
Show HN: ContextCue – Create and host private, ethical ads - jroschen
https://contextcue.com
======
saintPirelli
I will 100% try this within the next weeks. I am ddg-ing every possible
variation of "ethical adsense alternative" without any useful leads for months
now.

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gcb0
You will have the same experience from this one :(

At least judging from their page where all they claim is ethically correct,
not effectiveness.

~~~
saintPirelli
I haven't had an experience. That's the point. Most of my projects remain
unmonetized for ethical reasons. The only thing I could find until now was
tize[0], which is a completely different approach to advertising that didn't
strike me as particularly circumspect.

0: [https://tize.io/](https://tize.io/)

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jaredwiener
Interesting idea and I am excited to try out.

That said, trying to actually get started (as a publisher) is a little
challenging. Theres no reference to the script that has to be loaded on the
dashboard -- I had to find it in your FAQ.

I cant remove a site that had a typo in the address -- when I tried to
overwrite it I now have two with the same name.

I'm also hitting a CORB issue on my dev site -- though to be honest I havent
spent too much time yet on it, but it is preventing me from deploying
ContextCue ads

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jroschen
Thanks for trying this out! We should probably warn potential users that this
is still in the early stages (we've been working on this for nearly a year and
figured we should get some feedback).

1\. Definitely a good idea (I'm glad you could find it in the FAQ though!)

2\. We definitely need to be able to edit sites, just didn't make it in time.

3\. We probably need to revisit how the development flow is here. I believe
the site needs to match the hostname + port. Ex. "localhost:3000"

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jaredwiener
Thanks -- I can email your support account, but #3 at first was CORS, then it
became CORB when I got the ports working
([https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/serv...](https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/services/network/cross_origin_read_blocking_explainer.md))

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bcsusnak
Editing of sites is now live–thanks for your patience :)

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thinkcontext
Good to see.

I always thought a way to have individually targeted ads but not give up
privacy is for the user to indicate what topics they are or are not interested
in. An agent could manage an anonymous profile somewhere that provided a
identifying token that the user's browser provides in place of a tracking
cookie.

~~~
JohnFen
EDIT: The website says these ads are not individually targeted. Hooray!!

I'm leaving the rest of this comment for context.

...

Wait, these are still individually targeted?

In that case, I need to learn a lot more about them before I can be OK with
them -- specifically, how it's possible to individually target ads without
collecting data about users.

> that provided a identifying token

If that's what it's doing, then I'm out.

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jroschen
Nope, we don't do any individual targeting. We base the ads on the website
that that the ads are on. We believe that targeting based on the website will
still provide relevant ads because the user is already interested in the
content of the website. In fact, we don't store any cookies on the user's
device.

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cavneb
:clap: This looks great! I'm very excited that ethical ads are becoming more
and more common. It looks like this recently launched.

I am the founder of [https://CodeFund.app](https://CodeFund.app). We are an
ethical ad platform that is focused on funding open bloggers, builders and
maintainers. We also do not do any tracking of users nor allow 3rd party
scripts.

I'd love to connect sometime and see if there's anything we can do to help. We
also have a small group that meets each month to discuss ethical ads.

~~~
TicklishTiger
Javascript again... That means putting the balls of my visitors in your hands.
I would not do that. It does not feel ethical to me.

I wish there was an ad network that works with static html elements.

~~~
cavneb
We provide a server-to-server API service that allows HTML rendering sans
JavaScript. However, the unethical part of using scripts is not in the fact
that scripts are used, but what those scripts include. Yes, there must be
trust between parties. This is why we are 100% open source. This is why we
ensure that no 3rd party scripts are included alongside ours.

I’m sorry, but I do not believe you can get more ethical than that. I stand
behind our mission and our reputation.

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Nextgrid
How are the ads served? Are you using Javascript or simple images? If it's the
former I'm afraid there's no way to trust you (as the JS can change at any
time and become malicious).

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jroschen
We use JavaScript to fetch the ads, but the ads themselves are static images.
We went with static images for a few reasons. 1) Speed. There's no need to
download a bunch of JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. 2) Security. No JS in the ads
means no bitcoin mining on the ad network [1] 3) Privacy. Since we host all of
the images/ads, advertisers can't inject their own tracking code.

If the JavaScript to load the ads is a non-blocker, send me an email and we
can discuss other options.

[1]: [https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2018/01/now-e...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2018/01/now-even-youtube-serves-ads-with-cpu-draining-
cryptocurrency-miners/)

~~~
JohnFen
I love what you're doing here, by the way. This sounds like how advertising
should be done.

> We use JavaScript to fetch the ads

Sadly, since I keep JS disabled in order to help protect myself from all the
bad advertisers out there, depending on JS means that your system would be
filtered out too. Collateral damage and all that.

Perhaps you do this, but if not, then you might consider using a noscript
element to alert people like me that they might want to allow your script to
run.

~~~
jroschen
That's a good point. We'll add this to our long list of things to do :)

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morganf
This looks awesome! Do you have any info about publisher payout rates, or how
the revenue earned (like RPM) compares to, say, Adsense? I'm psyched to try it
:)

~~~
cpitzo
Yes, publishers get payed 70% of our revenue compared to Adsense's 68%.

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qwertox
Who is this company which wants to help me deal with my customer's "trust
issues"?

I really am interested in this advertising model because really hate what
these trackers have turned the internet into, but when I can't even find a
street address and phone number on their web page then that's a no-go for me.

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JohnFen
If their claims about not collecting data from users is correct, then this is
something I could get behind.

~~~
bcsusnak
You can read more about our privacy policy here:
[https://support.contextcue.com/support/privacy-
policy](https://support.contextcue.com/support/privacy-policy) Feel free to
reach out if you need any help getting started!

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TicklishTiger
It looks strangely anonymous.

Who runs ContextCue?

Where is it located?

~~~
cpitzo
Hey there, I'm Corey one of the developers at ContextCue. Thanks for the
feedback! ContextCue is run by me and 3 other developers out of Indianapolis,
IN.

~~~
TicklishTiger
Hmm...

If me and 3 designers would start a new project, we would use our original HN
accounts to communicate. Put our names on the project and link to our other
projects and social media presences.

And we would for sure announce it on our Twitter accounts.

None of this happened here. Why?

~~~
q3k
... maybe they didn't have HN accounts before?

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lapnitnelav
How do I know I can trust the numbers you give me as an Advertiser?

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jroschen
This is a great question, and a very important one.

The number of users referred to your site or product (based on traffic logs)
should be similar to the number of ad clicks that you're charged for. This
won't be 100% accurate due to some browsers removing the referral header, but
there should be a strong correlation between the two.

I think ultimately though, it's about trust. I don't believe it's in our long
term interest to attempt to defraud our partners as a company. We do well when
our partners do well, and providing fake numbers will cause our partners to
have a lower ROI, making them less likely to stay on our network.

It will take time for us to establish trust, but I believe that we won't be
successfully unless both advertisers and publishers trust us.

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nickphx
[https://contextcue.com/pricing](https://contextcue.com/pricing) is broken. :|

~~~
cpitzo
Sorry about this guys, we were so eager to get this out there! We used a
template to generate the website and forgot to remove extraneous links. Will
be fixed soon. In the meantime, there's no fees for signing up or hosting ads!

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duiker101
Looks very interesting, I have a few websites where I could maybe slap some of
this just to try.

~~~
bcsusnak
Sweet! Let us know if you need any help getting started on the publisher end
of things: [https://support.contextcue.com/support/publishers/start-
host...](https://support.contextcue.com/support/publishers/start-host-ads)

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reilly3000
Could this work with a (big evil) prebid stack? Or as a static tag in DFP?

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reilly3000
I know that defeats the whole point, but big publishers can’t just make a leap
blindly.

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jcsnv
Do you provide a list of publishers or share estimated volume numbers?

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cpitzo
We just launched today, and are currently recruiting publishers!

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penagwin
Just a heads up, you might want to look over your site. You've got a
unfinished tag in the bottom "user data/p>", and several links don't work such
as [https://contextcue.com/pricing](https://contextcue.com/pricing) (After
clicking the "start now" button it's linked to)

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jroschen
This should be resolved now. Thank you!

~~~
qwertox
I'm still getting an AccessDenied. Also for
[https://www.contextcue.com/contact](https://www.contextcue.com/contact)

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jroschen
Sorry, I should have been more clear. Those links were to old pages that don't
exist anymore, so I removed them from the original page.

We have moved most of our support/information resources over to
[https://support.contextcue.com](https://support.contextcue.com) for now,
since we do have limited resources and we would rather be spending time
building the network than building contact forms :)

