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A New Idea, For People Who Want To See More Banner Ads

Jacob53 writes "Scott Kurnit is a very bright guy. He founded About.com, and has raised over $8,000,000 for his new business AdKeeper. So, who am I to judge? But his new start-up sounds more like a Saturday Night Live skit than an emerging marketplace." As someone who actually enjoys a lot of advertising, it sounds only mildly weird to me — the basic idea is to let people easily archive ads they think might be interesting for perusing later.

9 of 167 comments (clear)

  1. A New Idea... by Looce · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Disable your ad blocker. Ding, instant shitload of ads.

  2. No - this is a great idea! by Weaselmancer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Convince advertisers that you'll look at their ads later if they don't bug you with them right now. That'll be the compromise. Get your lousy popups and spam off of the pages I'm interested in and you betcha I'll read them later.

    Then set up a cron job to wipe the folder every so often.

    --
    Weaselmancer
    rediculous.
  3. xjlm by xjlm · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't understand people. I use a 16,000 line /etc/hosts file to keep from seeing crap like that. Faster browsing, less spyware/adware/crapware, and I see what I want.

    --
    The Tea Party is just the GOP with a bag over its head.
  4. Who remembers AllAdvantage? by tepples · · Score: 3, Informative

    I use a 16,000 line /etc/hosts file to keep from seeing crap like that.

    And a decade ago, people signed up for a toolbar that showed a banner ad every minute, just for an extra 50 cents per hour of surfing the web. Some people even memorized the best startup sequence so that they could get GetPaid4, Spedia, and AllAdvantage running all at the same time.

  5. Re:Advertisements for the poor by theNAM666 · · Score: 3, Funny

    "Three poor children for sale. Make good workers, or if you can't afford to feed them, may be fricaseed to make a great meal!"

  6. Re:Forget the article, submitter is weird by causality · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Being that you are likely a fan of scifi, why are you being judgemental of what other people enjoy?

    Some people are masochists and really enjoy physical pain. There's nothing "judgmental" or otherwise faulty about saying that this is pathological. Something is wrong with those people. I don't care if pointing that out offends you because it's the truth, not merely a matter of taste or opinion.

    One can only be "judgmental" (a thoroughly overused word) when there is a prejudice against one of two equally viable options. You're not being "judgmental" when you say that having $1000 is better than having $10, merely realistic. Thus, to claim that GP is being "judgmental" is equivalent to claiming that banner ads have as much literary and artistic value as a well-written sci-fi novel. If you think you can prove that claim, I'm willing to entertain your evidence, but until then I remain fully skeptical.

    Some guy is free to enjoy ads if that's really what he wants to do. Others are free to think that's pretty damned strange. I don't see anyone advocating that either freedom should be taken away, so really what's the problem here?

    --
    It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
  7. Re:Forget the article, submitter is weird by Andy_R · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This dumb-seeming idea is potentially a great way of getting those people who are still susceptible to advertising to stick their hands up and shout 'hey, advertisers, over here'. That's it's actual value, it potentially allows targetting of ad spending on people who don't adblock.

    Scott 'dilbert' Adams pointed out a while ago that the holy grail for advertisers is an accurate list of people who are gullible, rich and not resistant to ads. He uses the example of a absurdly expensive house-cozy (like a tea cozy, but for your house). It's so stupid and over-priced that only a handful of people in the whole would be rich and dumb enough to buy one, so it's an awful idea for a business... unless you know exactly who those handful people are. If you do then then you have a workable business model.

    --
    A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
  8. The only time I wanted to archive an ad by lavagolemking · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The only time I wanted to archive an ad was when I was complaining to the company that booked my flight about their shady behind-the-scenes sale of my credit card number. I got this ad in my itinerary promising me 20% cash back from my purchase if I signed onto a trial for this "Great Fun Site" (run by Trilegiant). Thing is, I'm pretty detail oriented (what most people call "weird") and I actually read the terms of use. Sure enough, although they ask for only my e-mail address, the terms of use said Priceline already handed them my credit card information before I even entered anything. The idea behind this company is that after the 1-month free trial (where I hear you don't really get any of the coupons they promise), they start billing you monthly and you have to call their customer service line to cancel (entering your e-mail address is formal agreement to their billing terms). Naturally, I didn't enter anything.

    At the time, I had more important/productive things to do than complain about it. A few months later, I wound up with around $700 of international charges for Cyprus-based adult websites on that same credit card. It was a new card, and in protest to bad practices of banks I always pay with cash when possible, so Priceline was the only company I gave the information to. So, when I went to complain and show them the link, the ad was conveniently gone so I had no evidence. Priceline insisted they did not send anything to Trilegiant (even though the terms from the ad said they already had it) because I didn't enter my e-mail address nothing was sent, and their systems were "unbreakable" and had "never been hacked as long as Priceline existed".

    I guess in summary, the only reason I would want to save an ad is for legal documentation when the advertiser oversteps his/her bounds.

    To be fair, in this case it could go either way. The issuing bank, 5/3 Bank, has been careless and tried to pass the cost of fraud onto me several times in the past (this time by refusing to dispute the international transaction fees). I can narrow it down between 5/3 Bank or Priceline & Friends, but in my opinion they're both equally shady and equally likely to have had a data breach somewhere they're not telling anyone about.

  9. Re:Advertisements for the poor by 1u3hr · · Score: 3, Informative
    Has anyone ever thought of making a website where you watch nothing but advertisements with the knowledge that the money made for the website goes directly to feeding the poor?

    http://www.freerice.com/index.php