Ask HN: Would you sign an anti-ad pledge?

10 points by evanwarfel 7 years ago | 22 comments

I don't know about you, but I have personally committed to never (or so rarely as to practically be never) respond to advertisements. I'd love to be able to tell advertisers that they are wasting their money trying to buy my impressions and clicks. I'm also willing to pay for an ad-free but otherwise identical version of a product, and I think many of us here might be in the same boat.

If there were an easy way to do so, would you sign a pledge / publically commit to being "anti-ad"? One version of such a pledge could involve committing to buy a competitors product if you see a relevant ad.

(Note: Given that only a subset of online users might sign such a pledge, this might actually save the advertisers money, which you may or may not want to have a hand in.)

yellow_lead 7 years ago |

Even if you were to sign this pledge, ads aren't as simple as "I see, I buy". Lots of branding seems to be around changing your perception of or just making you aware of a company or product so that several months later, when you're purchasing something in that category, you'll think of them. You can't possibly remember all the ads you have or haven't seen, so trying to restrain yourself from buying products which youve seen ads for seems futile.

muzani 7 years ago | |

I tried ads once for a sports blog. A lot of it was things like marketing a chocolate drink as an energy booster or breakfast meal for athletes. I thought it was quite dishonest .

DanBC 7 years ago |

Have you heard of the Boulder Pledge?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Ebert#Personal_life

> During a 1996 panel at the University of Colorado Boulder's Conference on World Affairs, Ebert coined the Boulder Pledge, by which he vowed never to purchase anything offered through the result of an unsolicited email message, or to forward chain emails or mass emails to others

evanwarfel 7 years ago | |

I have not heard of the Boulder Pledge, thanks for linking to it. I imagine Roger Ebert was on the receiving end of a lot of unsolicited offers, being a public figure and all.

muzani 7 years ago |

I would.

Ads are a lazy way to make money. It works for FB & Google because they can focus all efforts on making the best product. But this was an era before ad blockers.

Ads pay badly and also significantly drop user experience if done to a certain extent.

When we did a recipe app, it was a conscious decision not to use ads. If we had recipes, the only fitting ads are food related, not dating related, not car related. Anything other than food would be dishonest to advertise.

So instead of advertising food, we skipped the middle man and sold ingredients directly. As we had a niche (keto recipes), the sold product was also a niche of keto alternative ingredients.

My partner later did a different startup, focusing on a football blog. They tried ads, but it was terrible; made about $300 for millions of pageviews. Sponsored articles, e.g. for football injuries recommending a product, would pay several times more. This is also advertising but more precise, and gave the sponsor a huge SEO boost for exactly the thing they were selling. The company eventually landed a deal with a sports supplier which made up a big portion of their revenue.

tomjen3 7 years ago |

No. Ads are not bad. Ads for products that suck are, which is to say 90% of products and something like 99.99% of ads (really great products only need ads if they are in areas that are not normally talked about, e.g tampons).

Ads for products that don't matter to me are noise and annoying.

We should actively work toward rewarding people who create stuff that solves problems, but right now nobody has a better way to get the word out there than using ads.

shanecleveland 7 years ago |

No. Ads in general and bad/abusive tactics are not unique to the web. I’m willing to take the good with the bad and be discerning with my clicks and quick with the back button. And that includes paying for valuable apps and services.

evanwarfel 7 years ago | |

Great, thanks for answering.

Someone1234 7 years ago |

> I'm also willing to pay for an ad-free

It has been tried multiple times, particularly in print media. Most people, regardless of what they claim, aren't willing to pay for ad free. Just the pure fact that it used to be free, often makes it even harder to convert them.

You say you're willing to pay for ad-free, but I'd ask why you aren't paying for ad free already. Many websites now offer it, and few pay it (e.g. almost all online news, Reddit, Google's ad network, YouTube, etc.

tomjen3 7 years ago | |

Most of the offers I have seen are either widely out of proportion to a reasonable price (e.g essentially all newspapers), won't allow me to maintain privacy, aren't easy to purchase or are pointless bundles (newspapers linked from Facebook, I just want to buy that one article).

I am typing this while listing to google music, which I have a paid subscription for. I also pay for Netflix and HBO. They are worth it for now.

dylz 7 years ago | |

I'd pay for ad and analytic and tracking free. Not just making the ads invisible, but the other code along with it disabled.

evanwarfel 7 years ago | | |

That's a great point. People should be able to opt-out.

evanwarfel 7 years ago | |

In all honesty, it's because I did not know that paying for Reddit / Youtube would turn off the ads.

stfwn 7 years ago |

What is an ad exactly? Friends/non-friends telling/mailing/phoning/showing paid/free products/ideas/events irl/online? I need to know the specifics before committing.. Better yet, I'll stay away from extremes and judge case-by-case.

evanwarfel 7 years ago | |

Great question / good points! I don't mean to single out word of mouth recommendations. Perhaps the pledge could be individually modified so that one could specify per-platform definitions.

afarrell 7 years ago |

No. I would be willing to give google/amazon/facebook a list of my life problems every 3 months if it would get me ads that were actually relevant.

evanwarfel 7 years ago | |

Ah yes, the other end of the spectrum, which I also find not unattractive.

marssaxman 7 years ago |

I already behave this way. I'm not sure what I would gain from the pledge you suggest. I don't think the advertisers would care.

evanwarfel 7 years ago | |

They may not! But there is information asymmetry between the advertisers and us individuals. Also, if enough people signed it, such a pledge could be used as a collective bargaining chip, one that could be used to convince C-suite executives to change how they do things.

chungleong 7 years ago |

I've failed already. I just clicked on an ad promoting a hopeless, self-contradictory political movement :-p

evanwarfel 7 years ago | |

Oh no! Keep fighting the good fight.

redsable 7 years ago |

I would