Comment by 15155
21 hours ago
> Americans are receiving more ads than in other parts of the world
Ads aren't free, so yes, it would stand to reason that people in the largest consumer market in the world might garner more ad spend.
21 hours ago
> Americans are receiving more ads than in other parts of the world
Ads aren't free, so yes, it would stand to reason that people in the largest consumer market in the world might garner more ad spend.
So because the US is the largest consumer market in the world, the TVs LG sell in the US has more ads in the UIs than TVs sold in Europe? Why would it be like that? If that theory is true, does that mean TVs sold in the European Union then have more ads than TVs sold in China, as the EU consumer market is larger than the China one?
> Why would it be like that?
Ads aren't free - this isn't a "theory," it's basic economics. Cost can be political (you cause the entire EU government to outlaw the practice) or monetary.
> If that theory is true, does that mean TVs sold in the European Union then have more ads than TVs sold in China
Probably? The markets have little overlap, but again, this is a function of cost. Where people have more money to spend, I have more money to spend on ads, or more money to spend on campaigning to be allowed to show ads.
> Probably?
Spoiler: LG TVs sold in China also seem to have more ads than the LG TV we end up buying in Europe. Seemingly (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48957229) with Samsung it's the same. Even though EU is a larger consumer market than China, so obviously your theory doesn't hold, it's something else than "Bigger consumer markets === more ads in UIs in TVs".
4 replies →
Living in China, in my experience there are more ads than anywhere else I have been. My TV’s homescreen is just ads, every app has constant ads after each action there is basically a popup. There are even more ‘grey area’ ads, my whole scooter and door is plastered with the same ad for borrowing money, just different color and number, but literally 40 around my front door. On the rolling shutters of stores there are hundreds of stickers offering shutter maintenance services (lol). Its fairly insane, but the overload also makes it interesting
Europe has strong GDPR regulations. As for China, I've heard that hardware margins are low, so the hardware itself is just bait, and they embed ads in the software inside. But this is just something I heard from another Korean programmer, so it's not really a serious claim
More spend doesn't equal more ads. Given a fixed number of ad spots, demand dictates the price advertisers would pay for ad placement. But ad platforms have no incentive to reduce the number of ads they show just because placement price is low; keeping ad spots around costs them nothing.
The cost of ads already accounts for the audience. Ads in the US are more expensive, so the number of ads people see should be roughly the same despite higher ad spend.
You must be getting downvoted by people who have never run an ad-supported web site.
When I used to do that, North American traffic got ads 100% of the time. European traffic might get ads 5% of the time. Otherwise, there were few advertisers that cared.
However, this was back before Google AdSense upended the industry, and you could still make a living showing one static ad per page.
It's afternoon in Europe, and folks generally don't like to be reminded of the fact that their market is decreasing in global relevance.
In this case, ads are even a product people actively want to avoid, but it's still unsettling to be undesirable. Imagine banning smoking and then getting upset that Philip Morris doesn't want to sell to you anymore.
I don't think many Europeans are lamenting that companies are advertising to Americans more than them.