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Comment by laurent123456 | Hacker News Reader

That would make sense. Ads are designed to be visible and clicked on, but on the other hand you can't go too far without annoying the users. It's a fine line to walk so it's not surprising you'd lose some users as a result. The unblockable ads they had on Facebook at some point is what finally pushed me to close my account.

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but on the other hand you can't go too far without annoying the users

Back in the ancient history before Google and search engines, a web site I built was submitted for inclusion in DMOZ. At the time, all web sites were hand-approved by an editor who also wrote a description of the site.

The site was included, but the description noted that it was "covered with too many ads" or something similar.

The site had one 468x60 static image banner ad, and one 236x60 static image ad.

My how our standards have changed.

I believe Adsense policies allow only up to 3 ad units in a page. And after all ads below the fold do not perform that well. I see a lot of ads in long form content/news websites though, which do not receive a lot of pageviews. It's a tradeoff for most

That can't be right, we have Google AdManager deliver to more than 3 slots.

Right, the limitation was lifted in 2016

Maybe your standards have changed, but that's still too much for me. I don't mind guest posts or (mentioned) sponsored content, however I will always use ublock to remove ads.

It would be different if the typical ad experience were a related, useful product. But it's always unrelated hot garbage - distracting and annoying at any pixel size.

that's still too much for me

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.

I would absolutely love an ad blocker for my car's windshield (or, since I don't drive much, some sort of AR glasses that block ads). I find advertising unbearable. People's tolerance levels are different.

I wouldn't say that your old site, with its two image ads, was "covered with too many ads", but I would still expect an ad blocker to remove them.

Everyone's different. I'd probably pay as much for that windshield ad blocker as I did for my car.

Billboards are banned in Maine

It's beautiful

Most web ads are designed to be clicked, but I firmly believe this is the wrong model. Ads should be designed not to get you to click/buy now. Ads should be designed to make you think about buying it latter. You see/hear a car ad, and next time you drive you think wouldn't it be nice if my car did X.

I think they do partly still retain that effect, but internet advertisers don't rate it so highly because it's hard to measure the effectiveness of.

You can't measure it for any other ad at all yet TV, radio, newspaper, billboards, and other ads are all common because they work.

Also, at the risk of stating the obvious: clicking on the ads takes you off the site in question. Some of the people who would have been clicking around your site more are now at someone else's site.

Click rates (CTR) are usually quite low, if you get 2% you can open the champagne. Or at the very least, keep it at the ready and look at your conversion rate.

What? Ads open in new tabs.

Wouldn't it depend on the default behaviour of your browser?

Not if they use target=_blank or use JS to open a new window/tab

The focus changes to that tab, typically. It’s not a big difference hitting a back button or closing a tab/window, is it? Some users are confused by this, being less familiar with the browser interface, and the effect of interruption is the same.

I guess that's a possibility, I'm not good at thinking like non-technical users.

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