Publishers Are Rethinking Those ‘Around the Web’ Ads

#1

Post by gk1 » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 1:19 AM UTC

Publishers Are Rethinking Those ‘Around the Web’ Ads
nytimes.com

Re: Publishers Are Rethinking Those ‘Around the Web’ Ads

#2

Post by detaro » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 1:37 AM UTC

Surprised it took this long. These things are incredibly jarring and low-quality, and actively try to redirect users away from the publishers sites into a rabbithole of even more links.

If they supposedly pay so well, I wonder where the money for that comes from. Just high ad-density?

Re: Publishers Are Rethinking Those ‘Around the Web’ Ads

#3

Post by M_Grey » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 1:47 AM UTC

Honest question: How many people are left without some form of ad-blocking? It seems to have become incredibly ubiquitous, and when malicious ads aren't teaching people to go and get it, loud and obnoxious ads are.

Re: Publishers Are Rethinking Those ‘Around the Web’ Ads

#4

Post by _qik1 » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 1:52 AM UTC

M_Grey wrote: post #3

Honest question: How many people are left without some form of ad-blocking? It seems to have become incredibly ubiquitous, and when malicious ads aren't teaching people to go and get it, loud and obnoxious ads are.

Mobile users. There just aren't any pleasant ad free browser experiences for stock mobile phone users. Firefox for Android is quite poor and fixing through chrome requires root, something most users are not going to be doing

Re: Publishers Are Rethinking Those ‘Around the Web’ Ads

#5

Post by no_protocol » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 1:53 AM UTC

M_Grey wrote: post #3

Honest question: How many people are left without some form of ad-blocking? It seems to have become incredibly ubiquitous, and when malicious ads aren't teaching people to go and get it, loud and obnoxious ads are.

I don't have any data beyond what a web search would get you, but from past reports I have seen, somewhere between 20% and 40% of web users block ads.

I use an ad blocker on my desktop but not on mobile.

Re: Publishers Are Rethinking Those ‘Around the Web’ Ads

#6

Post by toomuchtodo » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 1:53 AM UTC

_qik1 wrote: post #4

M_Grey wrote: post #3

Honest question: How many people are left without some form of ad-blocking? It seems to have become incredibly ubiquitous, and when malicious ads aren't teaching people to go and get it, loud and obnoxious ads are.

Mobile users. There just aren't any pleasant ad free browser experiences for stock mobile phone users. Firefox for Android is quite poor and fixing through chrome requires root, something most users are not going to be doing

I pipe all my reading into Pocket, which does a great job of stripping the ads out.

Re: Publishers Are Rethinking Those ‘Around the Web’ Ads

#7

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 1:55 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #6

_qik1 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mobile users. There just aren't any pleasant ad free browser experiences for stock mobile phone users. Firefox for Android is quite poor and fixing through chrome requires root, something most users are not going to be doing

I pipe all my reading into Pocket, which does a great job of stripping the ads out.

[deleted]

Re: Publishers Are Rethinking Those ‘Around the Web’ Ads

#8

Post by eropple » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 1:55 AM UTC

_qik1 wrote: post #4

M_Grey wrote: post #3

Honest question: How many people are left without some form of ad-blocking? It seems to have become incredibly ubiquitous, and when malicious ads aren't teaching people to go and get it, loud and obnoxious ads are.

Mobile users. There just aren't any pleasant ad free browser experiences for stock mobile phone users. Firefox for Android is quite poor and fixing through chrome requires root, something most users are not going to be doing

I have heard good things about block-this, which creates a VPN connection that just strips out ads, but it seems (unscientifically, because Android doesn't track VPN battery usage) a battery suck.

Re: Publishers Are Rethinking Those ‘Around the Web’ Ads

#9

Post by mzw_mzw » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 2:00 AM UTC

_qik1 wrote: post #4

M_Grey wrote: post #3

Honest question: How many people are left without some form of ad-blocking? It seems to have become incredibly ubiquitous, and when malicious ads aren't teaching people to go and get it, loud and obnoxious ads are.

Mobile users. There just aren't any pleasant ad free browser experiences for stock mobile phone users. Firefox for Android is quite poor and fixing through chrome requires root, something most users are not going to be doing

Firefox for Android works quite nicely, in my experience -- better as a browser than mobile Chrome, which surprised me as I had little faith in Mozilla's products before trying it. And installing uBlock Origin was a trivial matter of downloading it from the app store. It really couldn't have been easier unless it came from the factory already installed that way.

Re: Publishers Are Rethinking Those ‘Around the Web’ Ads

#10

Post by chipperyman573 » Mon, Oct 31, 2016, 2:16 AM UTC

detaro wrote: post #2

Surprised it took this long. These things are incredibly jarring and low-quality, and actively try to redirect users away from the publishers sites into a rabbithole of even more links. If they supposedly pay so well, I wonder where the money for that comes from. Just high ad-density?

>If they supposedly pay so well, I wonder where the money for that comes from. Just high ad-density?

Probably because ad-networks pay per click, and if you have something SO clickbaity like these ads there's a lot of ad clicks. For example if google ads and Outbrain both pay $7 per thousand clicks (I have never used either so this is just a random number) and google ads bring in 1000 clicks while outbrain brings in 3000, you're making 3 times as much money.