Ask HN: What's wrong with current advertising system?

The web hasn't taken enough advantage of the technological advantages it has over TV. So what I'm thinking is more in-depth on page commercials with the ability to checkout (even one click checkout). The call to buy should be more aggressive overall.

Advertising is bad because it doesn't positively contribute to the user experience. Advertisements should inform you of something that you either A) Actually want to buy or B) Want to know about. They don't do that.

advertising is a depressing middle-man work that no-one needed but it exists to lure its customers with the promised possibilities of increased revenue. Something like "Hey you wanna make more monies? give me some first and then I'll give you the possibility of making more money with my XYZ scheme".

The problem with the current XYZ schemes is that they get outdated as soon as users get used to it. Its like a bonfire, you need to keep bringing the woods and other stuff in the fire to keep it burning.

Ages ago, when the world was young (say 1994 or 95), I thought ads on web pages were a fantastic idea. Unobtrusive, able to be taylored to the viewer, a one-click gateway to all kinds of information, and a nice way to get free content paid for. But, alas, after I clicked on a few ads, I was sadly disillusioned. Haven't clicked on ads in years.

But now, you post your questions. So I put on my experimenter hat and try again. For science.

Let's click on some ads.

Ad #1. A sidebar ad asking if I know who uses oil & natural gas. I click. I get a page listing lots of uses of oil & natural gas. Why do these people want me to know this? How does it benefit me? How does it benefit them? I have no idea.

On to the next ad.

Ad #2. Forex trading. Click. A page full of words like "spread" and "pips". No idea what it's talking about.

Continuing.

Ad #3. Schick Hydro. I can win prizes. Wow. Click. The Facebook page for Schick Hydro, whatever that is. If this is the same Schick we all know & love, then it's probably a new kind of razor, I guess. I'm supposed to "like" to continue. They want me to upvote them before I even know what's going on?? I'm seriously turned off. But, as a die-hard experimenter, I bravely forge ahead (for science!). Click "like". Get a box saying I need to sign up for Facebook. No thanks.

Sick of ads, I end the experiment.

Folks, I've been on the web since 1993. There must be an enormous amount of information about me in various databases out there: my habits, my preferences, what I like to read, what I like to buy. And this is the best the ad industry can do?

Consider: someone worked on these ads. Someone paid for them. But in none of the three cases did the ad offer me anything I wanted. Nor, I think, did the advertisers get what they wanted. Complete waste of their time and money. I know how oil is used. A page that assumes I understand "pips"? That does no one any good. And making me jump through hoops before -- presumably -- telling me about a razor, is not pushing me toward buying it.

In short: these ads all appear to come with a significant dose of stupidity -- or well intentioned incompetence at least.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it:

(1) Build an ad platform that isn't stupid. (I'm not saying I know how, or that it's easy, but my experiences above show some things not to do.)

(2) Work very hard to keep the stupidity out. Advertisers seem to want to be stupid and waste users' time. Don't let them; not on your platform.

(3) Brand the platform in a recognizable way. I think the web will always be full of worthless ads. Your platform needs to be easily recognizable and develop a reputation as something worth clicking on[1]. Otherwise, you'll just get lumped in with all the stupidity out there.

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[1] That is, if clicking is what you want users to do. There are certainly other ways of advertising on the web. But I should warn you that, if you choose to put your efforts into unskippable ads before videos, then I will most likely end up detesting you.

Ad platforms capture behaviour but rarely capture quantifiable opinions. Advertising based in this premise is like chasing a shadow.

You may assume that based on a detailed behavioural profile a user should click on my ad and buy my product.

Capturing the opinion of a user (or users in aggregate) in a way that can be relayed to an ad platform is more likely to result in higher relevancy advertising, as you can move closer to the users beliefs about themselves, which governs their behaviour.

So in summary, behaviour is a poor reflection of beliefs. Opinions are a better reflection of beliefs.

Capturing opinions and matching these with advertisers is a better matching system.

This is the direction I am working in anyway.

Ad system has four stakeholders - Advertiser, Ad Platform, Content Publisher, and Content Consumer. I guess we need an advertisement model that not only provide benefits to all four but also engages all four stakeholders to determine the quality, ranking and relevance of ad. Automated Context Matching Algorithms are just a first step in this regard. They match the ad with content but they don't take into account the preferences, beliefs, opinion of visitor and content provider. We must allow content publisher and visitor to have an equal say in which ads get served and which not. Atleast they should be allowed to express whether they found ads relevant or not.

How about vote up/down system for ads? Will it help in determining the relevance of ads according to visitor? Will user even care to click on it?

Another thing that bothers me is how a particular user can be identified and his behavior/preference can be recorded without invading his privacy? How existing ad platforms handle this?

Advertisements particularly for local businesses are limited in their ability to track conversion. If a user sees an ad on Yelp, for example, there is no good way of telling if the ad converted or not - that is that the user saw the ad and made their way to the business due to the ad.

Groupon has begun to close this loop - a business automatically knows that a customer came in due to Groupon. There needs to be a more sustainable way for a business to gain traffic though, like Adsense etc offers for online businesses.

I would suspect Google Offers + Google Wallet will be an extremely effective solution. Companies will be able to advertise AND track how much customers spent. I would say those metrics are extremely important in order to optimize the ad experience.