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Comment by teamspirit | Hacker News Reader

I think the HN community, and most consumers, tend to look at things from only one angle. Imagine you start work at some small shop that manufacturers widgets for consumers. What would you do when you have to advertise your product? You'd have to turn to Google is a similar company. Are there any real alternatives? (I am asking because I really want to know)

I say this because I am in this position now. I have to figure out how to advertise my company's products and am torn on how to go about it.

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The alternative is to spend hundreds of hours finding widget-related websites, trying to contact the owner(s), negotiating what ad spots are available, what ads are acceptable to run, and what pricing/terms will work for both parties, then managing that relationship over time to ensure ads are actually being displayed, being paid on time, contracts renewed, etc.

It's definitely possible, but you're just doing everything manually that ad networks do for you. Whether that is worth your time (or worth it to hire someone to do this kind of thing for you...) is up to you.

AdSense used to do this for you before it tracked individuals...

You can still target adverts at content on a site, and have an aggregate system to make that easy and granular.

There could even be services which collected lists of websites and categorised them, and the rough demographics of their audience, and retailed slots.

Individual tracking is unnecessary financially, you can make as much revenue without. See example of the New York Time dropping tacking for EU readers for GDPR reasons, and continuing to grow ad revenue: https://digiday.com/media/gumgumtest-new-york-times-gdpr-cut...

Native ads like those can certainly be automated to a great degree, and at the very least use a self-serve interface. "Advertise with us!" links in the sidebar or footer or wherever.

At which point you'll very likely learn that a lot of widget-related websites use ad networks because it saves the 2-3 administrators involved a lot of time and energy.

It's definitely possible for small websites to do ads directly, but it's a lot of work. Often more than is justified for a few thousand dollars a year in ads.

> It's definitely possible, but you're just doing everything manually that ad networks do for you.

You've just explained how contexual ads used to work, which doesn't need all the invasive surveillance modern internet users have to put up with.

Yeah and there's a reason the tech moved on from that. It was a LOT of work on both ends to negotiate and monitor the relationship. Instead now we have a central broker who both parties work with that has set up a computerized way to manage these relationships.

Personally I think the solution that lets us keep ad supported content and easy ad placement would be for Google to force companies to provide bots they could run internally so the profiles never leave Google's datacenters and strictly monitor the output so the buyer bots don't leak information back to the companies. I think that would do a lot to alleviate the privacy concerns and breaches and is honestly how I though ads were being sold for the longest time instead of profiles being sent to companies buying placement.

> Yeah and there's a reason the tech moved on from that. It was a LOT of work on both ends to negotiate and monitor the relationship. Instead now we have a central broker who both parties work with that has set up a computerized way to manage these relationships.

I'm not disputing the necessity of a central broker. Contexual ads based on search keywords or website content used to work fine without surveillance, and can perfectly be automated by a central broker.

Years ago, I didn't have much issue with online ads (with the exception of popups and spam emails). Nowadays, I'm forced to block them altogether to avoid the extensive surveillance by adtech. It doesn't have to be this way if adtech respected user privacy.

> I think the solution that lets us keep ad supported content and easy ad placement would be for Google to force companies to provide bots they could run internally so the profiles never leave Google's datacenters

Honestly, that wouldn't do much to alleviate my privacy concerns, as it does nothing to protect my privacy from the likes of Google (or other ad-slingers).

Just so long as I don't have to have relationships with dozens or hundreds of hosts.

You advertise on a website for widget fans. That's how it successfully worked for a long time.

The whole targeted advertising is to allow adtech companies to identify users of the "widget fans" site, and then advertise to the same people, but on another, cheaper site.

That's how it successfully worked for a long time... ... until google search and facebook groups killed thematic sites and communities.

I'd love seeing this turned around though.

Targeting existed long before computers. The difference today is the massive amount of very personal data being collected on people without their knowledge or consent and the risks it puts on them.

Imagine if you went back to say the 1920s, and you told a marketing director that you could install a one-way mirror room and back door into every household in the country, and staff them all with analysts who will secretly observe people in their homes 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. People would think you were crazy. In fact, I bet most people today would be completely against that idea, yet wouldn't realize that what companies like Google and Amazon are doing today is effectively the same thing, except _much more_ invasive.

For actual, physical widgets the traditional advertising markets still work: trade magazines and trade shows. Contacting vendors who specialize in your market of interest and running promotions with them also works.

However, it's all a whole lot more expensive and effortful than running some Google ads.

And there lies the problem. The cost in both time and money is much higher. I'd love to run TV and magazine ads on all the shows and in all the magazines my customers are reading, it just costs a whole lot more. Way more than we have just starting out.

I think the point that's missing from the discussion is that adtech companies should be targeting solely on placement (i.e. what ads should show up on a particular website based on the content of the website), and not select individuals (i.e. based on user interests regardless of the place on the web an ad is shown), when faced with this kind of legislation.

This is exactly how marketing worked before and how people can go about it now, as you describe, through traditional advertising markets.

I'd personally prefer it that way in general, but legislation is necessary for them to optimize on those restrictions.

You find your audience and you target them directly.

Yes, thank you. I logged in just so that I could upvote this. Why isn't this more accepted of an answer? Why is spam everyone's goto?

I've started a few successful businesses, and all I can say is what's worked for me.

I've never needed to turn to Google or other ad-slingers. Instead, I've done things the old-fashioned way, by going to where my potential customers tend to congregate and engaging with them (this kickstarts word-of-mouth, which is still the best advertising you can get), hosting my own online forums for customers, going to trade shows as appropriate, and supplementing everything with a few direct-placement ads in carefully selected media.

Yes, it's more work -- what Google et. al. are actually selling you is convenience, after all. But the rewards in terms of of ROI as well as fostering a real community, complete with evangelists, are more than worth it to me.

Of course, ymmv.

Online shop only, or brick and mortar?

Trade "print" media with an online presence. Online media that doesn't sell all their pixels to Google? Radio, depending on your audience and required reach? Forums specific to your audience that don't sell all their pixels to Google. Podcasts. Submarine articles in the trades? Open source ad networks that don't embed insanity or real-time bidding?

Mostly, I would try to target your initial audience as precisely as possible where they live, rather than with a wide net. Perhaps a Google search returns results for top websites dealing with your product - if they are not vendors, then perhaps you advertise on that site?

Disclaimer: I'm not a growth hacker, but I've thought about these things and run a couple of poor Facebook campaigns for a brick and mortar business.

Look for genuine, verified success marketing stories for people in similar positions and follow similar strategies.

I've personally never heard of a success story for what you describe that involves paying google. But maybe they exist and they're just keeping it quiet?

Surely Google has an obvious competitor, right? Because otherwise it would clearly be a monopoly.

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