alt Hacker NewsI do not mind advertising on websites. What I mind is bad ads, ads with malware, way too many ads, and ads that track me. This is where Google gets the whole ad thing wrong. They are focusing on the wrong problem.
If you think about the economics of it, a very popular website could survive on only on ad because the advertiser would pay a premium to be seen on the website.
So that is my other argument, bad websites need a whole bunch of ads to be profitable. So better websites would help as well.
Replies
tartoran • today at 4:03 PM
The thing is that they don’t care about what you and I mind or don’t mind. The only goal is to maximize profit to shareholders. Our only option is to use ad blockers for now.
The problem with that logic is that if one advertiser is willing to pay a premium for placement on the site, more advertisers likely are. Which creates a perverse incentive to inject exactly as many ads as most users will put up with, which shifts the users' perspective on the amount of acceptable ads, which encourages more ad placement. Rinse, repeat until you reach the current state of affairs.