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The Ad Blocking Wars

nytimes.com

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Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#151

Post by erikb »

ad blocking is such a simple topic. I don't know why they call it a war. War requires two nearly equal powers. Here we have the whole world who is willing to pay NOT to get free ads served, and then there are a few people who got free money in the past and now cry because they need to find a real job. Just find something people are willing to pay for, or go broke. It's your decision, the same as everybody elses.

And for us it's also quite simple in my eyes. There are ads and we block them. There are ad-block-blockers and we just don't visit that page again. There is enough other content to read. If you don't believe it yet, have some faith. I avoid paywalls and ads since I was able to use a keyboard and never lacked stuff to read. (And in fact if you look at my amazon history you'll see that I actually pay quite a big percentage of my monthly income on written content, it's just not blogs I'm paying for)

If you look at both paragraphs it's easy to see why there is no war. We don't need these content providers who push ads onto us that we don't want. So there is no way they can achieve their goal. They can fight as much as they want. The same as the copyright industry.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#152

Post by unclebucknasty »

deelowe wrote: post #104
pixl97 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>By that logic, you shouldn't be online at all... That's a strange leap of logic. >Wikipedia Asks for donations, it doesn't show ads. There are many other websites that are internally funded in other ways that exclude direct ads.

And there are many that are. For those that are you really have two or three options morally: 1) Don't visit the site 2) Visit the site and don't use an ad blocker 3) Pay for premium service (e.g. youtube red) wherever it's available I refuse to accept that there's some moral high ground to using an ad blocking service. Especially for people like us (I assume you work in tech) where a huge percentage of our salaries…

But, can it go too far in the other direction? Can ads be abusive or is anything a content publisher does to monetize fair game?

For instance, apps that use dark patterns that make it difficult to dismiss an ad without "accidentally" clicking through the ad...are these cool? Or would you say that one simply should not use the app?

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#153

Post by 1stop »

deelowe wrote: post #138
tracker1 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I say fuck the ad services... yesterday I made the mistake of researching something on my phone, half the results were content stuffed, worthless and so many ads it brought my phone to a crawl. If websites weren't putting 6+ ads on a page, each with iframes in iframes several layers deep, it wouldn't be so bad... and you know what else... if the ads were delivered first party, then the ad blockers wouldn't be able to…

To be clear, I pay for youtube red so that I don't have to deal with ads. Same goes for netflix and several other services. My point isn't that I think ads are awesome, but that doesn't make ad blocking OK.

You are saying it isn't my right to consume what I choose? Like is lynx an ad blocker, because it's text based?

What is the difference between lynx and an ad blocker?

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#154

Post by dredmorbius »

kasey_junk wrote: post #147
dredmorbius wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny you should ask.... If I'm looking for something to buy: 1. I'll search for it directly. In particular, I'm interested in solid reviews. This quite often means not giving much credence to review mills -- CNET, Yelp, etc., -- where the nature and intentions of reviewers are quite often suspect. Amazon have this problem as well, though to a very slightly lesser extent. 2. Map-based systems (OpenStreetMap, Google M…

Many (maybe most?) ads are not looking for an immediate conversion. They are looking for long term impacts. Its why lifestyle programs like Top Gear are so valuable. Half the ads I see on the internet are for pickup trucks, something I'm clearly not going to click through & buy. Interestingly enough, I did buy a truck I don't need recently...

Right, and the branding power of advertising is significant. It's been argued (persuasively IMO) that targeted advertising is counterproductive in this regard.

Much as I find the practice annoying, a large stadium or other facility endorsement programme has a sticking power for brand awareness which a microtargeted, microsecond-auction online placement doesn't. Much the same as investing in streetfront retail space speaks to a certain confidence in your own products or services.

Don Marti and Doc Searls have both written on this many times and at length.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#155

Post by kasey_junk »

dredmorbius wrote: post #154
kasey_junk wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many (maybe most?) ads are not looking for an immediate conversion. They are looking for long term impacts. Its why lifestyle programs like Top Gear are so valuable. Half the ads I see on the internet are for pickup trucks, something I'm clearly not going to click through & buy. Interestingly enough, I did buy a truck I don't need recently...

Right, and the branding power of advertising is significant. It's been argued (persuasively IMO) that targeted advertising is counterproductive in this regard. Much as I find the practice annoying, a large stadium or other facility endorsement programme has a sticking power for brand awareness which a microtargeted, microsecond-auction online placement doesn't. Much the same as investing in streetfront retail space s…

I think one of the arguments for the more specific form of targeted advertising is for the measurement of impact, not that it is in some way more impactful.

Assumedly that measurement can lead to more impactful ads, but we are awfully new to programmatic advertising for that to be proveable.

I do know that advertisers believe targeting is valuable.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#156

Post by kasey_junk »

nitwit005 wrote: post #124
noodlio wrote: post #102

If all ad methods hypothetically disappeared, what would be the alternatives for businesses to promote their services and goods?

Imagine two models for a moment. In one, everyone is free to advertise, and in the other, no marketing of any kind is possible (magically enforced somehow). What's the difference between those two? Competing companies will occasionally edge ahead with clever ads, but in general they just cancel one another out. Having marketing exist isn't a "win" for companies, unless they have no serious competitors, because their…

A major component to modern advertising is educating people that options exist.

In the no advertising model things simply wither on the vine with no support to keep them going.

Smart phones are an obvious example. They existed for ages before a powerful marketing company pushed them to the mainstream (plus the usability improvements). That sparked a technical revolution...

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#157

Post by chris_wot »

ubernostrum wrote: post #107
0942v8653 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Ironically, Mozilla solved this in a privacy-respecting way, and the internet went apeshit over it and demanded its removal from the browser. That whole "sponsored tiles" thing was actually incredibly thoughtfully designed: * Third parties provide tiles to Mozilla, who gets to vet them, etc. * Tiles get put into bundles hosted by Mozilla and carrying metadata which can be used to target. * The browser periodically do…

The issue, of course, is that it was still downloading advertisements. Advertising isn't content, and Mozilla got screamed at because a. the way it was released was in a press release disguised as a blog post that attempted to sell why it was good for the Mozilla user (i.e. it wasn't useful for the Mozilla user), and b. advertising is advertising, nobody wants it unless they are getting paid to view the ads.

It's irrelevant if the ads were selected in the browser or not. You'd still have to download a lot of advertising that was irrelevant. And advertisers wouldn't have been happy with just client side choosing, it would have evolved into Firefox tracking you.

It was a very bad idea, and remains a very bad idea. I sure hope Mozilla never tries it again.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#158

Post by Kalium »

aikah wrote: post #110

As a musician, I remember 10/15 years ago what online medias told my kind "Adapt, go sell t-shirts". The irony.

As someone who has been involved in media production and online publishing, I'm wholly on board with "Adapt or die" here too.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#159

Post by erickhill »

cbhl wrote: post #150
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…

Subscriptions lock out people without credit cards (children, less affluent) from the Internet. This makes me sad.

Subscriptions can mean an ad-free experience for those who pay, but content for all. Doesn't have to be a wall.
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