Item — HN Reader

So, what are my ideas?

- static banners (non blinking, no transitions, esp. no vertical transitions that are designed to force you to lose focus – I've come for the content, not the ads)

- no tracking that exceeds maybe, if you have seen the campaign already. Preferably hosted by the website (who is responsible?).

- also, no targeting. Ads once were supposed to be consumer information. Public information is meant to be public, so I would enjoy leaning about what is out there (in the big world). Not just being reminded of what I bought last month, over and over again. Consumer products are part of (ephemeral) culture and I'd like to be part of it. (Reminder: you can always select/target by content and context, not just per user profile. This is technically feasible, as demonstrated by earlier versions of the Web.)

(This is also valid for recommendation and content presentation algorithms of all kind: I generally feel like desperately gasping for air, while being strangled by algorithms that only allow for an ever narrower bandwidth of the ever same. – E.g., is it really true that there are just three videos uploaded to YouTube per week? How do they make a profit? So you say, there are millions? How I'm not going to see them? Even a text search is littered by out of context reminders of the ever same…)

– moreover, ads should be more expensive for the advertising party. There should be less in total and the revenue for content providers should be greater (remember the thriving blog scene, we once had, when bloggers could make a living?)

(In other words, role it back to the early 2000s and I'm fine with that. Essentially, before Google ads went on steroids.)

> ads should be more expensive for the advertising party.

Sorry, my reading comprehension is failing me. If Bob pays Google to put an ad on Alice's website, is Bob the advertising party? Because if so, that would disadvantage small companies and harm the market by making it harder for newcomers to be competitive. If in our hypothetical situation Google is the advertising party that's good and well, though I don't know how we'd get that done.

It's about the price of placing an advertisement. Ads becoming that cheap has eradicated significant portions of the Web, which is now flocking to the few big content platforms. I'd call this an anticompetitive development. Ad networks, like Google, are setting these prices. And they have turned the tables: you can't negotiate the worth of the service, as you the product is the ad tag, not the content, it's embedded in.

(Also, we – as a society – don't entertain second thoughts on housing prices or general cost of living, while this is a common and basic need. Why is this different? Is there a privilege? Also, who's interest is this about, the content creators, including news sites, or advertisers, who rely on this kind of contextual content provided by the creators? Quite obviously, the current arrangement isn't working out for creators, and news, including active journalism and research, are in a steep decline, after having peaked in revenue around 2008.)