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The Ad Blocking Wars

nytimes.com

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Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#211

Post by punee »

aninhumer wrote: post #206
punee wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite telling, but by no means surprising on Hacker News, that you completely failed to address the question. The question wasn't "What would you do if you were looking for something to buy". The question is: "What would you do if you were a business and had something to sell?"

But the answer to the latter depends on the answer to the former. For example, if people tend to rely on review sites to make their choices, you should make sure your product compares favourably to the competition, and then solicit reviews for it. (And if you can't do that, maybe your product isn't worth buying.)

People tend to rely on watching television commercials to learn about new products. So you should buy more TV advertising. Correct?

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#212

Post by dnlbyl »

I'm a subscriber to the NY Times. Out of curiosity I disabled Ghostery and reloaded this article's page. It took 5.5s to load the page and then almost 30 seconds to load the _49_ trackers/widgets/beacons etc. This all over a 25Mbps connection. Page load time with Ghostery installed; 1.08s. I want to support the sites I value, but I'm not going to stop using ad blockers anytime soon.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#213

Post by logfromblammo »

Mimu wrote: post #194
abrookewood wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, my kids simply don't watch commercial TV. Everything used to be DVD based and now its all streamed, so they never see ads. I remember the first time they actually saw and advertisement - my son screamed! "Where did my show go??" "It's OK .. it's just an ad". A few seconds of silence passed and then he asked:"What's an ad?"

Your kids and yourself see ads all the time, just not on TV. There is no way to avoid ads, all ads are not evil either. Even if we talk only on TV, there are probably plenty in the shows / movies you watch.

Sometimes they are the shows you watch--as in, you may be watching a large advertisement with several smaller advertisements inserted into it.

Example: the Disneyland 60th Anniversary TV Special. Disney/ABC is particularly fond of advertising cross-medium Disney properties/investments on Disney-controlled television and radio broadcasts. For instance, Radio Disney definitely plays a disproportionately high number of DMG (Walt Disney Records + Hollywood Records/DMG Nashville) recordings.

My spouse was watching it. I saw 30 seconds of it and said, "this is a long format ad for Disney parks," before tuning it out.

The long-format ads are rather common on the local news broadcasts. Some stations show more than others.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#214

Post by punee »

aninhumer wrote: post #207
punee wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is that service if it's so valuable?

It exists (e.g. Which? in the UK), it's just undervalued because advertising already provides a low quality but free source of information.

That doesn't seem very logical.

First, I think you mean "less valued". That's generally what happens when there's little demand for something, or when there's a good substitute at a cheaper price.

Second, if all the free, evil ad-sponsored content on the internet is of such "low quality", it certainly would make such services more valuable, as it would offer something scarce. Their conspicuous absence seems to indicate something is amiss with this analysis.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#215

Post by logfromblammo »

melted wrote: post #87
byuu wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Dealm…

Funny thing is, Apple doesn't pay a dime for product placement.

They pay for placement with gratis or discounted hardware, not with dimes.

A long, long time ago, I did data entry for a local newspaper of campaign contributions records. At that time, I learned what an "in-kind" contribution was. This was when someone would, for instance, provide food for a campaign event. The candidate who benefited was required to report the dollar amount of that food as an in-kind contribution.

Payment in kind is another term for barter. The reporting requirement is so that public political campaigns could not hide sources of support by failing to report barter-like transactions.

And you shouldn't mislead people by saying Apple does not pay for product placement. It does pay. It pays via barter, rather than with cash, but it pays.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#216

Post by dk8996 »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #32
amelius wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ironically, one of the big moves that AdBlockers are prompting is a push to more social advertising and in app advertising as it's blocked so much less.

I agree. Content marketing on social media is becoming a big thing. Moreover, its usually much better than a display ad and has some interactions capabilities -- like any other post/tweet. Source: working for a company that is build Marketing As A Service software, first product is around social media.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#217

Post by dredmorbius »

majewsky wrote: post #177
dredmorbius wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

uMatrix isn't an ad-blocker. It uses ... a matrix ... of domains/hosts and content types to determine what is or isn't allowed to be presented/fetched by a client. Dedicated ad-blockers, such as uBlock Origin, apply heuristics which are specifically tuned to advertising signals -- hosts, domains, and, as noted in parent to your post, various HTML and other entity clues to advertising content.

Well, even if it technically isn't an adblocker, it's a darn good one in practice. And it sets up domain blocking by default, probably using the same lists as uBlock Origin.

Yes, it's useful. No, it's not specific.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#218

Post by dredmorbius »

aninhumer wrote: post #206
punee wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite telling, but by no means surprising on Hacker News, that you completely failed to address the question. The question wasn't "What would you do if you were looking for something to buy". The question is: "What would you do if you were a business and had something to sell?"

But the answer to the latter depends on the answer to the former. For example, if people tend to rely on review sites to make their choices, you should make sure your product compares favourably to the competition, and then solicit reviews for it. (And if you can't do that, maybe your product isn't worth buying.)

Quite, yes.

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#219

Post by dk8996 »

Display ads have a bunch of issues; bots, accidental clicks, and now ad blocking. I've worked for a large DSP and saw this first hand, even on closed platforms like Facebook there were bots. Change is coming, I think that content marketing will be a better option for brands to get their message out, esp on social media platforms (not via display ads).

Re: The Ad Blocking Wars

#220

Post by MiddleEndian »

punee wrote: post #189
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…

It's quite telling, but by no means surprising on Hacker News, that you completely failed to address the question. The question wasn't "What would you do if you were looking for something to buy". The question is: "What would you do if you were a business and had something to sell?"

>The question is: "What would you do if you were a business and had something to sell?"

Make a high quality product.

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