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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

#311

Post by tomjen3 »

_Understated_ wrote: post #14

In most walks of life we happily pay for something that provides us value: Cars, phones, shoes etc. I don't see the web/app ecosystem as any different although owners (that's app creators and web site owners/creators) feel they can make more by selling our lives to a third party - That's not something I want to happen with my details I will block your system for doing so. If I feel your site/app is not providing me w…

The problem with that is that, at least for me, is that I no longer read any one newspaper. I read whatever is linked on HN, reddit, twitter, facebook. So no, I am not going to have a separate subscription for each. I had a subscription with the Economist, and that is the last time I will have a subscription for any newspaper, but I am willing to pay for a bundle that has substantially every publication the way Spotify has substantially every song, as long as I could pay with paypal, so that I knew I didn't have to pick up the phone to cancel.

Other than that I just want a button to pay a couple cents to read just that article, no matter who has posted it.

The second problem is that far too few people are willing to pay.

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

#312

Post by JoshTriplett »

manigandham wrote: post #307
roymurdock wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like the ad market is bifurcating: "native content" for those with ad blockers, and ridiculous garbage-ads for those who either (1) don't have the tech literacy to install and run an adblocker, or (2) are whitelisting out of empathy for content creators. Increasingly I believe we'll see the former. Does "native content" (paid-for pieces disguised as objective information) require "sophisticated" ad network tech…

There's a difference between the formats and the distribution systems. Content has always been a good marketing tool, we're just starting to see a lot more of it with publishers setting up their own "agencies" to sell pieces written by the same teams but for advertisers. Some are actually really great (Netflix stories for example). When it comes to distribution, there is just a lot that needs to be done for advertisi…

> However, because adblockers mostly work at the network interface level, the typical 3rd party javascript tag approach is very easy to disable, and self-published native content by publishers using the existing content management system is a good workaround. It's more of a stop gap then a long term approach though.

The major adblocker filter lists tend to quickly add filters for "native" ads on any site with a non-trivial number of users.

Rather than moving to native ads, start planning today for how you could do without ads entirely. If that doesn't turn up any answers, you should worry about your future.

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

#313

Post by manigandham »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #312
manigandham wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between the formats and the distribution systems. Content has always been a good marketing tool, we're just starting to see a lot more of it with publishers setting up their own "agencies" to sell pieces written by the same teams but for advertisers. Some are actually really great (Netflix stories for example). When it comes to distribution, there is just a lot that needs to be done for advertisi…

> However, because adblockers mostly work at the network interface level, the typical 3rd party javascript tag approach is very easy to disable, and self-published native content by publishers using the existing content management system is a good workaround. It's more of a stop gap then a long term approach though. The major adblocker filter lists tend to quickly add filters for "native" ads on any site with a non-t…

Adblockers are just software and there are already dozens of ways to work around this. It's not the end of the world but a new paradigm that requires more work than before. Part of the benefit is that it's a reset in the industry that should get rid of some of the bad vendors and help improve the experience by showing advertisers that consumers do care about UX and choice.

Advertising will always be around though. No need to worry about that future. People want content but they don't want to pay, and advertising is a great model that works well for the vast majority. In fact digital advertising today is bigger, stronger and better than ever.

It's the legacy tech, formats and thinking that are broken, but progress is being made and everything will get better soon enough.

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

#314

Post by warfangle »

cantlin wrote: post #184

At the Guardian we needed our own video player, because we couldn't rely on a third party platform not to take down something that we published. Editorial independence was important. We implemented our player on top of video.js, and most of the developers who were there at the time still have nightmares about it. We finally got the thing working, looking good, embeddable, reasonably cross-browser. We shipped it. A fe…

Feel your pain. Worked on a video player at a previous company.

Advertising was the biggest pain point.

The fun part is when the ad trafficker would run a VPAID payload with 18 sequential ad-auction vendors. We saw delay from first byte of the player to first byte of the advertisement go from Xms on a fast connection to > 30 seconds.

And then they blamed the player for being slow \o/

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

#315

Post by thruflo22 »

Shinchy wrote: post #299
cantlin wrote: post #184

At the Guardian we needed our own video player, because we couldn't rely on a third party platform not to take down something that we published. Editorial independence was important. We implemented our player on top of video.js, and most of the developers who were there at the time still have nightmares about it. We finally got the thing working, looking good, embeddable, reasonably cross-browser. We shipped it. A fe…

You worked on the newer Video Player for the Guardian? Coincidently I created the really old one built in Flash, never had too many bugs though since most of the work was already done with the Flash framework. Just visual stuff going all over the place.

As part of the R&R project?

I half won and then firmly lost a project around then to port their video serving to our web tv platform.

Lost due to severe inability to manage such a project but we had a nice multi-format video player for the time: js abstraction over different players for different platforms (flash, quicktime, windows media, ...).

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

#316

Post by idlewords »

manigandham wrote: post #313
JoshTriplett wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, because adblockers mostly work at the network interface level, the typical 3rd party javascript tag approach is very easy to disable, and self-published native content by publishers using the existing content management system is a good workaround. It's more of a stop gap then a long term approach though. The major adblocker filter lists tend to quickly add filters for "native" ads on any site with a non-t…

Adblockers are just software and there are already dozens of ways to work around this. It's not the end of the world but a new paradigm that requires more work than before. Part of the benefit is that it's a reset in the industry that should get rid of some of the bad vendors and help improve the experience by showing advertisers that consumers do care about UX and choice. Advertising will always be around though. No…

How is digital advertising 'better than ever' when everyone seems to agree that the situation is untenable?

I admire your optimism that putting consumers and advertisers in a directly adversarial relationship (by forcing them into an arms race around blocking) will somehow make everything great, but I have a hard time sharing it.

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

#317

Post by modded »

kod wrote: post #288
dave_sullivan wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertising is a weird business. There's different types of media: print, television, digital (banner ads). Print is dead (has been the increasingly accurate argument for 10 years now), television is expensive and untrackable, and digital is here to save the ad industry because that's where all your customers are and it's very trackable. The value to the advertiser is either direct-action ("click here and buuuuuy!")…

> They're typically sold at a CPM (Cost Per thousand iMpressions) M is for mille, not impressions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_per_mille

;)

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

#318

Post by AlexandrB »

volatilitish wrote: post #306
Tyr42 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's usually a legitimately harmful ad. Malware, adware or other bad stuff. But these slip through quality control of ad networks, even when they don't want them.

It's worse than that IMHO. They dislike "deceptive" adverts. So for example, if it's an image, saying "download" then Google will block your website. Who knows, maybe in the future they'll start banning websites that advertise gambling or other things they dislike. Now I do think that adverts like that are irritating, and deceptive, but should the website that happens to be using an ad-network, that allowed an advert…

> Now I do think that adverts like that are irritating, and deceptive, but should the website that happens to be using an ad-network, that allowed an advertiser to upload an image that says "download", be blocked so that users cannot access it from Chrome and firefox? Of course not.

Why not? At least that would get websites to look at the ads their ad networks are serving up a little more than "not at all". Ultimately these ads would impact the site's brand even if browsers didn't block it, the damage would just be more subtle and easier to ignore.

Until somebody in the ad delivery chain accepts responsibility for ad quality nothing is going to change. Publishers and websites have the most to lose here and should be demanding better from their ad networks.

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

#319

Post by jhenkens »

delibes wrote: post #271
cantlin wrote: post #184

At the Guardian we needed our own video player, because we couldn't rely on a third party platform not to take down something that we published. Editorial independence was important. We implemented our player on top of video.js, and most of the developers who were there at the time still have nightmares about it. We finally got the thing working, looking good, embeddable, reasonably cross-browser. We shipped it. A fe…

Funnily enough, MailOnline had the same problem and also implemented VPAID for VideoJS https://github.com/MailOnline/videojs-vast-vpaid I really hoped that the Guardian and others were going to create their own safer (no pron/malware) and faster (less RTB) network and cut out much of the cruft when I read about Pangaea last year. Looks like it's more about sharing data though :( http://pangaeaalliance.com/

I work in industry, and while I haven't explored the Guardian's player, I do use MailOnline's plugins extensively, and they work better than any other tester I've found. Fantastic stuff, and its open source.

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

#320

Post by AlexandrB »

archon810 wrote: post #84
snarfy wrote: post #11

Sites need to be legally liable for installing malware on your computer. That will solve all of this. I can go to prison for clicking on the wrong link but somehow they get away with drive-by ransomware installs.

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.

The adtech industry strongly resembles a money laundering operation, except what's being laundered is malware and malvertising. The system's complexity means no one can (or wants to) pin down where malicious content enters the system, so all involved just shrug their shoulders.

"I don't know how that malware ended up on your PC, I was just serving ads from such-and-such network!"

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