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VPAID ads destroy performance and are still served by major ad networks

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Re: VPAID ads destroy performance and are still served by major ad networks

#131

Post by icebraining »

angry-hacker wrote: post #98
Faaak wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, hosting a simple website/forum is really cheap nowadays. Some websites (wikipedia being the main one) simply ask for donations at the end of the year.

Wikipedia is in different position than other sites. Every time someone posts a link to paywall, everyone discusses how to bypass it. And the people reading HN are wealthy Silicon Valley people. Well, not me but you get the idea. Everyone talking about charging people instead ads - have you ever tried it? Tell me your success stories.

My forum runs on yearly donations. The shared hosting plan and domain cost $48/y, so about six people usually cover the costs for the whole year for the price of a fast-food lunch.

If you're trying to pay salaries, good luck, but hosting costs are very low nowadays.

Re: VPAID ads destroy performance and are still served by major ad networks

#132

Post by geocar »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #58
franciscop wrote: post #6

If someone needs to have an ad solution to have their website running it is NOT a business that should exist. It's like we say restaurant owners should support the mafia because otherwise they cannot make money in the neighborhood. Or any other criminal(ish) activity. "Without advertising we wouldn't be able to run this" MAYBE it really means you shouldn't run it at all, but don't force advertising(+malware) down you…

But a lot of niche forums - games, hobbies and so forth are unlikely to monetise any other way. Should they die too? Or have to rely on a rich benefactor deciding to host a motorcycling (or whatever) site? Few are going to pay a subscription to chat on a Civilization or fishing forum a few hours a week. Advertising should be the appropriate model for this. Trouble is it's being poisoned by the greed of Buzzfeed and W…

> Trouble is it's being poisoned by the greed of Buzzfeed and Wired etc.

No, that's exactly wrong.

You tell people that you can get paid for having a URL called, someone will cheat- they will find the most power-and-cost "efficient" way of having that URL called.

Now there are people trying to be "efficient" and there are people trying to monetise content, and the advertiser can't tell the difference, so the mean price of that traffic goes down, and as a result, Buzzfeed (heh) and Wired make less money so they have less to spend on good content.

Eventually, all we get is recycled reality television.

If you really want to blame someone for this, consider that Google is laughing all the way to the bank, because they make more money as demand increases, not when their publishers produce better content. They could stop this, but don't.

Re: VPAID ads destroy performance and are still served by major ad networks

#133

Post by spiderfarmer »

What I would like in a new kind of Ad network:

- all ads are responsive HTML5 ads

- all resources are loaded over HTTPS

- ads are based on your content, not on a profile of the user

- ads can be requested server side by sending the URL where the ad will be displayed through an API. The response contains the ad code, as well as the expiration date

- if you want, you can even download a package with all resources so ad blockers can't block you. (unless they target you specifically)

- if you don't get an ad in return, you can fill that space with your own fallback ads

- the ad network also does some kind of sentiment analysis so it doesn't show ads for Donald Trump on a page that's critical about him

- the ad network immediately severs ties with anyone who abuses the system

Re: VPAID ads destroy performance and are still served by major ad networks

#134

Post by criddell »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #48
mpclark wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that straightforward though; these networks all pile in on each other, layers and layers deep, and in real time. It is very difficult for a publisher to work out who they are dealing with. The only network ads I had running on my news site were from Google Adsense, the seemingly reputable choice, but I found ads and trackers from all sorts of networks were infiltrating through that little window. The only re…

If Google started getting significant complaints from large publishers about the crap being served over the network, perhaps they'll limit the garbage possible to serve through adsense. It's this crap that's destroying the web and making people's devices unusable. Until it stops people will continue installing ad blockers. No amount of guilt trip adblock walls will stop that.

> If Google started getting significant complaints from large publishers about the crap

I tried to complain, but ad_server.py didn't care.

Re: VPAID ads destroy performance and are still served by major ad networks

#136

Post by archon810 »

franciscop wrote: post #107
archon810 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is laughable. If site owners could go to jail every time a 3rd-party code they're not fully responsible for does something bad, they'd all be in jail now. https://blog.malwarebytes.org/threat-analysis/2015/08/large-... http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/03/big-name-sites-hit-b... Etc.

Then the only standing ones would be site owners who care enough to make sure they don't allow malware on their visitor from their site. What's the problem?

Because that's not how the world works. You'd jail 99.999% of publishers and the only ones not jailed would be ones who don't have any advertising.

Re: VPAID ads destroy performance and are still served by major ad networks

#137

Post by KB1JWQ »

mpclark wrote: post #19
JoshTriplett wrote: post #9

> A single VPAID ad absolutely demolishes site performance on mobile and desktop, and we, the publishers, get the full blame from our readers. The site is responsible for including ads; "publishers" should get the full blame from their readers. The publishers themselves can complain to the ad network they use, but readers are right to just blame the publishers.

It's not that straightforward though; these networks all pile in on each other, layers and layers deep, and in real time. It is very difficult for a publisher to work out who they are dealing with. The only network ads I had running on my news site were from Google Adsense, the seemingly reputable choice, but I found ads and trackers from all sorts of networks were infiltrating through that little window. The only re…

As a user, I'm requesting only YOUR content. I don't get a choice past that what your revenue model looks like. Your decision (or not) to host ads from various networks means that from my perspective, I visit your page and suddenly my performance / bandwidth turns to garbage.

Ergo the lesson I learn is to not visit your site. How's that a net positive for content creators?

Re: VPAID ads destroy performance and are still served by major ad networks

#138

Post by nxzero »

_Understated_ wrote: post #29
nxzero wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious, given how strongly you feel about the commercial use of personally identifiable information (pii) - how do you feel about the collection, use, sharing, etc. of pii by governments?

I don't agree with Governments doing it en-mass (I have no problem with targetted surveillance based on reasonable suspicion) and I have signed various petitions to that effect over the years. The only real option, apart from revolution, is to move to another country that doesn't do it but I don't think there is one now. Of bigger concern is that I am in the minority: Most of my circle believe in the terrorist/paedo…

Thanks, don't like to assume things, and never really thought about if there are some people that're anti-commercial pii collection, but pro gov collection; as we both would likely agree, there probably are somewhere.

As for me, I give out less (real) pii than 99.999% of the world, in part because even as a kid I knew how easy it was to find and use info.

I don't know what the best way forward is to the topic, but the current situation seems problematic to me.

Only real solution long-term is a positive & significant economic culture that values privacy; my opinion.

Re: VPAID ads destroy performance and are still served by major ad networks

#139

Post by themartorana »

KB1JWQ wrote: post #137
mpclark wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that straightforward though; these networks all pile in on each other, layers and layers deep, and in real time. It is very difficult for a publisher to work out who they are dealing with. The only network ads I had running on my news site were from Google Adsense, the seemingly reputable choice, but I found ads and trackers from all sorts of networks were infiltrating through that little window. The only re…

As a user, I'm requesting only YOUR content. I don't get a choice past that what your revenue model looks like. Your decision (or not) to host ads from various networks means that from my perspective, I visit your page and suddenly my performance / bandwidth turns to garbage. Ergo the lesson I learn is to not visit your site. How's that a net positive for content creators?

Were you planning on paying for the content otherwise?

Re: VPAID ads destroy performance and are still served by major ad networks

#140

Post by _Understated_ »

archon810 wrote: post #44
_Understated_ wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree... I know nothing about the web advertising industry or how it works with bidding and so on and I don't think I am alone. So if a site has ads then as far as I am concerned the buck stops with the them: I have no knowledge of the ad setup or what deal the site has and I don't care either - the site owner takes the responsibility and if I have a negative effect (hacked/malware/slow load or whatever) then I won…

I don't think it's a fair comparison, but I get your point. I am not saying the user should know to blame the advertiser instead of the publisher, I'm saying it really sucks that the publisher is the one getting thrown under the bus and blamed for what is the advertiser's fault and it sucks for us publishers. The suggested solution to "figure it out" and "find other advertising networks" doesn't work because almost a…

I don't mean to sound harsh and I know you personally didn't create spammy ads and so on but if your chosen method of achieving $n per month is to use an ad network that doesn't give a shit about the end user then your business model is the problem here.

You can choose NOT to use them if you want to.

NOTE: I am referring to all content creators that do this: I don't mean to aim at you in particular.

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