Hacker News with Generative AI: Advertising

Big brands are spending small sums on X to stay out of Musk's crosshairs (arstechnica.com)
Big brands are allocating small amounts of their advertising budget to Elon Musk’s X, seeking to avoid being seen as boycotting the social media platform and triggering a public fallout with its billionaire owner.
Cheap TVs' incessant advertising reaches troubling new lows (arstechnica.com)
TVs offer us an escape from the real world. After a long day, sometimes there’s nothing more relaxing than turning on your TV, tuning into your favorite program, and unplugging from the realities around you.
Big brands are spending small sums on X to stay out of Musk's crosshairs (arstechnica.com)
Big brands are allocating small amounts of their advertising budget to Elon Musk’s X, seeking to avoid being seen as boycotting the social media platform and triggering a public fallout with its billionaire owner.
Canadian government launches billboards in multiple U.S. states (cbsnews.com)
Canadian officials are making their voices heard against tariffs through digital billboards in multiple states.
Brands spend nominal sums on X ads to keep Elon Musk happy (ft.com)
Commercials that David Lynch directed (2018) (openculture.com)
H&M to use digital clones of models in ads and social media (bbc.co.uk)
Fashion retailer H&M is to use artificial intelligence (AI) to create digital "twins" of 30 models.
Discord is getting mobile ads (theverge.com)
Discord is bringing third-party ads to its mobile platform.
Facebook to stop targeting ads at UK woman after legal fight (bbc.co.uk)
Facebook has agreed to stop targeting adverts at an individual user using personal data after she filed a lawsuit against its parent company, tech giant Meta.
CEO of AI ad-tech firm pledging "world free of fraud" sentenced for fraud (arstechnica.com)
In May 2024, the website of ad-tech firm Kubient touted that the company was "a perfect blend" of ad veterans and developers, "committed to solving the growing problem of fraud" in digital ads.
"Awful": Roku tests autoplaying ads loading before the home screen (arstechnica.com)
Owners of smart TVs and streaming sticks running Roku OS are already subject to video advertisements on the home screen. Now, Roku is testing what it might look like if it took things a step further and forced people to watch a video ad play before getting to the Roku OS home screen.
New Reddit controls let you block your most-hated advertisers for a year (arstechnica.com)
Reddit will likely continue increasing the amount of ads users see.
Honey Bunnies (mameson.com)
"fro 9"
Dodge Chargers now have pop-up ads at every stoplight (fuelarc.com)
Nothing quite says “high-performance muscle car” like a popup ad for a Mopar Extended Warranty covering your whole center console.
Apple pulls iPhone 16 ad over Apple Intelligence mishap (9to5mac.com)
Since last fall, Apple has been marketing the iPhone 16 and Apple Intelligence with an unreleased Siri feature. After confirming today that the more personal version of Siri isn’t coming anytime soon, Apple has pulled the ad in question.
Mozilla Likely Been Sharing Aggregated Firefox Data with Advertisers Since 2017 (quippd.com)
TL;DR: With Firefox 56, Mozilla combined Firefox Health Report and Telemetry data into a single setting called “technical and interaction data”, which was then enabled by default. This included data about advertising within Firefox’s New Tab page, along with a lot of other technical information about the installation of Firefox. The Firefox preferences UI makes no mention of usage of this technical data for advertising purposes.
The 2005 Sony Bravia ad (sfgate.com)
On a sunny July day in 2005, a frog jumped out of a rain gutter to see an unexpected sight: an avalanche of thousands of colorful bouncy balls careening down a San Francisco street.
Dodge Chargers Have Pop-Up Ads (fuelarc.com)
Nothing quite says “high-performance muscle car” like a popup ad for a Mopar Extended Warranty covering your whole center console.
Former Facebook execs are running Firefox adtech (goblin.band)
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Stuff a Pi-hole in your router because your browser is about to betray you (theregister.com)
A new, lightweight version of Pi-Hole is here. Just how easy is it to block advertising on your home network?
Bluesky Ad in Boston – Claims 'Finally, Social Media That Is Billionaire Proof' (theverge.com)
The hunt for the next Twitter: all the news about alternative social media platforms
List of Brave Browser Controversies (reddit.com)
Way back in 2016, Brave promised to remove banner ads from websites and replace them with their own, basically trying to extract money directly from websites without the consent of their owners
YouTube Forces Ads in Moldova Without Offering Premium as an Option (ycombinator.com)
Until March 2024, users in Moldova enjoyed an ad-free experience on YouTube. However, in March 2024, YouTube began showing intrusive ads in the region. Despite this change, YouTube Premium — the service that allows users to remove ads — remains completely unavailable in Moldova. (https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6307365)
Advertisers could be using mobile games to build profiles about your kids (cbc.ca)
A Marketplace investigation has pulled back the curtain on how some mobile games, which seem to attract children, use loopholes in rules protecting kids’ data — allowing marketers to build advertising profiles tailored to them, which can then be more effective at influencing their behaviour.
The Guardian now requires users to pay to reject personalised adversiting (theguardian.com)
This week we are launching Guardian Ad-Lite, a new subscription product that allows readers who would prefer to read the Guardian without personalised advertising to do so.
Jeep owners fed up with in-car pop-up ads (kbb.com)
Jeep owners took to social media this week with a new complaint: many are receiving repeated pop-up ads on their cars’ infotainment screens asking them to sign up for an extended warranty.
YouTube Premium Lite: Ad-Free Viewing for $7.99/Month (youtube)
Today we'll begin expanding our Premium Lite pilot to users in the US. Premium Lite gives viewers a new, more affordable way to enjoy most videos on YouTube ad-free for $7.99 per month. In the coming weeks, we'll also make Premium Lite available to all users in our current pilot countries - Thailand, Germany, and Australia.
YouTube launches a $7.99 per month, ad-free Premium Lite subscription (techcrunch.com)
YouTube on Wednesday announced a new premium subscription tier called Premium Lite, which will users to watch “most” videos ad-free for $7.99 per month.
How Google tracks Android device users before they've even opened an app (theregister.com)
Research from a leading academic shows Android users have advertising cookies and other gizmos working to build profiles on them even before they open their first app.
"Free" Office for Windows is being trialed (office-watch.com)
Microsoft is testing a free version of Office for Windows with limited features, an important requirement and ads to ‘pay’ for the software.