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Comment by default-kramer | Hacker News Reader

I have been thinking about what would happen if all browsers had perfect ad blockers enabled by default, starting tomorrow. I think years later we would look back and decide that it was the right thing to do, despite the immediate short-term economic damage.

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I like pretty much everyone else dislikes advertising, but it is a genuine source for a company to generate revenue.

I really don't know any other real alternatives other than making the user pay, which would in turn make the internet just basically one big subscription model. The majority of the "free" services which many people enjoy now, like YouTube, Facebook, etc probably could not exist as they do.

What is needed is some clear boundaries (legislation), and education. I believe without advertising that the internet would not have been what it is today, and I don't think it would have exponentially better.

Amazon's model wins (this customer). Prime is something that I'm 100% willing to pay for (between shipping, music, video -- again, for this customer). That it comes with WP digital access is a nice add-on. If there were a $10/mo hike in price for lots of other digital access products, I would go without. If the price hike were mandatory to keep prime, I'd keep prime.

Again, for this customer...

I'm moving soon and seriously considering not signing up for internet at my new address (new job, I'll be at work a ton, and the common area has free wifi I could use for the occasional email or weekend netflix download). But I won't cancel my prime subscription. That's what made me realize how sticky amazon is: I will pay 3 figures for access, even without instant access to the network that lets me get to them!

I think there are some services which people will pay for. People have been paying to be entertained for decades with pay TV models.

Advertising isn't that profitable per-user basis anyway, you need a huge amount to break-even. I doubt the average user generates more than a few euros worth of advertising per month. Not to mention the indirect cost of advertising paid by the consumer as well.

I doubt the average user generates more than a few euros worth of advertising per month

We know exactly what the number is. Take Facebook’s revenue and divide it by their number of users.

Of course the average is as nonsensical as saying the average American has 2.5 kids.

Most users probably make facebook almost nothing, and then a smaller portion make them far more.

A subscription model at a few Euros a month might attract only those users with high spending power, and whose ads (presumably) generate much more than a few Euros a month.

Do you think the users are not already paying for it? If you click on an ad and buy the product, you’re paying for that impression as well as 100s of others that resulted in a small annoyance instead of a conversion.

> If you click on an ad and buy the product, you’re paying for that impression as well as 100s of others that resulted in a small annoyance instead of a conversion.

Free shipping isn't really free, the cost of a product can include multiple different factors.

As far as the annoyance point, I guess that is somewhat balanced out by the importance of the site.

But that isn't the point I was making, the point I am making is that advertising is genuine way for companies to make money from offering services. There isn't really any other valid alternatives to this over than user pays or giving it away.

Do we know how much Youtube, Facebook, etc. make in ad revenue per user? It can't be much. If micro-payments are an option, the ability to pay $0.75 a month for an ad-free social network would be fantastic.

I think the problem behind this is that ad revenue is not the same as a subscription revenue. You cannot assume that if a user was worth $3 a month in ad revenue that that would translate to a $3 a month subscription.

For example, I would have no doubt the the customer acquisition cost for an "free" application with advertising is a lot lower than trying to sell that same user a membership.

When it comes to social networks I would suggest that the stickiness is because your friends/family etc are on the same network. It's not if you are willing to pay, it is only really worth it, if your friends are willing to pay.

If you are talking more about a paid and free version, then there are already services out there like YouTube Red (available in some areas for $9.99+ USD). There are always options out there.

What about all the work that goes into maintaining the ad network and distribution, advertiser acquisition etc? That isn't free either.

In the US, Facebook makes $27/user/year. Worldwide it's $6

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/31/facebook-earnings-q4-2017-ar...

So $3 a month to turn off ads would be a pretty good deal for them.

For the US, the entire digital ad market is $83B/yr, which works out to $257 per person per year, or $717 per household. Keep in mind that about half of the country's population is "frequent internet users", so that number is almost certainly an underestimate for anyone who browses HN.

For comparison, this number just recently passed TV advertising, which is about $70B/yr ($217/person, $605/household).

Yeah, also let’s not forget that the whole idea of ads is to sell people crap they don’t need. Industries are built to turn the environment into disposable products that people would not miss at all if they wouldn’t know about them. There’s obviously the question what would people do if they would not work for companies that produce waste and their actual needs have been met but I don’t think the current way is the correct answer, and there’s a huge part of the world who’s needs (food, shelter, clothing, self-actualization) are not being met.

You were probably downvoted for taking the position that you are the judge of what other people need, but besides that error, I think you bring up an interesting point.

It is an uncomfortable truth that we have yet to really contemplate as a society.

Consumerism ISN'T sustainable, and society will grow to a point where we are going to see seemingly fundamental systems start to crumble beneath the sheer weight of consumption.

We have to be willing to ask "should we?" in addition to "can we?"

> Yeah, also let’s not forget that the whole idea of ads is to sell people crap they don’t need.

That doesn't have to be true. Done right, ads can be about making more people aware of a product, to reach people who genuinely benefit from it but would not otherwise have heard about it. That's the advertising future I'd like to see, even if it's not how things are right now.

If that were true all ads would simply be a bullet point list of features - branding would not exist, there would be no pretty models in the ad, etc etc etc

The argument that ads are about informing consumer just doesn’t stand up to reality. The whole concept is flawed.

> but it is a genuine source for a company to generate revenue.

That's a common cultural belief that I do not subscribe to, seems to come with our currently trendy variants of capitalism/liberalism. I personally belief it is more akin to a crime that is currently not punished.

> probably could not exist as they do.

More industries have been outlawed in history.

> I believe without advertising that the internet would not have been what it is today,

I can take that as fact. But I do not think that "without ads" (on the internet or not) is "economically worse". I think without ads we would produce better quality; it's complete guessing, but that's just my expectation.

Browser-based ad blocking is pretty easy to bypass for companies like Facebook if they really want to. They already have their own ad network, so they will start serving all content (messages, ads, videos) from the same server with no way to distinguish between them programmatically.

At least, peformance-wise, that would be nice.

In Germany ads must be distinguishable from other content. If a human can spot the difference it shouldn’t be too hard to automate that process.

Well Google certainly would not do that with Chrome. Firefox, Safari and Edge however could explore such ideas putting pressure on Google. It could be an option during setup, like disable tracking and known advertisers. That certainly would make a difference, bunch of things would break but alternatives would pop up quickly I'd assume

> Firefox, Safari and Edge

Given how much Microsoft has been pushing ads in W10, we're not going to see this push coming from Microsoft anytime soon.

MS play this game because they have to. If they had the option to cut Google off cold they would take it in a heartbeat.

advertising would just shift to product placement in the news you get and affiliate links everywhere. not better. people tend to forget that advertising covers a real need.

I'll take the other side of that argument. Search engines should put the most relevant products at the top of the page because they are the best fit, not because someone paid for them to be there.

If all advertising disappeared tomorrow, the world would function better. Consumers would not have advertisers trying to manipulate them, and they would more rationally allocate their resources.

Advertising is a tax placed on people who have already bought a product, which made it more expensive, to manipulate other people into also buying that same product.

Without it, good products would succeed on merit / independent reviews / word of mouth.

* The one exception I can think of is possibly during the scale period of startups, helping them scale faster (artificially) than if they just followed the "be the best and it will catch on" approach.

Companies are already starting to game "independent reviews" through incentivized reviews or downright fake reviews, and word of mouth has been gamed with referral programs. Fact is, when there's money on the line, it's gonna get dirty, PPC and banner ads just happen to be the cheapest option.

I'd love to not play the advertising game, but marketing seems to be one of the most important parts of running a business, if not the most important part, and it'll get its grimy hands on anything to acquire users. I'd prefer to avoid the world where they pay people to post rave reviews in HN comments to hype products.

Advertising doesn't necessarily make a product more expensive except where something like cost plus pricing is used.

> people tend to forget that advertising covers a real need

I don't buy it. Advertising is not going to provide me with the service that is the most suited to my need, or with the best value. In fact, quite the opposite: the advertisement that's the most likely to reach me comes from the company with the largest budget for advertisement. That budget eats into either the profit of the company or into the quality of service delivered.

It is short-sited to say advertising eats into the profit of the company. When done successfully, it allows for more goods to be sold which increases profits and in turn allows for more research and development and thus better products.

Advertising covers a real need for businesses, (you and I aren't the customer, we are the product). The math works out pretty simply: what is the total profit with 0 advertising vs the total profit with advertising? If you had a magical machine where you could insert a dollar and get $1.05 out, you should be putting your money in there as fast as possible.

People have shown an impressive ability to figure that kind of advertising out. A lot of native advertising on sites like Reddit is outed almost immediately, and then the discussion turns on the advertiser. We could also add protections as they are in the UK requiring “sponsored content” to display clearly that it’s an advertisement.

In short, there’s nothing inevitable about advertising models as they exist today, and people who try to convince of you that they are inevitable are peobsbly trying to sow apathy.

>People have shown an impressive ability to figure that kind of advertising out

This is of course selection buas.

I really don't have any objection to affiliate links. If you're talking about something and link to it on Amazon with your affiliate link, rather than a bare link, what difference does that make to me, as the user? You get paid a smidgeon, on something that I would have either bought or not bought anyway, for the same price to me either way.

I think general affiliate links are pretty safe, maybe they might incentivize content creators to hype up products that are more expensive (so they get a bigger cut) though.

Unless handled very carefully, using affiliate links damages my perception of the writer's integrity. When money's on the line, maybe their motivation for writing wasn't to share their experience of finding the best product for the lowest price. In rare cases, like the AppliedScience youtube channel, the quality of content is so high that the affiliate links in descriptions don't tarnish my esteem for the guy.

On the bright side, I think product placement manipulates people in less problematic ways than companies like Cambridge Analytica have been able to do with precision-targeted advertisements. At least product placement needs to involve actual products, and if you try to go beyond that it'll be pretty obvious. Although I guess there's a cross-section here: one of the really sinister details of Facebook's advertising is it gets presented in the same context as pictures of your friend's puppy, so our filters don't engage like they would looking at something that resembles an ad container.

I strongly disagree that Cambridge Analytica has done more damage than advertising. The leading causes of death in the US are preventable. Companies are pumping out disinformation to get people to consume things that are killing them, as well, to spend money on non essential items they can't afford.

Who is “we”? You and I might decide it was the right thing to do but you and I are probably also in the top X% of the world in terms of wage.

Here’s my hunch on what would happen: we would realize that it’s really messed up that the only options for people to get basic services we once took for granted is to pay for it; and those that can’t afford it must give up their privacy or start rationing a budget to access news, email etc. for a fee.

On Maslows hierarchy, privacy in the sense of ad targeting is a pretty privileged need. The business model works for the overwhelming majority of the world; it’s only broken for people who think it’s no big deal to have to shell a few bucks extra a month for either more privacy or access to services (that would no longer exist for free to the extent they do today.)

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