At that point I'm really considering pulling my own feed and displaying in my own client.
Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users
251–260 of 462 posts
Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users
#252> “Facebook is ad-supported. Ads are a part of the Facebook experience; they’re not a tack on,” said Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, Facebook’s vice president of engineering for advertising and pages.
I get the point that Facebook is ad-supported. But to spin that as "ads are a part of the Facebook experience" is like saying that 'throwing up is part of a rollercoaster ride experience' (please make a better analogy if you will).
I don't use the FB apps because apps are more intrusive with respect to the information collected and don't give me adequate control. Instead, I use the FB site from a desktop browser with an ad blocker to have a cleaner experience. And I know it really is clean because I do try to turn off the ad blocker every once in a while to see how crappy it can be.
The FB experience on the desktop is terrible with ads. I don't want to see "earn so much in a day", "play poker and make money" and all kinds of nonsense on the right. These ads are in addition to the sponsored stories and stuff that get pushed into the news feed. I don't want to really tell Facebook what ads I like and what my interests are so that I can be fooled by some brand or seller into paying more, part of which would fuel Facebook ads even more.
For a long time, people who've been reading about the web and online advertisements have known about banner blindness. [1][2] For some strange reason, those who want to serve ads ignore this or don't want to acknowledge this.
Facebook's ads on the desktop are easily ignored by banner blindness, but I don't want to even get those downloaded and waste my bandwidth or Internet traffic limit. While Facebook claimed a big victory with "native ads" on mobile, I'd be willing to bet that many users on mobile have learned banner blindness to these too and just quickly scroll past these ads or sponsored stories inserted into news feeds. They're very easy to spot and take perhaps a few hundred milliseconds for the brain to recognize and act on. For the advertisers paying for impressions, this is a bad deal because it's not valuable at all. But of course, Facebook can make (false) claims that this is better than sidebar ads.
People generally do not like ads on any medium because they waste people's time and keep them from the content they're interested in. People do not want to get targeted ads if they know that all their actions are being tracked and be given the euphemism of "a better experience" with it. It doesn't matter how you spin it or what excuses you make for shoving ads into a user's experience. Given a chance, people will skip ads in every communication medium.
The only ads people enjoy are the ones that are really thoughtful or funny or move them in some way to make the world a better place. These are really few and far between, and even they have a limit to the number of times people will put up with or want to see and share. The rest of the ads are just examples in wasting money and human thought.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_blindness
[2]: http://nngroup.com/articles/banner-blindness-old-and-new-fin...
Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
I worked for a company that got most of its revenue from online ads. When I started, adblockers were 20%. When it got up to 35% the boss decided to take action. We hired a third party anti-adblocker, and it worked great. It went back and forth with the adblockers as they updated to block our anti-blocking. Most adblock extensions use some standard rules-lists, similar to email spam lists like Spamhaus. I guess we pis…
Have you tried leaner, less obtrusive, ads? Something like straight simple text?
We started off nice: "Hey, you are disabling ads, please turn them on" etc. Then we offered an ad-free subscription (almost worthless). And I think we played with another idea or two, before finally going through with the blocking adblockers.
Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users
#254It's important to remember that Facebook usage is entirely optional. I won't miss it when I get fed up and leave.
Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users
#255Original announcement from Facebook: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12255132 http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/08/a-new-way-to-control-the...
Quote from the FB newsroom post:
> When we asked people about why they used ad blocking software, the primary reason we heard was to stop annoying, disruptive ads.
The ads on FB are annoying and are disrupting regardless of how well targeted they are. Unless FB decides to completely change the advertising market and allow only a handful of nicer brands and ads (along with the drastic reduction in the amount of money it can make), nobody is going to believe that the ads are anything but annoying, intrusive and disruptive.
I'd be really interested in knowing how many Facebook employees use the platform from a desktop browser and resort to ad blockers to have a better experience. :)
Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users
#256Why not just allow users to pay to not see ads? It's a crazy idea, but it just might work. Hulu's getting a lot more from me per month for their ad-free tier than they could ever dream of getting from me for ads with my watching habits, probably at least an order of magnitude more.
I think they're holding out hope that they can continue to grow revenue through advances in adtech when their subscriber numbers hit the inevitable plateau. Even offering an ad-free subscription option would eat into their ad platform, and Netflix has recently demonstrated how tough it is to raise the price of a subscription (or expire a years-old discounted rate). With ads, they can at least hope to grow per-user revenue in the future.
Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you tried leaner, less obtrusive, ads? Something like straight simple text?
We started off nice: "Hey, you are disabling ads, please turn them on" etc. Then we offered an ad-free subscription (almost worthless). And I think we played with another idea or two, before finally going through with the blocking adblockers.
I think you missed the point of the question - people install adblockers typically because they find the ads are intrusive (full-screen graphic overlays, etc), or their machine gets infected with ad network-delivered malware.
If you presented ads that were respectful to the visitor (i.e. weren't offensive) I expect the blocker escalation war would cease.
Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users
#258They are welcome to try. And I am welcome to try harder to block them. As long as they don't try to force some sort of legislation on how people can use their internet connection, and their internet browser to fetch and display content, there's no problem. The real problem is Facebook is already full of advertising disguised as content. From sponsored posts to content from things you "like". So I'm kind of surprised…
I worked for a company that got most of its revenue from online ads. When I started, adblockers were 20%. When it got up to 35% the boss decided to take action. We hired a third party anti-adblocker, and it worked great. It went back and forth with the adblockers as they updated to block our anti-blocking. Most adblock extensions use some standard rules-lists, similar to email spam lists like Spamhaus. I guess we pis…
Did your revenue go back up to what it used to be?
Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users
#259It's really interesting to me how strongly people dislike actions like this and the "Please turn off your adblock" thing. If this were a physical store, it's the equivalent of you taking something and the owner saying "hey man, that's not free, this is how I make a living". It seems like the right response would be "Oh wow, sorry, I won't take that any more", not "Go away, you're bothering me, and I'm going to keep t…
My attempt at the analogy would be: someone offers to come to your house and, using your Legos, build a little Lego castle in your living room for free, so you say "Sure," and when they come over they build the castle, but then they use the rest of your Legos to build a little Lego giraffe. "Why'd you build a giraffe, too? I just wanted a castle." "I get paid to do that by the National Council on Giraffes." "Well, so…
It's more of a situation where you've been informed well in advance that this person will be building a giraffe, and that your castle is in fact funded by their giraffe-building activities -- but once they've built the castle, you try your damnedest to prevent them from completing the giraffe.
Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
A big issue with paid subscriptions is that it dilutes the strength of the ad network, since you're specifically excluding desirable target customers.
I'd imagine you - by which I mean morally void publishing execs - take money for reduced ads and then charge a premium for reaching the people who are paying to remove ads.
Even better, form an ad blocker company, get successful, and charge large advertisers for white listing their ads. https://adblockplus.org/acceptable-ads-agreements