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I've removed all ad network code from my blog

troyhunt.com

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Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#181

Post by tenpoundhammer »

kaybe wrote: post #46

Here is another argument for curated ads or ads that are matching the page content, not the viewer: Seeing ads that are for something very different than the page content give me a high mental overhead, such as ads for games when I search for programming, or ads for food when I look for games. They are highjacking my though processes and I have to extend effort to manage all these things in my head. On the other hand…

With the current ad networks, it's easy to have well-tailored ad's, but most publishers choose not to do so in order to increase the revenue on their inventory.

Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#182

Post by lucb1e »

empath75 wrote: post #128
r1ch wrote: post #12

You'll be surprised how much faster pages feel without ad scripts - I noticed significant improvements after implementing a no-ads premium option on our website. Even with an ad blocker, things just feel snappier if the scripts simply aren't there in the first place. I decided to go one step further with my personal site and eliminate all JS completely. I don't get enough traffic to make any kind of analytics or ad c…

My 4 year old ipad is barely usable on even basic pages now because of all the js bullshit.

5 year old smartphone here. Works fine with both Firefox and Habit Browser. I turn off JavaScript in the latter and it's significantly faster (as expected) but it's not as if Firefox is unusable at all.

.. I did however just remember I have an ad blocker installed from day one, that might have something to do with it. Forgot about that difference.

Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#183

Post by krapp »

fiatjaf wrote: post #4

Ok, you have a sponsorship model that works because you're probably very famous. That doesn't solve anyone's problem, because almost no one is famous. How can we replace ad networks with something better and saner?

Saner and better would be most content producers being unable to make a living on the internet - and no one at all being able to do so through advertising. The more content there is that attempts to be commercial, the lower the quality becomes overall for the consumer, because that content tends to optimize for clickbait and metrics rather than actual value.

If you can't convince people that your content is worth paying for, then you don't deserve to be paid for it. That's the way it works everywhere else, and finally the web is starting to correct the illusion that it's the one domain where supply and demand doesn't apply.

Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#184

Post by walterbell »

ddebernardy wrote: post #180
walterbell wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which parties perform fraud / bot detection today?

There was a dozen plus last I worked in the field. There are scores of horror stories related to ad fraud. In particular: - PPV ads that get stacked. That, several ads laid out on top of each other so that only one (if any at all) is visible. - PPV ads that get served to bots. Sometimes purposely so, other times as a result of phantom users who replay sessions to build fake profiles for PPC purposes. - Ad injection t…

Is it safe to assume that all of these go away within a closed network like Facebook? If so, the numbers that advertisers see on Facebook (vs elsewhere) could help quantify fraud.

Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#185

Post by bazillion »

protomikron wrote: post #167
bazillion wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's extra work, but is more contextual. You could, for instance, link to wikipedia articles, imdb articles (for actors) etc. and not just link to ad content. Really what it does is help define what is inside an image.

Although I despise ads, I have to admit your tech is nice. Do you do automatic image segmentation, or are these images "hand-labeled" (I can not imagine that would scale)? If it's automatic - is it calculated server-side or client-side?

They're hand-labeled. In the future, I'm sure I'll be hiring a bunch of Google people to build the "automatic" part.

Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#186

Post by tokenizerrr »

arjie wrote: post #173
vintageseltzer wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I ask: if one is not "famous" (i.e. popular), why should one expect their site to be profitable from ads alone? If my limited edition, 250-prints-per-month 'zine isn't making money, is that the advertising industry's fault, or is there an issue with my expectations? People ask the "how do we fix dwindling ad-based revenue" question all the time. The answer is clear, it's just not what people want to hear: metered…

Seems a bit disingenuous to suggest a paywall when the first thing anyone does on this website with a paywalled article is attempt to bypass. Such a bad faith move to say "use a paywall" and then promptly follow it up with "and I'll try to bypass it to access the content".

If a site wishes to implement a paywall that is their right. If they wish to implement a bypass, that is also just fine. They choose to implement this bypass because they wish to be indexed by Google. So why shouldn't we make use of that intentionally implement bypass?

Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#187

Post by komali2 »

vintageseltzer wrote: post #168
fiatjaf wrote: post #4

Ok, you have a sponsorship model that works because you're probably very famous. That doesn't solve anyone's problem, because almost no one is famous. How can we replace ad networks with something better and saner?

May I ask: if one is not "famous" (i.e. popular), why should one expect their site to be profitable from ads alone? If my limited edition, 250-prints-per-month 'zine isn't making money, is that the advertising industry's fault, or is there an issue with my expectations? People ask the "how do we fix dwindling ad-based revenue" question all the time. The answer is clear, it's just not what people want to hear: metered…

On the other hand, this will lead to us only being able to read the blogs and personal websites of people who are able to dip into their own money and time to make and host a blog.

I'd be very interested in reading about the life of exactly not that kind of person.

Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#188

Post by komali2 »

r1ch wrote: post #12

You'll be surprised how much faster pages feel without ad scripts - I noticed significant improvements after implementing a no-ads premium option on our website. Even with an ad blocker, things just feel snappier if the scripts simply aren't there in the first place. I decided to go one step further with my personal site and eliminate all JS completely. I don't get enough traffic to make any kind of analytics or ad c…

Did you use JS for anything else? Any dynamic content or even some UI ala jqueryUI?

Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#189

Post by bazillion »

philliphaydon wrote: post #123
bazillion wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I built what I believe to be the most sane way to "advertise" something: Let people buy directly from an image. This solves the problem of people not interested in the content, because of its unobtrusive nature -- if they don't hover over an item within the image, it's as if the "advertisement" isn't there. Check out my demo (desktop only) at http://www.worldlifestyle.com/testpost My website which you can sign up for…

This is very similar (but far better done) to something I did about 8 years ago for a client while I was working in Australia. The idea was they had a photo of a bedroom and they could draw on top of the image to isolate items in the room that could be purchased. What I wrote was very very basic, but what you've done is far more impressive and awesome. Edit: This is something I wouldn't block (from what I currently s…

Thanks a lot for that! I think that's one of the core underpinnings -- advertising that brings a benefit, and therefore shouldn't be blocked with an ad-blocker. Hopefully, this is the direction advertising goes towards.

Re: I've removed all ad network code from my blog

#190

Post by pmlnr »

StavrosK wrote: post #42
r1ch wrote: post #12

You'll be surprised how much faster pages feel without ad scripts - I noticed significant improvements after implementing a no-ads premium option on our website. Even with an ad blocker, things just feel snappier if the scripts simply aren't there in the first place. I decided to go one step further with my personal site and eliminate all JS completely. I don't get enough traffic to make any kind of analytics or ad c…

> I don't get enough traffic to make any kind of analytics or ad code worthwhile. On a related note, does anyone else see GA being wildly inaccurate? My blog was on the HN front page a while ago, and CloudFront got ~600k hits, which should translate to about ~100k uniques (I cache), yet GA only showed 8k uniques. I'm guessing the HN crowd runs uBlock or some other blocker in its vast majority, so JS-based analytics a…

> I'm guessing the HN crowd runs uBlock or some other blocker in its vast majority, so JS-based analytics are completely untrustworthy.

Actually, the server based access logs would be more accurate. The "only" things the JS based are giving you are tracking options and user interface data, such as resolution. And yes, due to blocking, JS based will never be the as accurate as the server logs.

A long time ago I used awstats[^1] and webalizer[^2]; those will show the traffic that your server(s) actually served. However, you'll need to log it, and if you have multiple machines, you'll need to centrally log it, and store it, which is not always simple and trivial to set up, compared inserting a JS in the HTML.

[^1]: http://www.awstats.org/ [^2]: http://www.webalizer.org/

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