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The Ad Blocking Wars

nytimes.com

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Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#11

Post by 0942v8653 »

tosseraccount wrote: post #2

Why don't sites just serve up the ads from their own domain?

The lack of cross-site tracking makes the ads far less targeted, losing a good bit of the amount advertisers will pay for ads. Additionally, advertisers don't trust the logs of the site publishing the ads in the way they trust Google, further reducing the ad price. And adblockers already support hiding specific elements of the page, even if they don't involve making an HTTP request to a designated advertising domain. So people would stop using hosts files and start using proper browser extensions or HTTP proxies, and the ads would still be blocked (this could fix the iOS 9 content blocker problem, but not for long).

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#12

Post by gyardley »

Online advertising is a perfect example of the tragedy of the commons, where that commons is the general public's attention. Any individual publisher or advertiser can do a little bit better by surpassing what the general public finds acceptable, but when enough of them do this some of the general public resorts to ad blockers - causing overall ad revenues to decline, which causes more publishers and advertisers to push the boundaries in search of higher revenue, which causes more people to install ad blockers...

No matter how or what you feel about advertising and tracking, this cycle is well underway, and I believe it's no longer capable of being stopped. There's still short-term wins out there, but I'd be long-term bearish on anything involving ad tech or analytics, and structure your career accordingly.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#13

Post by officialchicken »

gyardley wrote: post #12

Online advertising is a perfect example of the tragedy of the commons, where that commons is the general public's attention. Any individual publisher or advertiser can do a little bit better by surpassing what the general public finds acceptable, but when enough of them do this some of the general public resorts to ad blockers - causing overall ad revenues to decline, which causes more publishers and advertisers to p…

At the end of the day, we all agree that shining shit is their job.

Media/Ad buyers and sellers need to realize that there are 2 issues (intrusive ads and tracking) at play, not one. The IAB can't deflect on "bad actors" too much longer and they know it - that campaign has run it's course. They have to correct their own behavior and not modify ours as they're naturally inclined to try.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#14

Post by colmvp »

Arguments seem to glaze over the ethics of advertising and imply that it's a benign, acceptable practice.

Yet the more I read psychology, the more I am aware of ways advertising can manipulate the thoughts we have towards brands when we're not aware of it. So to protect myself, I try to avoid ads in any circumstances (ublock, minimal usage of ad-supported apps).

Quite frankly I'd rather have more subscriptions. I pay for Spotify, ad-free magazines on my Kindle, and local journalists (through Patreon). And that's good enough for me.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#15

Post by BenoitP »

mschuster91 wrote: post #3

Advertising is the maybe best example of Capitalism going raving mad. We consumers tell the media with every single installation of Adblock: fuck off, we don't want to be data-mined. We don't want to be interrupted every time we open a new tab that we might like a penis enlargement. And especially: WE CONSUMERS FUCKING HATE THE LIES OF ADVERTISING. Prior to the internet, people tended to actually believe what adverti…

Do you believe there is space (as in: market space) for user controlled advertising? :

Publisher gets a cut, for providing a place for the ad, having made the consumer come to it, and also for providing information on the consumer's interests. This is the current situation.

But the consumer would get a cut too. For renting his pixels, his CPU, his internet connection, his eyes, his brain. He would get to veto types of ads he dislikes. He would get to say he only wants 30% of ads to be displayed (and let the crowd define these 30%). He could partitipate in surveys, share his buyings lists, share events of his life (ex moving to a new city), in exchange for better revenue, or deals.

This (tiny) revenue really could help bootstrap microtransaction. On top of that, if the NYT can benefit from the microtransactions, the NYT will talk of such a program. Adoption could be boosted by all the news outlets.

Would participate as a consumer? Do you think publisher, advertisers, announcers would participate too?

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#16

Post by swang »

tosseraccount wrote: post #2

Why don't sites just serve up the ads from their own domain?

gets advertisers to agree to let website self-host ads, with access to click rates, etc

spins up new server

setups ad service

spend couple days fidgeting with open source ad software

ads deploy to subdomain ads.domain.com

people start blocking ads.domain.com, assuming ads..com wasn't already in your blocklist

redeploys ads into domain.com/DEFINITELY_NOT_ADS

people start blocking that URL

its basically a cat and mouse game. most people don't have time for that.

if you have a small client base though you can probably get away with selling a promo on a per month basis.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#17

Post by mschuster91 »

BenoitP wrote: post #15
mschuster91 wrote: post #3

Advertising is the maybe best example of Capitalism going raving mad. We consumers tell the media with every single installation of Adblock: fuck off, we don't want to be data-mined. We don't want to be interrupted every time we open a new tab that we might like a penis enlargement. And especially: WE CONSUMERS FUCKING HATE THE LIES OF ADVERTISING. Prior to the internet, people tended to actually believe what adverti…

Do you believe there is space (as in: market space) for user controlled advertising? : Publisher gets a cut, for providing a place for the ad, having made the consumer come to it, and also for providing information on the consumer's interests. This is the current situation. But the consumer would get a cut too. For renting his pixels, his CPU, his internet connection, his eyes, his brain. He would get to veto types o…

Not really. The concept is definitely interesting, but it will fail with the consumer masses.

What is really needed is a concept for micro-transactions - transactions that may even go down to fractions of a cent!

If you're a newspaper and you're trying to sell an article (e.g.) for 20 cents, it's not possible unless you use Bitcoin, and even then it's a hassle.

Adblock Plus might actually be in the position to introduce a platform for this - in contrast to Flattr, they have a huge userbase, a massive number of clients for their opt-out scheme... I'd gladly put, say, 10-20€ a month on my Adblock account, and enjoy a web free of paywalls, advertising, malvertising, video eating off my mobile data...

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#18

Post by hammock »

BenoitP wrote: post #15
mschuster91 wrote: post #3

Advertising is the maybe best example of Capitalism going raving mad. We consumers tell the media with every single installation of Adblock: fuck off, we don't want to be data-mined. We don't want to be interrupted every time we open a new tab that we might like a penis enlargement. And especially: WE CONSUMERS FUCKING HATE THE LIES OF ADVERTISING. Prior to the internet, people tended to actually believe what adverti…

Do you believe there is space (as in: market space) for user controlled advertising? : Publisher gets a cut, for providing a place for the ad, having made the consumer come to it, and also for providing information on the consumer's interests. This is the current situation. But the consumer would get a cut too. For renting his pixels, his CPU, his internet connection, his eyes, his brain. He would get to veto types o…

>Do you believe there is space (as in: market space) for user controlled advertising?

Aka permission-based marketing. Most common examples being email and SMS subscriptions. Most studies of marketers actually conclude that email marketing is their most effective tactic.

Don't overthink it.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#19

Post by icebraining »

tosseraccount wrote: post #7
mschuster91 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because with own domains sites lose the ability of tracking. A central entity can track users across all websites where the entity has a tracking beacon, and target ads to a specific customer as a result. Tracking makes advertisements much, much more expensive and thus profitable.

Can't their servers contact the mothership? And cache potential ads? I don't even mind the ads so much as the delay.

Contacting the mothership doesn't help. The way it works is that an ad network loaded by site A sets a cookie with a new random ID. When you go to site B with the same ad network, since the ads are served from the same domain (the ad network's), it can read the cookie with the ID and link the two website visits.

If ads came from the sites own domains, this wouldn't work.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#20

Post by BenoitP »

hammock wrote: post #18
BenoitP wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe there is space (as in: market space) for user controlled advertising? : Publisher gets a cut, for providing a place for the ad, having made the consumer come to it, and also for providing information on the consumer's interests. This is the current situation. But the consumer would get a cut too. For renting his pixels, his CPU, his internet connection, his eyes, his brain. He would get to veto types o…

>Do you believe there is space (as in: market space) for user controlled advertising? Aka permission-based marketing. Most common examples being email and SMS subscriptions. Most studies of marketers actually conclude that email marketing is their most effective tactic. Don't overthink it.

That could be a quite convincing argument to present to advertisers. Honestly grabbed attention would transform better.
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