<story><title>BuzzFeed Says Posts Were Deleted Because of Advertising Pressure</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/20/business/media/buzzfeed-says-posts-were-deleted-because-of-advertising-pressure.html?partner=socialflow&amp;smid=tw-nytimes&amp;_r=0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kyllo</author><text>&lt;i&gt;I work in the online advertising space.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;They also use AdBlock to basically steal content&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The whole problem with your industry is that you are still operating under the mistaken belief that &amp;quot;impressions&amp;quot; drive purchasing behavior. As if having some image forcibly burnt into my brain will influence my subconscious desires enough to cause me to make a purchase sometime later. This idea is and has always been pure snake oil. I don&amp;#x27;t want to see your ads, and I&amp;#x27;m not going to click on them or buy what they are selling anyway. If anything I&amp;#x27;m &lt;i&gt;less&lt;/i&gt; likely to buy a product after I see it in a banner ad because they are annoying and I don&amp;#x27;t buy products that annoy me. You have no business telling me that it&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;stealing&amp;quot; when I configure my browser client not to show me ads that I don&amp;#x27;t want to see. The implication is offensive. Do you think that running a spam e-mail filter is &amp;quot;basically stealing&amp;quot; too?</text></item><item><author>manigandham</author><text>I work in the online advertising space. Unwilling is probably an understatement.&lt;p&gt;Although &amp;quot;people&amp;quot; shell out tons of money on casual&amp;#x2F;social Facebook games and such, they are incredibly price sensitive to content like news or videos. They also use AdBlock to basically steal content without letting publishers recoup the production costs  and other investments.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve spoken to and worked with several major publisher networks over the years that have tried various solutions with subscriptions but every attempt has led to a massive backlash or drop in traffic as users would rather go elsewhere then pay to read. Just look at how much negative feelings there are towards paywalls or any site that requires membership.&lt;p&gt;There have been trials already by Google to solve for this but the original idea with Google Wallet [1] failed and they&amp;#x27;re now trying out the Contributor program [2] but still having trouble.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.digitaltrends.com&amp;#x2F;web&amp;#x2F;google-launches-micropayments-for-web-content&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.digitaltrends.com&amp;#x2F;web&amp;#x2F;google-launches-micropaymen...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.google.com&amp;#x2F;contributor&amp;#x2F;welcome&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.google.com&amp;#x2F;contributor&amp;#x2F;welcome&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>wtallis</author><text>People &lt;i&gt;aren&amp;#x27;t&lt;/i&gt; paying for content. But extrapolating that to say that they&amp;#x27;re &lt;i&gt;unwilling&lt;/i&gt; to pay for content is a bit of a stretch, given the unwillingness of content producers to offer ad-free access at a fair market price, and the lack of an easy payments system to process such small transactions.</text></item><item><author>vonklaus</author><text>Well, if people would fucking pay for content, these conflicts wouldn&amp;#x27;t happen. However, people have largely decided not to pay for content. I personally don&amp;#x27;t pay for content very often, I also don&amp;#x27;t expect unbiased journalism from buzzfeed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>manigandham</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re conflating a lot of issues.&lt;p&gt;1) Spam is not the same, you didnt ask for it so you are rightly refusing and actively blocking it.&lt;p&gt;2) Content is not free. Someone had to create it, and they can either charge you directly or let you see it for free by also showing you ads. When you block those ads but still read the content, you&amp;#x27;re stealing the access&amp;#x2F;time&amp;#x2F;production&amp;#x2F;value of that content without letting the publisher recoup any of their investment or make any profit.&lt;p&gt;3) I&amp;#x27;m not really sure where this anger comes from. Advertising is such a big and growing industry because it works. This is not some evil conspiracy nor are all the companies full of idiots. You will find regular people much like yourself working at all of the advertising agencies, networks and publishers.&lt;p&gt;Impressions do work. It&amp;#x27;s not a &amp;quot;belief&amp;quot;, it&amp;#x27;s a fact. Think of it like an empty road with a billboard and a store at the next exit. You can have a blank billboard and see how many people stop at the store. Then put up an ad and measure again. That delta is a significant and measurable difference and with digital advertising, it can be tracked to a very specific level to prove it works. There are also many different types and formats of ads which work in different stages of the sales conversion funnel. YOU might not think it works, but that&amp;#x27;s not what the massive amount of data and results show every day.</text></comment>
<story><title>BuzzFeed Says Posts Were Deleted Because of Advertising Pressure</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/20/business/media/buzzfeed-says-posts-were-deleted-because-of-advertising-pressure.html?partner=socialflow&amp;smid=tw-nytimes&amp;_r=0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kyllo</author><text>&lt;i&gt;I work in the online advertising space.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;They also use AdBlock to basically steal content&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The whole problem with your industry is that you are still operating under the mistaken belief that &amp;quot;impressions&amp;quot; drive purchasing behavior. As if having some image forcibly burnt into my brain will influence my subconscious desires enough to cause me to make a purchase sometime later. This idea is and has always been pure snake oil. I don&amp;#x27;t want to see your ads, and I&amp;#x27;m not going to click on them or buy what they are selling anyway. If anything I&amp;#x27;m &lt;i&gt;less&lt;/i&gt; likely to buy a product after I see it in a banner ad because they are annoying and I don&amp;#x27;t buy products that annoy me. You have no business telling me that it&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;stealing&amp;quot; when I configure my browser client not to show me ads that I don&amp;#x27;t want to see. The implication is offensive. Do you think that running a spam e-mail filter is &amp;quot;basically stealing&amp;quot; too?</text></item><item><author>manigandham</author><text>I work in the online advertising space. Unwilling is probably an understatement.&lt;p&gt;Although &amp;quot;people&amp;quot; shell out tons of money on casual&amp;#x2F;social Facebook games and such, they are incredibly price sensitive to content like news or videos. They also use AdBlock to basically steal content without letting publishers recoup the production costs  and other investments.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve spoken to and worked with several major publisher networks over the years that have tried various solutions with subscriptions but every attempt has led to a massive backlash or drop in traffic as users would rather go elsewhere then pay to read. Just look at how much negative feelings there are towards paywalls or any site that requires membership.&lt;p&gt;There have been trials already by Google to solve for this but the original idea with Google Wallet [1] failed and they&amp;#x27;re now trying out the Contributor program [2] but still having trouble.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.digitaltrends.com&amp;#x2F;web&amp;#x2F;google-launches-micropayments-for-web-content&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.digitaltrends.com&amp;#x2F;web&amp;#x2F;google-launches-micropaymen...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.google.com&amp;#x2F;contributor&amp;#x2F;welcome&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.google.com&amp;#x2F;contributor&amp;#x2F;welcome&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>wtallis</author><text>People &lt;i&gt;aren&amp;#x27;t&lt;/i&gt; paying for content. But extrapolating that to say that they&amp;#x27;re &lt;i&gt;unwilling&lt;/i&gt; to pay for content is a bit of a stretch, given the unwillingness of content producers to offer ad-free access at a fair market price, and the lack of an easy payments system to process such small transactions.</text></item><item><author>vonklaus</author><text>Well, if people would fucking pay for content, these conflicts wouldn&amp;#x27;t happen. However, people have largely decided not to pay for content. I personally don&amp;#x27;t pay for content very often, I also don&amp;#x27;t expect unbiased journalism from buzzfeed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>smtddr</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt;&amp;gt;As if having some image forcibly burnt into my brain will influence my subconscious desires enough to cause me to make a purchase sometime later. This idea is and has always been pure snake oil.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Brand_awareness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Brand_awareness&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;This absolutely does work on a non-trivial amount of people. Even when said people are aware they are being influenced. Anecdotal; I grew up with McDonald&amp;#x27;s fast food. Even though today I&amp;#x27;ve taken up a much healthier diet for years, I&amp;#x27;m still a bit sad McD&amp;#x27;s cannot be a part of my family&amp;#x27;s life. I&amp;#x27;m aware it&amp;#x27;s because of those golden arches and that Ronald person that was always in commercials during my Saturday morning cartoons. My superMarioBros.3 toys came from McD&amp;#x27;s happymeals. To this day I still buy many Nintendo-brand t-shirts for myself, and even Nintendo stuff for my kids, and I know it&amp;#x27;s because Nintendo has etched into my head their marketing from before I was even 10 years old.... but I can&amp;#x27;t shake it off. McD&amp;#x27;s mixing Nintendo characters into their marketing image makes it even harder for me to ignore them... but I do because I see the real effects of eating unhealthy. Otherwise anything that doesn&amp;#x27;t have a very clear negative effect, the Ads do work on me. If I see something advertised often enough without running into any negative commentary about it, the next time I need whatever that company was advertising I will look to them first.</text></comment>