[Jestar342]

For more than a decade I've been campaigning (to any of my employers that utilise adverts on their platform) to drop adverts with the primary factor being that of performance for page load. The last time I looked, adverts were adding an additional ~35% load time to the page. Anywhere from 5% to _60%_ (!!) of vistors were navigating away before page load completed (Varied depending on company/product of course) and a staggering 80+% of those vistors would have had a full page load if the adverts were not there.

[yummypaint]

I often wonder incredulously whether developers responsible for particular sites really comprehend how bad performance has gotten. Browsing threads like this on HN makes it clear that they are probably well aware, but have no choice in the matter. In a way that's even more depressing because only a tiny minority of people are happy with the arrangement.

[hinkley]

I walked away from one project. 3rd party scripts were not the only problem but were the last straw.

I have a community site I want to build. If it stays small I can probably run it for $20 a month all in and not pester anyone. But I’m still keeping my eye on some of the saner ad networks that use subject matter instead of user tracking to target ads. That might be an option.

Linus tech tips has a video where he gives us a peek into their finances. Among other things the merchandizing arm makes them about a third of their revenue, and no one advertiser is allowed to pay more than that, so they can maintain a degree of objectivity. I think a lot of us don’t want to approach sponsors so we feel sort of stuck with ad networks.

And I’m not much of a materialist but I’m a tool nerd (you possibly don’t need it, but if you’re gonna buy it, get a really good one) so I’m not sure how I’d do merchandizing, since I’m more likely to recommend a brand than have something made for us. That leaves what? Amazon’s “influencer” BS, which is more money for Amazon? Discount codes, which are untargeted consumerism?

[Jestar342]

> I often wonder incredulously whether developers responsible for particular sites really comprehend how bad performance has gotten.

For every site I've developed and have been tasked with adding adverts, and every colleague that I have worked with that has done the same:

- Yes, we are aware.

- Yes, we doth protest.

- No, we were not successful.

[executesorder66]

What was their rationale for not doing as you suggested?

[Jestar342]

Sunk cost is/was my conclusion. At one firm in ~2013, advertising was bringing in $600k revenue per annum - we estimated a loss of potentially triple that (!) - but the response was apathetic. There was very much a reluctance to accept that the "advert management team" (yep, they had a team dedicated to managing the adverts, who had the duty of "managing" Google Ads) would need terminating, too.