The Ad Blocking Wars • Hacker News Board

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#61

Post by Geekette » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 8:22 PM UTC

adblawk wrote: post #43

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…

Just look back 50 years, how many ads an average Western person saw a day and how many today... 50 years ago the average western person had access to maybe 1/50th of the information they access to now thanks to the internet and in large part thanks to advertising. Advertising allows businesses to outsource the consideration (and associated decisions) of the value of their users. A business dependent on advertising do…

There would be nothing unfair about choosing to acknowledge and restrict your product to the actual market size for it - the paying audience of 5%. Currently, it seems the company acknowledges its current market demand is small and is using ad revenue from the non-paying 95% to supplement income.

A lot of online product falls under entertainment/content and most users will not pay for non-essential services; they'd simply find alternatives. Even those willing to pay something want to pay one fee at most and with so many content sources, competition to be the chosen paid source is exceedingly stiff.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#62

Post by timonovici » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 8:25 PM UTC

spodek wrote: post #10

Why should others control my monitor? If they detect my software and don't let me on their site, that's their prerogative, but my computer is my property, not theirs. If their business model requires them to control other people's computers, plenty of other entrepreneurs will be happy to overtake them in the market. Once they feel entitled to control my monitor, they start lobbying for laws to support them, making th…

Things started to go downhill, and they consider themselves too big to die, too important for the current infrastructure. Any business will have this inertia - gripping their shaky hands on the past, and showing the fangs at the present and the grim future - it's like the will to survive of animals.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#63

Post by old-gregg » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 8:25 PM UTC

colmvp wrote: post #14

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…

They're already calling it a "disorder": http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1805733/

The question is, if advertisement leads to more consumption, and excessive shopping is now a disease, how long before we start seeing people suing ad agencies for infecting them with such illness?

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#64

Post by byuu » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 8:26 PM UTC

caoilte wrote: post #44

joesmo wrote: post #30

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 thi…

You can't afford to be too complacent because ad agencies know this too and will come at you sideways - 2nd hand advertising is going to become a recognised thing. Advertisers reaching you and me through celebrities we respect, through hijacking friends or just through corrupting children.

Not to mention embedded advertising.

Kevin Spacey on House of Cards: "is that a PS Vita you have there?"

Anything from Hollywood: "Apple, Apple, Apple, Apple, Apple, Apple, Apple, Apple, Apple, Apple, Apple, Apple, Apple, Apple, Apple, look it's an Apple. Apple."

Aggregator: "New Java framework Zaxybar; The true cost of OOP abstraction; Link'dOut is hiring engineers; How ride-sharing is reshaping cities; Weekly Dealmaster; The myth of the 10000x programmer"

Future news article: "Hundreds evacuated the area after the hurricane ravaged the eastern parts of $city. Thankfully, many had followed city officials' advice to stock up on Dasani water bottles and flashlights powered by Duracell long-lasting batteries, so the harm of no access to fresh water and power was greatly minimized. The local damage to crops was... (article continues)"

This is not a war I want to keep escalating.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#65

Post by ino » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 8:27 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #5

tosseraccount wrote: post #2

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

Fraud. The dozens of domains and tons of javascript are all there as part of an effort to establish that the ad has been served to a human who might concievably be a customer for the product, and not a robot or some sort of third world ad-viewing farm.

That's true for click campaigns but what about view campaigns?

Couldn't Samsung, now releasing their new phone, buy a website's entire ad space for a month or two, let's say techcrunch, and tell them to serve their new phone's ad themselves? Samsung is in for the eyeballs just like when they buy those huge outdoor ads, but even better, no intermediaries.

The publisher would even optimize the HTML5 ads for loading and rendering speed, and have a selection of them so they could rotate them. I believe it could work well for physical items.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#66

Post by timonovici » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 8:32 PM UTC

palderson wrote: post #48

The objective of the entire ad industry is basically to determine what it is you're in the market for. Funnily enough, I'd have no problem telling someone/thing what I'm in the market for providing the offers received matched my specified criteria. On any given day of the week, we're all in the market for something, right down to a tube of toothpaste. I've always thought that if advertisers knew, from the source, wha…

The problem is - every minute of every day, they'll show their wares, while I'm interested only seldom to buy things. Most people buy their toothpaste, brushes and toilet disinfectant at the supermarket, when they do their weekly shopping - why would I have to be bombarded with it constantly?

It's like in those movies when they tie you down to a chair, forcibly open your eyes, and blast you with tormenting images.

I never even once bought something I saw advertised online (in sidebars, for example), because I mostly think they are scams - my parents are more gullible though, and I feel bad for them, so I block their ads to protect them.

Video reviews from some people I trust are other story.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#67

Post by lotsoflumens » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 8:33 PM UTC

adblawk wrote: post #43

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…

Just look back 50 years, how many ads an average Western person saw a day and how many today... 50 years ago the average western person had access to maybe 1/50th of the information they access to now thanks to the internet and in large part thanks to advertising. Advertising allows businesses to outsource the consideration (and associated decisions) of the value of their users. A business dependent on advertising do…

> A business dependent on advertising doesn't need to consider which of their users are most dollar valuable ...

A business dependent on advertising, is a business about to fail.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#68

Post by bunderbunder » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 8:36 PM UTC

kazinator wrote: post #50

Supposedly blocking ads is immoral because ads provide funding for the so called valuable content. Here is the thing though: most pages do not have any such content. One reason I don't want to see the ads because I didn't want to see the page in the first place. I only landed on the page because it's stuffed with keywords that duped the search engine indexer. The ads are part of the delay and bandwidth waste which st…

Sometimes I do go for the content. Oftentimes this is only to be unable to access it because all the ads bring my browser to its knees, or even crash it.

Yeah, I suppose the makers of these ads would suggest the solution to this problem is that I spend a few hundred to a thousand bucks on some shiny new electronics. Funny how they manage to be both the cause of and the solution to the problem.

Instead I use an adblocker. And I try to be choosy about which ads I block, so that it's only the really obnoxious ones that kill my battery life or are a thinly veiled vehicle for digging through my kitchen wastebin for fingernail clippings to collect. I feel no sense of guilt about this.

If they don't want me accessing their site over this, and curating their ads to be less corrosive is not an option for whatever reason, then perhaps they can set up a special clickthrough agreement asking me to consent to abusive treatment before I view the content. Perhaps that will make it easier for us to negotiate a mutually satisfactory arrangement.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#69

Post by LanguageGamer » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 8:41 PM UTC

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'd roughly guess that the amount of time a person had to spend with ads in the 60s in a year is about 1/12 of the time he has to waste (!) with ads now.

Perhaps, but how do we measure that?

I was surprised to learn recently that advertising for the past century has only grown at pace with GDP, i.e. it has continued to be about 1.29% or our economy: http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-03-03/advertisings...

But it's still possible that advertisers are buying an increasing percentage of our time and attention. I would love to see a study that attempts to measure that, though it sounds like a tricky task.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#70

Post by matt4077 » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 8:46 PM UTC

kazinator wrote: post #50

Supposedly blocking ads is immoral because ads provide funding for the so called valuable content. Here is the thing though: most pages do not have any such content. One reason I don't want to see the ads because I didn't want to see the page in the first place. I only landed on the page because it's stuffed with keywords that duped the search engine indexer. The ads are part of the delay and bandwidth waste which st…

By that logic, you shouldn't be online at all...

I don't quite get fundamentalists like you. I cannot see how people can deny that the New York Times, Wikipedia, or even HN, Reddit & XKCD add something valuable.