AdReplacer

Replace Obnoxious Ads with awesome human curated news!

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Replace Obnoxious Ads with awesome human curated news!

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Ad blockers

Launch tags:News•Ad Blockers•Tech

Launch Team

Inside

Maker

You know those obnoxious ads at the bottom of news stories? The ones that link to spam sites? Well, we're replacing those ads with the best content from around the web. The difference is amazing... let me know what you think!

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11yr ago

How Many People Have Voted?

@jason the simplicity of this idea is striking to me. one of those "it makes so much sense!" concepts, and something i could really see myself using, particularly on a busy day when i don't have the time to go looking for new material to read. this combined with Pocket could reintroduce a serendipitous effect to an industry (news) that is fast becoming mostly about curation and personalization. sometimes i don't know what news i'll find intriguing until i'm presented with it, so this seems like an ideal way to kill two birds with one stone (wow, what a violent metaphor ha).

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11yr ago

Bolo

@jason Be careful what we wish for. Ad blockers - or worse, "replacers" - are Carthaginian Peaces for people that care about good content. No, I don't care to find out how to "stop Googling names" and the other low grade linkbait that is increasingly ubiquitous. So I don't click on it. But they're apparently a major revenue stream, and a choice for the creator to make. I tested the ad blocker and on Business Insider its not giving me additional information from Business Insider, as implictly suggested above, it's directing me to competitive sites to BI. (If they had been effective: for what its worth I'd say the links are pretty bad. On BI: Science the blocker is giving me links to Dancing with the Stars, a dead Fifth Beatle, and Sepp Blatter has an emotional breakdown: not much better than Taboola.) Effective adblocking inevitably means lower quality content over time, and spam will move deeper and deeper into original content. You produce very good content yourself - I love Twist. If someone feels hearing about Walker Corporate Law is the equivalent of spam celebrity news (I'm happy with my lawyer, I don't need Scott) and writes a podcast ad blocker, what would be your grounds for objecting to that?

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11yr ago

Huckle

@jason This is a really interesting way to take advantage of an open window. What preferences is the news content based on?

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11yr ago

Inside

Maker

@mrsenorhill For now, it's based on me and my editorial team picking out the stuff we think is most interesting. But over time, we've got lots of ideas about ways to tailor or customize that feed.

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11yr ago

Huckle

@lons @mrsenorhill Very cool! I'm curious how many times I double take after installing. I've trained my brain not to look at ads... What sorts of ways do you differentiate visually?

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11yr ago

Inside

Maker

@mrsenorhill We added a little border and a message letting you know who brought you these awesome links, but really, we don't want it to be very loud and distracting. I like it mainly for the feeling of security - no matter where I am on the page, I can just click anything that looks cool without worrying that I'm now going to be sold protein supplements or something.

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11yr ago

@lons I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with that feed. This is great. If you could learn my preferences over time and customize it for me, I'd be reading your content more than the page I started out on.

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11yr ago

I would love to see something similar that just targeted Outbrain and Taboola "recommended from around the Web" ads with ads for meaningful causes. But this is a good step.

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11yr ago

DailyDrip

Maker

@ugo_alves ohh, cool idea

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11yr ago

Inside

Maker

@ugo_alves thanks a killer idea! we will put it on the roadmap -- do let me know what you think!

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11yr ago

Jolly

@ugo_alves +1 on this - the taboola and outbrains are very sales driven and promise monetization, but monetization through them is ugly and barely generates revenue while diluting the brand. Would love to see this as an alternative - it literally could be dropped into the same ad slot and placement that they work in!

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11yr ago

Rye

@craigzingerline @ugo_alves Only if done poorly or if you're trying to do it for the wrong type of product. I've seen Taboola and Outbrain work really well for folks.

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11yr ago

Jolly

@jamiequint @ugo_alves I'm sure it has and does work for others but quality control is an issue and I just haven't had much luck in real trials.

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11yr ago

Meet Leon

When Apple allowed ad blocking, many journalist and publishers compared it to stealing. I wouldn't go that far for the personal user, but as a business with the intent of generating profit, this doesn't feel right. A little too steal-y. It is essentially replacing other's ads with TLDR's.

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11yr ago

Inside

Maker

@jfals82 actually, we are replacing other people's ads with.... their own content! so, the consumer (not us!) takes taboola or outbrain off of Business Insider and replaces it with quality content -- which includes Business Insider!

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11yr ago

Inside

Maker

@jfals82 oh yeah, we make $0 from this.... so, if you can figure out a way for us to make money with out ads I'm all ears :-)

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11yr ago

Rye

@jason @jfals82 except they no longer make anything on those pageviews so you're just losing them more money.

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11yr ago

Meet Leon

@jason Excellent hack. Probably not a business. And the moral point wouldn't keep me up at night so good luck.

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11yr ago

Book Your Sales

@jason @jfals82 Sponsored content that passes a human curation - not spammy but actually interesting and something people might want to read. What Outbrain wants to be but isn't (as far as I can tell).

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11yr ago

Better

Well executed, clever idea that improves your browsing experience significantly. Already love it 30 min in. You can see @jason passions all the way back to mahalo with human curation and high quality content. Two ideas: Would be cool if it could tune into topics I tend to click on in tl;dr or inside (so quality keeps going up) Would be cool to tune content to site I'm on (ESPN/sports, cnn/news, etc) or even by topic (so it's defacto 'more' )

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11yr ago

DailyDrip

Maker

@geoffclapp i really want to do some `topic tuning` ... we've been talking about that internally. Wasn't MVP though, so next version maybe!

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11yr ago

Velona AI

Maker

@geoffclapp Our team is totally on the same page. Already have some cool stuff coming for a v2...that is right on par with what you're saying.

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11yr ago

Inside

Maker

@geoffclapp thanks pal! yeah, we are going to tune it up for sure.... personalization and machine learning next!

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11yr ago

Just gave it a whirl on Huffpo and it worked like a charm. Now, if only you could build one to replace horrible articles with better journalism! But really though, it makes me think of lots of other applications and uses of this 'browser trickeration', from securing children's browsing experiences, to corporate public wifi networks, all the way to letting SJW have safe spaces right in their browser!

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11yr ago

Inside

Maker

@akhanukov you are now in a SAFE SPACE (TM)! :-p

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11yr ago

@akhanukov You're right-- schools could make great use of this, especially since so many are going 1:1 with Chromebooks. Thanks, @jason.

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11yr ago

I'd like to/could see this going beyond the format of content here, currently other news or editorial articles, and expanding into possibly 3rd party content integrations with things like 1. related Quora questions/answers, 2. Medium replies related to the current story, 3. Twitter Moments, videos, etc., or even REALLY go crazy and create a backchannel commenting system layered atop content providers they can't govern. Oh oh.

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11yr ago

Inside

Maker

@akhanukov These are great ideas. I love the idea of Quora integration, maybe even by topic? (Find the 3 most relevant recent Quora threads tagged with the same subject as such-and-such blog post.) Could be pretty powerful, and certainly better than 4 Things You Didn't Know About Cranberries or whatever would normally be there.

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11yr ago

Velona AI

Maker

@akhanukov That is cool...and could lead to some cool ui design elements as well...mixing in interaction items...instead of blocks of content. That's going on the board :)

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11yr ago

@lons Thanks. Yes, exactly. The two biggest problems with news sites is 1. the spam ads and 2. the horrible comments, which are usually just the same trolls rehashing the same argument over and over, if comments exist at all, yet, there are impactful and/or practical related conversations occurring at places like Quora and Medium just to name a few at 4:06 am, and most readers would never think to jump over there and see the topic in another context.

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11yr ago

@raydawg88 thanks! ☺️

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11yr ago

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