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The Ad Blocking Wars

nytimes.com

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Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#21

Post by rayalez »

mschuster91 wrote: post #17
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…

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 introd…

I've just recently wrote a post on the subject:

https://medium.com/@rayalez/somebody-should-create-a-youtube...

tl;dr - I think that youtube red model would work really well for this.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#22

Post by tosseraccount »

icebraining wrote: post #19
tosseraccount wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They know your domain, your IP address, your referer, your screen size, your OS, your browser version, your supported MIME types, your port number, your plugins, your ISP.

That should be enough information for cooperating servers to target an ad.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#24

Post by microcolonel »

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…

I don't see ads all that often, there is an element of choice to it.

It's just that people want the things behind ads more than they don't want the ads. In a way it's an example of capitalism doing well.

If consumers really don't want to see ads, they won't.

An example of advertising working well, I see the Massdrop mailouts periodically. These emails come in a predictable and respectful format which tells no lies about the product. Attractive products clearly win on Massdrop.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#25

Post by amelius »

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…

Relax. Within 10 years, we have AI that is strong enough to recognize advertisements regardless of origin, so that they can be stripped from any content, be it text, images, or video.

Make sure you sell your Google and Facebook stocks before that time.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#26

Post by AndrewKemendo »

My thought is that we should be replicating the "pull" based commerce process of the shopping mall but doing it electronically.

So instead of bombarding people with stuff they don't want in a context that doesn't make sense - ads for products on the sidelines of other unrelated content - we build a platform where people can get as close to the in person shopping experience as possible from their home. Obviously there are limitations to this from a tactile standpoint, but by and large consumers have shown that they don't really need that to such high fidelity.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#27

Post by michaelbuckbee »

tosseraccount wrote: post #2

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

From the blockers side, this doesn't really help as domain filtering is just the first step, then dom elements, url fragments and finally HTML identifiers (like being a standard ad image size).

From the user privacy side it's also mixed as there are still large scale efforts to link up users across sites and devices.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#28

Post by bufordsharkley »

amelius wrote: post #25
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…

Relax. Within 10 years, we have AI that is strong enough to recognize advertisements regardless of origin, so that they can be stripped from any content, be it text, images, or video. Make sure you sell your Google and Facebook stocks before that time.

I'm more worried at the point that we have AI strong enough to pass the turing test, and then spends years befriending us... just to advertise products.

Pretty far off, but this concept scares the hell out of me.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#29

Post by mirimir »

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…

I don't want to be distracted by ads. And I don't want to be tracked. I would be happy to pay forgone ad income, at the going rate, which I understand to be on the order of $0.001 to $0.01 per view. But I would want that to be largely automatic, with just a quote and opportunity to accept.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#30

Post by joesmo »

I don't see this as an issue. I've been blocking ads on the web for over a dozen years and now somehow it's an issue? No, it's not. The publishers who can't make it in a world where people increasingly use ad blockers won't and the ones who figure out how to make it will. Economics 101. I've been waiting for this play to start for awhile--it's amusing--but I'm not really interested in reading about idiots who see this as a moral issue. The advertising industry has had a good dozen years to reign unchecked. They've gotten used to having nice things that shouldn't have been theirs. Now, either adapt or die. Truthfully, no one outside of the advertising industry cares either one way or another.

It's possible nowadays to live an almost completely ad-free life. Outside of live sporting events and billboards, we have so many ad-free choices, that choosing something with advertising at this point has to be deliberate or simply out of laziness. The world of web advertising is gone just like many worlds that are now outdated: CDs, DVDs, etc. It's just a matter of time till the companies involved realize this. They're like the coyote who, chasing the roadrunner, has run off the cliff but hasn't looked down at the abyss yet and thus hasn't yet fallen. Google and Facebook will at some point realize they're in defiance of gravity and start plunging. Perhaps they can rescue themselves with native mobile apps or other closed ecosystem allowances, but on the open web, they are finished. I'm just amazed it took this long for the final act to start ...

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