Ask HN: How can advertisements be better?

1 points by anthony_james 10 years ago | 1 comment

I personally envision a day where advertisements are both relevant and of immediate use to users. Instead of "HEY LOOK BUY THIS!" they function as useful reminders, suggesting we purchase goods that are of personalized use to us.

What do you all think is limiting advertisements (across all mediums) from achieving this? Is this even possible? Will ads forever be necessary evils used to finance freemium businesses and Google?

ivansavz 10 years ago |

The best advertisements have

    display:none;

no but seriously, the whole idea of adverts is to "push" you to buy things you don't need, so how could they ever be good?

Also the general idea of selling my website visitors eyeballs to a third party is very difficult to swallow for me. If I run a content website and I put adverts on it, selling to the highest bidder, what respect to I have for my readers?