> I'm ad tolerant, but the ads Twitter show me are always useless. The ads have zero relevance to me
I have actually thinking about this and some ideas come up. If you don't mind me asking... What would be your ideal non-introsive ads mechanism? Maybe a relevant mention to you on a recommended tweet?
There isn't a company that knows better what I am really interested in than Twitter, and yet they seem unable to recommend me anything even remotely interesting.
It wouldn't even need to be particularly evil stuff: I'm convinced that my public profile would be enough to sell me e.g. half a dozen good books per year.
Ads should allow me to opt out of any alcohol or gambling company's campaign.
If the ad network is slurping all my data they should use that info to serve ads that have some relevance to me.
I'm happy for stuff to end up in my twitter stream. I'm not happy for anything to sound like it's come from me, or has my endorsement or recommendation.
I'd actually be ok with explicitly endorsing something if it's something I really like (and not get a revenue cut). The sort of product/services where I'm a "Net Promoter" 9-10.
Could have a sort of "tinder for endorsements" built into the platform, refreshed once every week maybe, that lets companies request your endorsement for a particular ad/message.
You flip through with an endorse/don't endorse (and some granularity around "I'll never endorse" this) and have that tied to a custom decay function where your endorsement expires and needs to be requested again.
Maybe you have a paid sub to opt out of this system entirely. And for those who don't want to pay or endorse, ok, let's see if the other mechanisms are enough to support them too.
> What would be your ideal non-introsive ads mechanism?
I am not the OP but the answer to question is very close to my heart.
The pinnacle of non-intrusive online ads have been the original Google search ads. They were out of the way, clearly marked as ads - and hence could be visually filtered out. They were pure text, so could be neatly included as elements on the rendered page. And they were always targeting an INTEREST. Not an individual.
So I would take that as the minimum acceptable advertising behaviour. Not implying that it's perfect, but it's a clear set of ground rules. With that in mind, _my_ ideal, non-intrusive ads mechanism builds on the following rules:
* Ads must never be inline to page content
* Even when clearly out of the way, ads must not be allowed to mimic page content; they must be clearly marked as ads
* Text only.
* I might accept an image within the ad, provided it was always served from the content provider's system.
* As an extension to previous point: if the served image size would exceed a notable fraction of the page size, it must not be included in the output.
* No user tracking of any kind.
* No third-party javascript. Ever.
* At most 15% of display real estate allowed to be used by ads. Including the padding in the UI. (Counts as space denied from content.)
* Not allowed to affect page content load times. Ad material must be included at the end of the page code. If your service pushes ads from internal and separate system, hard timeouts must be imposed: if the internal system cannot serve an ad within an allotted time, the frontend must never be forced to wait. You just missed an ad impression. Tough.
* If clicking an ad takes a user through a bounce page, all identifiable information from the user must be stripped. Bounce page or redirect must not impose any further page loading delay.
* No beacons
Breaking even one of the rules automatically disqualifies you.
If you, as an advertiser, find these rules unacceptable - well, then we are in mutual disagreement. I find your ads equally unacceptable and treat them as a form of cancer.
However, as a genuine service to the user... please allow the user to search for ads that have been displayed to them. Preferably by display context. I would be glad to return to a subject at a later date and search for something I remember seeing earlier.
The above is still not ideal, but everything that behaved according to it would at least be palatable.
I have actually thinking about this and some ideas come up. If you don't mind me asking... What would be your ideal non-introsive ads mechanism? Maybe a relevant mention to you on a recommended tweet?