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Insane state of today's advertising part 3

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Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#151
post #121
post #96

In related news, uBlock Origin has finally (today) been converted to a WebExtension and is now fully compatible with Firefox 57 and beyond. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin

it's been a webextension for a while now, the only reason it has been listed as otherwise by Mozilla is because of the update wrapper https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/2576#issue-22541793... https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/2862#issuecomment-3...

Yep. I've been running it on nightly for a while now just by going to the development channel version.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#152
post #64

IMO the way to solve this is a single-click "pay this tiny amount to keep reading" UI. Now that Amazon's one-click checkout patent has expired this is actually legally viable. But it won't happen until Chrome is overturned by a new browser because Google will never let such a model succeed :( It's possible Firefox may successfully do the "phoenix re-viral" thing, in spite of the fact that it would be a literal miracl…

I think Google would be just as happy owning a large share of the micropayments industry as they are owning a large share of ad inventory.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#153

I didn't see any ad blocker recommendations in the comments, so I searched and came across a list on Tom's Hardware of the best ad blockers of 2017. The funny part is that Tom's Hardware was FILLED with these exact kind of ads from algovid and adaptv. Even worse, the list is in a carousel / slideshow format so you have to keep clicking if you didn't GTFO like I did.

> I searched and came across a list on Tom's Hardware of the best ad blockers of 2017

For some reason Tom's article is missing Pi-Hole [1] and AdGuard [2] which are network and computer-level ad blockers respectively. Both are good for people who regularly use multiple browsers on multiple devices since there isn't any need to install an ad blocker extension for each one then.

[1] https://pi-hole.net

[2] https://adguard.com

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#154
post #74
post #64

IMO the way to solve this is a single-click "pay this tiny amount to keep reading" UI. Now that Amazon's one-click checkout patent has expired this is actually legally viable. But it won't happen until Chrome is overturned by a new browser because Google will never let such a model succeed :( It's possible Firefox may successfully do the "phoenix re-viral" thing, in spite of the fact that it would be a literal miracl…

I've never liked those things that popped up but, as I was reading I thought I'd definitely go for it if I had something like a digital wallet in the browser that I could preload with a balance and simply use to pay for websites like that with one click. Doing a quick google search hasn't shown anything like that. Does anyone know if a browser extension or something like this already exists?

Flattr.com is about to relaunch with something like that. You set an allotment for the month, then Flattr sites using their extension, and at the end of the month, they get the share of your allotment, based on how much you visited them.

I've already signed up both our sites, just waiting for them to relaunch.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#155

Not sure if the requests are faking clicks or sending tracking information. We had similar incidents before where the requests are for analytics firms to track you: http://donw.io/post/github-comments/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14170041

What's actually happening is they're loading ads in iframes, destroying them, then rinsing and repeating over and over, thus causing all those insane requests.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#156
post #76

Awesome to see that subject #1 on HN. At my startup Confiant [1], we block bad ads in stream on behalf of publishers. Cedato aka Algovid aka TLVMedia is one of our prime targets, we block millions of their ad impressions daily. They are essentially buying cheap display ad placements to resell them as fake video preroll ad placements. They sell on video exchanges like AOL's AdapTV and others. To maximize their yield,…

The only good ad is a dead one. With very few exceptions, especially in the consumer space, you won't need advertising if you actually need something. You'll search it out or your friends will tell you what to buy. Advertising serves as a way for the capitalist class to exert veto power over other aspects of society by yanking funding at opportune moments (see the current Google snafu or Bill O'Reilly's departure fro…

An anecdote from 2010: my company had racks of Rackable Systems servers. Every month a server went dead- power supply, board or some such. Rackable Systems were unreliable. Then on Slashdot I saw a square ad for IBM System X servers (unfortunately they have been sold to Lenovo a couple of years ago). That somehow made me do research- although I was aware of IBM System X before. Between 2010 and 1013 we bought perhaps 20 IBM System X servers (rock solid and beautifully engineered). Cost per that ad impression was perhaps $75,000.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#158
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fake video preroll ad placements Can you explain this further? Who is getting defrauded here?

Advertisers. Preroll ads are valuable because people are mostly paying attention. eg you went to youtube to watch X, and they show you 15 seconds of swiffer beforehand. The problem is there aren't enough preroll ad slots available to satisfy demand. Therefore, companies invent them. One thing I know people are doing is this: film a video every day. Talk about who cares. It could be upcoming movies; the tv show with d…

>Preroll ads are valuable because people are mostly paying attention. eg you went to youtube to watch X, and they show you 15 seconds of swiffer beforehand.

Personal anecdote time.

Preroll ads are the main force for me behind installing the adblocker. I just can not stand something that manipulates my flow. I call it televication of the Internet. It is unbearable.

If for some reason I am not able to block them then I just do not watch them and I am not listening to them (I look elsewhere, say a lalala mantra in your mind).

I also taught my family to do so.

So advertisers actually loose in the long term.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#159
post #76

Awesome to see that subject #1 on HN. At my startup Confiant [1], we block bad ads in stream on behalf of publishers. Cedato aka Algovid aka TLVMedia is one of our prime targets, we block millions of their ad impressions daily. They are essentially buying cheap display ad placements to resell them as fake video preroll ad placements. They sell on video exchanges like AOL's AdapTV and others. To maximize their yield,…

The only good ad is a dead one. With very few exceptions, especially in the consumer space, you won't need advertising if you actually need something. You'll search it out or your friends will tell you what to buy. Advertising serves as a way for the capitalist class to exert veto power over other aspects of society by yanking funding at opportune moments (see the current Google snafu or Bill O'Reilly's departure fro…

Have you ever heard of multi-level marketing? Let's all buy what our friends tell us to buy.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#160
Holding up AOL One (Adap.tv rebranded) to represent modern digital advertising is like holding up IBM to represent modern Database design. It's bad context bordering on negligence. Adap developed their ad manager before the IAB produced video standards. Utilizing a team in India, which made it compatible with strange workarounds and primitive browsers from decades past, it has been monkey patched to the current clusterfuck it is today...it will take you awhile to detangle it but you can watch the IFrames in IFrames making async requests all along the way.

Adserving platforms are more primitive, the older the company is. The reasons are the same as any other mega-system. Entrenched process and existing revenue stream (fear of change). That being said, look at an actual modern adserver and they don't have the massive multi-call overhead.

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