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Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures

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Re: Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures

#51

Post by CaptSpify »

krapp wrote: post #14
alkonaut wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any site that doesn’t control the content of their ads deserve to be starved out of business as fast as possible by ad blockers. That is: I don’t mind ads, I just don’t accept “adtech”.

Advertisers tend not to be willing to give that much control to whatever medium they're advertising in. More often than not, they can dictate terms because they drive revenue.

Well advertisers have clearly shown that they can't be responsible with the controls they have. It's time their tools are taken away. I'm not sure that how this should happen, but this is a clear sign that something in this system is seriously broken.

Re: Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures

#52

Post by MisterBastahrd »

orbitingpluto wrote: post #39

Okay, here's a crazy idea for advertisers. Tie the advertisement to the type of content that the user is already there to read about. Then you can serve ads from the content web server and make it indistinguishable from content, completely unobtrusive, completely noninvasive, and maybe even welcome.

They already do this if possible. The VAST majority of publishers are selling only a small percentage of their own ad space (the giants of the industry might be different, but even they probably have third party networks to fill gaps in their inventory). Instead, they partner with networks who auction ads off to the highest bidder. That bidder is usually going to be a company who trusts the ad network to track users and show ads relevant to either the interests they've shown or the current content.

I work with a publisher on these sorts of things (I am not an ad network, though). Some of those networks have strict prohibitions against showing ads on pages featuring certain types of content, and so we've had to build our own system to display ads on those pages which work with networks which are fine with that content. The publisher does sell its own ad spaces to interested local parties, but these are usually accompanied by periodical ad sales because the company ultimately makes more money selling ads through networks.

Re: Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures

#53

Post by marcusjt »

jacques_chester wrote: post #44
CaptSpify wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I agree with your first point, I think this is a symptom of a much larger problem that we are ignoring: We have a serious economic problem in which we can't fund things that we want and need. Instead of making advertising "less bad", we should be looking into alternative ways to fund sites and services. Advertising in it's current form simply needs to go.

My bet is microsubscription, but that's only because it's something I've been working on (Robojar). Part of my motivation has been to make the best parts of the early web economically viable. For a few years it was normal to have relatively successful small sites with good writing and regular readers. They've largely been driven out by the economics of clickbait. I'd like to help that come back by breaking the rigid…

Flattr http://flattr.com is the best solution out there IMHO, Patreon is good but only makes sense if you're a regular/loyal consumer of a source.

Re: Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures

#54

Post by severine »

Groxx wrote: post #35
severine wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you can test this extension [1] in Chrome? Works great in Firefox, where bookmarklets are tricky sometimes due to some CSP voodoo. [1] https://github.com/mems/bookmarklets-context-menu

Yup. It's a long-standing issue. Join in the fun: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=866522

:) Guess where I found the extension?

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=866522#c83

Re: Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures

#55

Post by leeoniya »

> It turns out that many ad providers are offering anti-blocking tech in the form of scripts that produce a variety of “bait” content that’s ad-like — for instance, images or elements named and tagged in such a way that they will trigger ad blockers, tipping the site off.

you don't need a provider to help detect ad blocking in most cases. just serve a script from your server called `ads.js` that modifies some global js variable or does an ajax post to some endpoint indicating it was served....or "pixel.gif".

Re: Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures

#57

Post by ISL »

sharpercoder wrote: post #56

I wish content suppliers would listen more to clients. Clients want more content without ads, so why not invest more into offering content without ads?

Content suppliers would like to eat. Many clients don't want to pay for content, and nobody has yet figured out how to make micropayments blossom.

Re: Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures

#58

Post by ISL »

orbitingpluto wrote: post #39

Okay, here's a crazy idea for advertisers. Tie the advertisement to the type of content that the user is already there to read about. Then you can serve ads from the content web server and make it indistinguishable from content, completely unobtrusive, completely noninvasive, and maybe even welcome.

That's what adwords tries to do. There's a substantial premium on relevance.

Re: Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures

#59

Post by charonn0 »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #27
eeereerews wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they're getting paid per unit of user suffering.

Or maybe they were using a cryptocurrency miner during those 10 seconds as a substitute for ads.

That's not a bad idea, provided they were up front about it.

Re: Many major websites are taking silent anti-ad-blocking measures

#60

Post by Jedi72 »

orbitingpluto wrote: post #39

Okay, here's a crazy idea for advertisers. Tie the advertisement to the type of content that the user is already there to read about. Then you can serve ads from the content web server and make it indistinguishable from content, completely unobtrusive, completely noninvasive, and maybe even welcome.

In theory this is a good idea but in practice it leads to thousands of low quality "top ten things you need when going camping" style websites only created to sell things.
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