They paid you to put a little ad banner at the bottom of your screen, and paid you like 5 cents an hour that you had the banner up and you were browsing the web.
It tried to watch your browsing to make sure you were actually there, but of course we wrote some script to programmatically visit random web sites. Then they added mouse tracking, so we added mouse movement to our scripts.
The most insidious part was that it was also an MLM… you would also get paid for usage by people you referred, too, and then even by people those people referred, with diminishing returns from each level. So like 1 cent an hour for my referrals and .5 cents an hour for their referral referrals.
We were broke high school kids, so we put so much time and effort into recruiting people and getting them set up with the auto scripts. By the end we were making in the low 3 figure a month. We knew people who were making even more.
Of course, it soon went out of business because of the dotcom bust as well as the ridiculous business model and rampant user fraud, but it was fun while it lasted.
I remember allAdvantage. I remember hitting like $20 or some low figure which was their base payout. For a 12 year old kid that would have been awesome. Lo and behold I got an email saying they had increased their minimum pay out to $50 and I never used it again.
Yes, I especially love it when the auto-playing video automatically goes to the lower-right hand corner of the screen when you scroll down so you don't miss anything. So convenient! Can't wait for this exciting new feature.
Pretty sure I've removed scammy browser extensions that injected ads before, so this probably isn't "the only browser extension that adds ads to webpages".
What would happen (theoretically) if ublock would be changed to not only hide the ads, but click on each and every one of them. Would that disincentivize ad networks to run ads because the data would be poisoned?
It's also illegal in many jurisdictions (e.g. in the US, viewed as a scheme to defraud advertisers by generating invalid clicks that cause financial harm, by depleting their budgets and push them to spend for fake traffic), but in practice it's way easier to just blacklist that IP / user.
The big networks filter such traffic, the small networks benefit from it.
You may also get accidentally get your own website blacklisted or moved to a lower RPM tier, or provoke shadow-ban websites that you like to visit, or... generate more ad revenue for them.
I've never understood the use-case of Adnauseam. This just, essentially, allows the adbroker (e.g. Google) to get more money from the business putting up the ad. Unless every single person uses it, it's not going to stop business from advertising, it just makes the likes of Google get more revenue.
You would probably just start seeing worse and worse ads [0]. Legitimate ad accounts would stop bidding on your profile so you'd be left with only scam ads.
This is also why when people turn off their adblock they only get ads for crypto scams and malware downloads, reinforcing the notion that even "clean" websites are infested with scams and viruses.
this is unironically useful bc if it works well, can use that algo to instead of serving ads, enrich ai responses by adding image and media previews appropriately at the right spots (layout modifications)
Can it be used to insert content from an intranet server? It would be nice to have the ability to insert ads with company content, so people slacking at work get to involunarily learn about some opportunities or company policy.
Ok, so I don’t have an NFL team. I played in high school and like the sport, but find it difficult to be loyal to a color and a logo. I also never watch ads at home on any platform.
So. Am I the only one who kind of likes watching the commercials more than the game when my family or friends make me watch football? They are entertaining when you only see them every now and then.
Now, banner ads are not in the same category. But above is a real use-case for enjoyment of ads.
They get old fast. A few really iconic adverts I could imagine watching once per decade indefinitely, but for most the first time is enough, and where an agency made several similar ads I probably don't need to see all of them even once. Here's an example of an iconic ad I grew up with that I could imagine wanting to see again some day:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accrington_Stanley_F.C. -- for US readers, the UK has a "football pyramid" in which there's a hierarchy, the elite sport teams you've probably heard of compete in a national league, but every year the worst of those teams can be replaced by the best of those from the league below, and this repeats in layers like a pyramid, until eventually you're talking about friends or co-workers, who play other similar teams in their local area maybe in some public park for the love of the game. Accrington Stanley is in the middle of that pyramid, it's hiring professional players and has a dedicated ground to play football, but we're not talking superstar lifestyles or billion dollar stadiums.
This reminds me of a company my best friend’s brother worked for, alladvantage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AllAdvantage
They paid you to put a little ad banner at the bottom of your screen, and paid you like 5 cents an hour that you had the banner up and you were browsing the web.
It tried to watch your browsing to make sure you were actually there, but of course we wrote some script to programmatically visit random web sites. Then they added mouse tracking, so we added mouse movement to our scripts.
The most insidious part was that it was also an MLM… you would also get paid for usage by people you referred, too, and then even by people those people referred, with diminishing returns from each level. So like 1 cent an hour for my referrals and .5 cents an hour for their referral referrals.
We were broke high school kids, so we put so much time and effort into recruiting people and getting them set up with the auto scripts. By the end we were making in the low 3 figure a month. We knew people who were making even more.
Of course, it soon went out of business because of the dotcom bust as well as the ridiculous business model and rampant user fraud, but it was fun while it lasted.
I remember allAdvantage. I remember hitting like $20 or some low figure which was their base payout. For a 12 year old kid that would have been awesome. Lo and behold I got an email saying they had increased their minimum pay out to $50 and I never used it again.
I must have been early because I received a payout of a few € once.
they paid you nothing for the things you taught/did for them :D
but it does sound fun. let's see if all these large coding models and agents are a similar scheme.
I've been waiting for something like this for ages. Hope there's auto-playing video ads too
Yes, I especially love it when the auto-playing video automatically goes to the lower-right hand corner of the screen when you scroll down so you don't miss anything. So convenient! Can't wait for this exciting new feature.
It's better when the auto-playing video automatically reopens itself in case you accidentally close it.
Pretty sure I've removed scammy browser extensions that injected ads before, so this probably isn't "the only browser extension that adds ads to webpages".
What would happen (theoretically) if ublock would be changed to not only hide the ads, but click on each and every one of them. Would that disincentivize ad networks to run ads because the data would be poisoned?
Adnauseam (https://adnauseam.io/) does this
It's also illegal in many jurisdictions (e.g. in the US, viewed as a scheme to defraud advertisers by generating invalid clicks that cause financial harm, by depleting their budgets and push them to spend for fake traffic), but in practice it's way easier to just blacklist that IP / user.
The big networks filter such traffic, the small networks benefit from it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/legal/comments/1pq6kgp/is_it_legal_...
You may also get accidentally get your own website blacklisted or moved to a lower RPM tier, or provoke shadow-ban websites that you like to visit, or... generate more ad revenue for them.
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Data poisoning is probably a more effective way to preserve privacy than simply blocking all ads.
I've never understood the use-case of Adnauseam. This just, essentially, allows the adbroker (e.g. Google) to get more money from the business putting up the ad. Unless every single person uses it, it's not going to stop business from advertising, it just makes the likes of Google get more revenue.
16 replies →
You would probably just start seeing worse and worse ads [0]. Legitimate ad accounts would stop bidding on your profile so you'd be left with only scam ads.
[0] https://www.theawl.com/2015/06/a-complete-taxonomy-of-intern...
This is also why when people turn off their adblock they only get ads for crypto scams and malware downloads, reinforcing the notion that even "clean" websites are infested with scams and viruses.
1 reply →
Wasting scammers money seems like it's targeting itself in the right direction.
i used adnauseam a while ago. it clicked on about 1.5 million ads in half a year of usage.
Not sure i can give good reasoning for this, but it felt like doing the right thing. :)
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That exists, it's called Ad Nauseum
clicking each ad would have no entropy. Clicking some on the other hand…
Can I buy a subscription to get rid of the ads?
this is unironically useful bc if it works well, can use that algo to instead of serving ads, enrich ai responses by adding image and media previews appropriately at the right spots (layout modifications)
Can it be used to insert content from an intranet server? It would be nice to have the ability to insert ads with company content, so people slacking at work get to involunarily learn about some opportunities or company policy.
Thanks. I never knew how much I needed Weather Premium until now.
Those ads look better than the modern adware business. Simple. CSS graphics. Text.
Unfortunately the ads are fake
https://github.com/surprisetalk/AdBoost/blob/main/content.js...
It'd be cool if we could add a feature that places an ad inside the ad. Sort of like Ad-ception.
I was kind of hoping this would let me have ads that I get paid for.
Is there planned support for popups ?
Back in the day, a funny extension was the one that put a Jimmy Wales donation banner on every page https://www.theregister.com/Print/2010/11/25/jimmy_wales_chr...
Seems like every website ever is using this by default already
Just use Google Chrome.
Ok, so I don’t have an NFL team. I played in high school and like the sport, but find it difficult to be loyal to a color and a logo. I also never watch ads at home on any platform.
So. Am I the only one who kind of likes watching the commercials more than the game when my family or friends make me watch football? They are entertaining when you only see them every now and then.
Now, banner ads are not in the same category. But above is a real use-case for enjoyment of ads.
They get old fast. A few really iconic adverts I could imagine watching once per decade indefinitely, but for most the first time is enough, and where an agency made several similar ads I probably don't need to see all of them even once. Here's an example of an iconic ad I grew up with that I could imagine wanting to see again some day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPFrTBppRfw
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accrington_Stanley_F.C. -- for US readers, the UK has a "football pyramid" in which there's a hierarchy, the elite sport teams you've probably heard of compete in a national league, but every year the worst of those teams can be replaced by the best of those from the league below, and this repeats in layers like a pyramid, until eventually you're talking about friends or co-workers, who play other similar teams in their local area maybe in some public park for the love of the game. Accrington Stanley is in the middle of that pyramid, it's hiring professional players and has a dedicated ground to play football, but we're not talking superstar lifestyles or billion dollar stadiums.
The only thing I agree with the current US president about is that American Football should be called something else.
- Helmetball
- Gridiron
- Scrimmage
- Brain-B-Gone
- Turnover (if you are Bo Nix)
- Fumblederp
- Kicks and Giggles
I misread the title as “AdaBoost” and got excited for some old school ML discussions on HN. My disappointment is immeasurable.
I had the exact same reaction!
This is one of the stupidest things I've ever seen. I love it.
... why OP, why
need that rental gravity