
Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users - ascertain
https://twitter.com/gwern/status/1103855323100708866
======
umvi
I believe it. There are a lot of games that I downloaded from the app store
and really liked initially. However, I noticed a pattern. At first, ads seemed
to be optional (i.e double your gems by watching an ad!) However, after about
10 minutes of playing, I'd see an ad. No big deal. But then it got more and
more aggressive. Pretty soon there was an ad after every single level, (plus
the bonus ad if you want to double gems). It got to the point I was spending
about 50% of the time actually playing games, 50% of the time watching ads
(the levels could be beaten in 30 seconds or so).

At that point I uninstall even though the game is fun. It's not like I can
just pay a 1 time fee to get rid of all ads with the type of game I am talking
about. I have paid to get rid of ads for a few bucks in the past, but these
games will _still_ pester you with in game pop-ups for "diamond memberships"
(outrageous recurring subscription fee for nominal and significant bonuses)
and "best value" gem packs (also sold at outrageous prices going up to $100
for the biggest pack).

~~~
leggomylibro
One of my favorite mobile games (an old Popcap title) used to have a version
which cost ~$10 and was just a no-frills port of the original.

No ads, no permissions beyond file storage, no issues working offline.

But you can't buy that anymore; now the only option is a 'free' version which
has ads that you cannot pay away.

Fortunately I can still download the old version from the app store; now it is
called 'zzSUNSET <game>' in the list of purchased apps. But I'm amazed at how
consumer-hostile game companies have gotten; I guess the ads must pay out the
wazoo. It makes me really hesitant to try any new mobile game, especially
since I don't really have much time for them these days. I'm not going to
spend 30 seconds out of every 1-5 minute diversion watching an ad, that's
ridiculous.

~~~
1000units
I think my conscience would be more satisfied working in porn than mobile
gaming.

~~~
pawelmurias
I worked in mobile gaming and would never work in porn (unless it was like
filtering or prosecuting creators). A coworker hard a good point to say what
the people who are addicted to mobile games would be addicted/spend money on
if they didn't play. It's possible they would be buying meth/booze with it.

~~~
YaxelPerez
We don't hand children meth so that they behave, but we do with mobile games.

~~~
1000units
In fact this is almost exactly what happens with many children being
prescribed Adderall.

~~~
crankylinuxuser
To counteract your bullshit...

If someone has ADHD, adderall slows them down so they can concentrate. It
reduces mind-fog from too much stimulus.

If you don't have ADHD, its like a super cup of coffee, but in pill form.

My doctor was trying to figure out my cognitive issue. And for a time, I was
on adderall. It was pretty easy to tell that I didn't have ADHD, since I
started getting upper'd. Felt nice, don't get me wrong. But I'll stick with
coffee.

~~~
zkomp
More interesting question: How do we know regular drug users are not self
medicating.

~~~
TomMarius
They in fact frequently are. There are huge communities dedicated to that on
the Internet. BTW a lot of the previously illegal and unthinkable treatments
these people used have just been legalised in the EU, using MDMA etc.

~~~
JohnFen
Indeed. And although I wouldn't recommend the self-medicating route, it's hard
to deny that there are some people who get much better results doing that than
getting "official" medical help.

~~~
TomMarius
Professionals can be found even though its illegal. I wouldn't recommend self-
medication either.

------
gwern
More detailed discussion of the 4 other datapoints:
[https://www.gwern.net/Ads#replication](https://www.gwern.net/Ads#replication)
(I added McCoy et al 2007 just last night, so now it's 5 total: me, Pandora,
Mozilla, LinkedIn, and McCoy et al 2007.)

~~~
nabla9
It's often said that less than 10% of users click ads. If there would be way
to identify those users with reasonably low false positive rate, you could
annoy only small fraction of users and keep more of them (if you want to have
them).

~~~
kelnos
Yeah, that's the thing. I will never (except possibly accidentally) click on
an ad. Every single time I see an add in my Instagram feed, I mark it as "not
relevant". And yet these days I see ads every 5-7 photos in my feed. I use
Instagram _much_ less now because of the quantity of ads, and Instagram should
clearly be able to tell that I don't interact with ads at all except to get
rid of them. I've probably reduced my use of the app by 75% or so (both
viewing and posting), solely because of ads.

~~~
Wordball
What are you trying to accomplish by clicking "not relevant"?

~~~
kelnos
My (naive) hope was that after a while they'd give up.

Is there a better response, you think, that would possibly decrease the number
of ads I see?

~~~
marcosdumay
The "not relevant" button certainly means "please, show me other kinds of
ads".

~~~
kelnos
I've tried "I see this too often" for a period of time without any better
results.

And in the end, I don't really see much variety in the ads I see. Decent
variety in account/company, but very little variety in product/market type.

------
eridius
If a game doesn't offer any way to pay to remove ads, it's an instant
uninstall for me.

If a game does offer it, but doesn't let me play for long enough to decide
whether I like the game before it starts serving up unskippable ads, I
uninstall it.

Most games simply don't give enough time to decide if you even like it before
they start throwing ads at you. That seems like a terrible policy in general,
regardless of whether you have a "skip ads" IAP or not. You want to wait until
the player has made up their mind about your game before you start degrading
the experience. This seems like such an obvious thing I don't know why so many
games are so bad about it.

~~~
luxuryballs
I’m about to release a fun little ambient physics based puzzle game on iOS and
have been debating this. To me ads are a stain on what I consider my art. But
at the same time I want to monetize and wonder if people will skip over a
$1.99 download. What do you think? Ads with the option to unlock? Seems gross
though... maybe free with paid version that includes level editor or
additional level packs?

~~~
shittyadmin
I think the classic "shareware demo" model is a good one, have some free stuff
to introduce the user and make sure they like the game, then give them a wall
and tell them to pay if they want more. It's fair to them and fair to you. It
doesn't violate their privacy, it makes sure your customers actually want to
be your customers (reducing chargebacks because the game has an issue for
someone) and you get paid without polluting your art.

~~~
viraptor
I actually like a "skill shareware" (my made up name) model in puzzle games.
When you have lots of levels, you split them into groups. You can only advance
to the next one if you solve all previous ones perfectly, (3 stars / 100% /
some other metric) or pay for full unlock.

I've never been on the other side, so I don't know how well that converts. But
as a customer, I love the idea. "Euclidea" does this for example:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hil_hk.euc...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hil_hk.euclidea)
They also have IAP for dark mode.

~~~
shittyadmin
As a customer it may be great, but this isn't great for the developer in my
opinion. Perhaps it's just the way I play, but I will already refuse to
advance until I've got a level fully beaten, so I'll basically keep at that
until I get bored of your game or beat it fully and you'll never see a penny
from me.

~~~
shittyadmin
To add to this a bit, it also provides a motivation for developers to make
games that are too hard and will force users to pay if they want to enjoy
them, but people who play like I do will get bored quickly.

This is why I loved the old Peggle games from PopCap but hate the new mobile
one.

------
sesteel
I feel like advertisements ruin everything. I remember driving onto the my air
force base and being thankful that all the visual pollution was gone. It was
like stepping into another world. Now the internet has ads everywhere. I find
the attention economy awful and dystopian. I'd gladly pay to never see another
ad.

~~~
anitil
I remember reading about someone that built a system where you put $X in to a
pot every month, and every page you visit gets $X/pages_visited. This allows
you to directly monetize creators without ads.

I cannot for the life of me find it - does it ring any bells with anyone?

~~~
Cyphase
Ironically(?), Google Contributor is a thing:

[https://contributor.google.com/](https://contributor.google.com/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor)

------
jrockway
Is it ads, or slowly-loading ad-sized content?

One thing I've noticed is that ads seem like an afterthought in most apps. The
New York Times iPhone app displays ads, even if you pay for it, and
occasionally the entire app will freeze while it's waiting for ads to
download. (The app works offline, but if it gets a hint of network
availability, it will stop the world to try and download them. Usually as your
train is leaving the subway station with a 4G signal entering the tunnel
without.) The Wall Street Journal app is similar, except instead of freezing
completely, scrolling starts to run at about 5Hz instead of the expected 60Hz.
Obviously, the developers of the apps develop it with ads turned off (or with
sample images loaded from servers they control with no DNS lookup latency,
etc.), so probably aren't even aware of these issues. That is going to reduce
subscriptions, even if the images weren't ads.

------
OscarTheGrinch
I tried to get my young son into original Angry Birds, thinking it would be a
nice simple physics lesson for him, but it has become absolutely
unnavigateable for his age level. So many pop up special offers for magic
birds to solve the level, cut scene product placement, and other in game
purchases, that I can't trust those games to not get him lost in a maze of
advertising bullcrap.

I paid for this game, a kids game I thought, why can't I just enjoy it with my
son?

~~~
avgDev
Basically, everyone that makes games now knows how insanely lucrative it can
be. I am not sure if this is caused by sales/marketing/executives but games
now can generate massive cash.

Many games now offer micro-transactions, casino style loot crates where you
can open them by buying keys to have a chance of wining something. Even I
bought a few things in games. However, many others young or old drop massive
amount of cash on some games. My uncle drops thousands of dollar in world of
tanks(or whatever it is called) to have the best tank. Plus, those game can
create gambling addiction in kids, I think it is quite sad.

~~~
OscarTheGrinch
Oh man, sorry for your uncle blowing that amount!

Speaking of training kids to gamble, I'm gonna thread jack with a public
service announcement, please avoid letting your kids see any "Surprise Egg"
videos all costs. I downloaded "you-tube kids", their supposedly safe curated
experience, and almost half of the recommended videos on a completely clean
user install was this moronic kiddy click bait that turns youngsters into
drooling dopamine rinsed zombies, primed for our loot-box overlords.

Un-install, go play outside.

[https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/modern-
minds/201703/...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/modern-
minds/201703/welcome-the-madness-and-mystery-surprise-egg-videos)

------
radium3d
I believe it. I've stopped playing games with ads altogether. I'd rather pay
$40-60 for a game that keeps me in the story. I don't have time for ads.
Apparently 90% of users do though, so they'll continue to fill up the "top
games" lists and make it impossible for us to find good ad-free games in the
app stores. Even worse now that google removed the "contains ads" tag from the
play store top game lists. _sigh_

~~~
theandrewbailey
> I'd rather pay $40-60 for a game that keeps me in the story. I don't have
> time for ads.

Old-fashioned console and PC gaming is still a thing, though mobile inspired
microtransactions are starting to creep into the market.

~~~
radium3d
Yes and I am very appreciative of companies like Nintendo who keep the art
alive. I feel the phone market has untapped potential still.

~~~
majewsky
The Nintendo Switch's start screen has ads on it. When you turn the console on
from sleep mode, it shows flashy images entitled "Featured News" on the left
third of the lock screen. [1] I tried to disable it, but apparently you cannot
unsubscribe from the preloaded "news" channels.

When I play Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the in-game experience is
mostly ad-free, but there is a side quest on my quest log that appears to be a
cross-promotion with some non-Nintendo game.

It's really frustrating that Nintendo is also doing this bullshit now, even if
in moderation.

[1] Representative example: [http://www.bearingnews.org/wp-
content/uploads/2017/03/IMG_49...](http://www.bearingnews.org/wp-
content/uploads/2017/03/IMG_4920.jpg)

~~~
radium3d
I think an ad outside of a game is fine if it's not too excessive, but I too
was disappointed to see cross-game "ad" content being baked into The Legend of
Zelda DLC.

~~~
JohnFen
> I think an ad outside of a game is fine if it's not too excessive

I don't, if the ad is on a device or program that I've paid cash money for.

~~~
majewsky
Exactly. I didn't pay 300€ for an ad delivery mechanism.

------
tschwimmer
This is interesting and valuable analysis. Despite a lot of people in this
thread saying "See! I told you ads are user toxic!" I'd easily make this
tradeoff if I had no/limited other sources of revenue.

Two additional questions I have are: 1) Which 10% of users churn because of
ads? Are these just average p50% actives or are they power users who
evangalize your product? 2) What's the effect on annual growth rate?

~~~
godelski
I think the real key takeaway is the graph he has about what type of ads are
served. I'll deal with inline ads, but I'm closing the window if you think a
popup is okay.

------
Reedx
I assumed this would be the case and removed ads from my web game about a year
ago. But didn't see a difference with traffic or retention (granted, I didn't
A/B test it! I removed them 100%). Which was disappointing. The only
difference I noticed is that I lost that revenue (5 figures).

But probably depends on volume and/or type of ads?

[EDIT] Clarified re: traffic

~~~
gwern
'Revenue'!='users'. EDIT: and 10% is, while important, a pretty subtle
difference compared to the enormous variability of traffic. Traffic is a time-
series which drifts and has many potentially large jumps. If you removed ads
only once, how would you ever notice? The effect is very noticeable if you
look at samples with _n_ in the millions, or if you remove/add scores of times
and model it statistically, though.

~~~
kelnos
A very good point -- if you don't have other sources of revenue aside from
ads, and can't run the site/game/whatever without that, 10% of your users gone
might be a perfectly reasonable trade off for the ad revenue that keeps the
site running.

I think you mention later in the Twitter thread that Patreon has given you
much more recurring revenue than ads? I wish operators would spend the time to
look at the effectiveness of ad alternatives as you've done.

------
masswerk
I really do think the way ads are presented and how they are embedded matters.
E.g., a static banner, embedded statically server-side without tracking and
targeting, respectfully sitting besides the content may be not offensive to
anyone. We may even appreciate that the advertiser is supporting the content
we like, a positive image transfer besides the needs of last week's shopping
list (of which we're kept reminded just too often by common advertising
practice). On the other hand, what we mostly see, is advertising going off-
the-rails, competing with the content (reading a news site is often some of a
glimpse of war of its own today, at least visually), aggressive tracking and
targeting, in combination fostering the feeling that the ad-networks and by
this also the hosting site are actively working against you, providing the
content just as a pretext for exploitation. Something has gone terribly wrong.
(I've actually not bought products, I would have bought else, because of
advertising practices.)

Edit: As an ethical workaround, I find myself increasingly opening a site in
broser A without blocker and then copying the URL to another browser B with
blocking, because I can't concentrate on the content anymore, or maybe
switching to reader mode to consume the content. But, does presenting the ads
to me make any sense at all? Most interestingly, this would result in inflated
user statitistics. Maybe, we're seeing a combination of both?

------
laurent123456
That would make sense. Ads are designed to be visible and clicked on, but on
the other hand you can't go too far without annoying the users. It's a fine
line to walk so it's not surprising you'd lose some users as a result. The
unblockable ads they had on Facebook at some point is what finally pushed me
to close my account.

~~~
reaperducer
_but on the other hand you can 't go too far without annoying the users_

Back in the ancient history before Google and search engines, a web site I
built was submitted for inclusion in DMOZ. At the time, all web sites were
hand-approved by an editor who also wrote a description of the site.

The site was included, but the description noted that it was "covered with too
many ads" or something similar.

The site had one 468x60 static image banner ad, and one 236x60 static image
ad.

My how our standards have changed.

~~~
degenerate
Maybe your standards have changed, but that's still too much for me. I don't
mind guest posts or (mentioned) sponsored content, however I will always use
ublock to remove ads.

It would be different if the _typical_ ad experience were a related, useful
product. But it's always unrelated hot garbage - distracting and annoying at
any pixel size.

~~~
reaperducer
_that 's still too much for me_

Reasonable ads don't bother me.

I don't long for the day when I can install an ad blocker in my car's
windshield so I don't see billboards or the names of car dealerships on the
backs of the other cars.

Then again, when I drive someplace where there's too many billboards I find it
annoying.

~~~
kelnos
I would absolutely love an ad blocker for my car's windshield (or, since I
don't drive much, some sort of AR glasses that block ads). I find advertising
unbearable. People's tolerance levels are different.

I wouldn't say that your old site, with its two image ads, was "covered with
too many ads", but I would still expect an ad blocker to remove them.

------
jedberg
I don't have the data anymore, but based on my memory of the time, I don't
think reddit saw any difference in traffic when we launched ads (which was
more than 10 years ago).

That's not to say that it wouldn't change now, but just throwing out there
that it didn't make a difference then.

~~~
m463
Reddit lost me with the redesign to track and monetize. maybe 2-3 years ago? I
had 250k karma all from mindful comments.

------
everdev
> So now there are 4 independent quasi-/experimental datapoints (me, Pandora,
> LinkedIn, & Mozilla resp) showing that a standard load of ads vs no ads
> decreases total consumption/activity by 10–15%.

From the tweet itself, this is 10% of activity, not users. Kind of suspect
that someone misinterpreted their own data so significantly.

~~~
gwern
I disagree about it being a misinterpretation. They are measuring different
things because they have to, but if you read the papers, you see that that's
the net effect and most reasonable way to summarize them: an 11% reduction in
intention to visit, a 9% reduction in total traffic, a similar reduction in
total web browsing per individual, and in the case of LinkedIn, you can see
both a decrease in users _and_ activity per user, which net to the >10%
reduction in total activity. This is as it must be (what is a web browser user
going to do - stop using web browsers completely and quit the Internet
entirely...? Not likely! Reduction in web usage is their only possible
response.) How else could one reasonably summarize that in a few words?

~~~
everdev
In analytics there are ways to discuss activity like: visits per month, pages
per session, time on site, conversion rate, etc.

It's possible for any of those activity metrics to go down 10% without losing
any active users.

------
marcell
This is pretty interesting. I'd love to see the analysis broken down by some
measure of the ads' "annoyingness." For example, what is the harm from an
animated gif ad vs. a text ad?

------
AdsAreLazy
A site with ads is guaranteed to not care about how you use it. A site that
takes your money is one that will care about the experience. Seeing an ad is
an instant “if I can’t use reading mode I just block the site”. Life is too
short to waste your attention on people selling you crap.

------
fwip
While ads may cost you 10% of your users, it may also be responsible for up to
100% of your revenue.

~~~
ContentTho
That’s your own fault if that’s the case.

------
kbenson
> @Piccirello: What viable alternatives exist that don’t directly charge the
> user and therefore disadvantage the less privileged? Is JavaScript-based
> crypto mining feasible?

That leads to an interesting thought. Ads are definitely one of the more
egalitarian ways of getting payment from people, as they sap time and
attention somewhat equally (or randomized along a fairly predictable spectrum
not affected by most differentiators, I would think), and in proportion to how
much you use something.

Also, the ones problematic form a privacy perspective likely screw people over
equally as well.

------
atoav
I might be one of the 10% mentioned here. It was sefinitly true for instagram
since facebook took over. If every 5th image in my stream is a sponsered ad by
nike or some startup it _doesn’t feel like my stream anymore_. There is weird
content coming out of nowhere that I didn’t ask for. Effectively I just ended
up using it less and less, till I sropped using it entirely.

~~~
mywittyname
This is exactly why I quit pinterest. A good 10% of the content are ads.

------
pbhjpbhj
Could just be an effect of page load time?

Any attempt to rule out confounding parameters - on the web ads increase
pageload a heap.

------
tjpnz
I was a long time mobile Chrome user (until my recent switch to Firefox which
allows me to block ads). My rule then was to move onto another source if I
couldn't find one place on the page unimpeded by ads or spammy shite from
Taboola et al. News sites are definitely the biggest offender here.

~~~
vorticalbox
You can block ads in chrome too. Ublock is on both ff and chrome or you could
install a chromium based browser with native ad blocking like brave or opera.

~~~
slig
He meant mobile Chrome, which doesn't have extensions.

------
yeukhon
I have been seeing Squarespace ads on YouTube nearly for every video. I hate
it and I just gives thumbs down hoping it will go away. Nope.

Although the echo effect is real, I have to say I do not and will not use
Squarespace simply because of the ads. It's insane. Same music, same video
over and over.

/rant

~~~
therealdrag0
Why don't you use an adblocker or pay for YouTube premium to support your
content creators.

~~~
yeukhon
My conscious choice NOT to pay premium. Content creators already get $$ for
views.

~~~
penagwin
Aren't youtube ads pay per click? In which case adblock doesn't cost the
creator money (if you weren't going to click an ad), and their
viewer/subscriber count is still normal (important for non-youtube sponsors)

~~~
12298765
Pretty sure they aren't -- on my PS4 for example, YouTube shows ads just like
on PC/mobile, but they're totally unclickable. There's no button for "see more
on this ad" or anything.

I know this because it has shown an ad for something that I was interested in
buying, and I tried everything to get to the ad and couldn't. Ended up having
to Google it on my phone!

------
aiisahik
> I feel like I'm on crazy-pills with this topic. No one links to my page,
> hardly any orgs run these experiments, no one upvotes them on Reddit or HN

Gwern is on crazy pills because this is a feature not a bug. Your users are
there to generate ad revenue - not the other way around.

------
dahart
Are the 10%-15% who bail free users, or paying users? Number of free users is
only a good metric if you have ads. Without ads, a better metric is needed,
like revenue.

The other thing we need is a real alternative. Ads are more or less
unanimously not beloved, but bootstrapping revenue and funding are real
problems. Worse than losing 10% of your customers is losing 100% of your
customers because you can’t afford to stay in business. No matter how much
everyone dislikes ads, they aren’t going away until there’s a way to fund your
site/org/business.

~~~
JohnFen
> No matter how much everyone dislikes ads, they aren’t going away until
> there’s a way to fund your site/org/business.

The problem isn't that there aren't other ways of generating revenue. There
are lots of them. The problem is that carrying ads is the easiest way -- it
requires almost no development effort.

~~~
dahart
That doesn’t answer my question. The question isn’t what ways there are to
generate revenue, it’s what is the right metric. Number of users dropping
doesn’t mean that revenue is dropping, so it’s not a great metric to
demonstrate that ads are bad. If we want to show that adding ads to a site is
damaging, we have to show that it’s actually damaging, rather than you lose a
fraction of the people who were mooching anyway.

I’m not sure I agree there are lots of ways to generate revenue, and more
importantly that there are _reliable_ ways to generate revenue when
bootstrapping a small company. If there were reliable ways to do it, ads
wouldn’t be such a big problem. The scourge of ads is evidence that finding
revenue sources isn’t reliable.

The main sources of funding for small companies are: loans, grants, personal
savings, friends & family, angels, VCs, sales, and ads. Sales and ads are the
only sustainable long term strategies unless you’re going for government
funding of research or a public service. Sales requires a product with market
fit, i.e., a bootstrapped company. For most early stage companies that leaves
only ads as a potential positive long-term revenue stream. What other options
are there?

Making money with ads requires an audience, which requires having something of
value. In that sense, it does require development effort. Maybe installing the
ad into an iframe is easy, but getting enough people to your site isn’t
trivial.

~~~
JohnFen
> The main sources of funding for small companies are: loans, grants, personal
> savings, friends & family, angels, VCs, sales, and ads.

Funding a startup is an entirely different, and more complicated, topic than
what I was addressing. However, I would mention that what you list there are
not the only options.

For instance, I've started a number of successful companies without requiring
more than a small amount (four figures) of seed money from my own savings, and
bootstrapping from there, growing the companies from the revenues streams they
create.

Admittedly, this isn't an approach that appeals to everyone or is feasible for
all sorts of business. It requires a lot more work and causes initial growth
to be very slow (but the payoff is no debt), but it works for me and
demonstrates that in the real world there are numerous workable approaches.

> In that sense, it does require development effort.

Yes, but that's precisely the same amount of development effort required no
matter what your revenue model is.

------
eqdw
If any app or service offers me the ability to pay them money in exchange for
removing ads, I do

I do this even if the price is rather large. I think the most I've ever paid
is $25 but I'd go higher.

------
alpaca128
I'm curious about the numbers for websites automatically playing videos. I
find these even more annoying than 80% of ads and they often don't get
blocked. And I personally run a domain blocker plugin just for these sites.
Playing a video I didn't ask for? Bye forever. Most sites with this problem
have 10 competitors just on that page of search results.

------
microdrum
The guys who built RealClearPolitics built a sort of "pay to eliminate ads"
feature.[1] I wonder if they saw Gwern's Law in action.

[1] [http://subscriptions.publir.com/](http://subscriptions.publir.com/)

------
wittedhaddock
Ads strike me as a laughable local maximum on our ability to monetize spare
brain cycles of the human mind. Critical thinking cycles, arguably the most
precious resource, is subverted for single digit clickthrough rates. Ad tech
makes me cry, and after reading science fiction, depressed. Let's please
please gtfo out of this paradigm and figure out how to bootstrap these things
between our ears for creation, than consumption, of something.

And to go a bit deeper for a moment, it seems likely to me that what we now
call critical thinking is the same thing as what Chomsky and Berwick mean when
they use the word "language": an ability to hierarchically represent the world
using symbols. Our "external representation" or ability to communicate ideas
to one another, according to them is a byproduct of that effect. This was from
their recent book, Why Only Us, and go on to point to the specific gene,
FOXP2, that they believe caused this ability for the mind, and then assert
that this emergence caused us to leave Africa (Out of Africa Theory). And if
that's even remotely true, then the human mind is inherently more able and
creative than we will ever know. Or said another way, the cross product of
Dunning & Kruger with Berwick & Chomsky suggests an almost infinite
unawareness of our own potential. \- How do we know that the 10% drop off in
traffic isn't "just" due to the increase of latency by the nature of adding
additional the additional ad package that dispatches and draws on the main
thread, slowing everything down (Linden, 2006)?

[http://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/12/slides-from-my-talk-
at-s...](http://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/12/slides-from-my-talk-at-
stanford.html)

------
altitudinous
Ads cost a tenth of my users, but I gain 100% of my income. No regrets.

------
vertis
In a similar vein. Anti-adblock measures will pretty much guarantee I never
come back. I'd love to be able to filter them from my search results. Plenty
of domains I would blacklist.

------
reallydude
Only if they are done intrusively. Nobody cares about the ads on CrossMe, for
example...but Jewels Jungle, the interstitials may aggravate a small number.

~~~
ergothus
I have troubles with the concept of a "non-intrusive" ad - If you don't notice
it to any degree, it's not doing its job, and if you DO notice it to any
degree, it's intrusive and disruptive (to a matching degree)

I think you mean "Nobody cares ENOUGH" rather than "Nobody cares", and that's
a big distinction.

~~~
dbcurtis
You may have a point. Maybe we need to draw a distinction between "non-
intrusive" and "non-distracting".

Ads should not move, period. No animated gif's, no video. And for $DIETY's
sake, no audio. NONE. No audio. EVER.

Slicing up the reading in the middle. Covering with spashes, etc. I just close
the tab.

But a non-distracting static ad? It is easy to ignore if I don't care, but if,
in fact, it is something I care about I will see it. Ads that relate to my
needs at work or to my hobbies will likely get clicked on. Non-distracting
will keep me from closing the website, relevant and timely will get me to
click on the ad.

The human mind is funny that way. A non-intrusive, non-distracting ad for,
say, carpet, I likely won't even notice. But display a non-intrusive, non-
distracting ad of exactly the same size for a piece of shiny, new, ham radio
gear... it will get noticed. It might even get me to think about my credit
card limit. Basic psycho-perception at work.

~~~
kaybe
Some ads are intrusive in the way that they highjack my thought processes. I'm
reading about hard-drives, I don't want to think about science fiction right
now, and vice versa. So unobtrusive also means matching the content in spirit.
(I might be fine with related tech, for example.)

At that point there shouldn't even be any point in user preference tracking
any more. I even click these ads on occasion if they seem trustworthy (another
important point - there is still too many 'You won a car!'/'Lose weight with
one simple trick!'/'Doctors hate him!' kind of ads).

------
Causality1
Additionally, 26 percent of desktop and 15 percent of mobile users block ads,
so those studies already exclude the most ad-averse part of the user base.

------
buboard
but can you rephrase that in terms of revenue? and tbh 10% is right about the
amount of pain you 'd expect to inflict to monetize your traffic.

~~~
gwern
No, because that will depend on the purpose of a site, what alternative
revenue streams there, the site owners' utility preferences between traffic
and revenue, what sort of ads there are, what sort of clickthrough rate they
have, what the advertising rate is, and so on. At best, you can make a
directional generalization: given that people systematically appear to
underestimate the effects of ads (they just don't know), there is probably a
large but unknown number of people who have overshot the optimal number of ads
by an unknown amount, which will be different for each person.

In contrast, the binary variable ads/no-ads appears to have a (surprisingly)
consistent effect on general metrics of users/usage, as measured by 5 very
different large-scale studies.

------
charlie0
Life hack for stopping ads on mobile games: Turn off internet connection.

So far this has worked for me with solo games.

------
OJFord
Surely any user that's going to bail because of advertising is already
blocking the ads anyway?

~~~
bluGill
I don't object to advertising - it is how free news sights should pay for
themselves. I understand and accept the deal. However this is a two way deal,
they give me "free" content in exchange for me seeing the ads. If the ads are
too intrusive they have violated their end of the contract and I leave.

~~~
kaybe
I actually don't really block ads, I block tracking and by-default scripting
(I whitelist pages), plus enforced https. That gets rid of almost all of the
ads. If they can't give me ads without these things, their problem.

------
fixermark
(sardonic) True, but did you want those users if they aren't even willing to
spend money?

~~~
lupire
Sometimes. Those users are potential advertisers for your site.

------
Octoth0rpe
I mean, sure, but they also often fund 100% of your users.

------
cm2012
Not having ads costs you 100% of your members if it's the only way to monetize
your content (not all content is suited to be supported by paywalls or
Patreon).

~~~
AdsAreLazy
Is the content worth anything then? Why not just distribute it through
torrents or ipfs or something?

~~~
cm2012
I guarantee you that you read tons of content that you wouldn't pay for.
Hacker news itself is a big ad for Ycombinator.

------
mlthoughts2018
This may help explain why many companies focus so much ad budget on brand
awareness and generally inserting their brand into the zeitgeist or popular
memes and conversation.

Corporations rarely prize loyalty of any type: loyalty from employees, loyalty
from customers... they don’t care.

Creating loyalty requires sublimating your own short term desires for the sake
of promoting someone else’s interests instead. Corporations, as sociopathic
legal constructs meant to encode ruthless pursuit of short term financial
gain, are essentially incapable of acting this way.

This is why you have to pay so much to get new employees to join your team, or
pay so much to acquire new customers. The corporation never cares to
proactively reward existing employees or proactively improve products or
reduce prices for customers.

So all short term attention is paid to seeding the necessary details required
to acquire new supply of employees / customers / whatever.

Holding on to / valuing what you already have is just not a concept modern
corporations have the ability to understand or articulate, despite lots of lip
service about it.

