Timeline for Native Ads coming soon to Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
15 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Dec 10, 2025 at 16:57 | comment | added | wizzwizz4 | @LyndonGingerich That can be special-cased, if required. Ignoring the ad tag would still hide the ads from organic search. Alternatively, SO could just allow the opt-out to work, preventing the ads from being injected into search results: they'd still be posts, so people would still see them (unless they also ignored the tag: most people wouldn't do both, at which point it's a game of finding the least annoying configuration to maximise the number of people who see the ads). | |
| Dec 10, 2025 at 16:09 | comment | added | Lyndon Gingerich | If ads are labeled with tags, then the idea to make the ads respect ignored tags won't work. People will just ignore the ad tag. | |
| Dec 10, 2025 at 9:48 | comment | added | wizzwizz4 | @l4mpi That's the quality I imagine we'd get from companies that weren't interested in doing it properly. It's far below the quality I'd expect from AWS's sales department, or from anything where they paid Stack Exchange staff to copy-edit. But, yes, I'm also hoping they'll reverse course: I have no expectation they'll actually use this idea. (Maybe if I'd thought of it last month… but they shouldn't expect moderators to fix all the bad ideas in private, and it was not my responsibility to try.) | |
| Dec 10, 2025 at 9:46 | comment | added | l4mpi | Anyways, I think this is yet another case where SE has decided on a course and this is just a notification that it is going to happen - we can debate and envision whatever but it won't change a thing. The announcement references that "sales efforts" will start this month and given the christmas break that means they're probably already underway by now. So at this point all that's left to do for the community is to shake their heads and watch the incoming trainwreck, and hope that this crashes badly enough that it will be reversed sooner rather than later. | |
| Dec 10, 2025 at 9:42 | comment | added | l4mpi | @wizzwizz4 I can see them get some conversions, mainly by people clicking on it because they do not notice that it's an ad. But when has something being a bad idea ever stopped SE from pressing ahead at full speed? Collectives was DOA as well but took a while to actually die. Re your lower bound - I'm not sure spam companies such as these would buy an ad at any realistic rate even if offered, and if that's the kind of content you're envisioning then I'd rather have popup stripper ads with sound (not that any ad bypasses uMatrix+uBO). | |
| Dec 10, 2025 at 9:17 | comment | added | wizzwizz4 | @l4mpi And I can't see SE's proposed version of Native Ads actually getting any conversions. Sure, companies will pay for it – at first. But when they see it's not working, how much is that going to damage the value of those ad slots? Your point is valid, but we do have a lower bound: there are companies already trying to do so. See the most recent metasmoke entry, for an example. This one, from a few hours ago, is an even better example: that's almost a good contribution! | |
| Dec 10, 2025 at 9:04 | comment | added | l4mpi | @wizzwizz4 if it's better does not matter if it is not realistic. Of course you could implement the required software changes but that is irrelevant if no customer wants to buy those ads. Your plan requires the companies that want to advertise to buy into a new special untested ad format that's exclusive to SO and spend extra effort to prepare an ad copy. Why would companies accept that risk and spend that extra time and money instead of simply going elsewhere? I cannot see that happen at a relevant scale, especially not as most digital ad spending is concentrated on a few big ad networks. | |
| Dec 9, 2025 at 17:19 | comment | added | wizzwizz4 | Meanwhile, we'll get all the moderation functionality that cfr demands automatically. | |
| Dec 9, 2025 at 16:35 | comment | added | wizzwizz4 | @l4mpi And yet, it's strictly better than what's been proposed by Stack Exchange. I made sure that everything here can be accomplished relatively easily in the codebase, except the "Q&A written by other people" bit (which would require extra work, but isn't strictly central to the concept). If companies can't be bothered to create decent content, and don't want to pay SE staff to massage their marketing copy into half-decent on-topic Q&A, then the questions will live and die on a hidden site and not affect the rest of us. | |
| Dec 9, 2025 at 13:52 | comment | added | l4mpi | I only read the first third of your "sponsored spam" idea but there are already enough things in there which seem impractical or unrealistic (plus some that seem annoying to users) that I don't think I need to read the rest to know this will stay a pipe dream. Remember for a second that we had sponsored collectives on SO with the idea that companies create curated articles. That did not work out, at least in part because the companies couldn't be bothered to create decent content, or even much of any content at all - in which case I can't see your idea working at any nontrivial scale. | |
| Dec 9, 2025 at 6:21 | comment | added | Meta Andrew T. | Did you mean: Community Promotion Ads | |
| Dec 9, 2025 at 5:50 | comment | added | Toby Bartels | This kind of sponsored question and answer appears on Quora. I haven't looked into it much (because I don't click on them), but it seems like it at least initially keeps you on site. | |
| Dec 9, 2025 at 4:11 | comment | added | PM 2Ring | The Poe's Law is strong in this one. | |
| Dec 8, 2025 at 22:02 | comment | added | Dan Getz | Turning around (or better fulfilling?) the old help page's advice: "If the only reason you're here is to sell something or drive traffic to your site, then please avoid posting answers. Our advertising rates are quite reasonable; contact our ad sales team for details." | |
| Dec 8, 2025 at 21:52 | history | answered | wizzwizz4 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |