Ad blocking “controversy” just foolishness

http://creaturefeaturecode.blogspot.com/2015/09/ad-blocking-controversy-aka-foolishness.html

by elialbert • 11 years ago

20 16 11 years ago

creaturefeaturecode.blogspot.com

elialbert4• 11 years ago

long time lurker, first time poster here. curious to hear opinions on this piece I just wrote. thanks!

bobajeff• 11 years ago

"We would only improve the internet by striking back against giant, centralized ad serving systems. How anyone could honestly defend cross-site targeted ads is beyond me. Do they improve anyone's browsing experience? Do they honestly make all that much money for the sites that run them? For the businesses that pay for them?"

Very important question I don't see asked a lot. Of course there was an article a while back that suggested that it would get way worse before it got better.

I find it really disturbing that Mozilla sides with this view that ads make the web possible. Who can blame them? They owe pretty much the majority of thier early funding and promotions to Google who was getting referrals in exchange. So the hard truth is Mozilla used and still uses ads to fund Firefox development.

Could they have thrived without doing referrals? Would the web be worse off if they never took off? Would the world be worse off if the Web stagnated? Who could know?

teaneedz• 11 years ago

Agreed:

if your website can't make money without crappy ads, and nobody looks at your crappy ads because of advances in technology, then blaming that technology puts you squarely on the wrong side of history.

However, GOOG would face quite a user backlash if they tried to go with some anti-ad-blocker policy. Not only would they tarnish their brand more, but they would chase more to DuckDuckGo and other service alternatives.

elialbert4• 11 years ago

verr troo, tho the way lobbying works I'm not sure they'd even need to be directly involved with the policy.

oldfatslow• 11 years ago

I despise the "wrong side of internet" argument. It feels pretty childish and I quit reading after your TL;DR.

elialbert4• 11 years ago

you mean "wrong side of history"?

strgrd• 11 years ago

I don't think you quite understand what's controversial about the current concern over ad-blocking. You miss the point that Apple is using ad-blocking as a business decision to make traditional ad-supported monetization harder for Google et al., forcing the publications and websites who use traditional advertising platforms away from the internet, and onto app stores, where ad-blocking is more difficult.

To write off the entire controversy as "foolish" is irritating because this article is completely ignorant to any nuance beyond "ad blockers let you disable ads." Yes, but who is doing the ad-blocking? Which ads are being blocked? Are all ads treated equal? Is ad-blocking being done as an imperative, or as a means of control?

elialbert4• 11 years ago

@strgrd Apple's behavior is a big part of the story, yr right. tho I think it's a separate controversy, honestly, more related to walled gardens and cult of apple BS. maybe my point is that as long as government doesn't get involved, the rest will sort itself out according to free market economics.

strathmeyer• 11 years ago

The creator of peace, one of the most popular iOS ad blocking apps, just pulled his app after a day and a half because it "didn't feel right" to him.

We assume he was paid off.

thomaskcr• 11 years ago

My feeling is that the current model adds liquidity to the internet. Paywall sites are annoying now as it is, I get frustrated when I click an interesting title and can't read the article. I really don't see how not being able to access huge swaths of the internet without managing your subscriptions is better than just having ads on the screen. Ads mean you just don't need to worry about it.

I remember seeing tons of this image (tiered internet: http://www.gacetadigital.com/wp-content/2010/12/TieredIntern...) used to scare people about net neutrality and yet this seems to be what a lot of these proposals boil down to.

The other ideas are nice, but they just add to the cost of monetizing your content. The advantage of ad networks was not having to spend time negotiating advertising or finding a vendor for shirts.

I think there is a compromise version of an ad-blocker that just freezes all animation -- that seems to be the biggest complaint that can be reasonably addressed. Privacy can be addressed by targeting ads based on the content of the page and possibly proxying the ad content through that server so the ad network never gets the request directly from a client. Since most ads only pay for a click instead of a view anyway I think confirming an ad loaded is becoming less of an issue from the other side.

eevilspock• 11 years ago

If by "liquidity" you meant diarrhea, I would have totally agreed! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10047706

It is a lack of imagination and logically false to conclude that the only alternative to ads is "annoying" management of subscriptions. But we love get rich quick schemes and that's what the advertising "business model" enables: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10049494.

Net neutrality has nothing to do with much less rely on so-called "free" ad-supported sites. Net neutrality is not about free access, but equal access and equal cost for the same volume of data transmission regardless of source. Besides, that ads make the web free is a lie: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585237

Advertising diminished editorial freedom and replaces the readers position as customer, completely changing who the free market's "invisible hand" serves.

tracker12• 11 years ago

It isn't just animation, it's audio.. it's layers of iframes and tracking scripts that slow down the rest of the page/browser/computer ... I don't begrudge tasteful, and limited use of advertising windows on a page... the issue is that many sites go too far beyond that.

When left to their own devices advertisers and the sites that cater to them, most recently the clickbait article sites, will use ever more intrusive methods of advertising. Much of which aren't easily avoidable... you see someone post something on facebook that looks interesting, you click it, you've already been abused, before you realize it's the same site that has abused you in the past.

These abuses include fly over ads, popup/out actions that are all but unavoidable, clickjacking, close filtering and more. It's not that the full-screen ads aren't enough, but there's pervasive and invasive ads that are disguised and integrated to look like content at first glance.

If it weren't for the bad actors in advertising we wouldn't have popup blocking built into the browsers. And as time goes it doesn't look to me like advertisers have learned their lesson. If Firefox wasn't such a performance nightmare with adblock on android, I'd use it more.. if I could get uBlock with chrome on android that would be better still.

As it stands, using my phone more has only served to increase my desire for ad/privacy software everywhere.

shopinterest2• 11 years ago

The larger issue is this, the AdBlockers block 'independent ads, served via third party services via web' Ad blockers won't block Google Ads via Android or iOS ads in their new "news" apps. Nor it will block Facebook ads, YouTube Ads or some in-app marketing.

So, what I think is missing in the discussion that, perhaps by flaw or mistake, but the original sin of the web (ads) is now the currency for many websites, apps, etc... and it maintains the small, medium and large publishers and companies.

Ad blocking as-now targets the independent web more than anything. It will force Advertisers to give to Google/Facebook/Apple more and basically just suck the revenues of an industry into the hands of a handful of platform. Content has already been centralized by force, now they want the ads as well.

People who say, 'if your content requires ads then its not worth it, or you are in the wrong side of history, blah, blah, blah' fail to recognize how ad monetization happens on web/apps - yes it gets annoying, but it works. Independent sites (arts, news, etc...) like a favorite of mine ArsTechnica, depend on Ad revenue.

Apple releasing Ad Blockers the same day their News app becomes permanent and with Ads that cannot be blocked its not a coincidence. And that is quite a strategic move aimed to move more ad revenue into fewer companies. I don't know if that's the right side of history then. I hope not.

However, it's all in the defaults - 90% of online users (and I cant imagine app users are any higher) never touch the defaults. Sure, a number of 20MM may have downloaded adblockers online, but it is still small. But once the option is there, one day, the iPhone7 might default to 'ad block yes' and obliterate a mobile ad industry. No one likes to defend marketers, but moving us to a system controlled by a few platforms is a bad idea. Say, a presidential election could be influenced by a company deciding it won't allow ads of candidate Y or Z etc... or Donation campaigns won't be able to afford a market price of higher ad prices.

This is a bad idea folks.

lagadu• 11 years ago

Say, a presidential election could be influenced by a company deciding it won't allow ads of candidate Y or Z etc... or Donation campaigns won't be able to afford a market price of higher ad prices.

That is a perfect example of why adblocking should be on by default for everything. It'd solve that problem instantly.

tracker12• 11 years ago

The trouble with this... is that the functionality behind ad service (iframes, remote content, etc) is very functionally useful... as is/was being able to open a window. It's simply abused.

If iframes were limited to 1 layer deep in the browsers that would change a lot, as ad networks wouldn't be able to cross-bounce for 10+ layers if iframes each with their tracking and behavior scripts (poorly written) running in the browser, and throwing up errors all over my console output.

For that matter, It's not unreasonable to serve ads from the origin domain... it is very easy to do, and can cover some interesting models with advertising... integration can come in other ways, as could server-side integration methods. There are better ways to serve ads... the "liquidity" mentioned in another post is generally of poor and dubious quality.

Ad blocking “controversy” just foolishness

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