
We're Enabling Display Ads on Select Stack Exchange Sites - ingve
http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/287242
======
fowlerpower
Do you stackexchange, do you. I have made lots of money by relying on great
answers posted on your site, solicited by your code and app and hosted on your
hardware.

I think anyone whose upset by this sort of move is living in la-la-land the
rest of us know you have to make money. I'm surprised your not doing it on all
sites and haven't done it sooner.

~~~
ikeboy
Literally no comments as of now here say it's a bad thing, nor any answers
there, nor any comments.

If there's no visible opposition, why are so many people preemptively
defending it?

~~~
rustles
Because apps like Facebook have trained us to always expect fights and
arguments based on how it selects what is visible in the news feed and in what
order we see articles and comments.

~~~
JBReefer
You're close, but it's not just Facebook.

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-
rage/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/)

------
jasonkostempski
Why is there no talk of native advertising? They seem to be in a perfect
position for it. I'm not going to disable my tracking blocker for any site, no
matter how useful it is. No matter how relevant and ad is, or how tasteful it
looks, if it's doing any tracking, it is distasteful.

Edit: Just realised I've been using the term "native advertising" incorrectly.
I'm not talking about disguising it as part of the content, I mean hosting the
ads themselves instead of dropping in an ad network script from a third-party.

~~~
layble
Because the advertiser wants to track how many times the ad was seen, etc. Ad
Servers / 3rd Parties provide the function of being an independent third
party.

~~~
the8472
put it on a subdomain. foo.tld should use ads.foo.tld and point the DNS to the
advertiser.

That way there's no cross-domain tracking via cookies and they can still track
impressions.

~~~
boredprogrammer
This particular setup can/will leak cookies set on foo.tld to ads.foo.tld
which leads to security concerns - only in your specific example though. If
you were to use www.foo.tld and ads.foo.tld then you're good to go. While it
is possible to carefully setup cookies that do not leak, its something you
need to be careful of when recommending. That said, I do agree with your
premise and wish native ad hosting like this happened much more often.

Reading material: [http://erik.io/blog/2014/03/04/definitive-guide-to-cookie-
do...](http://erik.io/blog/2014/03/04/definitive-guide-to-cookie-domains/)

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criddell
If they do ads like Daring Fireball does ads (no tracking, display only, same
origin), I'll see them. Otherwise, I suspect they will get filtered out by my
browser.

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pluma
If every site that had ads did it like Stack Overflow I wouldn't mind ads.

~~~
corobo
There's a giant advert asking you to register, then there's one between the
title and the question then there's another after the first answer. There's
also sponsored jobs on the sidebar next to the whole lot.

Don't get me wrong I know businesses need to make money and I'm not saying
they're bad people or anything but it's not exactly my first example of a site
doing good adverts.

~~~
pluma
Granted, I'm not talking about what anonymous users see but what you see if
you're logged in. Most social sites are obnoxious to use without an account so
I almost give them a pass on that.

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pionar
Stack Exchange sites are some of the only ones on my whitelist for my ad
blocker and Privacy Badger.

They do ads the right way.

~~~
kefka
Still a nope for me. Adverts are a vector of malware and 0-day attacks. We
already know that the advert companies aren't too keen in fixing these issues,
either.

Lowering adblockers for a site means lowering my ability to protect against
these attacks.

~~~
Nadya
While, like any advertiser, they help you'll disable it - they openly stated
they are impartial towards Ad Blockers as recent as February [0]. Personally,
if what they say is true, that most advertisers are advertising for potential
hires - then I'm a non-option to begin with so I'd be a waste of money to
advertise to. My blocking saves them from having to serve the ads and get
pointless ad impressions.

The fact they aren't begging and pleading me to disable my Ad Blocker means I
don't care if they decided to show more ads. I won't see them - it doesn't
impact me in the slightest. They need to make money, some portion of people
will see the ads, those people (at this point) are probably technical enough
to know they could block the ads if they _wanted_ to but have elected not to
for whatever reasons they may have.

So the people seeing the ads are people who don't mind/have chosen to see the
ads and everyone else is not affected. Nothing to be upset over.

[0] [https://stackoverflow.blog/2016/02/why-stack-overflow-
doesnt...](https://stackoverflow.blog/2016/02/why-stack-overflow-doesnt-care-
about-ad-blockers/)

------
matt4077
It's great to see a HN thread with some appreciation for the need to allow
content creators to develop aa sustainable revenue stream.

But it's sad that is has to be SO. Not, that they don't deserve it – but they
merely need to support the technology. The content is created by users.

The Guardian, Bloomberg, The Washington Post usually get the "it's my browser
and I block what I want – and that's everything" treatment. Although they're
arguably more important than even Stack Overflow, what with some quality news
being necessary for a democracy.

------
captncraig
Note that this is no change to stack overflow, which has had these ads for a
while. Just adding them to some other popular sites so they can sell relevant
ads instead of using placeholders on those sites.

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pbh101
Had anyone here recently used stack overflow when not logged in? Last I
checked there already were huge, animated banner ads only when logged out, as
opposed to more tasteful ads only when logged in. I recall Jeff and Joel
discussing this approach long ago on their podcast.

I know this is talking about some of the longer tail sites, but I wonder if
that same approach will be taken and which ads will show up.

------
anc84
There seems to be no way to donate to them, why?

~~~
pluma
Probably because accepting donations as a company is non-trivial?

~~~
jdavis703
Is that true? Can't you sell "overpriced" T-shirts or whatever and treat that
profit as the "donation"?

~~~
prawn
Then have to design and print t-shirts, manage inventory and so on, track
earnings, etc. Even when you can outsource that, it might not be worth the
headspace for them.

~~~
fma
How about "Buy a thank you email"...

Shell out credit card, get email.

~~~
pluma
Fun story: the German parody party "Die PARTEI" ("the party", where PARTEI is
also a backronym for a bunch of populist buzzwords) is under investigation
because they pulled a supposedly legal scam that worked in a similar way.

They had a public campaign asking the public to "buy money", selling a hundred
Euros (and two post cards) for the small price of exactly a hundred and five
Euros -- effectively selling postcards for €2.50 a piece with a transaction
overhead of another €100 in expenses and income.

Due to the way German public funding of political parties works (the public
funding was based on revenue rather than profits) this meant they were granted
funding that was hugely disproportional to the actual profits. Why it's
supposed to be based on revenue or profit in the first place I don't fully
understand but let's just say the authorities were displeased.

However they have a good case: they did the entire scam out in the open and
had legal counsel that greenlit the campaign. It's definitely violating the
spirit of the law but they may be able to make a good case that they were
trying to showcase the absurdity of the law rather than simply exploit it for
their own benefit -- also nobody interfered at any point and they documented
everything from start to finish.

If they lose in court, however, not only would they have to pay back the money
they were given (€72k) but they would also have to pay a massive fine (€384k)
which would bankrupt the party instantly. Considering the party's satirical
nature this would be pretty disappointing.

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del511
What utter, patronising shit. 'Keep Joel caffeinated'? At least have the balls
to explain how you're selling out, and don't piss on your users' heads and
tell them it's raining.

