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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

#231
post #164

Might be off-topic. It seems a majority of people are against ads. What are the top few reasons why people dislike ads, excluding reasons such as them just being a nuisance? My own guesses are: * People don't like the idea that the platform serving the ads is making money through ads which is not directly tied to the main value they derive from that platform * Maybe people feel that they are also indirectly contribut…

Loss of privacy, for one. I don't want to be tracked at all. Tracking and user-tailored ads should be opt-in, not opt-out. Advertisers don't respect the user and their chosen settings.

They kill web performance. I use Firefox Mobile with uBlock Origin, and it's blazing fast! Ads REALLY hurt mobile web.

Their purpose is to manipulate users in order to extract money. They never serve the user's interests. Ads will lie and manipulate you in any way they can, in order to milk you dry.

I have a very limited attention span, and I don't think advertisers deserve any access to it. I'm the one that gets to decide where I spend it.

At most, ads should be a static images or a snippet of text that gets sent along with the page. You can pick what ads to serve based on the page content.

The only time I might be fine with ads is when I'm actively searching for something which is directly related to the product or service. But even then I'd be weary. I want unbiased sources to compare and review different competing products or services, so I can pick the best one for my needs. That's at odds with the advertiser's desire to sell me something.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm being uncharitable, but what I read from that story is that advertising saved your company from its own incompetence, since it should have someone responsible for managing those servers and subsequently for doing research upon noticing the problems. For me, that example actually serves as an extra argument against ads.

Crikey, guy shares an anecdote of how an ad helped him and all you can do is be really nasty about it, it's completely unnecessary. I bought a piano course from Udemy because of advertising on FB (and then spent an additional £150 on a keyboard). I'm really enjoying it. Please tell me what a horrible human being I am.

Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt like elderberries!

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends. How many products are you using which you first heard from via HN? That's a form of advertising too, albeit a lot less sleazy.

Aggregation sites, that use crowd sourcing to bubble up interesting content and products is a fundamentally different beast than paid advertising.

It is until advertisers conspire to bubble their own content up.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#234
post #108

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.

If you are still looking for an ad blocker, I have had great experiences with ublock origin.

Any advantages over adBlock?

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#235

Proposed Transfer Size Policy will allow site owners and ad networks to block abusive ads - https://github.com/WICG/transfer-size

Ability to pause iframes, which Transfer Size Policy depends on, is already on Chrome's radar: https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5141555102875648

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#236
I wonder how much junk like this gets through Adsense.

I would have thought Google keeps the ads on their network under tight control. But I see tons of requests to other domains even on pages with just one Adsense ad and no other external content.

Example:

    googlesyndication.com
    google.com
    voicefive.com
    gwallet.com
    doubleclick.net
    doubleverify.com
    mediaplex.com
    scorecardresearch.com
    t4ft.de
    r1-cdn.net
    afy11.net
    dotomi.com
All contacted multiple times on a single pageview with a single adsense ad and no other external content.

What is all that?

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm being uncharitable, but what I read from that story is that advertising saved your company from its own incompetence, since it should have someone responsible for managing those servers and subsequently for doing research upon noticing the problems. For me, that example actually serves as an extra argument against ads.

Crikey, guy shares an anecdote of how an ad helped him and all you can do is be really nasty about it, it's completely unnecessary. I bought a piano course from Udemy because of advertising on FB (and then spent an additional £150 on a keyboard). I'm really enjoying it. Please tell me what a horrible human being I am.

My gut feeling is that for every advertisement induced purchase you actually want and enjoy, there are several orders of magnitude more marketing/advertisement (directly or indirectly) induced purchases that are unnecessary or harmful.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#238
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 means it will work in Edge out of the box as well?

There has been a uBlock version for Edge for quite a while now; or am I missing something?

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/ublock-origin/9nblgg...

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was in Google's interests, we'd probably have that already.

Why isn't it? I'm sure Google can make well behaved ads that bring them lots of money. Implementing this would make it even harder for any competition to get a foothold into the market. Now a google ad is treated (by customers with adblock) the same way as the most shitty ads = gets blocked. Maybe if chrome blocked the worst kinds on its own, less people would use adblockers in general. Ad blocking is not a hobby. It…

I don't know why it isn't in Google's interest, but you can bet it isn't.

My guess: they don't want to feed and speed up the cat-and-mouse game, so whenever ad-blockers become ubiquitous they still have a chance to outsmart them.

Anyway, I think at some point AI will bust all ads, and Google will have to come up with really smart ways to still make money while not annoying its users.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#240
post #193
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you can't even install ad blockers on the phone.

"And you can't even install ad blockers on the phone." Nonsense. I've been using Firefox + uBlock Origin on Android for years. There are even browsers/add-ons that can disable JavaScript completely, but I find it too much of a hassle.

my mistake, can't edit my comment now. *iphone I mean
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