8 ms·

> We’re introducing more helpful ads in AI Mode I always chuckle when ad companies say that. I have never seen a helpful ad in google search, but well I have b

• bryanrasmussen 4mo ago
  I used to see helpful ads every now and then about 18 years ago.
• BLKNSLVR 4mo ago
  I use an ad blocker, but I'm occasionally exposed to YouTube outside of my ad-free bubble and I find the ads useful for identifying brands to actively avoid.
• baal80spam 4mo ago
  > I have never seen a helpful ad There, I fixed it!
  • iso1631 4mo ago
    I sought out the He Man trailer because I thought I'd be interested in it. I decided I was and will watch it at the cinema next month. That was a helpful advert. I also sought out the Supergirl trailer and decided I wouldn't bother seeing it. Again a helpful advert. In both cases I chose the advert.
  • HelloUsername 4mo ago
    Actually it should be: > I have never seen an ad in google, because I use adblockers
• iLoveOncall 4mo ago
  I never have on Google Search (I also block them to be fair), but I've booked a lot of shows through Instagram ads actually. Shows I learnt about only through those ads and I would have been disappointed to miss. But yeah that's literally the only platform where I've ever had useful ads. Even other meta products only have absolute garbage ads.
  • LightBug1 4mo ago
    Just came here to say the same thing. Local gigs and the like, instagram is actually decent. And I'm a to-the-bone hater of ads. Ad-blockers up to my eyeballs. Except for that one niche of local gigs on insta.
• Antibabelic 4mo ago
  I don't have an ad blocker on my laptop. The ads I get are pretty much entirely generic and irrelevant to me, I don't remember ever consciously clicking on an ad.
• rib3ye 4mo ago
  Recently I’ve been starting up quick web projects and a number of external services are recommend (Neon, Resend, Railway), and if I just let the agent rip, signed-up for and implemented. Is it confirmed any LLM producer or provider has been receiving kickbacks for these technical decisions?
  • _heimdall 4mo ago
    Legally they would gave to disclose with the recommendation that its a paid advertisement. That said, they were also legally not supposed to scrape the entire internet for training so if they are getting kickbacks I wouldn't expect a confirmation.
• Eldodi 4mo ago
  Some might argue that Adwords got so successful because ads competed like search results, on bid AND relevance, not just bid. If your ads inventory is big enough, ads can actually be a better answer to your intent than organic content, because the companies behind the ads have a much stronger incentive to satisfy your need.
  • _heimdall 4mo ago
    Paid ads always negatively distort the results. If AdWords or search consider both relevance and the fee collected, the end user will never be shown the most useful results consistently. If the goal was usefulness they would only pick results by relevance and take no fee at all, or take a flat fee that isn't based on a bidding system.
• sedawkgrep 4mo ago
  Since when have we considered ads something helpful? Their purpose isn’t to be helpful. They're there to sell you something, and nothing more. Any semblance of helpfulness is misinterpretation and merely coincidental.
  • codingdave 4mo ago
    Since when were we the customer? They are helpful to the people who buy the ads, not those of us who have them injected into our experiences.
  • embedding-shape 4mo ago
    The people who are buying ad spots and creating ads absolutely believe they're helpful, not just to you, but to their client. Their purpose is to helpful, to the company, who wants your money and who gives the marketer their money, and with this action, the marketer will believe whatever is needed to do their job, as always.
  • moooo99 4mo ago
    > Since when have we considered ads something helpful I have genuinely met people who claim that ads are helpful and interesting and used this as a justification for adware companies to stalk you every step you take on the web.
    • prepend 4mo ago
      I’ve met people who enjoy lots of gross things. That doesn’t make the things gross to me, or the vast majority of humanity. My guy take is that they are mindrotted by ads into thinking they are good for them. Digital Stockholm Syndrome. Or maybe a Myth of Sisyphus type situation.
      • thewebguyd 4mo ago
        The simpler explanation is that a significant segment of the population genuinely enjoys the rampant consumerism and view ads as a helpful discovery tool as they are actively seeking inspiration for their next purchase. TikTok effectively became a shopping mall because of this behavior, and long before technology there has always been a large demographic that treated shopping as a hobby and form of entertainment. If ads were universally repulsing to the entire population, we wouldn't have seen the development of current adtech. The uncomfortable reality is that most people either are apathetic toward ads, or actively want to be served ads. 60 to 70% of the global internet population still browse without any ad-block. Think back to how many people willingly and purposefully watched infomercial shopping channels like QVC? The ads are a symptom of a society that largely enjoys consumerism.
• laurentiurad 4mo ago
  What do you expect them to say? More annoying ads? They're trying to wrap this in a positive way. Everyone knows that ads are annoying.
• iso1631 4mo ago
  If an advert was helpful I would be able to click the "show ads" button I used to do this. I used to pay for adverts -- computer shopper was a magazine I traded real money for to get the adverts. If ads aren't opt in, they aren't useful.
• mattlondon 4mo ago
  I typically block ads as well, but more recently I changed some setting in the default Android newsfeed thing and some ads started to show through amongst the news items. The ads there are usually fairly innocuous (i.e. not disruptive, not flashing auto play vids etc, they just look like another news item and you can just scroll past them like other news articles you're not interested in), but I have actually found them useful. I am wearing a T-shirt right now in fact that was advertised to me a week or two ago as "on sale" for £8 (eight) and which I clicked through and purchased. There have been one or two other examples of things there that actually have been useful or at least interesting to me right now. So they actually have been useful/helpful in that regard. So I am a bit conflicted here. It is no cost to me to click on the ad, and I bought some things that I use but would probably have not got otherwise. Am I being manipulated to part with my money? I dunno. Would I have bought a £8 t-shirt anyway if I was just in a shop and saw it? Maybe. Was the ad actually quite well targeted and appropriate? In this case yes. I think on balance I would say those news feed ads are acceptable to me. I have problems where it is totally irrelevant and disruptive. Hopefully the AI mode ones will be similar to the news feed ones. I would be pretty upset if the ad content was directly worded into the response.
  • dotancohen 4mo ago
    I love the idea of targeting advertising. But the current implementations I hate. The ASR voice recorder app gets this right. It lets me use the full featured version for three days, after which I need to watch a few ads to get another three days. I choose when to watch the ads, and if I'm late there is nothing worse than a small nag at the bottom of the app. I actually now start every day with the ads, while I cook breakfast, and it is a positive experience. I could also just pay for the app and be done with them.
    • ravenstine 4mo ago
      The problem with the idealism of targeted advertising is that it assumes that there is always an ad that fits your desires. In reality, some people have very niche interests and preferences, and not every business advertises through the same channels or with the same budget. Ads will pretty much always cater to the lowest common denominator even if you account for the individual.
• otikik 4mo ago
  “Helpful to our short-term bottom line”
• IshKebab 4mo ago
  > I have never seen a helpful ad in google search I have, fairly often in fact. That's why Google makes such a bucket load of money from their ads - they're actually vaguely relevant. I've don't think I've ever seen a relevant ad outside of Google though, and I still wouldn't say "yeay, helpful ads!". Nobody is going to want them even though I occasionally get relevant ones and click on them.
• reaperducer 4mo ago
  I have never seen a helpful ad in google search That's a good thing. I don't mind ads, as I understand that without money, web sites go away. But I'm very careful about being tracked. That, I don't think is cool. It's not unusual for me to see ads for companies hundreds or even thousands of miles away, and often selling things for which I do not possess the correct body parts. I consider that affirmation that I am mostly successful at staying off the ad-tech radar.
  • prepend 4mo ago
    I mind ads and don’t think sites would go away. They’d just be less profitable. I mind ads because they crowd out less profitable margins and result in worse products. Imagine how nice and useful Google could be if they optimized for search instead of ads.
    • bigstrat2003 4mo ago
      And even if you pay for the product - a business model where the incentive should be for them to make the product better for you - you still get greedy executives who decide to try to juice their revenue with ads (cable TV, streaming services, etc)! I don't know what can be done, but honestly ads have gotten to be an intolerable business practice.
• ulfw 4mo ago
  The only helpful ads are the ones that waste money on Google (namely those companies/products/results that show up on top anyway, right below the sponsored very same ad)
  • bombcar 4mo ago
    The fact that a brand has to pay money to outbid competitors on their brand is something that feels it should be illegal. Google “forcing” Coca Cola to pay for ads on the search “coca cola” so Pepsi doesn’t appear at the top is somehow wrong.
• Razengan 4mo ago
  > I have never seen a helpful ad I have never purchased anything [just] because of an ad, nor do I know anyone who has. But I have been turned off from EVER buying some things because of their obnoxious ads. The whole ads racket is a case of the emperor with no clothes, an ugly self-justifying cancer infesting human civilization. And to those perpetuating the racket who'll say "but how will people find out about products??" the answer is fucking better search and filtering systems.
• whynotmaybe 4mo ago
  I have seen 1 "helpful" ad yesterday. When searching for sonarqube, I received an ad for a competing product I'd never heard of and I'll check them today to see if it fits my need.
• netdur 4mo ago
  I find helpful ads on Google Search sometimes, and it can be the easiest way to get results, but most of the time, ads (and SEO) ruin search accuracy to the point that it's becoming totally useless
• beanjuiceII 4mo ago
  this might sound wild but..on some platforms that are good with figuring out the types of things i like, I get many ads that I actually like. facebook for example i almost exclusively go there just to see what kind of products i wouldn't otherwise know about that it might show me (some of which i've bought). plus if it helps pay for services than i'm all for it. the part that crosses the line for me is when the platforms are peddling malware and scams through ads. google search would have a ton of this suprisingly..so i hope in AI mode they can improve things
• deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
• illwrks 4mo ago
  I have to wonder if helpful ads most likely refers to the type of add for the exact search result… So, for example if you search for Coca-Cola the first ad will be something Coke has paid Google for. That helps Google earn $ and helps Coke not loose to a site with better SEO and confusion. Does it help you… maybe.
• small_model 4mo ago
  When I want to buy something I search for it or ask AI for recommendations etc. Why not have a toggle, this is a search for product so shower me with ads related. Not all the time when I am just causally browsing.
• eithed 4mo ago
  Maybe one or two in an ocean of crap. And even the ones I do see which are interesting I start despising, because I will see them hundreds of times. Base44 - I will never use your services because of the ad bombardment. Same with that fucking toothbrush that doesn't have bluetooth. It never amazes me that ad agencies just serve me 1 or 2 same ads all the time, but :shrug:
• kccqzy 4mo ago
  A pretty high percentage. But that’s only because the ad goes to the same destination as the first organic search result. Just search for a brand whose web address you don’t know, and usually both the ad and the first results goes to the brand’s home page.
• jorisboris 4mo ago
  It seems techies collectively try to avoid ads, but clearly other segments of people actively click and buy through ads. I would love to get a marketing expert's view on this. It differs by product obviously, but there must be some common character variables (gender, wealth level, ...) I bought once through facebook ads, and now I actively try to avoid any ads
  • bombcar 4mo ago
    Advertisements have multiple purposes - brand awareness, product awareness, sale awareness, etc. Coca Cola advertising is mainly brand awareness - remind you they exist but not really directing you to buy one “right now”. Product awareness is how you learn about new product - usually trying to convince new customers, but sometimes just trying to swap existing customers. These can be “offensive” (a new product aimed at taking a competitors market share) or “defensive” (keeping existing customers from switching away). Of course this overlaps with above. Sale awareness is how you “scoop” up customers who have been exposed to the above but haven’t bought - you’re offering a “deal” so they’re more likely to buy. Most online search-targeted advertising is this kind, and is the most immediate (click and buy) - the other two are just to make it so when you want product, you want their product.
• chistev 4mo ago
  None.
• freedomben 4mo ago
  I use an adblocker and despise most ads with a burning hatred, but the absolutist position of "never helpful" isn't right. My example: A game I've been wanting to buy for a while recently went on sale on Steam. I saw an ad when I opened Steam. I bought the game for the low price, and it is now one of my favorite games I've ever played (Burnout Paradise City - highly recommend, but wait for a sale)
• ZetsuBouKyo 4mo ago
  For people who think often, ad is only useful in very few situations. The ability to think often is ultimately a capability that only a minority of humans possess. Therefore, for the vast majority of people, ad is very useful. For example, my retired parents enjoy buying little gadgets from ads.
• NDlurker 4mo ago
  Personally, I sometimes like targeted ads. If I'm intentionally shopping, it is nice to see ads relevant to my interests. Not saying the whole Internet should be a highly surveiled mall, but they do have their place
  • croon 4mo ago
    I understand your thinking, but I have never felt that the "promoted result" in any search when shopping around inspired confidence in them being the best fit or value for me, even though they're technically a relevant result. More directly: Someone paid to have them surface that result for me, instead of having me find them for being the best. I can understand the need to bypass the SEO arms race of yesteryear, but it still rubs me the wrong way.
  • AlexandrB 4mo ago
    It would be great if I was shown things "relevant to my interests". That's not what targeted ads are because ad placement depends on who is willing to pay the most, not on what optimally matches what I want. The most obvious example is search ads in the App Store that show you a competitor's product (or an outright scam) as an ad when searching for a specific app. Now extend that kind of dynamic to any other product category and you start to see the problem.
    • NDlurker 4mo ago
      True. I guess I forgot about the whole auction process.
• nibblecid 4mo ago
  In my case I haven't seen a single helpful ad in google search. They try to make the ads related to my work or hobbies but it's not helpful at all. Aside from Google, Instagram seems to be nailing the ads algorithm better.
• swordlucky666 4mo ago
  [flagged]
• foobarian 4mo ago
  Tbh that is a pretty vague statement. Could be 0.01% more and it would still be technically correct. Could be doubling the number of non-helpful ads in the meantime
• thih9 4mo ago
  It’s because you haven’t given them enough access to your data. Otherwise they would be able to offer more personalized and accurate ads. I should know, I block tracking and see annoying and unhelpful ads. And I browse social media with their algorithmic feeds, where the content is hyper personalized, helpful and mostly ads too.
  • cucumber3732842 4mo ago
    I remember the good ol' days when you'd search for the specs on a 10yo server you pulled out of the dumpster and then a day later you'd see "Aging HPC infrastructure, upgrade to latest IBM X-series blade architecture" banner adds in hilariously irrelevant places like thepiratebay or a certain hub of videos. Those "naive" ads from 15+yr ago are far more relevant than anything I've ever seen since.
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 4mo ago
  I search for Converse sneakers and top result is an ad for Converse sneakers! Genius! Pay these genius engineers more! So incredible. How are they smart enough to show me exactly what I search for?! But seriously. What are we paying advertisers for? Converse pays Google so that they don't show Vans when I search for Converse? Sounds like extortion or protection money.
• davnicwil 4mo ago
  I think weirdly, ads embedded in AI search responses actually maybe do have a chance at being helpful (as long as it's clear from the context of the question that I may be willing to pay for a solution) just because they could potentially be quite well matched to the specific thing I want, or if they're not quite as well matched but offer other benefits, explain the difference. At the moment search ads aren't very helpful because you have neither of those things. You always get them for any type of query, and when you do get them you don't know if the thing being shown will exactly solve your problem, or only approximately, and the work is much more on you to find that out by reading the product's marketing pages further. If all that could be done for you up front, reasonably honestly, then I could see it being useful. I mean to be sure, in some small percentage of searches I really am looking to buy something and really do want to be usefully, honestly pitched on available options.
• Humorist2290 4mo ago
  An exception that proves the rule, but KRAZAM's channel on Youtube has legitimately helpful ad reads. Rare Data Hunters [0] for example ends with a 1 minute Cloudflare ad that's basically a crash course in their services. Having worked with GCP and AWS but not so much with Cloudflare, that ad gave me a surprisingly clear idea of what the important pieces would be. Truly an exception though. I think generally the only people for whom ads are helpful are advertisers. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU4ByUbDKNc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU4ByUbDKNc
• gloosx 4mo ago
  Well, they are definitely helpful for Google incomes
• ajross 4mo ago
  > I have never seen a helpful ad in google search, but well I have been using adblockers forever so I would not know. That this self-awarely-self-contradicting quip is the top comment on the page is about as essential a summation of HN's collective thought as I can think of. I remain amazed at the pathology that results in the truth that, even in the world as it exists today, the one enemy that truly unites the supposedly-elite techno-leaders of our increasingly advanced society is... ...horror about seeing advertisements for products we're probably buying anyway.
• rastrojero2000 4mo ago
  Those ads do help them, though. They're an ad company now
• arational 4mo ago
  Someone on here said his wife got upset when he set up adblocker for her.
• RulerOf 4mo ago
  I saw a helpful ad once. The organic search results didn't offer what I needed at all, but the ad took me straight to an e-commerce site that sold what I wanted. I had it in my hands at a reasonable price about 5 days. It was for a Nintendo Wii component video cable, back in 2007.
• ventana 4mo ago
  I find all ads — both search ads and website ads — very helpful in training the brain to ignore the noise. Isn't it amazing how we trained ourselves to immediately detect the 1pt hidden "Sponsored" mark and scroll the page down to the first real search result, or immediately locate the Close or X button on the pop-up ad making sure none of the actual ad content gets through our well-trained firewall in our brain. Amazing. Browsing the web is such a fun and dynamic experience these days!
  • hoppyhoppy2 4mo ago
    I believe in brain plasticity but I also believe in uBlock Origin.
• stackghost 4mo ago
  >I have never seen a helpful ad in google search I have never seen a helpful ad, anywhere, in my life. "Ads help people discover new products" is a lie that people who work for companies supported by advertising revenue tell themselves. If $deity exists, and they were to delete all ads from the world tomorrow, never to return, everything would be just fine. Truly great products sell themselves by word of mouth.
  • wraptile 4mo ago
    I agree, maybe "ads are useful" could have been true long time ago before the world was not as connected. You could maybe argue that ad revenue could subsidize the costs of information delivery but information delivery costs are basically non existent today - it's all about attention delivery and thats an entirely different thing.
• com2kid 4mo ago
  When AdWords first showed up (decades ago) they were legitimately useful at times. They were a dramatic improvement over previous ad tech that just used plain word matching to try and find "relevant" ads.
• bluecalm 4mo ago
  For me ads on Instagram are often spot-on, same with Facebook although I don't check that too often. Google search always seemed completely off, I don't remember seeing one helpful ad here (helpful being defined as an ad of something I might be interested in buying).
• Eduard 4mo ago
  Assume the article reader / audience to be someone buying ads on Google and how unhappy they are with how ineffective ads have become in recent years, and you understand AI Mode ads are presented here as more helpful for advertisers.
• BurningFrog 4mo ago
  The targeted ads in Google Search were hugely helpful, at least in the beginning. Suddenly, you could search for something obscure and get ads about that exact topic. This enabled a huge number of small niche businesses to exist and prosper. We now live in the world Google Ads created, and we take for granted the there will be someone selling Bulgarian accordion cleaning kits out there that I can easily find. But targeted ads made this world possible!
• abustamam 4mo ago
  I don't think I've ever seen a helpful ad on Google. But Instagram, despite me only using it to keep in touch with friends via DMs, seems to know me very well. I get a lot of ads for puzzles and board games and video games, which are right up my alley. I've purchased a nontrivial amount of stuff from Instagram ads. Very few were life changing, except maybe an electric nail clipper which is the only way I can clip my infant daughter's nails. But the rest are all fun stuff that I've gotten value from. And FTR I do use an ad blocker both on my browser and my modem came with one. I guess the modems one isn't great though because I still see Instagram ads.