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duskdozerlast Wednesday at 8:37 AM1 replyview on HN

What do you consider to be an ad that actually adds value to the viewer's life in contrast to other ads?


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eucycloslast Wednesday at 11:09 PM

Short answer, any ad that leads to a non regretted purchase the viewer wouldn't have otherwise made.

The instantiation I'm working on is to track the viewer's long term goals and the habits they're trying to form, then only show ads relevant to those. Ads today are shitty because people with products that add no value to anyone's life can somewhat overcome that disadvantage by bidding more on ad space, so that's what we see. But there are plenty of products that would actually add net value which it doesn't occur to us to look for, and insofar as ads exist, they should help us find them.

This project (my working title is eudaimonia) aims to let the user essentially aikido the attention economy arms race by saying "here's what I think would add value in my life, you may pitch your product iff it's actually relevant to that".

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