Adpinion is a new startup trying to get rid of the antagonism between advertisers and web surfers by letting you vote for the ads you want. How you vote determines what ads you and other visitors see when visiting an Adpinion network site.
The most basic types of online advertising (banner ads) are widely disliked; an example of this is the increasing interest in ad blockers (40 on Firefox alone). In response, Google and others are continuing to evolve their contextual advertising engines. Adpinion’s solution is to empower users to choose their advertisers.
Adpinion collects your preferences through a voting bar that sits along the left hand side of their embeddable ad unit. You can vote an ad up or down using the thumbs up or thumbs down buttons. How you vote on each ad contributes to a profile of your ad preferences and the ad profile for the site overall. Adpinion serves ads based on your own preferences, but also recommends ads based on the ads liked by of users similar to you.
Advertising rates will be based on clicks and related to how close ads match your preferences. Rates vary by how closely the ads relate to your preferences, with ads costing more as they become less relevant.
The ad banner does have the drawback of being wider than standard units, 468 x 60 units, due to the voting bar. They have additional unit sizes planned.
The user feedback model leaves me wondering if they’ll get enough feedback to do a better job than automated systems or highly targeted sites. The big question is whether people are interested enough to use Adpinion’s voting system or will simply ignore it.
For their launch, they’ve lined up only a few advertisers (37 Signals, CrazyEgg, Mint, …) and have filled the remnant space with auto generated Amazon ads. They plan on building out the network to a self serve model, but haven’t finished the publisher and advertiser management tools. Adpinion is a Y Combinator company based in Boston and started last year by the three founders Luke Iannini, Mike Jacobs, and Kevin Corcoran.
I like the idea, but there are 2 big problems with this:
1) The ad is served in an iFrame. This means that anyone serving these ads can no longer offer pages in XHTML Strict. That might not be an issue for some content providers, but anyone who is a stickler for web standards will find that annoying.
2) The iFrame pulls in with it a 170kb .js file. That is a pretty hefty chunk of data to add to your page, especially if you are already serving javascript-based ads. However, by comparison, Google’s adsense .js file is only 13kb in size. I think they need to think about optimising their software before seriously expecting mainstream users to add such a big chunk of external data to their pages (and potentially multiple times within the same page).
They won’t attract anyone unless they pay at least what adsense pays (and have as at least as good reporting and reliability). Since they don’t have any audience, they don’t have any advertisers, and don’t pay anything. Ergo, they are dead. YPN has a larger chance of success, and they are dead vs adsense as well.
if the ad network is large, and has good reporting, un-interesting or horrible ads _already_ are voted down by the community but passively, they are simply ignored.
this idea is destined to sink without a trace.
well yongfook, those two are problems with implementation and not concept, so if those were the only problems, they are all set.
I mainly don’t see the incentive on either side. I think it’ll be fairly unedifying to find out that lower-contrast, non-animated ads are preferred over jittering fake system alerts. So why not come up with some guidelines for advertisers that will generally not annoy, and go with it? I think with this, people will vote for the ones that don’t bother them, not because they interest them but because they can ignore them.
I don’t see it working, but then again most of what I do fails pretty spectacularly too.
Despite the iFrame and .js size, this is a fantastic idea. I’ve even found a few new services via the ads that look very interesting and bookmarked them. Anything is a welcome departure from the ubiquitous AdSense ads and Dell offers.
Maybe im mistaken ….. but if a person clicks on an ad … typically this means it’s effective? Why bother rating ad’s when you have this ?
If no-one clicks … change your ad. Simple.
I don’t like the idea. I think that users savvy enough to figure out how to install AdBlock (I can’t believe there are still people who see these ads…), are just anti-ad and won’t want to see it whether it’s popular or not.
-Chris
http://www.nerdcouncil.com
I like the idea and would vote on ads….I’d vote more if I was compensated.
We’ll see if this idea takes off, but it isn’t a bad one conceptually – though iFrames and a 170 kb javascript file would turn me off.
Negative Jay in First Life comment in 3…2…1
Too many smack the monkey and win a iPod ads to attract credible reviews.
You have to be kidding. #9 Carl has it right – this is Jay bait.
I can’t see this concept working. Why (as a user) would I take time out to rate an ad? There is just no incentive for me. If I want to click on the banner, great get me to the offer….I don’t take extra time to rate it. Most ad are annoying enough. The problem I see is that if only a few people rate ads, this system can easy be gamed.
How will this effect contextual delivery and/or targeting of ads? I’m not sure they will work together effectively. What if one ad pays more than another? If I’m a site owner my goal is to I want to maximize my revenues.
YC could have done a better investment than this, though it’s not the worst idea I’ve seen them invest in.
My Rating:
+–+
: 4 :
+–+
If I’m not clicking on the ad, I’m certainly not going to waste time voting, again. Doesn’t the fact that I’m not clicking on the ad tell you something?
I’m guessing they didn’t do any market research.
#9 Carl and #11 Dave – thank you. I’m glad my reputation is so strong (or weak depending on your viewpoint).
There are a number of problems with this idea so let’s go through one-by-one:
1. Advertising is not music. AdPinions is not Pandora. Let’s be clear on this. People barely pay attention to ads. Let’s assume that on the average banner ad, click-through rates are 0.25%. If that’s the click-through rate, let’s assume that on a typical Web 2.0 site with a relatively tech-savvy demographic, maybe 10% even notice the ad. Most people in this demographic either have ad-block installed or don’t ever pay attention. How many of us see the TechCrunch ads on the top right hand side? I barely notice them and I think most of you don’t either.
2. Let’s say that of the 0.25% that click the ad, a smaller portion are willing to engage with the ad to indicate whether they like it or not. Let’s say that 1/5th of them do. That’s now 0.05% of ad viewers. Now let’s assume that you need 1,000 opinions before you see any sort of statistical significance. That means you need 2,000,000 impressions. That is 2000 CPMs of an ad to determine any sort of statistical significance.
3. The chicken-and-egg problem is massive. A publisher has no reason to switch over unless there is a massive advertiser network (a la Google AdSense). Doubleclick (ostensibly Google) has far more advanced methods to target ads. The technology behind AdPinions is funded with a grand $20,000 from Y-Combinator? Give me a break. Google’s ad product team is huge and includes statisticians, engineers, marketing experts, etc. They didn’t create their model in 3 weeks living in ramen in a rat-infested Cambridge apartment.
The advertisers have no reason to use this either. Stupid ads might get some traction because users think they are funny. So what happens? All the advertisers that are getting screwed for having serious advertising leave your network. Bam! Where did all the insurance companies go? What about the mortgage firms? Trial lawyers? Consumer electronics stores? Auto companies? Hmm, all gone because of the stupid pricing model.
(We of course can’t expect TechCrunch to understand statistical significance since they think Y-Combinator is such a success. 3 hits out of 40? How is that a “success”? Oh wait, at TechCrunch, raising money is considered a success by itself.)
We’ll ignore that this is funded by Paul Graham and being shilled openly on his own personal web site with really crappy ads. I would think most ads on any Paul Graham essay should focus on problems that Y-Combinator types suffer from – dating (”Get out of your crappy North Beach apartment and get a girlfriend!”) or eating (”Stop eating ramen, try organic tofu!”).
The issue I see is that people are likely to vote positively for the ads which do not bother them, and ultimately those that don’t grab their attention. And of course the problem here, is that people rarely click on ads that do not get their attention.
I don’t know about you guys, but of course I “like” the ads which are not annoying. And the only ads I DO click on are those that draw my attention, hopefully because they interest me or are advertising a product I want.
It’s a catch 22
Two things…
First, this startup is solving a non-issue: If I like the ad/product, I’ll click on it! End of story. And if I buy something as a result of that click, I’ve proven that the ad works. This voting ads idea is ridiculous.
And THE reason why this will not work and will be dead: These ads are of non-standard size!!!! The voting widget is taking valuable space! Advertisers will not shorten their ads and publishers will not enlarge their banner space. Whoever thought this out didn’t do their research.
PS: Is YCombinator paying TC now to push these ridiculous startups now?! This latest one is ridiculously childish.
#15: My original post was not meant as a compliment. I was just surprised the standard Jay rant hadn’t appeared yet.
A lot of the negative comments on this page assume advertisers choose only 1 ad network. And it is true that if I were only going to choose 1 network it wouldn’t be this one just yet.
But… big advertisers use lots of networks and something like AdPinions would be a nice way to test which ads are generating user interest without annoying them. If I spend 1% of my ad budget on AdPinions I can use the data I get back to hone my spending of the other 99%. And nobody would be unhappy with 1% of the revenue of AdWords.
(Also, measuring 3 out of 40 YCombinator companies is hardly fair. This assumes the other 37 companies have failed – which is not true. Most are still in existence and some are doing rather well despite your best efforts to complain them in to oblivion.)
@ 16 – thanks for the comment on my blog and congrats on the successful site.
@ 17 – One really does have to wonder what TechCrunch gets in return for giving publicity to nearly every single dumb start-up that Y Combinator churns out. Paul Graham is secretly snickering while posting 200 times a day on news.ycombinator – “Fools, I sold them Reddit, then I suckered them into Zenter, and now AdPinions muahahahahha.”
I think that is a really stupid idea. I agree with all of the problems stated previously. Furthermore, as a user I would most likely just ignore the ads as usual. And what’s to stop users from just thumbing down every ad on their network?
@ 15 Carl – I’m shocked (not! All you fanboys think the same) that you don’t enjoy my sometimes articulate and other times fun comments.
Did you even bother to read my comment? Do you understand the concept of statistical significance. I just said above that you’d need 2000 CPMs to get any significance on a single ad. Now if you say that AdPinions is used for only 1% of total ad servings, the network would need to generate 200,000 CPMs (200 million views) to find any statistical significance. There aren’t too many sites generating that many page views in a month let alone for just one advertiser.
Let’s face it, AdPinions has a bone headed model. We already know most Y Bombs don’t understand big terms like “statistical significance” and “game theory”.
3 out of 40 is pretty crappy. A lot of the companies just fall off the face of the earth DESPITE TechCrunch and others gladly giving them publicity for no apparent reason.
Jay,
“3 out of 40 is pretty crappy. ”
And none of these three have been big exits. Zenter was obviously a talent, not product, acquisition.
Finally, where are all these Billionaires?!?! LOL
http://www.msnb...ewsweek/page/0/
Jay,
You have so much free time for criticizing others. Can you provide some links to your projects so that we can evaluate them? They must be incredible based on your attitude toward other startups that actually exist.
By the way, your free Wordpress blog is pretty weak, and that template you’re using is soooo 2003.
Just added http://www.adpinion.com/* to my FireFox Adblocker. Thanks!
Its hard enough to get users to pay attention to ads to begin with. Now users are supposed to grade them too? I don’t think so. Maybe this would work for a specific website that graded award winning ads but the average banner is nothing that will strike anyone as ‘oh this is cool’.
Even if this does become popular, all people would need to do is make their banner ads look like these and people would mistakenly try to vote for an ad and be whisked away to that free iPod we all have been promised.
Does it go in the deadpool if it never even got a chance to get wet?
Zenter had some pretty awesome stuff in their product.
@ 23 Perry – First of all, why don’t you address any of my critiques? All of the Y Combinator Fanboys never address anything I actually say.
I don’t have that much free time but as you can tell I work decent hours at an enterprise software start-up. Why do I need to reveal the firm at which I work? Just because someone is a billionaire does not mean they have valid points nor does it mean that someone who is poor has no valid points.
Your criticism of my blog is fair – I’m not an expert on blogging by any means. I don’t try to earn a living off it. I am simply using it to expound on some thoughts. If you care to, please leave some comments and engage in some debate.
The idea is great only if people cared enough to vote.
I don’t see why anyone would waste their time for first looking at an ad, then trying to digest the ad and then placing their votes.
throw out the voting part, and it’s a winner:
http://shmooth....yadprofile.html
Why can’t they do both voting and click tracking? This way they would have a lot more data to work with and more data to crunch. I actually think this is a a good idea and believe that all recommender systems will get in the ad field sooner or later.
Who needs this?
The advertiser doesn’t care if you like the ad, he cares if you click it, and that’s already measurable, so what’s the point in a voting mechanism?
This could work, but only if they can show that fewer ads get Adblocked when served through this system. I don’t know if there’s any way to research how much Adblocking goes on, but shoud be possible, at least for certain sites.
Here’s a better idea for online ads, a button that means “I’m interested but busy right now. Save this ad for later and maybe I’ll go look at it when I have time”. It’s rare that I’ll actually interrupt my browsing of a site to follow one of it’s ads, and then it’s middle-click to a new tab anyway.
you have to be kidding me.
Why would I want to pick which ads I want to see when I don’t want to see ads in the first place?
What a great concept, putting the control back in the hands of the users, the people!
This technique and process is also being used in eCommerce, social networking sites, and anywhere else where choice needs a little boost!
Along a simliar vein, here’s a list of companies that provide Behavioral Recommendations and Social Recommendations Web Services:
http://www.web-...s-web-services/
Well this idea is counter intuitive to say the least. With most users going out of their way to avoid ads, we are expected to go and rate them? I would be surprised this site takes off…
Jeremiah – are you a total shill or what? You never say anything bad about anything Web 2.0. Everything is “synergistic” and “viral” and “great” to you. Do you even understand the vocabulary you use?
Did you even read other comments on here? You just show up and shill your own web site and your stupid list. Grow up dude and stop hanging out with other shills like Scoble.
Read the ARGUMENTS: AdPinions is DEAD ON ARRIVAL.
@Jay, only a shill. Debate is not necessary for web2 success, only page views and uniques. Paul G is giving a talk on how revenue models mean very little for start-ups compared to site traffic. You should come and learn.
Jay,
If I’m promised that I’ll never see a particular annoying ad again I may very will vote more frequently than your back of the napkin numbers above. How can you honestly cite rigorous terms like statistical significance and then make up a bunch of fake numbers and claim they’re “close enough”?
I also enjoy that you mock me for not mentioning every detail of your comment but then you completely ignore the last paragraph of mine.
Call me a fanboy if it helps you write me off – I’m a fan of seeing interesting ideas succeed and fail because to me you learn more by taking risks. I’m also a big fan of constructive criticism – you’ve got the second part down, why not work on the first some time?
I like this idea instinctively, because ads make sites free to use and any engagement with ads keeps the payers paying because they can see some useful ROI.
We should all be worried about things like adblockers and the possibility that we’re going to make the farmer so disillusioned with his return that he stops feeding the Golden Goose, and we have to start paying for the eggs at source..
That’s why I like this idea – I hope they get some traction, possibly with some niche sites they can really focus down on.
@ bdb –
Paul Graham doesn’t like debate. He prefers that you shut up and code.
@ Carl – let’s address your point that I didn’t talk about the fact that Y Combinator’s porftfolio is a shit show. Certain companies don’t even get “claimed” by Y Combinator until they have an exit (a la Parakey – a talent acquisition by Facebook). That’s an interesting strategy. Read my blog post regarding how many of their start-ups are failures: http://livingin...r-y-bombinator/
The 3 exits have been tiny except for Reddit which was $12 MM. Loopt seems to have some legs, but Scribd and Xobni are a joke. A ton of their start-ups just fizzle out or just have the same boring interface and no traffic. Can you point to any successes that are really blowing it up but not being mentioned in my analysis?
I’m not saying my numbers are precise. I’m doing mental math. It’s something most fanboys should try before they get too excited about an idea. I also like seeing great businesses succeed- I just think that great businesses are founded on a real business model, not a joke. You can’t offer up a product for free and expect that to be your distribution strategy.
@ John J – I agree that it’s important to not let web users get pissed off by ads, but the way to do that is through passive tracking. As I stated above, the numbers just don’t work out even if my numbers are ballparks. Even at an order of magnitude off, it’s still difficult to make this work.
So if I don’t like an ads, I would vote it down. And what happened if an Ads have very very negative score? The Advertiser will leave AdPinion right? I doubt they will change their ads graphics or whatnot. So AdPinion will only have a limited set of Ads in their portfolio. It’ll be really hard to grow your portfolio.
The thing with voting systems is that people can game these systems. I hope these 3 people have time figuring out spammers and bots.
It’s quite clear that the strategy here is to get bought by bigger ads serving company. This is a feature not a product.
Jay, if you want to know why TechCrunch covered things like this is because it’s what TechCrunch does for a living. Once the story is gone, they have nothing else to write and therefore their media died.
I’m sure Arrington would say “What on earth are these products coming out from YCombinator, un-interesting, not innovative, repetitive” in his mind. But if he doesn’t have any more startup to cover (startup a la Silicon Valley, not somewhere in Asia or Europe), nobody will come to TechCrunch.
Jay,
Y Combinator has never named their companies until they have launched or appeared at Demo Day. Parakey did neither so that is why they weren’t “claimed”. I think they provide the number of their investments on their web site so they don’t seem to be trying to hide failures.
What is your minimum threshold for something larger than a “tiny” exit? From what I have heard, Y Combinator has broken even on their investments thus far and therefore they have equity in at least 15 surviving companies for “free”. If I could invest 0 dollars in Loopt to get a stake I certainly would.
Companies with great potential, but companies who aren’t rich just yet include Weebly and Wufoo. Obviously it’s hard to argue with your statement that Scribd and Xobni “are a joke”, since you have stated it as doctrine. I will say that in the case of Xobni they have received funding from some of the top VCs and angel investors in the world – people who likely have a better track record than you or I at picking winners.
Last note: most of these companies will fail. Even the founders know their odds are low. You’re going to be right most of the time, Jay. But by writing off every single company at launch you miss out on some interesting stories.
Please keep posting these stories Michael and Nick. Whether they come from Y Combinator or not, I read TechCrunch to hear about crazy experiments people are trying. If I wanted to read about solid business models, I’d buy the WSJ.
Carl,
You have some valid points my friend. That being said, your “from what I’ve heard” is not any more reliable than “what I [Jay] have heard”. When you succeed, you tend to boast about it. When you don’t, you stay secretive. That should be a proxy to indicate the lack of success that Y Combinator has had. I don’t think Y Combinator itself is in that poor of a position given they pick up cheap equity at insanely low valuations.
I agree with your point that TechCrunch should feature experimental companies, but I think it would be wise to realize there are a lot of unmentioned consumer focused companies that don’t get coverage but have a lot more traction than anything out of Y Combinator – look at how much longer it took to give UStream publicity despite the fact it’s clearly superior to Justin.tv?
Jay,
There seem to be contradictions in your comments. On the one hand you dispute Carl’s assertion that YC is breaking even, because it is hearsay. On the other you say that you don’t think YC is in a bad position because they get equity at “insanely low valuations”. What valuation is appropriate for companies that you describe variously as a “joke”, “stupid”, or worse?
It seems to me that in painting YC as taking advantage of these companies, you profoundly patronize the people who start these companies & who take the YC deal of their own free will.
@ 46 Jon
I’m saying that I don’t consider Y Combinator’s companies to be “big hits” but when your basis in the investment is so tiny, it’s not hard to break even. I hope that clarifies my position. Y Combinator typically takes 6% for $15,000 or so – that’s a $250,000 valuation. Not awful for the stage at which most of these companies are, but they should get a product before they start hyping it up and I think the model at Y Combinator pushes them into an even higher risk/reward scenario than most regular start-ups since no Y Combinator business has a “let’s generate revenue” model. All of them are a “let’s get sold” model. If they can’t find a buyer, they are busted because they have no revenue stream.
I do patronize them to a certain extent because I think they are being lazy and taking the easy way out by going with Y Combinator and because of it’s model, they are not treated like real entrepreneurs, but pawns. Some succeed, some don’t. Free will in Y Combinator is overstated – Reddit’s co-founders were forced to take on other people onto their team in a “merger” of two Y Combinator start-ups.
Real entrepreneurs don’t pony up 6% of their equity to have some ambiguous set of dinners with Paul Graham & Co. They go find real mentors and board members and go out to build a real business.
Jay,
In the words of the recent film Ratatouille’s Anton Ego – In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.
Ads are here to stay and if you have to encounter them, why not let them be ones for things you might actually like?
I think the voting thing is pretty ingeneous, though i feel there will be some problems:
People don’t like extra effort, they are more likely to ignore an ad they don’t like than click or move a slider. On the other side of the same coin, they will be more likely to just click on an ad they do like than muck with some sort of rating system.
People don’t always know what they like, just because one day they find something attractive doesn’t mean a week later or even hours later they will like the same thing.
Luke, Mike, Kevin: Great job. Looks like a winner.