobtrusive

Indeed. However, it's still an ad. It still decreases the signal-to-noise ratio on his site, and that's why I use an ad-blocker. Ranting against this behavior is not in Troy Hunt's interest because guess what: the web is big. He's replaceable.

Again: the missing bit here is that the adverts do not add value to the site. They degrade it (if only a little). This is why his ads are being blocked. Full stop. The market has spoken.

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In response to this signal, it would be smart for bloggers to change their advertising model to just support paid blog posts. Then the advertising can be injected directly into the content instead of living somewhere that "decreases the signal-to-noise ratio" in an obvious and easily-blocked fashion.

I'm not sure that's what people actually want though.

Why so absolutist? Why must bloggers inevitably move to a 100% paid-content model?

If you restate your idea in less absolute terms, you'll find that you're essentially describing Pocket.

I just reread this and the tone seems a bit aggressive. Too late to edit. Apologies!

The crux of the argument is that many websites seem to have a model of partially-sponsored content (clearly-labeled, etc...) and that this economic model functions because it provides value to the consumer. Consumers are essentially paying for curated content, with the understanding that some of the information will be promotional, though relevant.

I think this is the most (and often only) viable approach to web advertising.

So that means you're kind of saying you do not want to consume any kind of ad. That's fine, but it kind of conflicts with your claim that you would consume different kind of ads.

No. I'm saying there are forms of ads I will and will not willingly consume. I'm saying that what troyhunt is serving constitutes the latter.

I'm suggesting that he could do something very similar (sponsored content that is clearly labelled and relevant to my interests) and fix his problem. These are the kinds of ads I willingly consume. I like opinion-pieces.

A corollary to this argument is that serving this kind of curated ad content is hard. Therefore: you cannot make "easy money" in web advertisement by just slapping someone's name somewhere. I suspect the mechanism behind this is that I want to know exactly what a sponsor is influencing. If a sponsor is influencing the whole site, it's a turn-off. If it's on an article-by-article basis, I'm comfortable. In economics we call this a demand.

So how should he fund his work? Can you offer him some sort of alternative method that's acceptable to you? Donation buttons are a sort of ad. Paywalls rarely work, especially in niche content like his. How else should he fund it?

> Ranting against this behavior is not in Troy Hunt's interest because guess what: the web is big. He's replaceable.

So he should just suck it up? Why?

> This is why his ads are being blocked. Full stop. The market has spoken.

If this is the market speaking, it's going to eat itself. On that trajectory, it's only a matter of time before everything of value is behind a paywall of some description.

>So how should he fund his work?

He should serve ads I want to consume. This is the norm: it's called native advertising.

Exactly how he goes about doing this is frankly his problem, but the bottom line is that the advertisment should also have value for me as a consumer. It should be informative, unintrusive, well-designed and enjoyable. This can take the form of sponsored posts, for instance (with the usual caveats surrounding such things).

What I'm propsing is not rare. Pocket does this extremely well. It does imply, however, that you can't lazily slap a link somewhere on a site.

> He should serve ads I want to consume. This is the norm: it's called native advertising.

You enjoy consuming glorified PR pieces, that aren't distinguished as such? To me, that seems much more underhanded and deceitful that a simple sponsorship message, or even something like AdSense. At least they're distinguished from content. In my opinion, there are too many ethical issues surrounding native advertising, not least of which is the distortion of content.

I do when they are signaled and add value. The second bit it crucial. If it's just a simple plug, I'm likely to hate it. If it provides a service (e.g.: informs me about a topic I'm interested in), then it suddenly becomes acceptable.

So no, I don't enjoy consuming glorified PR pieces that aren't distinguished as such, but that's not what I'm advocating.

I used to work as a print magazine editor.

"Advertorial", as native advertising in print was called, was loathed and rightly so. It was viewed as a way to hoodwink the reader, suggesting to them that this advertising copy ("buy this car, it's great!") came with the impartial seal of approval of the editorial staff. There would be a little "Sponsored Content" disclaimer at the top, but it was easily missed. Every editor I knew would strongly resist the sales staff's attempt to get us to run advertorials.

By contrast, display advertising - brash, colourful, couldn't be mistaken for editorial - was understood not to be in conflict. Occasionally an advertiser would threaten to pull their ads because we'd written something they didn't like (Casio once pulled all their advertising after I reviewed a terrible digital piano of theirs and pointed out how terrible it was). Our response was generally "ta-ra then".

There's some irony that we've now come 180°, and on the web, advertorials are considered good, display advertising bad.

Certain magazines (Time, Newsweek, The Atlantic, ...) have journalistic responsibilities. Web sites like troyhunt.com do not. This is the crucial difference.

I don't care that a commercial site is trying to sell me stuff. I do care that journalists -- who serve a crucial political and social function -- are actually peddling widgets for the ACME corporation instead of acting in the public interest.

As such, advertorials are a problem in journalism, but not in commerce (provided they are well-labeled, etc).

Exactly how he goes about doing this is frankly his problem, but the bottom line is that the advertisment should also have value for me as a consumer.

Surely you have to be at least a bit aware of the fact that the only way to serve ads that you, omginternets, will find value in would be to track you and your viewing and buying habits all over the internet, right? Which is one of the things that adblockers seek to circumvent...

It should be informative, unintrusive, well-designed and enjoyable. This can take the form of sponsored posts, for instance (with the usual caveats surrounding such things).

But this was a sponsored post? And you still seem to be pretty indignant about it. In fact you called troyhunt "part of the problem".

>Surely you have to be at least a bit aware of the fact that the only way to serve ads that you, omginternets, will find value in would be to track you and your viewing and buying habits all over the internet, right? Which is one of the things that adblockers seek to circumvent...

And surely I have, despite your strangely snide tone.

This is where relevance is particularly important: the pot has to be pretty sweet for me to accept tracking.

And surely I have, despite your strangely snide tone.

Sorry - no snideness intended. It seemed like a bit of a contradiction to me, that's all.

I myself believe that web advertising is just completely broken; I use an ad-blocker for safety and because on mobile the browsing difference with and without an ad blocker is like night vs day. But I'm also very aware that a lot of creative people earn their livings with advertising and I'm hoping we can figure out a good technological solution to this problem of making web advertising less-awful. Maybe micro-transactions. Maybe an <advertisement> tag that lives outside the DOM and doesn't affect page loading. I don't know.

Troy's website is (or should be) funded out of his own pocket.

His website, is itself, one huge advert for himself, his skills, knowledge and experience as a security expert. His website, advert though it may be, is full of great content and gives him increased exposure. Through this, he generates additional revenue (i.e. his own personal income) far more than he would do if he didn't have the website and thus, the increased exposure.

Therefore, Troy Hunt is the advertiser and he should pay for his advert (his entire website) out of his own funds, since this is the very thing that generates him (additional) revenue.

    >  It still decreases the signal-to-noise ratio on his site

It decreases the signal-to-noise ratio a hell of a lot less than the picture at the top of the page does.

One of the great things about adblock plus is that you can block non-ads with its custom rules very easily - right click the obtrusive element, block, done. I use it all the time for excessive headers/navigation/etc.

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