>If the problems actually need solving, ill go looking.
What if you are looking, but an advertisement helps you find it faster?
As an example, I was shopping for a keyboard the other day. I spent several hours looking through different specs. It would be handy if a website would have popped up "hey, here are the 3 you are probably looking for, pick one!".
The benefit would have been for me (less time looking) and for three site (less server time serving pages to me)
When I am looking to buy something, ads actively get in the way of that. Ads are why we don't have websites that tell you "these are the 3 options you're probably looking for" any more because people figured out that they can make sites like that where the three choices are just ads rather than good recommendations. There's been times when I've simply given up on buying something because I got sick of wading through ads looking for any actual information.
> There's been times when I've simply given up on buying something because I got sick of wading through ads looking for any actual information.
It's happening more and more often to me. I've been caught on this spiral of mistrust ever more often, even when wading through what once was a good place for human reviews: reddit.
I can't tell anymore what's an honest review to a paid one, be it affiliate links bullshit all the way to astroturfing on social media, it's exhausting.
In my experience all three options are usually crap and I would have been better served doing my own research.
The only time advertising has been of use to me is advertising clothing. It's an extremely saturated market, so searching for "cool t shirt" or "nice jeans" is worthless. Before COVID I would go to a nice area in Tokyo, NYC, or some other major city and just load up when it was time to buy new clothes.
I block most ads, but a couple ads have gotten through over the years and I've learned about new brands or atleast new styles and had a jumping off point.
I still feel I am way better off blocking as many ads as I can, but can't say they've been completely worthless.
Most of the HN crowd can't fathom the idea of spending money on clothing outside of necessity. Shirts that will last ten years is more popular of a topic than shirts that actually look good.
You basically want an oracle. That's fine, but none of what you just described requires a push model - you have a specific query, "best keyboard for me", so what you want is a service where you can go and explicitly ask that question, and get an accurate answer.
OTOH if an ad popped up and said "here's the best keyboard for you" - or even "here's the top 3 choices for you" - would you seriously trust that?
What if you are looking, but an advertisement helps you find it faster?
As an example, I was shopping for a keyboard the other day. I spent several hours looking through different specs. It would be handy if a website would have popped up "hey, here are the 3 you are probably looking for, pick one!".
The benefit would have been for me (less time looking) and for three site (less server time serving pages to me)