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LA Times and ads

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Re: LA Times and ads

#121

Post by padseeker »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #22

I develop software used by newspapers. This is a problem with the whole industry. It's amazing how much crap they load. These sites all use a third party "tag manager" (Google Tag Manager, Tealium, Piwik etc.) to manage the scripts they load: ads, analytics, trackers etc. The people who use the tag manager typically aren't techies, so they don't understand that adding another tag will cause the page to slow down. Typ…

I work in IT for TRONC (parent company of LA Times), and can vouch for this. Some of the ad scripts are horrendously bad. Open firebug or chrome dev tools and load the page, watch all those errors pour in. We pay very close attention to our own code, but all those js bugs that are happening are related to external ad networks with terrible javascript.

We have something in the neighborhood of 30+ ad partners. Some of those partners have decent code, others are really terrible. The IT team only adds the code to allow ad networks to inject their advertisements.

Because of the performance issues and the disreputable nature of some of the ad networks we have discussed the possibility of building our own ad server. However this takes time and money, I don't know the ROI of such an endeavor. Ultimately sale's job is to generate revenue so we partner with nearly every single ad network that can generate money. It's not desirable to deal with all these different ad providers, but you don't need me to tell you about the challenges the newspaper industry is dealing with. We need to bring in money on the digital side to make up the downward trajectory of print ads.

Re: LA Times and ads

#122

Post by mp3geek »

stvnbn wrote: post #60

https://pi-hole.net/ Turn your raspberry into an ad-blocker. I just want to spread the word out and make the world a better place.

Not enough, using "host files" won't protect from websocket/blob/webrtc/base64 injections.

Re: LA Times and ads

#123

Post by phaed »

vinnymac wrote: post #32
tedunangst wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"total data transferred: X MB ($y.zz)" should be part of a browsers standard status bar.

I know we can easily get some info from chrome dev tools and chrome://net-internals/#bandwith. It would be convenient for users if someone put together an extension that would display this information by default, or alternatively browsers just had a setting we could turn on.

On it

Re: LA Times and ads

#124

Post by elzi »

zkms wrote: post #33
lobster_johnson wrote: post #22

I develop software used by newspapers. This is a problem with the whole industry. It's amazing how much crap they load. These sites all use a third party "tag manager" (Google Tag Manager, Tealium, Piwik etc.) to manage the scripts they load: ads, analytics, trackers etc. The people who use the tag manager typically aren't techies, so they don't understand that adding another tag will cause the page to slow down. Typ…

The worst type of ad on newspaper sites are the disgusting "chumboxes" (by scumsuckers like "taboola" or "outbrain") that orbit at the bottom of pages and serve up images meant to be as simultaneously repulsive and fascinating as possible: https://theawl.com/a-complete-taxonomy-of-internet-chum-de0b... As long as these pages have ads that display utterly gross images (if you doubt me, click the above link) that make…

It's crazy to think I probably exercise way, way more restraint on clicking that kind of junk than most, and even I can recall a time in the past year I just couldn't help myself. They're so psychologically predatory.

Re: LA Times and ads

#125

Post by matt4077 »

excalibur wrote: post #34
SwellJoe wrote: post #19

I resisted using an ad blocker for many years; I kinda felt like if I wanted to use a site, I should be willing to trade for seeing their ads. I've changed my tune a couple of years ago, and this is a (small) part of the reason (but a bigger part of it now that I know how crazy usage for ads has gotten). I'm on mobile data nearly 100% of the time most months. 14GB costs me $50-$70 (depending on which network I'm on,…

I recently (past year) bit the bullet and began ad blocking myself. My primary concern is the recent proliferation of malicious content through the common ad networks. Supporting websites is great, but not at the expense of your own security.

Maybe we need smarter ad blockers.

Publications right now have little incentive to improve their ads with regards to security, readers' resources or quality – because if the LA Times motivates you to install an ad blocker, the NYT is getting hit as well. The tragedy of the commoners, so to speak.

If ad blockers would aggressively judge each publisher, ad network and/or advertiser and rewarded good behaviour by showing the ads, I could see publishers prioritising the user experience. I'm pretty sure the publishers and journalists themselves look at these websites with horror, and they'll jump at the chance to regain some quality.

The adblock+ model is tangentially similar, but charging the publishers is simply too close to blackmail to be acceptable.

Re: LA Times and ads

#126

Post by __david__ »

megous wrote: post #68
rinze wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this solution similar to putting "+unique_string" before the @ part in (for example) Gmail addresses?

That's no good. You're still sending your primary address, before the +. They can remove or modify anything after +, and you'll still receive the email. I'm slowly transitioning for having a random 20 char generated alias email for every service/use and there's no chance anyone will hit a real mailbox by chance. If alias leaks, I can either abandon the service and block it, or change the registered email for the serv…

+ is also notoriously unsupported by many sites—either because of horribly naive email address validators, or by their unsubscribe web pages. I can't tell you how many times an unsubscribe page has shown "myuser stuffaftertheplus@example.com"—where the + didn't get escaped and got interpreted by the web server as a space. It's happened to me so many times I have %2b memorized! :-)

My solution was to change my email server setup so that . and _ act the same as +. Someone might guess that they can strip something after a + but nobody is going to strip an address after an _.

Re: LA Times and ads

#127

Post by eli »

anigbrowl wrote: post #102
eli wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It made me sad when boingboing put one of those ad boxes on the site. I work in digital media. I get why publishers do it. But, sheesh, if you're resorting these ads that insult your audience in exchange for pennies, I think you need to reexamine your approach.

Let's not beat around the bush: some publishers do that kind of thing because they are scumbags.

I don't really agree. I don't think that's fair.

Re: LA Times and ads

#128

Post by asdfaoeu »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #114
uxp wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the time since I read the linked article, I opened the LA Times site and navigated to a story, opened my network console, and read some comments on HN about the article. Safari says it's been about 12 minutes. It's requested over 1000 resources (it pegged 999+ at ~2 minutes). It's downloaded 88.4 Megabytes of data. It appears to be continually firing pixels from a multitude of places (openX and doubleclick are com…

Your measure pencils out to 10 GB/day. Someone else here found 7 GB/day. Perhaps it's a Safari vs Chrome thing. (In case the sarcasm is not clear: the problem is that it's anywhere over 0.01 GB.)

I only got to 13.6mb/10mins before the page crashes. So I guess that counts as a safeguard.

http://i.imgur.com/PIcpEPJ.png

Re: LA Times and ads

#129

Post by Mtinie »

Watching the requests, there's a huge number of mixed content warnings in the console. Attempting to hit https://www.latimes.com to remove the reason for all of those failed requests triggers Firefox to throw a certificate error. Could all of this be a side effect of a certificate that has gone bad?

> www.latimes.com uses an invalid security certificate.

>

> The certificate is only valid for the following names:

> .akamaihd.net, .akamaihd-staging.net, .akamaized-staging.net, .akamaized.net, a248.e.akamai.net

Re: LA Times and ads

#130

Post by Mtinie »

Mtinie wrote: post #129

Watching the requests, there's a huge number of mixed content warnings in the console. Attempting to hit https://www.latimes.com to remove the reason for all of those failed requests triggers Firefox to throw a certificate error. Could all of this be a side effect of a certificate that has gone bad? > www.latimes.com uses an invalid security certificate. > > The certificate is only valid for the following names: > .a…

Folllow-up question.

Do Doubleclick ads typically employ a cache control policy of "no-cache, must-revalidate"?

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