There is no such thing as ethical ad. Why would anyone leave money on the table and not do scummy / google / facebook ads. Not like anything is stopping them unless the ad industry gets killed by law.
> Why would anyone leave money on the table and not do scummy / google / facebook ads
If ethical ads do a better job of reaching developers, you would be leaving money on the table by not using them.
Supply and demand applies, as usual. Companies selling dev services want more effective ad campaigns, ethical ads are less likely to be blocked/ignored by their target demographic, thus demand for ethical ads goes up. The supply of websites/apps running ethical ads is relatively low, so that means the payouts of those ads are higher.
So in the end, running ethical ads on your dev-oriented website could make more money than google/facebook ads, advertisers could get more return on their investment, and end-users benefit from ethical and less-intrusive advertising (although that might not last forever once the MBAs are brought in to chase growth)
It sounds like we have a very different idea of what "ethical" means. In answer to your question about "what's stopping them?" - well, just that: ethics, morals, the desire to act decently even when there might be some additional benefit to being sleazy.
Waiting for a law to prohibit immoral behavior doesn't seem like a sustainable way for a society to function, even though it does seem to be the way we're trending.
>It sounds like we have a very different idea of what "ethical" means. In answer to your question about "what's stopping them?" - well, just that: ethics, morals, the desire to act decently even when there might be some additional benefit to being sleazy
for some private companies, sure. but the second a company goes public, all of this completely goes out of the window. the only time a publicly traded company acts ethically is when it thinks its public image (read: stock price) will be harmed by acting otherwise
>Waiting for a law to prohibit immoral behavior doesn't seem like a sustainable way for a society to function, even though it does seem to be the way we're trending
as far as I've seen - i.e. the rise and dominance of free-market economics - we're trending and have been trending since the 70s, in the opposite direction.
creating laws to prohibit harmful behaviour isn't some kind of crazy unsustainable new invention, it is just the basis of how societies maintain themselves. it's convenient for corporations (read: groups of resourceful people that will do anything they think they can get away with to take your money) to act like rules for them are a bad thing, but they are not, and short of implementing actual communism, they will continue to find ways to make profit. and if they don't? well should they have been making profit from harming society in the first place?
I definitely appreciate the negative view of ads. I had some similar internal conflict around building on ads, but it was the only way for us to sustain the project we worked on..
Read the Docs was a huge part of the open source community, but all the other ways we tried to fund it didn't work. I posted about this at the time, and still think it makes a good argument for why we should be investing to fund open source infrastructure with marketing money, not just engineering budget:
We are also experimenting with an option for showing sponsorships, instead of paid ads. This works well for non-profits, and could layer on top of Open Collective or GitHub Sponsors. We're working with the Python Software Foundation to power their "sponsored by" messaging, which is another option other than "paid ads"
If the ads didn’t change what you showed based on the price and instead charged a fixed price ti be in the list (and still be ranked by what’s best) then I think you can call it ethical.
That is to say, helping people find the best product is ethical. Helping them find whichever product has the biggest marketing budget less so.
I agree that there is no such thing as an ethical ad, but not for this reason. an advert in and of itself is an outside actor trying to implant information in your head, by and large without your consent, by and large using manipulative psychological techniques. this, to me, is unethical
> I agree that there is no such thing as an ethical ad
Are you saying an ethical ad is possible, but it has never existed to this day? Or that it’s impossible to ever make an ad ethical?
It seems that using your definition of an advert, an ad can theoretically be made ethical by addressing the issue of consent and psychological manipulation. But it’s probably not practical.
Studies show that non-tracking ads pull in 96% as much revenue per impression as tracker-based ads.
Is the 4% boost really worth chasing away users, adding cookie popups, etc? Also, it's possible for users to unblock non-tracking ad networks. If 4% of your audience does that, then you end up making more from them.
Finally, with ads that target content, any extra revenue due to premium audiences goes to the content publisher. For ads that target end users, the premium goes to the ad network.
If you're placing user-targeted ads on anything but bottom-tier content, then you are squandering your monopoly access to your readership. That's why this ad network specializes in just developer sites -- some advertisers will pay a premium to reach developers. Others will pay a premium simply to avoid being displayed next to toenail fungus and celebrity wardrobe failures.
Because in my first hand experience in ad tech and running an ad-monitized site, the net effect is that CPMs on Safari and Firefox (no 3rd party cookies) are about 60-80% lower than that of Chrome and Edge.
The quality of ethical vs non-ethical is not a binary state, it's a transient descriptor. That which was not evil will either fail or grow large enough to become evil. There are no known exceptions to this.
bogwog|3 years ago
If ethical ads do a better job of reaching developers, you would be leaving money on the table by not using them.
Supply and demand applies, as usual. Companies selling dev services want more effective ad campaigns, ethical ads are less likely to be blocked/ignored by their target demographic, thus demand for ethical ads goes up. The supply of websites/apps running ethical ads is relatively low, so that means the payouts of those ads are higher.
So in the end, running ethical ads on your dev-oriented website could make more money than google/facebook ads, advertisers could get more return on their investment, and end-users benefit from ethical and less-intrusive advertising (although that might not last forever once the MBAs are brought in to chase growth)
ericholscher|3 years ago
pugio|3 years ago
Waiting for a law to prohibit immoral behavior doesn't seem like a sustainable way for a society to function, even though it does seem to be the way we're trending.
permo-w|3 years ago
for some private companies, sure. but the second a company goes public, all of this completely goes out of the window. the only time a publicly traded company acts ethically is when it thinks its public image (read: stock price) will be harmed by acting otherwise
>Waiting for a law to prohibit immoral behavior doesn't seem like a sustainable way for a society to function, even though it does seem to be the way we're trending
as far as I've seen - i.e. the rise and dominance of free-market economics - we're trending and have been trending since the 70s, in the opposite direction.
creating laws to prohibit harmful behaviour isn't some kind of crazy unsustainable new invention, it is just the basis of how societies maintain themselves. it's convenient for corporations (read: groups of resourceful people that will do anything they think they can get away with to take your money) to act like rules for them are a bad thing, but they are not, and short of implementing actual communism, they will continue to find ways to make profit. and if they don't? well should they have been making profit from harming society in the first place?
ericholscher|3 years ago
Read the Docs was a huge part of the open source community, but all the other ways we tried to fund it didn't work. I posted about this at the time, and still think it makes a good argument for why we should be investing to fund open source infrastructure with marketing money, not just engineering budget:
https://www.ericholscher.com/blog/2016/aug/31/funding-oss-ma...
We are also experimenting with an option for showing sponsorships, instead of paid ads. This works well for non-profits, and could layer on top of Open Collective or GitHub Sponsors. We're working with the Python Software Foundation to power their "sponsored by" messaging, which is another option other than "paid ads"
https://www.ethicalads.io/sponsorship-platform/
williamtrask|3 years ago
That is to say, helping people find the best product is ethical. Helping them find whichever product has the biggest marketing budget less so.
permo-w|3 years ago
wzwy|3 years ago
Are you saying an ethical ad is possible, but it has never existed to this day? Or that it’s impossible to ever make an ad ethical?
It seems that using your definition of an advert, an ad can theoretically be made ethical by addressing the issue of consent and psychological manipulation. But it’s probably not practical.
hedora|3 years ago
Is the 4% boost really worth chasing away users, adding cookie popups, etc? Also, it's possible for users to unblock non-tracking ad networks. If 4% of your audience does that, then you end up making more from them.
Finally, with ads that target content, any extra revenue due to premium audiences goes to the content publisher. For ads that target end users, the premium goes to the ad network.
If you're placing user-targeted ads on anything but bottom-tier content, then you are squandering your monopoly access to your readership. That's why this ad network specializes in just developer sites -- some advertisers will pay a premium to reach developers. Others will pay a premium simply to avoid being displayed next to toenail fungus and celebrity wardrobe failures.
celestialcheese|3 years ago
Because in my first hand experience in ad tech and running an ad-monitized site, the net effect is that CPMs on Safari and Firefox (no 3rd party cookies) are about 60-80% lower than that of Chrome and Edge.
aliqot|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
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