Ask YC: Are merit-based ads a good idea? Appearance probability proportional to karma/score/etc.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=129177

by amichail • 18 years ago

10 9 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I've added this feature to Numbrosia:

davidw• 18 years ago

Interesting idea. It's something fairly cheap to give people with whatever kind of points, and probably also makes sense in terms of habitual users being the ones most likely to have points and ignore ads.

NSX2• 18 years ago

My point exactly. This is one of the more interesting ideas I've come across on Y ... and as you say it's cheap and I bet people can come up with the nuts and bolts relatively easily.

Who's talking about it here? Now compare the top posts at the same time as this and perhaps you can understand what I'm talking about?

And yet, "Do you watch TV" got like, 100+ responses in mere hours ...

I hope this post becomes popular because this is an idea worth at least discussing, if not pursuing.

Bet not too many people will pay attention to it though ...

misterbwong• 18 years ago

Definitely sounds like a good idea. Add to that a decent message/spam filtering mechanism (like karma) and you're in business.

dkokelley• 18 years ago

This is a very interesting idea. In fact, a concept like this may very well go beyond the game itself.

Please keep us informed on how your score based ads work out.

alex_c• 18 years ago

That is very interesting.

I would be grateful if you let us know in a couple of days (or enough time to get a decent data set?) how many people are using the feature (and if it has any noticeable effect on user behaviour), and what kind of clickthrough rates the ads have...

pchristensen2• 18 years ago

I'd also like to hear some results from this.

pchristensen2• 18 years ago

I like this. This could be a big change in how ads are served online, and since ad-supported is one of the most important business models for internet sites, that's saying something.

tim22• 18 years ago

Not a total departure from how some people have used many other sites. Eg, the more friends you have on myspace, the better you can advertise your band; the more popular your youtube video, the better you can use it to promote something; same goes for blogs.

Of course, the way it's being used here works off of a skill that nearly all of his users are known to have, unlike the youtube example.

tim22• 18 years ago

That is an interesting idea.

I will probably try this with my site and make it based on points earned today or this week.

Ask YC: Are merit-based ads a good idea? Appearance probability proportional to karma/score/etc.

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