Comment by amelius
3 days ago
> AdTech engineer here (some 13 years in the industry).
How do you even plan to explain it to your grand-children?
3 days ago
> AdTech engineer here (some 13 years in the industry).
How do you even plan to explain it to your grand-children?
Obvious sarcasm aside, I compel you to ponder on this question next time you read "free" content on the web (a newspaper, a dedicated niche site or anything in between).
Former Adtech dev here - yeah, that justification worked for me for a while but when I was ordered to "just go look at this porn site and figure out what they're doing to open popunders despite the latest browser updates and then apply it to our adverts" too many times, I jumped ship.
But sure, "free content cos adverts", you keep believing that for as long as you can, I jumped ship after 13 years of it, which ironically appears to be how long you've been in the industry.
Let me just say though - adverts can still support free content without all the absolutely scummy things the adtech industry does. You don't have to track users across everything you can possibly track them across to still make money - my former company at one point was going to partner with Shazam to track people via transponders in bus-stop / train station billboards.
That's not "supporting the free Internet", that's "making some amoral shareholders richer".
Hopefully you'll figure out the difference with a few more years under your belt.
I want to pay a real and honest price for everything.
I send them a dollar or two in Monero, anonymously. That has me for a year, no?
https://www.therage.co
Most free works on the web is produced by users who receive absolutely zero ad money or any direct compensation whatsoever.
If anything, the ad industry helps kill honest contributions because they financially reward dishonest ones who are better at playing the SEO game or other such tactics than they are at giving visitors what they are actually looking for.
And at the end of the day, ad-supported content isn't free at all because we all pay for it in the end - and much more than what the website receives because there are entire industries inbetween that take their cut.
Honestly, if a bunch of adverts going away got rid of "free" content, would that be all that bad? Most of the quality free content does not have ads on it. Ad supported content, or at least those using traditional ad networks, tends to be bottom of the barrel.
After all, this website doesn't have (traditional) ads