Study of Ad-Blocking Software Suggests Wide Use

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/10/study-of-ad-blocking-software-suggests-wide-use/?ref=technology

by mgav • 11 years ago

77 135 11 years ago

bits.blogs.nytimes.com

applecore• 11 years ago

This article makes an important point: ad-blocking is not just a means to remove annoying (and often disgusting) advertisements; it's also to prevent data being collected about you without any consent or oversight.

iwwr3• 11 years ago

I'm not sure how successful it is in that regard. Just browser fingerprinting is enough to track most people; cookies and third party connections are not essential.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Fingerprinting

octo_t• 11 years ago

It prevents ad companies from fingerprinting you, you never make the connection to seedy-ad-company-X, you only make the connection to facebook/nyt/WaPo etc

troels2• 11 years ago

It's an arms race. Blocking cookies currently works.

rmc• 11 years ago

Is it possible to track someone without using cookies? Maybe. Do most of these advert sites make heavy use of cookies? Oh yes.

lorenzhs• 11 years ago

Don't forget the security perspective -- as ad networks are being abused for malware delivery more and more, ad-blocking is also a way to stay safe.

Not to mention all the fake "DOWNLOAD!!1" buttons that an ad-blocker removes, eliminating a large percentago of malware installations for less tech-savvy users.

iwwr3• 11 years ago

I wonder if the audience for ad-blocking software is also not that "valuable" to begin with (from an advertiser's perspective). These are more sophisticated people that don't fall for blinking warnings, fake browser UI and who don't tend to install stuff without meaning to.

TeMPOraL5• 11 years ago

Maybe they're losing the less tech-savvy folks too, as their "computer whiz" friends and family members grow tired of fixing yet another drive-by toolbar or ransomware install. Myself, when working on someone's computer, I now download Adblock as a first thing after a clean browser installation.

benbristow4• 11 years ago

I now install this on other people's computers as well as ABP. http://unchecky.com/

Automatically unchecks most 'related/sponsored offers' in installers for software. Most of the adware that people install often tends to be a result of not reading the installer properly.

nly• 11 years ago

Some ads are presumably responsibly implemented and for decent products

ethanbond3• 11 years ago

And by some you mean nearly all. At least the ones that sustain the "important" parts of our Internet (Google, Facebook, news media, etc.)

troels2• 11 years ago

If 1/3 people in certain countries use ad-blockers, I'd venture to guess that they are no exclusively without value. In fact, since they are probably more savvy than the rest, they might be better targets.

wololongong• 11 years ago

blinking warnings, fake browser UI and who don't tend to install stuff without meaning to.

The majority of online ads are bland and don't use dishonest or obnoxious tactics. People just tend to notice the dishonest/obnoxious ads more.

iwwr3• 11 years ago

Dishonest advertising is big business and even gets featured on Tech Crunch as "legitimate business":

http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/16/conduit-worth-1-4bn-acquire...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conduit_%28publisher_network_a...

flinty• 11 years ago

Same way with piracy. Most people who are pirating content weren't a potential customer in the first place.

lawl• 11 years ago

Seeing how a lot of browser/flash/java drivebys seem to come from ads, I also consider them good security practice these days. See for example the recent firefox exploit.

https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2015/08/06/firefox-exploit...

We need a better system than ads.

aikah4• 11 years ago

We need a better system than ads.

We already have that, it's called a link with text or an image file with no scripting or plugin. But since there are 3 parties involved who don't trust each others (content providers,ad networks,advertisers) , it's not going to happen.

bobajeff3• 11 years ago

I've been thinking lately that websites should just do static ads. No ad networks, scripts, cookies, etc. Just the content of the ad (video, audio, text, images). Not only will they be harder to block and lead to a better experience for users they could possibly negotiate for higher rates since there would be no middle man.

VLM2• 11 years ago

We need a better system than ads.

Complimentary editorial copy, corporate press releases masquerading as news stories, paid product placement, paid endorsements as part of the content ... Eh I'd rather stick with the existing "block known ad hosts and any graphic of X by Y pixel dimensions", easier to block.

davidgerard4• 11 years ago

It's ok! We have all that stuff too!

Seriously, the tech press went full-on "editorial wall? pfeh, so 20th century" fifteen years ago, and the rest of the press has followed. You're describing the present.

TeMPOraL5• 11 years ago

The numbers come as tech companies, publishers and advertisers grow anxious that their efforts to reach users through increasingly sophisticated online advertisements are having little effect.

Herein lies their problem. Had they stick to simple ads, people wouldn't rush to block them.

Per a HN comment I saved in my quotes file, "Any sufficiently advanced business model is indistinguishable from a scam." -- dsirijus, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8227941

“What’s causing grave concern for broadcasters and advertisers is video advertising, which is some of their most valuable content, is starting to be blocked,”

Video advertising is a whole new class of shitting on your users, and they're surprised people are blocking it?

It's as if those people lived on another planet. I wonder how many executives and ad-network people use ad blockers personally. I find it hard to believe they can't see the manure they're dumping on the Internet.

weland• 11 years ago

Personal, but fun anecdote: my girlfriend works in marketing and kept away from ad blockers for a long time, partly due to professional sympathy, partly simply because she wanted to see the ads, since she has a professional interest in that sort of stuff.

She eventually caved about a year ago and installed ABP. No matter how interesting it was, nor how much she sympathized with the folks working in media agencies, browsing the web simply became completely impossible, especially over an occasionally flimsy 3G connection.

Simple ads are "collateral damage" in this case, but even those can be worth blocking, e.g. to protect against tracking.

Drakim3• 11 years ago

Sometimes it's like we live in a parody of the real world.

I feel that the online video ad situation is akin to advertisers blasting loud commercial jingles in the middle of the night, while complaining that people are getting sound isolated walls and how that's hurting their business, some even going so far as to talk about how thick walls should be illegal.

When I navigate to an url I don't get a fully rendered webpage ready from the server, but instead I get served a bunch of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It's then up to my computer to compose those things into the interactive website, using the rendering engine of my choice. How the website turns out being rendered can depend on a number of factors, like what screen resolution I use, what fonts I have on my system, etc. Maybe I'm using a text browser that can't render pictures or video.

So, it's so darn crazy to me that some people would say that I'm stealing or being dishonest by not rendering the ads in the website. Is it really my duty to render those ads, even if I don't intend to click on them? Would I still be stealing if I rendered them, but never moved my eyesight over to where the ad is placed? How far do I have to pretend?

phantarch3• 11 years ago

I think the difficulty comes in when the two parties (us vs the site owners) come into the situation with different views about what the website IS.

You're viewing it, quite correctly, as a technical request that's made and some data that's passed back that you can use at your discretion.

They're viewing it as you entering a digital storefront where they need to take every opportunity to convert you into a customer.

In your mind, you're staying right where you are and the data you're getting back is just that: yours. In their mind, you're entering into their space and so they have certain expectations of you and your experience. You telling them what kind of advertising they are allowed to have is, in their minds, tantamount to walking in to one of their stores and telling them to change the displays they have out. Not saying that it justifies any claims about what should be legal, illegal, etc. but it does make sense why each party would have the opinions they do.

a3n4• 11 years ago

Would I still be stealing if I rendered them, but never moved my eyesight over to where the ad is placed?

No, because merely visiting the site and rendering the ad has done its job. The value of a web ad is in the information collected and profile built about you. You're going to see ads somewhere, even subconsciously, and you're going to buy something, somewhere. The hope is that retailers can place something in front of you where your task is buying instead of reading. Cell phones are going to be a huge assist to physical retailers in this area, because they carry your online trail into the store.

EDIT: I expect the day to come when advertising networks are subpoened for information on people.

madeofpalk• 11 years ago

I wonder how many executives and ad-network people use ad blockers personally

I can tell you ;)

Executives don't use ad blockers - they've usually drunk enough of the cool-aid to not be bothered by the ads.

Others, like the devs, for sure would have ad blockers installed (but disable when they need to do dev relating to ads)

mangeletti2• 11 years ago

It really just comes down to greed. The publishers had a good thing. They were making some profit, and they were finding ways to innovate (better tech, better subscription penetration, etc.), and then they had to go and get greedy with all our personal data. That's what sparked the war. We simply aren't willing to pay that much for the content we consume.

TeMPOraL5• 11 years ago

I'd agree with everything you say if I'd cross out "with our personal data". I don't think this is what started the war - most people don't care or even understand the nuances of this issue. But they experience publishers' greed directly in form of more ads, more annoying ads, more scammy ads, malware installed by ads, etc. Nowadays ads are offensive actions - annoying at best, costing lot of time and money at worst (if you catch that ransomware because some asshole put the thing you're looking for inside a "value-add" bundle). It's enough to piss everyone off even without bringing up the topic of data they're collecting and what they're doing with it.

malka• 11 years ago

This. I have no problem with ad per se. They are a annoying but necessary part of life. After all, products and brand needs to make themselve known.

However, I do have a problem with tracking. I'd rather have ads that are of no interest to me than having a ad network gathering huge of amount of data about me.

The day ad network will stop tracking, I will stop blocking.

ethanbond3• 11 years ago

Rather, the problem lies in the need to generate increasing returns without charging anyone for a service. Facebook's recovery model has been to acquire and monetize anything with a growing userbase, Google's has been to sprawl across as many verticals as possible in a wild goose chase for long term sustenance.

It's going to be a sad day for Silicon Valley when advertisers stop getting their money's worth – which seems inevitable at this point. Products reach their saturation point and you can either kill the user experience (and subsequently kill the userbase) or you can start charging (and subsequently kill the userbase).

We do still have a few more years left of pseudo-charitable "Internet-giving initiatives" to get the rest of the world's loyal consumer-to-be population online. That way we can shove ads for the local ebola clinic in front of people in need of real help. That should sustain SF housing prices for another decade or so.

ild• 11 years ago

...and here comes dot-com bubble 2.0

uxcn2• 11 years ago

The active campaigns that award ephemeral internet points actually seem fairly effective. Those are what worry me most though, as it seems like the making of a tragedy of the commons.

uxcn2• 11 years ago

I suspect if companies tracked the actual return for various adds, it would put an end to the obnoxiousness fairly quick. It's easy to why so many companies are willing to engage in click-fraud.

increment_i• 11 years ago

Exactly. There seems to be a huge disconnect between what ad executives assume people will engage with and what people will actually tolerate. I think people will tolerate small banners and images and interstitial video ads that are 3-4 seconds at the very most (on video sites). If you can't get your message across in that time then prepare to have your ads blocked by a generation that expects the internet to be instant.

leni5362• 11 years ago

Ad-blocking will lead to almost $22 billion of lost advertising revenue this year, according to the report, put together by Adobe and PageFair, a Dublin-based start-up that helps companies and advertisers recoup some of this lost revenue.

I guess assuming that the users of ad blocker users would visit the sites with the same frequency as without ad blockers, and they click on ads with the same probability if they see them as people who don't use ad blockers.

This is the same fallacy as counting the lost money on pirated content. Most people who pirate wouldn't buy a product even if they couldn't pirate it. The solution is much simpler for ad ridden websites: what about not serving the main content for ad block users? If you don't like them then don't serve them, it shouldn't be that hard. Maybe they don't do this because:

- Ad blockers are still a minority on most websites

- They don't eat up much bandwidth

- It would be really bad advertising (ha!) for them doing more harm than good

aikah4• 11 years ago

what about not serving the main content for ad block users?

Some porn sites have started to do that. Well it's not like there is only 1 porn site on the planet... There lies the issue with that method.

Unless every content provider does that it is not going to work. And it's also a cat and mouse game just like piracy. The technology will always be ahead of whatever scheme they use to block content.

As a musician, I get somehow a taste of revenge from all that crowd that is freaking out, the same crowd told us to "adapt or die" 10 years ago. Well they now need to adapt or die, because ad revenue will not be a viable business model 3 years from now...

davidgerard4• 11 years ago

Publishers have the same problem musicians do: it's (a) ridiculously easy to publish now (text or music), (b) you're literally competing with every other publisher/musician in the entire world. There's a larger consumer pie, but a ridiculously larger producer pie. http://rocknerd.co.uk/2013/09/13/culture-is-not-about-aesthe...

CSMastermind2• 11 years ago

Hulu basically blocks it's main content if you use an ad blocker.

dwild• 11 years ago

Well it's not like there is only 1 porn site on the planet... There lies the issue with that method.

How is that an issue? They get literally no revenue from theses users. I get there's some sort of worth of mouth marketing from theses users... but usually is the same with adblock so essentially it just mean more user that doesn't worth anything.

erikb• 11 years ago

I can say I watched a lot of grey market content when I could a) not afford otherwise seeing it, and b) when there were nor reasonable offers like Netflix. Since there's Netflix in my country my grey market consumption has diminished to less than 10%. And 100% of that remaining content is content I can't get on Netflix.

The reality is advertising is a brainless way to refinance for content. That's one of the reasons people minimized buying DVD/Bluray, or watching tv (I am not even connected to public tv any more). Find a better way and people will pay.

Finding that way might be hard, harder than I think, but I don't think the whole text media industry will go down before they find a model that works.

eli3• 11 years ago

what about not serving the main content for ad block users? If you don't like them then don't serve them, it shouldn't be that hard.

Harder than you think. Ad blockers actively subvert attempts to detect them with code and filter updates. If ad blockers were easy to detect we would surely see more of that.

xcombelle• 11 years ago

Ad networks is also a pretty convenient to spread malware. see for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising

Lancey• 11 years ago

Maybe this study will prompt advertisers to consider why a third of the internet is blocking their ads?

Just kidding. They'll just get mad at blockers and continue to make their users' lives a living hell.

ekianjo• 11 years ago

Wow, only something like 10 to 20% in the US ? For the first Internet nation of the world, I was expecting better.

lcswi• 11 years ago

I expected much less, 10% is great!

matwood• 11 years ago

What is the best ad blocking plugin for Chrome nowadays?

smickie• 11 years ago

I've found ublock to be the best for both chrome and firefox. Take up much less cpu than adblockplus.

uptown3• 11 years ago

I suppose "best" is subjective, but I'm using "uBlock Origin", "Flashcontrol", and "HTTPS Everywhere" together and am satisfied.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa...

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/flashcontrol/mfidm...

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/https-everywhere/g...

SCdF3• 11 years ago

Is there a reason for using flashcontrol over simply setting the plugin to click to play?

falcolas3• 11 years ago

If you feel up to it, I still personally recommend a hosts file. Extremely low overhead, and it blocks all forms of malicious content from ad endpoints.

I use: http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

ethanbond3• 11 years ago

Whoa, that's intense. Definitely going to try this out when my new laptop arrives! Thanks!

prawn• 11 years ago

I've found some content won't appear/work if ads are blocked. So in some cases I temporarily whitelist a site in AdBlock or Ghostery. With a HOSTS file, isn't that sort of thing a lot more painful?

(I used to use the HOSTS method but stopped for that reason.)

netmare• 11 years ago

I've been using a different one (http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.txt), which is roughly the same size. However, their entries seem quite different (only 1921 common domains out of 11356+13586 total). Maybe they should be merged.

benbristow4• 11 years ago

They work well, but the only problem is I've found is they can have a lot of false-positives.

Stuff like redirects that sites use to track links can get blocked and you can't follow links on a page, etc.

arh68• 11 years ago

I recommend you check out StevenBlack's Amalgamated hosts file: https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

  Currently the hosts files from the following locations are amalgamated:
    MVPs.org Hosts file at http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm, updated monthly, or thereabouts.
    Dan Pollock at http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ updated regularly.
    Malware Domain List at http://www.malwaredomainlist.com/, updated regularly.
    Peter Lowe at http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/, updated regularly.
    hpHosts at http://hosts-file.net/, updated regularly
    My own small list in raw form here.

wooger• 11 years ago

uBlock Origin

kevinherron• 11 years ago

I use uBlock Origin and Ghostery.

mosburger• 11 years ago

Does uBlock have a mechanism for allowing non-intrusive ads in?

I resisted ad-blockers for years because I believe in giving up my eyeballs to ads for free content, but finally gave up when my son started downloading minecraft mods, and he'd have trouble discerning between real download links and ads which installed malware. So I really don't mind some basic advertising, I just don't want (subjectively) "obnoxious" ads (and, yeah, the subjective part makes it hard).

I see that uBlock allows you to configure lists - are there lists that only contain the worst violators? (Forgive my ignorance, as I said I'm new to ad-blockers as I resisted for so long).

quinndupont• 11 years ago

Ahh, the free market is great, until it totally isn't. I look forward to seeing what new revenue strategies the truly innovative companies will come up with. We've all been lulled into the complacency of cheap and easy ad dollars -- let's innovate instead.

chii• 11 years ago

true innovation isn't cheap, and sometimes it's cheaper to try warping the market instead of innovating. After all, money is like water - it flows through the path of least resistance.

SCdF3• 11 years ago

So I just started using ad blockers (uBlock Origin on Chrome, adblock + ghostery on Safari) because I was finally sick of the amount of extra bandwidth, CPU and just noise they are creating with this crap.

I've intentionally not used ad blockers for years, because I get that's how companies make money, but heaven's to betsy if they don't dig their own graves with the intrusive over-intensive crap these days.

My old tactic was to just not visit sites with offensive, intrusive or band-width heavy ads. These sites, bar some outliers, no longer exist. Every tech, current events and editorial site pulls down half the fucking internet to show me some words on a screen these days.

jcadam• 11 years ago

I just started using ad-blockers for similar reasons. I found an increasing number of sites (especially news sites) were becoming so obnoxious with the advertising that it was causing my browser to frequently freeze and/or crash.

I really don't mind a simple, static banner ad, but this crap has gotten out of control.

lostcolony2• 11 years ago

I started using adblocking software -years- ago, when an ad on a reputable, syndicated comics page (gocomics.com I think) minimized my browser, and popped up an ad to look like a system dialog telling me my computer was at risk. That was it for me.

Since then, uBlock occasionally gets disabled on Chrome because I don't even know, and it usually is just a few pageviews before an ad is so obnoxious that I notice and re-enable it. I don't understand how people without adblockers even use the web at this point.

seandhi• 11 years ago

I recently just hit my limit, too. The final straw was advertising videos that grabbed focus and refused to let it go. Worse, the videos were at the bottom of the page and would force my browser to scroll to those videos, refuse to yield focus until X seconds were played. Then, after I was able to scroll back to the top of the page to view the content I was after, the whole thing would start again as the next video played. AdBlock was installed after that.

merrua• 11 years ago

I recently installed it at work due to offensive political advertising during our last elections (non-usa country)

JohnTHaller• 11 years ago

I've had more friends/family request ad-blockers. This has become an even bigger issue with auto-playing video ads on mobile which both suck up bandwidth and randomly begin playing loud audio on your phone when it's otherwise silent. We're talking mainstream sites like Slate, Salon.com, Daily Beast, Bust.com, etc, all of which automatically played loud video ads on my girlfriend's phone. On Android, this necessitates switching to Firefox and using something like AdBlock Plus or uBlock since Google Chrome on Android doesn't even support plugins. I'm unsure if these ads are intentional auto-playing video ads or AdSense's broken "hover to expand" ads which are always triggered accidentally and are, for all intents and purposes, auto-playing video ads.

HSO• 11 years ago

I use adblock, ghostery, several JS blacklists etc., uninstalled all Flash from all computers years ago, and still I regularly catch "funny calls" to strange IPs I don't even visit in Little Snitch.

Highly recommend this little utility. The logs make for unexpectedly interesting reading.

dhimes2• 11 years ago

Looks like it's Apple only?

eghad• 11 years ago

Glasswire, https://www.glasswire.com/ is a solid Windows alternative.

mikegerwitz• 11 years ago

The article alludes to this, but doesn't state it: let's be clear that by blocking ads, you're not just blocking annoying advertisements---you're blocking software, most of which spys on you. Some sites load megabytes of JavaScript.

Another perspective: for free software advocates, these simply must be blocked, because they're non-free.

quonn• 11 years ago

I started blocking ads about a year ago when some mainstream tech sites began to show ads that I felt make me unhappy, such as "The 10 signs of getting a heart attack/Alzheimer's/cancer", etc. Usually with a picture of someone in their 60's looking quite sad or disoriented. I find this kind of advertising very offensive and I'm sorry that I'm now also blocking all other kind of ads, too.

billyhoffman• 11 years ago

I was recently giving a screen-shared demo to a media company that makes the vast majority of their revenue from online ads. One of the execs saw the adblock extension button in the browser chrome, interrupted the demo, and proceeded to tell me how terrible I was. Needless to say we did not make the sale.

Lesson learned: When giving demos, open an incognito window since most plugins are disabled by default.

wslh• 11 years ago

The next time tell him that you are finding flaws in adblock to help ad companies. If he asks you for more details tell that this is a support 1 yr service because you have a dedicated team constantly researching new adblock versions.

benbristow4• 11 years ago

proceeded to tell me how terrible I was

Because that's probably cutting into his paycheck ;)

Fiahil• 11 years ago

I have a similar anecdote. I work for a company selling a recommendation platform to travel agencies, and the content we display is often similar in layout to regulars ads. It happens, from time to time, to demo a version of their own website to them, with the proper recommendation block injected (mostly to seek the client's validation on the look and feel). And, I recall having one of them congratulate us for the fast loading and clean display of their pages (on my ublock-running-browser). I didn't pick this up. Obviously, the original page was literally cluttered with ads..

talmand3• 11 years ago

Someone good at their job would have taken the opportunity to find out why you were using the ad blocker and considered the impact on their industry based off your response. It wasn't professional to have such a childish outburst during a meeting, and to interrupt at that. I would think it's possible you are better off in the long run not getting the business.

geromek• 11 years ago

The irony is that Ghostery is reporting 14 trackers on the page as I read the article...

sritrisna• 11 years ago

I can’t actually remember when I began using ABP. I install it on all browser by default and I believe about a year ago have begun using Ghostery to block annoying beacons everywhere. Never had much success with it on my Google Nexus Tablet and because of it simply stopped surfing the web on tablets and smartphones altogether. However, since the release of Adblock Browser - big big kudos to the team for creating such a fantastic piece of software - I can resume browsing the web on my portable devices. I don’t mind relevant and unobtrusive ads. However, some sites simply have gone overboard with 30 plus beacons included and ads everywhere. I will never support such an aggressive approach to monetising a resource. Especially by those large publishers which believe they can do whatever they want on the web, simply because they're now not limited by physical space anymore, as they are with their print magazines.

benbristow4• 11 years ago

If you're rooted download F-Droid (Open Source Play Store Alternative) and download 'AdAway'.

https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.adaway

Works a charm ;)

dublinben• 11 years ago

If you're not running a rooted device, uBlock works excellent in Firefox for Android. You get all the same filtering power in a mobile browser.

owenwil• 11 years ago

I don't want to get into arguing about adblocking too much, but it is notable that all studies, including this one, about adblock reach are from companies who have a vested interest in growing ad blocking's reach... yet the press gobbles it up.

davidgerard4• 11 years ago

With ad-network malware from major news sites, it is actually dangerous for your nontechnical friends and relatives not to run an ad-blocker.

"Ad blockers are safe sex for the Internet."

"You could sleep with lots of people and demand their test results every time ... or you could just use a condom. Same with ad blockers."

lowpro2• 11 years ago

If I remember correctly, ad blocking software overlays the ad with blank HTML right? So blocking ads doesn't actually reduce data usage, since the browser still downloads everything, Adblock just has to parse it and get rid of the junk.

I believe because of this download-then-parse model, webpages actually load slower. I remember an HN article on the front page about it.

Nonetheless, I still use Adblock. The sites worth supporting I normally pay money for in some way, such as premium on a forum.

ronjouch• 11 years ago

If I remember correctly, ad blocking software overlays the ad with blank HTML right?

Don't know why you're being downvoted, you're simply unsure about a (wrong) assumption and asking about it, which to me simply calls for a correction / explanation. Anyway, no, uBlock for example actually blocks http requests, based on huge community-maintained blacklists. Just try loading theverge.com :

- Without uBlock: 131 requests

- With uBlock: 37 requests

lowpro2• 11 years ago

Thank you, I've been here for a long time, still a noob though. I figured if I wasn't sure there had to be others thinking the same thing.

a3n4• 11 years ago

I actually wrote to the NYT about this some weeks back. In essence: feel free to block me, charge enough subscription to cover your needs, or go out of business. Or, display static ads that don't collect and forward information about me.

It just occurred to me that if adblocking is made illegal, then the next generation of adblocking software won't block ads, they'll block sites. "This site is known to use intrusive ads, which are illegal to block. Whitelist or Blacklist?"

a3n4• 11 years ago

I've been using adblockers for a few years. Something happened at work, I had to reinstall a browser, and I only install addons as the need arises, so it takes awhile to get a new browser installation up to speed with the ten or so addons I eventually end up with.

Ad blocker was first, and almost immediate. To paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke, "My God, it's full of ads!"

Not to mention the risk to my employer by allowing ads across the firewall.

EDIT: And there's an opportunity for people who want to sell into the enterprise. Businesses should be blocking ads at the firewall. My employer blocks egregiously non-work related sites, but they don't yet seem to care about ads riding in on allowed sites. I expect that to change.

a3n4• 11 years ago

To ad sellers: We may be technical here, but we all have friends and families.

I just helped my all-but computer-phobic ex-wife with a computer task last night. She had ABP installed. I think my teenage son did it.

Reap it.

littletimmy• 11 years ago

Of course there's widespread use. When you put in 2-4 video ads with sounds per page and clog up my browser, you'd be out of your mind to think I'm not going to take steps to stop this assault on my senses.

I don't see how advertisers don't get this. Surely they are not entitled to my eyes and ears.

plg• 11 years ago

Maybe ad blocking and the ensuing evisceration of the "free but agree to view ads tailored to you via the deep profiling of your identity using information you would ordinarily presume to be private" business model will be good for us (good for privacy)

cheald• 11 years ago

The ad companies have, IMO, brought it on themselves.

Flash ads, Java ads, ads with auto-playing sound, popups that interupt the UX, insane analytics deliverables that can increase total page payload and runtime by multiples of the original page size - they are the problem.

I work for a company that makes much of its revenue off of advertising, so this issue is near-and-dear to my heart. As ad blocking has increased in popularity, the networks' response is to impose even more intrusive, resource-intensive, user-hostile requirements on their ad deliverables, and it's only been getting worse. Browsing ad-supported sites is so painful these days because the advertising networks are no longer a relatively minimal ride-along with the parent page - they're practically their own webapp that gets injected along with the host content. Instrumentation shows payload times 4-5x larger than the host page, and total load times can be 10-20x greater than just the host page.

The problem is that ad networks don't feel the pain of increased payload sizes, user-hostile deliverables, degraded UX, and user frustration. There is no feedback mechanism with which to economically punish the bad ads and reward the good ads. The lifetime of an ad unit is so relatively short that there's no incentive to develop a quality deliverable, or to fix problems unless a publisher's development team notices a specific unit and can call out specific problems with it (which generally only happens when the ad is doing something like, I dunno, crashing the entire tab).

I have exactly zero sympathy for the advertising industry's AdBlock problem - it's a problem they've wrought of their own doing. If you want to fix it, there has to be a hard focus on ads that don't actively make it harder for users to get and ingest publishers' content. Reduce deliverable sizes, get rid of long transitive dependency chains (scripts loading scripts loading scripts loading scripts is awful), get rid of stuff that is constantly causing network overhead (viewability trackers are easily the worst offenders here), aggressively police against flash/java ads, police against ads that autoplay audio, ban ads that pre-load video (I have instrumentation on ads which load thirty megabytes of video before the user ever interacts with them), minimize reflows and DOM manipulation - tl;dr, stop being so incredibly user hostile.

Ads are, as far as users are concerned, malware that is painful enough that they'll seek out ways to avoid it rather than just tolerating it. That's the ad networks' problem, and nobody else's.

hsod• 11 years ago

When accessing an ad-supported website, there is an implied agreement to not automatically block ads. Using AdBlock is an immoral violation of this implied agreement.

Study of Ad-Blocking Software Suggests Wide Use

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