Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

He also learned through trial and error not to accidentally tap on the ads.

This is on my Macbook and all three major browsers Safari, Chrome and Firefox.

... AAAAAAND watch as this gets fixed (I'm an idiot).

They may prefer that those web requests succeed and generate ad revenue, but that’s literally just a mere hope that the user will choose to allow that to happen.

Another example could be creating a little robot that floats above my shoulder and uses a computer vision system to place some construction paper in my field of vision dynamically to block the photons of light coming from ad pixels from reaching my eyeball.

I’ll just miniaturize that idea and place it into my phone either as a browser/app ad blocking program, or a root level web request blocker, etc.

Noped out of that and started getting a lot more critical when it comes to where I work with regard to ethics.

Ive just taken to replaying old JRPGs from my childhood, they're very compatible with that playstyle. Sure, a battle may take 2-4 days to complete, but it's much more entertaining.

I think this is a huge reason a game like Clash of Clans has done so well. I could never get into it, but my brother has been playing steadily for 4 years. He likely only spends 10-15/year, but the devs haven't annoyed him enough to quit. It's the worst sort of pay-to-avoid waiting game, which is why I couldn't stand it, but somehow still less exploitative than most of the competing mobile games.

I'm just so disappointed that I'm carrying around a far more powerful device than even a PC from my childhood, and some of the best gaming experiences are old console games.

Pretty simple reason. There's enough games that charge $0 up front that products asking for even $1 up front, get negligible downloads. Consequently, everybody has to charge $0 up front which immediately constrains you to advertising or mostly coercive business models. And this business model then ends up meshing into the game itself. It's not easy to have a game when you have this constraint of having to coerce the user into paying. It invariably lends itself to a sort of addiction + satiation pattern. And oddly what's most addictive is not necessarily the most fun; in many cases it's not really any fun at all.

Arguably it's the same reason console gaming is dying. Increasingly often now a days you're not buying a game for $60, you're buying a starter pack which is then filled out a la carte with DLC and various microtransactions. And once again this model directly impacts the game experience itself. It's stripped down to the bare bones to attempt to coerce purchase of the 'whole' game. But to further 'incentivize' people to buy the 'whole' game, the stripped out content is often not only necessary for a complete experience but also grossly imbalanced in the player's favor. It's a very myopic business model. Fortunately PC gaming is full of independent developers who've yet to grasp the sophisticated business strategy of MBAing yourself to death, and then blaming everything except your own actions for your deteriorating longterm results.

It boggles my mind that internet is not a revokable permission. Anywhere. I'd be happy to give X access to e.g. contacts, as long as it cannot upload that info, but until I ran a local VPN that hasn't been an option at all.

Why are (stock) mobile permissions so user-hostile?

(1) very "casual" players who don't spend that much time, and just want to roll, or to use money as a substitute for game time;

(2) very dedicated players who want to be at the top of some ranking.

from my own observations (2 pre-teen kids) they are infinently patient in sitting through ad after in order to keep playing.

I used to freely install any highly rated free-to-play educational game. Now I only install paid stuff, as those don't have these pathological ads.

The idea is that companies don't advertise at first to take advantage of the exponential growth and user retention when they start getting hot, and once they have market share they start to target profit rather than growth.

If you have existing other revenue sources, then you definitely have to factor that into the equation.

There are tools that come with using ads that allow for insights into better SEO though - e.g. Adwords keyword planner.

I've noticed more and more dark patterns to trick users into accidentally clicking on an ad. Showing an "x" in the top corner before the ad is allowed to be closed/skipped, for example. I'm not sure whether it's game developers or advertising agencies who are responsible but it's definitely frustrating.

I've never been on the other side, so I don't know how well that converts. But as a customer, I love the idea. "Euclidea" does this for example: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hil_hk.euc... They also have IAP for dark mode.

When I play Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the in-game experience is mostly ad-free, but there is a side quest on my quest log that appears to be a cross-promotion with some non-Nintendo game.

It's really frustrating that Nintendo is also doing this bullshit now, even if in moderation.

[1] Representative example: http://www.bearingnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/IMG_49...

Removing advertising doesn't have the same kind of immediate effect because the "audience" for it is people who haven't even heard of your app yet, and have no idea whether you're ad-free or not. (Here I'm discounting the possibility that there's a bunch of people waiting, hoping you eliminate ads so they can finally join.)

So the effects of removing ads probably have a much longer lag-time, governed to a significant degree by the usual mechanisms and rates of user acquisition.

Edit: you can also argue that the pre-existing users of an ad-free app have to some degree self-selected based on a hatred of ads, and that in a more general sample, the proportion for whom ads are a deal-breaker might be lower than 1 in 10.

Reasonable ads don't bother me.

I don't long for the day when I can install an ad blocker in my car's windshield so I don't see billboards or the names of car dealerships on the backs of the other cars.

Then again, when I drive someplace where there's too many billboards I find it annoying.

Funding a startup is an entirely different, and more complicated, topic than what I was addressing. However, I would mention that what you list there are not the only options.

For instance, I've started a number of successful companies without requiring more than a small amount (four figures) of seed money from my own savings, and bootstrapping from there, growing the companies from the revenues streams they create.

Admittedly, this isn't an approach that appeals to everyone or is feasible for all sorts of business. It requires a lot more work and causes initial growth to be very slow (but the payoff is no debt), but it works for me and demonstrates that in the real world there are numerous workable approaches.

> In that sense, it does require development effort.

Yes, but that's precisely the same amount of development effort required no matter what your revenue model is.

One of the things that I think got completely overlooked in the recent Cambridge Analytica (and related) scandal was the idea that microtargeting actually WORKED to some degree. (Granted, it's easy to be manipulative when you aren't accountable for anything, but still - the idea went from vague promise to actual implementation). We've paid attention to the CONSCIOUS effects of those ads, but not so much to the subconscious ones. Even the ads that I dismiss as ridiculous are affecting my impressions of certain groups, and when the ads are primarily there to increase division, dismissing them still has the same result.

Not all intrusions are unwelcome, but they remain intrusions.

At that point there shouldn't even be any point in user preference tracking any more. I even click these ads on occasion if they seem trustworthy (another important point - there is still too many 'You won a car!'/'Lose weight with one simple trick!'/'Doctors hate him!' kind of ads).