Would've been nice if the article had pointed out that ad-networks have become a popular way to distribute trojans and malware using Flash exploits (though I'm sure when Flash is gone, ppl will keep finding other browser exploits ad's can exploit).
Welcome to the Block Party: The internet after ad blocking
11–20 of 101 posts
Re: Welcome to the Block Party: The internet after ad blocking
#12Maybe the ad-heavy Internet was just a phase. Business models come and go. Craigslist killed newspaper classifieds as a business. Ad blockers may kill web ads as a business.
And we slide into closed and centralized places ... that is scary.
Or people continue to provide compelling content for free, if only more temporarily.
Re: Welcome to the Block Party: The internet after ad blocking
#13I don't want ad companies tracking me. Ad companies have roundly demonstrated that I can no longer trust them to show me ads without tracking. Sorry, but I'm not switching off that blocker. Maybe if the history of the internet had taken a different course. But now it's too late -- the well's been poisoned, and advertisers and publishers have only themselves to blame. Pointing the finger at the users doesn't do anythi…
Tracking is one thing that bothers me. The other are video ads that hijack my speakers and sap my bandwidth, pop over ads that hijack my screen focus, etc. Those are where I draw the line.
I don't use explicit ad blockers, but I do run with NoScript and Cookie Controller. Simple, well-behaved banner and sidebar ads are fine. Overly aggressive ads get killed.
Re: Welcome to the Block Party: The internet after ad blocking
#14About a year or so ago, my dad called me out of the blue and told me that my mom was crying because "internet ads were following her and making her anxious".
Earlier that day, she came from a doctor and ended up searching for a medical condition on a famous search website. After that, she started seeing ads for various bullshit remedies all across the internet. Almost every website she visited, showed her same types of ads. Even when she wanted to forget and take her mind of it, she couldn't because these ads were constantly reminding her of it.
She got so disgusted that she quit using the web for the rest of the day and cried.
I guided them on how to install ad blocking addons and how to change default search engines (she now uses Startpage) But we couldn't easily block it on iPad so the solution was to switch the search engine and clear cookies.
All these companies that make money off tracking people and are selling search results really need to rethink their business models.
PS: She also wrote an email to Tim Cook complaining about this and got a reply from someone that they will "look into it". I'm glad Apple will now a provide solution to block these kinds of things on an iPad.
Re: Welcome to the Block Party: The internet after ad blocking
#15Another possibility is that people will learn to care about what they read, and learn that it costs something. We don't have to tip, either.
Also, I'm sorry, but I'm never going to login to Facebook to read the Economist, and I stopped using Twitter's mobile app when they introduced sponsored content.
Re: Welcome to the Block Party: The internet after ad blocking
#16Maybe the ad-heavy Internet was just a phase. Business models come and go. Craigslist killed newspaper classifieds as a business. Ad blockers may kill web ads as a business.
And we slide into closed and centralized places ... that is scary.
Every business will still have a web site for their own products and services. Amazon won't have a problem. Wikipedia will go on. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Economist are already pay sites, and they're almost the only news sites with actual reporters. Pay TV will continue to fund news networks, which will have sites with additional content to get people to watch their TV.
All we'll lose are the millions of bottom-feeder sites which take content in, hang ads on it, and hope to get paid. No big loss.
Re: Welcome to the Block Party: The internet after ad blocking
#17As a possibility, a model whereby advertisers pay both content providers and readers for viewing ads. I can imagine a system where before viewing expensive content (your next ultradeep NYT analysis I really want to read) I'm given a choice to view an ad (video, audio or picture) on one of the topics I'm interested in and be paid say $0.001. There are ad processors, let's say 2 or 3 major ones A, B and C, with whom I…
What is the point of a system that pays people less than a cent?
Right, that part needs some improvements. I'm thinking, advertisers might compete for viewers by paying more for a given keyword, i.e. the prices are not fixed and the highest bidder wins the viewer.
Another question is whether these ads are skippable or not. Can I skip the ad, go straight to the article and not be paid? Maybe content providers could decide.
Re: Welcome to the Block Party: The internet after ad blocking
#18Why don't more publishers try to detect the ad blockers with stuff like this? https://github.com/sitexw/FuckAdBlock
And then they could throw up a page that says "Sorry, AdBlock must be disabled to view this content"
Re: Welcome to the Block Party: The internet after ad blocking
#19Damn, that article took a strange leap with discussing what better ads would be. Somehow it entirely skipped the possibility that more ads might resemble the ads of the most successful advertisers of the web (like google, facebook, twitter) and instead leaped on a dystopian slope where all ads are served by the content platforms of those companies.
Saying that twitter, google or facebook ads cannot be blocked is just bogus. People use them on normal web browsers that quite easily could block them. The reason they're not blocked is that it's not worth the hassle, because the ads are clean, small and polite. You know, better ads.
Such better ads are not patented, and switching to pleasant text ads like the industry leaders leaders did would make ad blockers a marginal phenomenon.
Re: Welcome to the Block Party: The internet after ad blocking
#20About a year or so ago, my dad called me out of the blue and told me that my mom was crying because "internet ads were following her and making her anxious". Earlier that day, she came from a doctor and ended up searching for a medical condition on a famous search website. After that, she started seeing ads for various bullshit remedies all across the internet. Almost every website she visited, showed her same types…
I'm sorry but how do you know it was the search website that sold information? It could as well be the first web site that she opened that happened to be on the same ad network as other related web sites she visited. Just guessing.