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Rise of Ad Blocking Is the Ad Industry's Fault, Says Outgoing FTC Commissioner

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Re: Rise of Ad Blocking Is the Ad Industry's Fault, Says Outgoing FTC Commissioner

#151

Post by burkaman »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #129
burkaman wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it will not be filled by people with "passion", it will be filled by people with free time and economic security. We don't yet live in a world where passion is enough to motivate free content.

Nobody is going to go through the trouble of writing content they aren't passionate about if there isn't a financial incentive. As for the free time argument, people who are passionate about a subject make time for it. These people you claim are too busy just surviving to write content still find time for several hours of television/video games/other worthless use of time a day.

No, those two categories are basically the same. Middle class people with solid 9-5 jobs and not many other commitments. Some portion of these people create stuff in their free time.

The people I'm talking about are either too poor to follow their passions and work for free, or have the time but have decided to channel their passion into something that might make them money.

Basically, I have a problem with this quote: "Is content that needs to be supported really that valuable? Might the world be a better place without it?" The idea that anybody who publishes anything of value would be willing and able to do it for free is just obviously wrong. The world would not be a better place if independent content were only created by a tiny portion of humanity.

Re: Rise of Ad Blocking Is the Ad Industry's Fault, Says Outgoing FTC Commissioner

#152

Post by TeMPOraL »

tomp wrote: post #43
adamt wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely and like you for a long time I didn't use ad-blockers on morale grounds. Personally I don't get overly excited about the tracking/re-targeting, but what did bother me was how ridiculously intrusive the ads on some sites that totally destroyed my user experience, wasted my batteries and cellular data and at times prevented me from (on mobile) from getting to the content I actually wanted. With mobil…

> On Google search sometimes the people who will pay for ads are sometimes a better signal than those that SEO their way to the top. Are they? If you have 2 products that sell for X, one company spends Y on ads and X - Y on product, the other spends X on product. It would seem that the second one should be SEOd (by good reviews and recommendations) to the top, and that would be the more important signal.

For me an ad is a signal I don't want that product. Most of the time ads in search results are suboptimal compared to organic results anyway.

Re: Rise of Ad Blocking Is the Ad Industry's Fault, Says Outgoing FTC Commissioner

#153

Post by cpeterso »

jgalt212 wrote: post #34

If third party cookies were allowed, then sites like Business Insider would not be tempted to fire 50 (or more) resource hogging tracking pixels and scripts. The law of unintended consequences in full effect here.

Besides Safari, which browsers block third-party cookies (when not using an ad blocker that would also block those 50 tracking pixels)?

Re: Rise of Ad Blocking Is the Ad Industry's Fault, Says Outgoing FTC Commissioner

#154

Post by Cypher »

karterk wrote: post #5

For a very long time, I did not want to use ad blockers. I have used ads in the past to monetize some of my own projects, and I really did not want to stab the creators of quality content. However, last week I finally reversed my decision and started using ad blockers. Why? Frankly, many sites are just greedy. Banners were ugly enough (and I tolerated them) but many sites these days show ads that cover the content, a…

Sounds like the internet is going back to the early 2000s with mass popups? and auto playing sounds?. I recall the banner ad that made me learn how to edit my host files. It'd play a sound of a bee buzzing away on loop. I learnt how to edit host files pretty quickly, never looked back. Threw TV out soon over a decade ago too. Native ads are on the rise, that's the next wave.

Re: Rise of Ad Blocking Is the Ad Industry's Fault, Says Outgoing FTC Commissioner

#155

Post by zzleeper »

What do you guys use as ad blockers on mobile? I use chrome on an android and it seems that I would need to switch to FF in order to have adblocking?

(Which I might, as there are ads on Chrome that even make the cellphone vibrate and redirect to the store, amongst other things)

Re: Rise of Ad Blocking Is the Ad Industry's Fault, Says Outgoing FTC Commissioner

#156

Post by eli »

spacehome wrote: post #110
chris_wot wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why do they bother?

Yea, I'm ready for websites who can't find a viable monetization strategy to just go bankrupt already and stop blaming me for their shitty business plan.

You won't miss them? Quite a few of the sites I enjoy are struggling to remain ad supported and I would be sad if they can't find a way to make it work.

Re: Rise of Ad Blocking Is the Ad Industry's Fault, Says Outgoing FTC Commissioner

#157

Post by cm2187 »

pdkl95 wrote: post #124
cm2187 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but there are no cookie in DNS queries. Tracking by IP is a lot more toothless than tracking by cookies / super-cookies.

IP based tracking still works most of the time. Dynamic IPs change very infrequently, and NAT combines IPs in physically (and often socially) close groups. It isn't perfect, but a lot of those requests can probably be mapped back to those cookies. Google's entire business is based on building large database of tracking (and other) information; obviously their DNS is just another data source. Just skip the recursive r…

But you can't serve the same ads to the teenager of the family, Grandma and Dad...

And the IP may be a public network.

Re: Rise of Ad Blocking Is the Ad Industry's Fault, Says Outgoing FTC Commissioner

#158

Post by Kenji »

zzleeper wrote: post #155

What do you guys use as ad blockers on mobile? I use chrome on an android and it seems that I would need to switch to FF in order to have adblocking? (Which I might, as there are ads on Chrome that even make the cellphone vibrate and redirect to the store, amongst other things)

You can use a hosts file that redirects all the domains that serve garbage to 127.0.0.1. If you have rooted your phone, at least. There are plenty of good lists available in forums. Like this, you remove ads system-wide, even in apps.

Re: Rise of Ad Blocking Is the Ad Industry's Fault, Says Outgoing FTC Commissioner

#159

Post by teaneedz »

sokoloff wrote: post #125
saetaes wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Akamai sold that business a few years ago: https://www.akamai.com/us/en/about/news/press/2013-press/med...

That may be, but it seems that Akamai CDN is still giving them a data feed. From that press release: "As a result of the pixel-free technology partnership, MediaMath's clients will gain access to more data for audience segmentation, retargeting, and optimization, with quick and easy activation."

Why a good VPN is pretty much a requirement now. I've been using F-Secure's products and really love seeing all the blocking it does.

Re: Rise of Ad Blocking Is the Ad Industry's Fault, Says Outgoing FTC Commissioner

#160

Post by CuriouslyC »

burkaman wrote: post #151
CuriouslyC wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is going to go through the trouble of writing content they aren't passionate about if there isn't a financial incentive. As for the free time argument, people who are passionate about a subject make time for it. These people you claim are too busy just surviving to write content still find time for several hours of television/video games/other worthless use of time a day.

No, those two categories are basically the same. Middle class people with solid 9-5 jobs and not many other commitments. Some portion of these people create stuff in their free time. The people I'm talking about are either too poor to follow their passions and work for free, or have the time but have decided to channel their passion into something that might make them money. Basically, I have a problem with this quot…

Just because you publish content for free doesn't mean that you don't derive value from it. By establishing yourself as an expert you can (just off the top of my head):

- create a market for yourself as a consultant/instructor/offer seminars in that area

- charge businesses to feature reviews of their goods and services

- sell books/prints/tshirts/(insert relevant merch for type of content here)

None of these avenues are viable for content mills. I stand by my original point that if content was free and everyone monetized their expertise this way we'd have a much better internet.

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