<story><title>Startpage is now owned by an advertising company</title><url>https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/di5rn3/startpage_is_now_owned_by_an_advertising_company/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rdbell</author><text>Former adtech CTO here.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve heard this argument a lot but it&amp;#x27;s hard for me to agree.&lt;p&gt;Saying that ad arbitrage doesn&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;add value&amp;quot; is kind of like arguing that someone with a media-buying&amp;#x2F;sales role doesn&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;add value&amp;quot; because they&amp;#x27;re just sitting in the middle taking a paycheck&amp;#x2F;commission.&lt;p&gt;Partnering with ad arbitragers isn&amp;#x27;t much different than outsourcing internal media buying&amp;#x2F;sales roles to an agency to increase reach or fill-rate.&lt;p&gt;Your point about ads being annoying to end-users isn&amp;#x27;t unique to digital. Advertisements on all mediums have always annoyed end-users. Certain implementations like full-page takeovers &amp;amp; loading 100 ads on a page are the most annoying. Generally it&amp;#x27;s the publisher&amp;#x27;s fault for the bad UX.</text></item><item><author>graaben</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve worked with System1 in a previous job. One of their main products is ad arbitrage, which as far as I can tell adds zero (or negative) value to the average consumer&amp;#x27;s browsing experience. This is a company that only cares about extracting as much money as they can by finding new ways of showing you ads.&lt;p&gt;As a side note - the whole digital advertising industry reminds me a little of the financial engineering on Wall Street of the last decade. Doesn&amp;#x27;t add any new value to society - and in many ways actually harms it - but makes so much money that companies build their whole strategy around it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eropple</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; Advertisements on all mediums have always annoyed end-users.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is untrue. Historically speaking, print advertisements in many markets (even when restricted to English-speaking ones) could and did serve multiple purposes, including the relation of interesting topics and stories--ones that certainly were brought-to-you-by or even featured products in them, but worked in concert with the material of the publlication to entertain and inform the reader.&lt;p&gt;It wasn&amp;#x27;t until the 1960s, approximately, that print advertisements turned into the screaming look-at-me garbage that they have continued to amplify in volume to this day.&lt;p&gt;Advertising does not have to be a pustule on society, but we have chosen to allow such.</text></comment>
<story><title>Startpage is now owned by an advertising company</title><url>https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/di5rn3/startpage_is_now_owned_by_an_advertising_company/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rdbell</author><text>Former adtech CTO here.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve heard this argument a lot but it&amp;#x27;s hard for me to agree.&lt;p&gt;Saying that ad arbitrage doesn&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;add value&amp;quot; is kind of like arguing that someone with a media-buying&amp;#x2F;sales role doesn&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;add value&amp;quot; because they&amp;#x27;re just sitting in the middle taking a paycheck&amp;#x2F;commission.&lt;p&gt;Partnering with ad arbitragers isn&amp;#x27;t much different than outsourcing internal media buying&amp;#x2F;sales roles to an agency to increase reach or fill-rate.&lt;p&gt;Your point about ads being annoying to end-users isn&amp;#x27;t unique to digital. Advertisements on all mediums have always annoyed end-users. Certain implementations like full-page takeovers &amp;amp; loading 100 ads on a page are the most annoying. Generally it&amp;#x27;s the publisher&amp;#x27;s fault for the bad UX.</text></item><item><author>graaben</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve worked with System1 in a previous job. One of their main products is ad arbitrage, which as far as I can tell adds zero (or negative) value to the average consumer&amp;#x27;s browsing experience. This is a company that only cares about extracting as much money as they can by finding new ways of showing you ads.&lt;p&gt;As a side note - the whole digital advertising industry reminds me a little of the financial engineering on Wall Street of the last decade. Doesn&amp;#x27;t add any new value to society - and in many ways actually harms it - but makes so much money that companies build their whole strategy around it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>graaben</author><text>The biggest issue that I have with companies like System1 is that a huge portion of their business model is tricking technically un-savvy people into clicking on ads they otherwise would not want to click on. How is that adding any value to society, other than a check in the pocket of the middle man?</text></comment>