Hacker News Reader

Comment by samd | Hacker News Reader

Except that as the metrics and tracking gets better so does the advertising.

The ability of tracking to get better is almost unbounded; the ability of advertising to get better is probably not. Given the way things are distributed, there is a segment of the population who will simply never respond to advertising the way advertisers would like and sooner or later they're going to be able to notice us.

And while I will (and did) concede that I am not magically unaffected, as I am human, I will point out that my actual economic decisions tend to come from non-advertising sources. When I have actual money to spend I look for reviews and the experiences of others. "But reviews are just ads too!" Not all of them, and I have gotten pretty good at finding the ones that aren't. I'm even pretty decent at reading through the reviews that are mostly ads. It's not that I'm unaffected, it's that I take paths they don't want me to take and I don't plan on stopping.

I used to be like you, never clicking on ads.

Then the ads got good enough that they started to advertise something that I might actually want.

The same thing will happen to you at some point - either it will be groceries that you can get cheaper at some other store or some product there really isn't a replacement for (say the Roomba, which as far as I recall is the only autonomous vacuum cleaner) which will save you a lot of time and/or effort.

The ability of tracking to get better is almost unbounded; the ability of advertising to get better is probably not

Advertising will stop getting better once the only ads you ever see are for things you need right at the moment, in the exact place you need them.

my actual economic decisions tend to come from non-advertising sources. When I have actual money to spend I look for reviews and the experiences of others. "But reviews are just ads too!" Not all of them, and I have gotten pretty good at finding the ones that aren't. I'm even pretty decent at reading through the reviews that are mostly ads.

The perfect advertising system will be something you trust enough to substitute for reading reviews. You might think it's unlikely, but there are numerous precedents for it (eg, financial advisers advising you on things they are paid to sell).

It's true that there is an inherent conflict of interest between an advertising system and giving accurate advice. However, in the type of system envision the future value of your transactions though the system will be enough to provide a counter-weight to outright bad advice.

Yes, the relevance should get much better. For instance, I did once click on a StackOverflow ad, because the product sounded interesting.

The other annoyance about advertising is the interruption, which I'm not sure will go away.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com