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Comment by jmathes | Hacker News Reader

We try to show ads that people will click on AND THEN buy/use whatever's on the other end. This maximizes advertiser value, long-term Google profit, and user experience all at once.

So we're trying to show you ads that you want to see, rather than ads that try to provoke you into clicking (like Buzzfeed articles)

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I have a better idea. How about turning the tables and making a service that collects info about advertisers instead of users? Then let users browse your database of companies (and/or the products they're pushing) and actively search for what they went. Filters could be ecological stance of the company, color or style of the product, user reviews, published "expert" reviews, etc. Turn all that data over to the user and let them be in control of what ads they see. Let them spy on advertisers instead of vice-versa. It would also be way cheaper since you don't have to maintain this vast data-collecting network.

You can only search for what you already know about (and want to search for).

I already find tons of stuff I didn't know on Google! More, seriously, advertisers already "target" ads based on such loose parameters as age or location. Let me set my age as a filter if I want to, then you can show me those ads. Pinterest is starting to monetize people browsing semi-aimlessly through pages of tangentially-related items. This could just be a variation on that.

Actually, with Google, advertisers don't target anyone, really. They have a few knobs to tweak, but mostly it's Google that does the targeting, based on much smarter (but not yet smart enough) algorithms.

So, you must correlate advertisers.

But it's hard to design something that can not be gamed. As a user, there's no reason to adopt the more obvious possible solutions, because I wouldn't be able to verify that I'm not being tracked. (What means that I'd adblock it like any other source, and thus there's no reason for the site owner to use this one service.)

Are you implying ads is the only way to know about products and ideas ?

very true-did not think about this-good point

This would work if it did not interrupt G's current revenue stream- not sure how the rates would be set for the advertisers- especially smaller ones who need high target niched key words.

> So we're trying to show you ads that you want to see, rather than ads that try to provoke you into clicking (like Buzzfeed articles)

Huh, really? Then why aren't you actually doing that?

http://imgur.com/a/KGsQh

> trying

No, I don't think so. It will be 2016 and we'll still be having this conversation. Money.

Maximized user experience would be no ads.

Not if price is factored in to the user experience. Plus the small amount of value of discovering something you wouldn't have heard of otherwise.

I'm not at all convinced that's true. I pay for Ars Technica because I want them to have money but I don't want to see ads.

Edit: looks like Google might be thinking the same https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor

That would be awesome. Google's one of the few players with enough clout and reach to make a micropayments system that might actually work, or at least get enough users to see how it would work in practice and work through some of the theoretical hurdles.

The only ads I ever notice are for things I already have. Everybody pro advertising tells me how good ads are for me. I started using the Internet in 1991 and have yet to see how advertising is good for me. Here are some ways in which ads are bad for me:

- Increased operator bandwidth charges (REAL money)

- Loss of privacy

- Page download performance

- Garish web sites

- Lost time cleaning up after sites

- Being shown ads for products I already own

I would happily give more money than I pay my operator to content providers in exchange for no ads.

There's always the freebie users for every media form - piracy, adblock, etc. As a supplier of such things I can only really hope you'll spread the word to those that do fill my pockets with delicious fractions of a penny and not let it bug me

The rest? Not really my problem - I wouldn't redesign a website to save you time when you're (objectively speaking) worth nothing to me - that's bad business

On paying more - You might (might, I don't believe you) but you'd be in the minority. Having a system that allows you to paypal the site a penny every few months would be infeasible anyway

I would be ecstatic if I could pay $8/mo. for YouTube with no ads. Instead I use AdBlock and no one gets anything.

Agreed, I would pay for an ad free version of the internet. Unfortunately, as I have to negotiate everywhere and many advertisers act badly or are misleading, I choose the scorched earth option as well.

No ads would mean no Google, which (given Google's market share) I respectfully claim would not be maximized user experience.

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