

Ask HN: What's wrong with current advertising system? - anujkk

In "Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund" by Paul Graham (http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html) one of the idea is 12. Fix advertising.<p>According to you what's wrong with current advertising systems on web and mobile? What are the major pains for both advertisers and uses? Do you know of any startups with innovative advertisement model?
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ggchappell
Ages ago, when the world was young (say 1994 or 95), I thought ads on web
pages were a fantastic idea. Unobtrusive, able to be taylored to the viewer, a
one-click gateway to all kinds of information, and a nice way to get free
content paid for. But, alas, after I clicked on a few ads, I was sadly
disillusioned. Haven't clicked on ads in years.

But now, you post your questions. So I put on my experimenter hat and try
again. For science.

Let's click on some ads.

Ad #1. A sidebar ad asking if I know who uses oil & natural gas. I click. I
get a page listing lots of uses of oil & natural gas. Why do these people want
me to know this? How does it benefit me? How does it benefit them? I have no
idea.

On to the next ad.

Ad #2. Forex trading. Click. A page full of words like "spread" and "pips". No
idea what it's talking about.

Continuing.

Ad #3. Schick Hydro. I can win prizes. Wow. Click. The Facebook page for
Schick Hydro, whatever that is. If this is the same Schick we all know & love,
then it's probably a new kind of razor, I guess. I'm supposed to "like" to
continue. They want me to upvote them before I even know what's going on?? I'm
seriously turned off. But, as a die-hard experimenter, I bravely forge ahead
(for science!). Click "like". Get a box saying I need to sign up for Facebook.
No thanks.

Sick of ads, I end the experiment.

Folks, I've been on the web since 1993. There must be an enormous amount of
information about me in various databases out there: my habits, my
preferences, what I like to read, what I like to buy. And this is the best the
ad industry can do?

Consider: someone _worked_ on these ads. Someone _paid_ for them. But in none
of the three cases did the ad offer me anything I wanted. Nor, I think, did
the advertisers get what they wanted. Complete waste of their time and money.
I know how oil is used. A page that assumes I understand "pips"? That does no
one any good. And making me jump through hoops before -- presumably -- telling
me about a razor, is not pushing me toward buying it.

In short: these ads all appear to come with a significant dose of stupidity --
or well intentioned incompetence at least.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it:

(1) Build an ad platform that isn't stupid. (I'm not saying I know how, or
that it's easy, but my experiences above show some things _not_ to do.)

(2) Work very hard to keep the stupidity out. Advertisers seem to _want_ to be
stupid and waste users' time. Don't let them; not on your platform.

(3) Brand the platform in a recognizable way. I think the web will always be
full of worthless ads. Your platform needs to be easily recognizable and
develop a reputation as something worth clicking on[1]. Otherwise, you'll just
get lumped in with all the stupidity out there.

\--------

[1] That is, if clicking is what you want users to do. There are certainly
other ways of advertising on the web. But I should warn you that, if you
choose to put your efforts into unskippable ads before videos, then I will
most likely end up detesting you.

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anujkk
Ad system has four stakeholders - Advertiser, Ad Platform, Content Publisher,
and Content Consumer. I guess we need an advertisement model that not only
provide benefits to all four but also engages all four stakeholders to
determine the quality, ranking and relevance of ad. Automated Context Matching
Algorithms are just a first step in this regard. They match the ad with
content but they don't take into account the preferences, beliefs, opinion of
visitor and content provider. We must allow content publisher and visitor to
have an equal say in which ads get served and which not. Atleast they should
be allowed to express whether they found ads relevant or not.

How about vote up/down system for ads? Will it help in determining the
relevance of ads according to visitor? Will user even care to click on it?

Another thing that bothers me is how a particular user can be identified and
his behavior/preference can be recorded without invading his privacy? How
existing ad platforms handle this?

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salman89
Advertisements particularly for local businesses are limited in their ability
to track conversion. If a user sees an ad on Yelp, for example, there is no
good way of telling if the ad converted or not - that is that the user saw the
ad and made their way to the business due to the ad.

Groupon has begun to close this loop - a business automatically knows that a
customer came in due to Groupon. There needs to be a more sustainable way for
a business to gain traffic though, like Adsense etc offers for online
businesses.

I would suspect Google Offers + Google Wallet will be an extremely effective
solution. Companies will be able to advertise AND track how much customers
spent. I would say those metrics are extremely important in order to optimize
the ad experience.

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neilich
Ad platforms capture behaviour but rarely capture quantifiable opinions.
Advertising based in this premise is like chasing a shadow.

You may assume that based on a detailed behavioural profile a user should
click on my ad and buy my product.

Capturing the opinion of a user (or users in aggregate) in a way that can be
relayed to an ad platform is more likely to result in higher relevancy
advertising, as you can move closer to the users beliefs about themselves,
which governs their behaviour.

So in summary, behaviour is a poor reflection of beliefs. Opinions are a
better reflection of beliefs.

Capturing opinions and matching these with advertisers is a better matching
system.

This is the direction I am working in anyway.

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creativeone
The web hasn't taken enough advantage of the technological advantages it has
over TV. So what I'm thinking is more in-depth on page commercials with the
ability to checkout (even one click checkout). The call to buy should be more
aggressive overall.

~~~
anujkk
This is one nice concept. We need to think more about it. Isn't it something
like "Related Products", "related articles", "Products you might be interested
in" type thing?...where user can just simply choose to buy and checkout from
ad itself?

~~~
notahacker
Integrating a context-sensitive ad network with a widely-used payment platform
that keeps users signed-in-by-default could be very powerful...

~~~
creativeone
Can't amazon or iTunes integrate their one click buy systems?

Can you sell products using the amazon one click service on an iframe?

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Jarred
Advertising is bad because it doesn't positively contribute to the user
experience. Advertisements should inform you of something that you either A)
Actually want to buy or B) Want to know about. They don't do that.

~~~
anujkk
So, basically it comes down to knowing what user wants to buy/wants to know.
Despite the concept of contextual ads by services such as Google Ads why isn't
it happening?

~~~
Jarred
Most ads are put in a disruptive place, or put out of site. Advertising should
be put in a disruptive place, but not in a disruptive way.

Google's ads are kind of put to the side and there because they need to make
money, not because it actually makes Google's products better, and the same
thing goes for Facebook. They just do a good job of putting it in a place that
doesn't hurt the user experience that much, while being worthwhile.

An example of good advertising is in Grooveshark. I legitimately think that
the themed search looks good, and I don't get annoyed by it.

