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Adblock Plus blocked from attending online ad industry’s big annual conference

arstechnica.co.uk

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Re: Adblock Plus blocked from attending online ad industry’s big annual conference

#21

Post by dhimes »

monochromatic wrote: post #17
dhimes wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't know this, but they admit it on their site, and explain it. https://adblockplus.org/about#monetization TL;DR is that if by participating in the "Acceptable Ads" initiative the organization gains 10 million more ad impressions per month, then they have to pay. If they are "smaller" than that, it's free to them. Everybody has to keep their ads acceptable, however; you can't bribe your way out of it.

> Everybody has to keep their ads acceptable, however; you can't bribe your way out of it. Riiiiight.

Good point. It only works until somebody decides that they are leaving money on the table.

Re: Adblock Plus blocked from attending online ad industry’s big annual conference

#23

Post by elsjaako »

The ad companies simply don't want ABP to come along and tell them stuff they don't want to hear. They also don't want ABP knowing what they are talking about and planning to do. So they used a system to prevent ABP changing their experience.

Seems fair enough, nothing hypocritical there.

Re: Adblock Plus blocked from attending online ad industry’s big annual conference

#24

Post by lmm »

monochromatic wrote: post #17
dhimes wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't know this, but they admit it on their site, and explain it. https://adblockplus.org/about#monetization TL;DR is that if by participating in the "Acceptable Ads" initiative the organization gains 10 million more ad impressions per month, then they have to pay. If they are "smaller" than that, it's free to them. Everybody has to keep their ads acceptable, however; you can't bribe your way out of it.

> Everybody has to keep their ads acceptable, however; you can't bribe your way out of it. Riiiiight.

If ABP started letting unacceptable ads through they'd lose all their users. Enlightened self-interest and all that.

Re: Adblock Plus blocked from attending online ad industry’s big annual conference

#25

Post by creshal »

monochromatic wrote: post #17
dhimes wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't know this, but they admit it on their site, and explain it. https://adblockplus.org/about#monetization TL;DR is that if by participating in the "Acceptable Ads" initiative the organization gains 10 million more ad impressions per month, then they have to pay. If they are "smaller" than that, it's free to them. Everybody has to keep their ads acceptable, however; you can't bribe your way out of it.

> Everybody has to keep their ads acceptable, however; you can't bribe your way out of it. Riiiiight.

Well, it'd be immediately visible to the users. While I think it is blackmail, ABP has a lot to lose by not enforcing strict standards.

Re: Adblock Plus blocked from attending online ad industry’s big annual conference

#26

Post by ucho »

dhimes wrote: post #5
riebschlager wrote: post #3

An organization called the "Interactive Advertising Bureau" should understand better than most that this would be a bad move. They'd have to really try hard to dig their heads deeper into the sand. What's the worst thing that could happen as a result of letting Adblock Plus attend? They'd gain a better understanding or ad-blocking technology? Or maybe get some insight into why so many people feel that ad-blocking is…

From the conference notice front page: Ad blocking is the latest crisis du jour, a potentially existential threat to the industry. I would guess you are correct. What's ironic is that adblock plus understands their value proposition and whitelists advertisers if they are not too shitty. I run Adblock plus for this very reason (as opposed to a less forgiving blocker). Also, they just landed Larry Ellison of Oracle as…

> potentially existential threat to the industry

I wonder if it really is a threat. Serving anything related to ads from same domain as content will make it much harder to create reliable blocking rules[1]. If ad blocking requires heuristics like the ones in Readability extension it won't be as popular.

[1] as a bonus it instantly kills simplistic host file method

Re: Adblock Plus blocked from attending online ad industry’s big annual conference

#27

Post by JohnTHaller »

cballard wrote: post #8

This reinforced to me that Adblock is a company, while uBlock Origin is just an open-source project. uBlock doesn't need to go to ad conferences and talk to people, it just filters content. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/MANIFESTO.md

And it sometimes bases those filters on personal grudges. Which is why all of SourceForge is blocked by default due to bad behavior last year on a handful of projects out of 400,000 that they discontinued after public outcry. Meaning that there is no forgiveness for giving in to public pressure. At the same time, tons of download sites with all kinds of malware and bundleware are allowed right through.

Re: Adblock Plus blocked from attending online ad industry’s big annual conference

#28

Post by cerlone »

chris_wot wrote: post #19

"The IAB Annual Leadership Meeting is for serious conversation among important digital industry stakeholders." Evidently those who prevent any ads from being served by their oh-so "important digital industry stakeholders" won't be part of any "serious conversation". Adblock, and the many others on the market, will continue to do the non-serious work of blocking ads.

I would do the same as IAB.

What adblock says to companies is "We feel your advertising is no good so we will blanket block it for millions of viewers a day"

HOWEVER, if you contact, let us review your advert and then WE decide it's not a bad add, we'll let it be shown to the millions of visitors that were supposed to see it anyway...

We'll just take a percentage of the money.

There's certainly a need for this sort of adblocking service on some level but from a money-making side of thing, their business model is just downright dirty.

Just imagine if I stood in the middle of the road at the end of your street and said "NO cars are coming down here because the residents said so"

"However, give me a few bucks because I decided you look like a decent person and you can come through"

In a real world situation, this would be classed as blackmailing and you'd be arrested for something.

Re: Adblock Plus blocked from attending online ad industry’s big annual conference

#29

Post by bainsfather »

elsjaako wrote: post #23

The ad companies simply don't want ABP to come along and tell them stuff they don't want to hear. They also don't want ABP knowing what they are talking about and planning to do. So they used a system to prevent ABP changing their experience. Seems fair enough, nothing hypocritical there.

Selling someone a ticket and listing them as a participant, then later banning them without an explanation, is pretty bad behaviour, no?
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