Not trivializing your complaint, btw... just pointing out that using money to get your message to the forefront is kind of the point of advertising itself, so the fact that Google is paying to get their advertising displayed is kind of... meta?

I'd love to have a discussion on HN about the necessity of advertising in the Information Age. I think we would all like to live in a world where purchasing decisions are based on reviews from people that have actually used a good or service, and I would think that the ubiquity of the web has made this kind of crowdsourced intelligence quite feasible.

Does advertising provide a valuable service beyond subsidizing information flow? If not, are there alternate viable strategies for subsidizing information flow, such as Wikipedia's donation model? Is a post-advertising world possible, or even desirable?

We need both. Advertising can be unethical at times but its no reason to do away with it all together. Reviews cAn be flawed too.

As far as AdBlock goes, I'm still uncertain of why people dislike advertising so much to begin with. Okay, they collect information about you. I understand the desire to not want to be tracked like that. But lets imagine for a moment that advertisers are collecting your information but they're not doing anything unethical with it. They're just trying to show you add that are relevant. In that situation I really don't care if I see advertisements online at all. I also think the definition of unethical comes into play here too though. For me, advertisers sharing my data with each other is something I don't see as unethical. Others I suspect do. Living the lifestyle I live, I can't think of anything advertisers could know about me that would be at all harmful. I suppose everyone's mileage may vary.

My question is, in the end, what part of online advertising is so distasteful to everyone? Is it the data collection or is it seeing the ads?

I've heard this argument countless times but I'm fed up with it and I want to call it out: the constant and worldwide glut of Coca-Cola advertising suggests this is not primarily what advertising is about.

Advertising never tells me about a new product that I care about and I'm not already aware of: in an age when I can research what I like on the internet and I hear about interesting new products through curated content such as this forum.

If you can, please come up with a better argument in favour of advertising.

Until then, I will continue to believe that modern advertising is perhaps the biggest waste of our greatest minds and resources.

Product advertising is advertising a specific product and the ROI on it is usually closely measured when it comes to channels that can do that such as banner ads. While you are quite well informed and get information about all the new products you care about via other channels, most people are not hence the need to make people aware.

Without making "the masses" aware you end up with product usage/growth spreading virally which while it might be "better" is a lot harder to predict or model production levels or possible ROI on an initiative. For example, the Taco Bell Doritos Taco would have probably become popular after a while but that would lengthen the payback period for redesigning the menus/training staff/etc, alternatively you could do partial rollouts but that defeats the economies of scale.

While its not perfect, or anywhere near, advertising does serve a useful purpose and until the economy changes to not reward advertising initiatives we will sadly have to deal with it.

Its an interesting approach, but that might just be because I'm a data nerd.

> Advertising never tells me about a new product that I care about and I'm not already aware of.

Even if it does that, it does so by interrupting me when I'm doing something else - which is not acceptable to me. Considering that we have search and social recommendations, advertising is not "beneficial for the user".

A very nice consequence of rejecting interruptive ads is that marketers won't need to collect data about me and build huge behavioral profiles. I'll come to you when I need you. And when I knock on your door, you would be certain that I am interested in talking to you. So there is no need to track/profile me.

Your point about product discovery is well-taken. In the case of discovery of new product types, it seems to be a valid issue. For product types that a person already has knowledge of, however, I would think it would be preferable to skip the ads and simply compare reviews. In other words, if I'm searching for a hammer, looking at ads for hammers will not give me the best information.

I do wonder if there are other ways to enable product discovery besides paid placement, but I'm not sure.

I learned about DigitalOcean from advertisements. I saw the ad, read the site, and their advertising convinced me to try them. They were much newer at the time so I didn't have anything else to go on and never heard of them before. To me, for my preferences, DO is a strong competitor to Linode but what kept me from moving my important projects to DigitalOcean was the reputation of the Linode brand. So its hard to separate the advertising from other information from other sources.

Apple's "it just works" campaign led to me getting my first Mac. I identified with the issues they brought up in the ads, switched, and found out I really did like Macs better. Now, Macs aren't without their own set of problems so when it comes to what would make me choose a Mac over a Windows PC, those intangible, marketing-speak little things is what gets me.

A lot of people try to act like they're above all that but I can't believe that. I know we all hate to think we're swayed by advertising because we want to protect our individuality. I feel like I can still be an individual even if I buy into some marketing.

I also tend to buy brands that spend less on advertizing because they end up as a better deal for your money.

My point is that I don't relate to the stress that people feel from advertising. I'm definitely swayed by it but only when it lines up with a real desire I have. The desire comes first and the advertising shows me the way toward fulfilling it. It doesn't both create and satisfy my desires. Well, not always. For example, after I saw iOS 7 I totally wanted it. Luckily I will but if I had to pay for it I might. Now, I'm wondering - did the advertising create the desire for that or did I just see something I liked and it happened to be a good match? Is there always a difference?

The problem is that it does this by interrupting users when they were doing something else. Ads, except those that are shown when the user is explicitly performing a search, are not "relevant" enough - because they ignore the user's context. When I'm reading guitar tabs for a song, I do NOT want to see ads for guitars. Interruptive ads can never be relevant enough.

From my point of view, search and social recommendations are enough to hear about new products and services which might be useful to me. "Interruptive advertising is beneficial for the user" is just advertisers trying to give an ethical justification to the fact that they are basically being jerks.

The second part ("lets the creator point out why their audience would like it") is easily solved by maintaining a landing page. Be accessible when I search and have enough information for me to learn more about the product.

(I had written about this on my blog a few years back: http://www.nileshtrivedi.com/search-results-are-the-only-rel... )

Relevant ads or privacy, choose one.

Search is terrible still, the other day I searched for "cheap mechanical keyboard" and the first two results were basically pure spam. Even then, only the first 5 results get any decent traffic and results on the 2nd page get almost none.

Social recommendations work only if your product is either really damn good or you play unfair and game the system. People are designed to not care about things they haven't heard of before.

There's a saying in selling that says a person needs to see your brand/product 7 times before they're ready to buy. As a new person on the capitalist market I don't see how I'd do that while playing fair and without going bankrupt in the mean time.

Sending advertising to people who actually want advertising is perfectly fine way. Sending advertising to people who do not want advertising, has ended in intrusive, tracking, bandwidth wasting, and CPU hogging mess that people want to escape. If I see advertisement being thrown in my face against my will, I instantly gets a dislike for what ever company/product being displayed. I would never, EVER, click or buy it.

In a world with search engines that know everything about you and can recommended great products and services for you, there's no need for wrong incentives in the form of money to be part of this recommendation process.

And regarding brand advertising : some marketing people say that advertising do offer people some psychological value that gets implanted in the product., which makes them enjoy the product more. For example the axe deodorant ads causes some people to wonder whether using axe did helps with attraction, which changed their internal experience.

The problem again with such claims is the perverse incentives that money play here, which we see in the effects of advertising on female body image.

Really the only case I think ads are usefull are in cases they are used by non profits or the states to achieve public goals, like anti smoking ads.

Would you really like all advertising to move in that direction? You should realize it's impossible to know if a person really owns and likes a product or it's just a sponsorship. Nobody would be trusted anymore.

Would you agree that opinion manipulation in online reviews is already taking place?

If so, would reducing the presence of explicitly-labelled advertisements result in an increase in covert opinion manipulation?

I'm pretty sure there are already issues with regard to the trustworthiness of online reviews. But if we define the value of testimonial by impartiality, then ads are pretty worthless by default. It could be better to rely on sources that at least have the potential of impartiality. I admit this is definitely a complex issue.

I can also understand the ethical argument that it's better to allow sponsored content because otherwise companies would resort to more illegal methods. It's sort of like the drug legalization argument: companies are going to market anyway, so we might as well focus on harm reduction. But it still feels suboptimal in this case. I guess I'd prefer if we focused on preventing misinformation rather than a strategy of appeasement.

This is a shining example of how those with money are able to influence the system by corrupting the very mechanisms that were implemented to protect the "regular people" in that system.

If Google had paid a politician to exempt itself from certain laws, we would call it bribery. For the exact same reason, we should take issue with them paying Adblock Plus to whitelist their ads.

Remember, people have no inherent right to the content they are consuming it, they are getting it because Google is presenting it to them with some expectation that it will benefit Google. That benefit is usually revenue through advertising, in the cases where it's present.

Bottom line: nobody can be forced into seeing ads.

Beyond the ethical considerations, which I think can be clear but aren't always (depending on the type of advertising, such as pop-unders) I'm not convinced there aren't legal considerations as well, which is why elsewhere in this thread I asked for more information when a lawsuit was referenced.

Beyond pop-unders and similar advertising that I think can be clearly defined as outside the bounds of acceptability (see my other post that mentions pop-unders for details), I think this is very clear. When media is presented to you under the condition that you view their advertising, whether inline or before access, refusing to do so clearly removes your rights to the content as well. You have no implicit right to the content, only what they grant you, and under their conditions.

I have yet to see an argument otherwise that sways me in the slightest.

P.S. To be clear, I also occasionally do and have bypassed ads, circumvented authentication to content, and used copyrighted material without right. This doesn't negate my argument, it just makes me a somewhat of a hypocrite when I do so, which everyone is at some point in their life. I just refuse to bury my head in the sand and act like I'm entitled when I do, and I feel bad about it (to varying degrees, depending on circumstances) when I think about what I'm doing.

I believe requiring authentication, or requiring performing some prior action (such as watching/seeing an ad for some time period) are also examples of this.

I do not believe pop-under ads are subject to this. They try to force behavior (viewing of an ad) after the implicit contract is concluded (you are done consuming the media presented) through altering the state of items outside the presentation experience.

I think with the proliferation of ad blocking software, we've only allowed bad behavior to go unpunished more often by continuing to use resources that behave in irritating ways because a large portion of people get to skip the irritating behavior entirely. I think this has the dual negative consequences of not causing feedback for the behavior to reach the originator, as well as causing them to increase the behavior to capitalize more on those that are not immune to it.

I'm a good citizen, in that when I'm offered the opportunity to fund resources I enjoy through means that don't involve advertising I do. Often this comes with extra benefits to entice me. That's why I pay for Reddit Gold, and Strava Premium.

If you as a business owner have decided that advertising is the only way you wish to fund your business, I'm not going to feel like I'm slighting you by refusing to participate any more than I would by muting my television and getting up to grab a snack when commercials come on.

You are, and that's your choice. You always have a choice whether to pay attention or not. To have a third party remove that choice entirely, I believe, is different.

> I'm also free to refuse to use my resources (bandwidth) in the furtherance of your flawed business strategy (ads)

Why is it flawed? It has worked for print media for over a century. It's worked for television for decades. It continues to work, to various levels of success, on the internet. I think the onus is on you to prove that it's flawed (it may be, but I don't think stating it like fact is enough for it to be accepted in this argument).

> If you as a business owner have decided that advertising is the only way you wish to fund your business, I'm not going to feel like I'm slighting you by refusing to participate any more than I would by muting my television and getting up to grab a snack when commercials come on.

> If you as a business owner have decided that advertising is the only way you wish to fund your business, I'm not going to feel like I'm slighting you by refusing to participate any more than I would by muting my television and getting up to grab a snack when commercials come on.

Those situations aren't equivalent, and I think that's the crux of my argument. The television ads are still there, you choose to ignore them, but must still deal with them. Would you feel the same way if someone recorded those shows, removed all the ads, and redistributed them for free without consent? What if ads could be removed automatically by a box in your home (beyond Tivo's fast forward, or ReplayTV's 30-second skip). Are your answers to those different in any way?

> There's no implicit contract

Is the problem that it's implicit? Would it make a difference if all page loads went to a landing page that said that said "This page is funded by in-content advertising. If you choose to opt-out of this you are not licensed or permitted to view this content." and required you to click to accept make a difference? Because at that point there IS a contract if you continue, and it's not implicit.

Just apply it to every other area of you life and see how it goes.

Would you agree, that as long as it is implicit I'm free to filter out ads in any way I like? And use any tools that can do that for me automatically?

Of course, some of us still consider "acceptable ads" to be a big, big oxymoron.

Without endorsing the 'payola', something to bear in mind that Google chose to go with text-only ads instead of allowing advertisers to control the format. At the time people thought they were crazy and that text-only ads would not last very long for them. Turns out google was correct and its critics were wrong. Any of the other major search providers could have done this, but they didn't try it - and as a result their brands became hopelessly diluted by the garish advertising content, instead of the ads being part of the branding.

I manually enable adwords and google tracking on things like Ghostery and other software because adwords is the only platform that I don't find obnoxious and ugly.

One takes advantage of market conditions their benefit, the other changes market conditions to the detriment of the competitor.

Also, sponsoring Adblock is changing the market conditions. Adblock can use the money provided by Google to make sure any non-Google ad is blocked more efficiently. They can also advertise their addon better, provide better support, etc. Google sponsoring Adblock directly affects Adblock's ability to block the adverts of other companies around the world.

To me, this is changing market conditions in the same way as my AT&T example. Google paying AT&T enough money for priority could allow AT&T to build new 'Google only' cables that Bing couldn't use. Google paying Adblock enough money to whitelist their ads could allow Adblock to grow enough to block Bing ads on a large percentage of user's browsers. Very, very similar.

As long as others have the same option, what's the problem? The article specifically says "Google is not the only company." (at least the Google translated page does).

> Also, sponsoring Adblock is changing the market conditions

Sponsoring? Maybe you can parse the original article in the language it was written, but I cannot and the translated article doesn't seem accurate enough for me to make assertions as to exactly what Google is and isn't doing, or more specifically, what Adblock Plus is or isn't doing when Google, or possibly many others, give them money.

> To me, this is changing market conditions in the same way as my AT&T example

How is this different than Google taking out a full page add in the New York Times? In both cases Google is paying a third party which does not have complete control of the marker for some advantage (exposure in the NYT case). It's not as if they are paying for nobody else to be able to do as much (and even if they were, that's not a problem as long as a competitor could outbid them for the same right)

Is there any action that Google could take that would appear ethical?

I do see your point that other advertisers are unlikely to have "acceptable" ads because they rely on flash and images, but shouldn't they have to make themselves competitive if they want to maintain a level playing field?

If this pushes advertising further away from flashing, shouting, animated ads then it sounds like a brighter future to me.

In my area, if Charter and CenturyLink both chose to de-prioritize Netflix traffic, that would be the end of it. I would have no economic alternative. But if AdBlock Plus[1] started showing me ads that annoyed me, I could just go download a different adblocker.

[1] I don't actually use AdBlock Plus. I use AdBlock for Chrome, which is a separate product.

If AdBlock didn't accept payments in part of considering whether a site's ads are to be whitelisted, then Google or any website for that matter couldn't use their monetary assets to give them themselves an apparently immoral advantage over their competitors.

Obviously they(Google) can't outright put out an adblocker of their own, but if someone else puts it out and they support it, and it just so happens to whitelist their ads, you must admit its definitely worth at least questioning. Plus Google is not the stellar company it pretends to be, with the recent news about its tax evasion in Europe and PRISM participation.

If you want to go by that meaning of "funding" then any use of a service is "funding" that company that provides it. While technically true, I would argue that most people would think "funding" to mean "provide capital to an entity without expectation of a service or item which that entity sells as a normal mode of business, and to use it in a different manner without explicit note of your meaning is to invite a misinterpretation of the facts, on purpose or otherwise. I don't believe that leads to rational discourse.

> Obviously they(Google) can't outright put out an adblocker of their own, but if someone else puts it out and they support it, and it just so happens to whitelist their ads, you must admit its definitely worth at least questioning. Plus Google is not the stellar company it pretends to be, with the recent news about its tax evasion in Europe and PRISM participation.

Of course it's worth questioning. But if someone someone states that paying a company to get a benefit yourself is the same as paying a company to cause a detriment to another, a lot of evidence is needed to back that up, otherwise we aren't questioning anything, we are making assumptions.

The ethics of disabling advertising and non-intrusive advertising are another thing entirely.

Adblock was created because advertisers got greedy and took it too far, not because advertising is bad.