
Ask HN: Would you sign an anti-ad pledge? - evanwarfel
I don&#x27;t know about you, but I have personally committed to never (or so rarely as to practically be never) respond to advertisements. I&#x27;d love to be able to tell advertisers that they are wasting their money trying to buy my impressions and clicks. I&#x27;m also willing to pay for an ad-free but otherwise identical version of a product, and I think many of us here might be in the same boat.<p>If there were an easy way to do so, would you sign a pledge &#x2F; publically commit to being &quot;anti-ad&quot;? One version of such a pledge could involve committing to buy a competitors product if you see a relevant ad.<p>(Note: Given that only a subset of online users might sign such a pledge, this might actually save the advertisers money, which you may or may not want to have a hand in.)
======
yellow_lead
Even if you were to sign this pledge, ads aren't as simple as "I see, I buy".
Lots of branding seems to be around changing your perception of or just making
you aware of a company or product so that several months later, when you're
purchasing something in that category, you'll think of them. You can't
possibly remember all the ads you have or haven't seen, so trying to restrain
yourself from buying products which youve seen ads for seems futile.

~~~
muzani
I tried ads once for a sports blog. A lot of it was things like marketing a
chocolate drink as an energy booster or breakfast meal for athletes. I thought
it was quite dishonest .

------
DanBC
Have you heard of the Boulder Pledge?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Ebert#Personal_life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Ebert#Personal_life)

> During a 1996 panel at the University of Colorado Boulder's Conference on
> World Affairs, Ebert coined the Boulder Pledge, by which he vowed never to
> purchase anything offered through the result of an unsolicited email
> message, or to forward chain emails or mass emails to others

~~~
evanwarfel
I have not heard of the Boulder Pledge, thanks for linking to it. I imagine
Roger Ebert was on the receiving end of a lot of unsolicited offers, being a
public figure and all.

------
muzani
I would.

Ads are a lazy way to make money. It works for FB & Google because they can
focus all efforts on making the best product. But this was an era before ad
blockers.

Ads pay badly and also significantly drop user experience if done to a certain
extent.

When we did a recipe app, it was a conscious decision not to use ads. If we
had recipes, the only fitting ads are food related, not dating related, not
car related. Anything other than food would be dishonest to advertise.

So instead of advertising food, we skipped the middle man and sold ingredients
directly. As we had a niche (keto recipes), the sold product was also a niche
of keto alternative ingredients.

My partner later did a different startup, focusing on a football blog. They
tried ads, but it was terrible; made about $300 for millions of pageviews.
Sponsored articles, e.g. for football injuries recommending a product, would
pay several times more. This is also advertising but more precise, and gave
the sponsor a huge SEO boost for exactly the thing they were selling. The
company eventually landed a deal with a sports supplier which made up a big
portion of their revenue.

------
tomjen3
No. Ads are not bad. Ads for products that suck are, which is to say 90% of
products and something like 99.99% of ads (really great products only need ads
if they are in areas that are not normally talked about, e.g tampons).

Ads for products that don't matter to me are noise and annoying.

We should actively work toward rewarding people who create stuff that solves
problems, but right now nobody has a better way to get the word out there than
using ads.

------
shanecleveland
No. Ads in general and bad/abusive tactics are not unique to the web. I’m
willing to take the good with the bad and be discerning with my clicks and
quick with the back button. And that includes paying for valuable apps and
services.

~~~
evanwarfel
Great, thanks for answering.

------
Someone1234
> I'm also willing to pay for an ad-free

It has been tried multiple times, particularly in print media. Most people,
regardless of what they claim, aren't willing to pay for ad free. Just the
pure fact that it used to be free, often makes it even harder to convert them.

You say you're willing to pay for ad-free, but I'd ask why you aren't paying
for ad free already. Many websites now offer it, and few pay it (e.g. almost
all online news, Reddit, Google's ad network, YouTube, etc.

~~~
dylz
I'd pay for ad and analytic and tracking free. Not just making the ads
invisible, but the other code along with it disabled.

~~~
evanwarfel
That's a great point. People should be able to opt-out.

------
stfwn
What is an ad exactly? Friends/non-friends telling/mailing/phoning/showing
paid/free products/ideas/events irl/online? I need to know the specifics
before committing.. Better yet, I'll stay away from extremes and judge case-
by-case.

~~~
evanwarfel
Great question / good points! I don't mean to single out word of mouth
recommendations. Perhaps the pledge could be individually modified so that one
could specify per-platform definitions.

------
afarrell
No. I would be willing to give google/amazon/facebook a list of my life
problems every 3 months if it would get me ads that were actually relevant.

~~~
evanwarfel
Ah yes, the other end of the spectrum, which I also find not unattractive.

------
marssaxman
I already behave this way. I'm not sure what I would gain from the pledge you
suggest. I don't think the advertisers would care.

~~~
evanwarfel
They may not! But there is information asymmetry between the advertisers and
us individuals. Also, if enough people signed it, such a pledge could be used
as a collective bargaining chip, one that could be used to convince C-suite
executives to change how they do things.

------
chungleong
I've failed already. I just clicked on an ad promoting a hopeless, self-
contradictory political movement :-p

~~~
evanwarfel
Oh no! Keep fighting the good fight.

------
redsable
I would

