Firefox: The Effect of Ad Blocking on User Engagement with the Web [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: Firefox: The Effect of Ad Blocking on User Engagement with the Web [pdf]

#51

Post by Kalium » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 6:38 PM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #6

Kalium wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the small players can only continue to exist by serving malvertising, some might opine that they might not have a right to continue to exist with that business model.

Why must non-server advertising be the same as malvertising? The integration type is different from the ads that are possible. Server-side integration doesn't affect what ads are available.

People who do their own server-side advertising tend to be far pickier and much more careful with what ads they use. They tend not to do instant auctions, and tend towards newspaper-style ads.

Does this render them immune to malvertising? As you imply, it by no means does so. You're completely correct. It might, however, reduce the chances by a non-zero amount as compared to a third party executing arbitrary code in their client as blessed by you.

But, none of that is important. I think the most important lesson here is that nobody has a right to a given business model. No website, big or small, has a fundamental right to generate revenue based on advertising. Advertising may be essential to some business models, but those business models are not essential to anything.

Re: Firefox: The Effect of Ad Blocking on User Engagement with the Web [pdf]

#52

Post by jasode » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 6:40 PM UTC

privong wrote: post #33

Animats wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

micro-payment system This comes up regularly. All the enthusiasm for micropayments comes from people who want to collect micropayments. Not from the users who would pay them.

> This comes up regularly. All the enthusiasm for micropayments comes from people who want to collect micropayments. Not from the users who would pay them. All the enthusiasm for ads only comes from the people who want to show/sell them. Not from the users who would be subjected to viewing them. I think it's still a worthwhile discussion. Presumably the micropayments have fewer (or at least different) unintended cons…

>All the enthusiasm for ads only comes from the people who want to show/sell them. Not from the users who would be subjected to viewing them.

Yes, it does seem that way because nobody actually says, "Please please give ads because I love them!"

Instead, the correct way to frame what users really want is to separate "stated preferences" from revealed preferences.[1]

The stated preference, of course, is for users to complain about ads and loathe them. Another source of stated preferences is marketing surveys and questionnaires.

But the revealed preference is different because it's the observation of what really people do instead of what they say they'll do. Most would rather watch youtube for free rather than pay $9.99 for YoutubeRed. Same for Spotify free tier with ads rather than $120 a year Spotify Premium. Most would rather read the 5 free articles with ads from New York Times rather than pay a subscription.

Another interesting example was Amazon's Kindle e-reader. They had a version with ads (what they call "with Special Offers") for $114 ... and one without ads for $139. More buyers chose the device with ads.[2]

Did Kindle users want ads?!? Of course not. But they valued the $25 savings more than the the ad-free experience. Basically, they "do want ads" -- in a roundabout way.

The micropayments enthusiasm doesn't really change the consumers' priority of "free with ads" over "pay for zero ads". People really really like the economics of "free". Unless micropayments is $0.00 -- which would be an oxymoron -- it will always have that economic handicap to widespread adoption.

>Presumably the micropayments have fewer (or at least different) unintended consequences.

One unintended consequence is that authors and creators end up with less revenue if they restrict their output to only subscribers making micropayments.

[1] https://www.beyondcostplus.com/blog/stated-vs-revealed-prefe...

[2] https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2385398,00.asp

Re: Firefox: The Effect of Ad Blocking on User Engagement with the Web [pdf]

#53

Post by camgunz » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 6:46 PM UTC

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #13

Mozilla should work on a micro-payment system that is inbuilt into the browser. Ultimately that is the only solution to a web that values user privacy and prevents the psychological toll of ads. 1. Obviously, the micro-payment system should not be selling my usage data to anyone. Perhaps some cryptographic techniques can be used to increase trust in the service. 2. The price for each page should be low - a cent or le…

I have serious reservations about making the web pay-to-play. Low-income people would suffer from this, here in the US but definitely elsewhere in poorer countries. It's essentially a regressive tax on the web. Furthermore, low-income people often run into barriers securing access to the kinds of payment systems micropayments would use (credit cards, etc.). It's also completely unregulated -- if you thought micropayments in mobile apps were bad, just wait until it's the web and there is no Google or Apple to crack down on it.

Low-income people and people in developing countries already experience a dramatically different web than those of us in the US with engineer salaries. I worry that adding micropayments into the mix would just widen the gap.

The system I would prefer would be progressive ISP costs based on income. So if you're a DINK household in the US midwest making > $200k a year, your internet costs $400/mo. If you're a single parent in a major US city making Also ISPs should be regulated like public utilities and all of the "profits" should go either to their communities or content providers, but that feels unattainable in the near future.

Re: Firefox: The Effect of Ad Blocking on User Engagement with the Web [pdf]

#54

Post by manigandham » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 6:47 PM UTC

Kiro wrote: post #30

manigandham wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about browsers or tech, the extensions were universally available with a single click on modern browsers.

Doesn't matter. It needs to be an integral part of the browser.

Ok, do you have an argument on why you think it doesn't matter? We actually did the work and these are the results.

People are not going to start signing up payments into their browsers without some kind of onboarding. An extension installation was the most trivial part of this process compared to actually explaining and convincing them to pay.

Re: Firefox: The Effect of Ad Blocking on User Engagement with the Web [pdf]

#55

Post by dmortin » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 6:49 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #40

dmortin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it different when ads are served from server side? Most sites (especially smaller ones) would still use an ad network, because they don't have their own resources to find advertisers, which it calls from server side to retrieve the ad. And when the retireved ad code is injected into the page on server side it could still lead to some malicious site or whatever.

I suppose it would be easier to sue such site's operator, as malware is suddenly served directly from first-party. Thus, creating a strong incentive for site operators to actually curate their ad experience, instead of subscribing to whatever network is most profitable any given day.

So this would again hurt the little guys (blogs, forums, smaller sites managed by 1 or 2 people) who don't have the capacity to find advertisers and curate ads, and for this reason, have to use an ad network.

The big sites, facebook and co. can easily do some curation and find advertisers, so as it was mentioned before these changes would only eliminate the small players while further concentrating the web into the hands of the big guys.

Re: Firefox: The Effect of Ad Blocking on User Engagement with the Web [pdf]

#56

Post by manigandham » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 6:49 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #45

manigandham wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has already been tried and tested for a decade. Blendle is arguably the best version of it today and Google has the Contributor program. I put together a small team to create an adblocker/payment solution a few years ago that used a flat rate with payments proportional to engagement (combination of time and depth) per domain, similar to systems like Spotify (number of plays vs total). It failed because people fu…

Is Blendle making money?

It is not profitable as of early this year. They are attempting to expand internationally and are still under 1M users.

Re: Firefox: The Effect of Ad Blocking on User Engagement with the Web [pdf]

#57

Post by thebranch » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 6:52 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #44

Animats wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

micro-payment system This comes up regularly. All the enthusiasm for micropayments comes from people who want to collect micropayments. Not from the users who would pay them.

I am not in the micropayment business, nor do I want to be. I do understand that news organizations and various web properties need to make enough money to survive, and would happily support a micropayment system. But the sad reality is that it will not happen. Not because people like me would not follow through on their pledge, but because advertising is completely entrenched at this point and it most likely would n…

At least you have an interesting motive. Anyone who thinks journalism would improve is fooling themselves.

Re: Firefox: The Effect of Ad Blocking on User Engagement with the Web [pdf]

#58

Post by manigandham » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 6:54 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #28

manigandham wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there are networks that have always remained clean. It's a business problem more than technical. But the topic was smaller sites running 3rd party networks which necessarily only integrate via client-side JS. That has nothing to do with what kind of ads are being run. It's the same exact ad calls to the ad exchanges, just done via HTTP from the server rather than JS in the browser.

You can't virus-scan an e-mail that doesn't pass through your server. How would you inspect javascript that doesn't pass through your server? Or do you have to just get a bit of paper from the ad network saying they won't make any mistakes, then take their word for it without any way of auditing their claim?

That's not how it works. The payload is dynamic javascript. Just because you make some calls on the server-side doesn't mean you can inspect the payload with any real reliability, and if it was that easy then it would already be done by the ad exchanges who send the payloads in the first place.

There is an entire inner industry around security and malware for programmatic ads, with a few companies that are pretty good at it, but it is not something that can just run as a simple server for any small publisher to deploy.

Re: Firefox: The Effect of Ad Blocking on User Engagement with the Web [pdf]

#59

Post by dnautics » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 7:02 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #52

privong wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This comes up regularly. All the enthusiasm for micropayments comes from people who want to collect micropayments. Not from the users who would pay them. All the enthusiasm for ads only comes from the people who want to show/sell them. Not from the users who would be subjected to viewing them. I think it's still a worthwhile discussion. Presumably the micropayments have fewer (or at least different) unintended cons…

>All the enthusiasm for ads only comes from the people who want to show/sell them. Not from the users who would be subjected to viewing them. Yes, it does seem that way because nobody actually says, "Please please give ads because I love them!" Instead, the correct way to frame what users really want is to separate "stated preferences" from revealed preferences .[1] The stated preference, of course, is for users to c…

It's more complicated than that. I'm happy to pay for Pandora but not Spotify or YouTube; I pay for content on Amazon (despite hating Amazon) and not Netflix or YouTube red...

I can't rationalize those choices, even, it's just what I've done, empirically.

Re: Firefox: The Effect of Ad Blocking on User Engagement with the Web [pdf]

#60

Post by otabdeveloper2 » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 7:05 PM UTC

dmortin wrote: post #12

user812 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The selection isn't happening on the publisher's side, but on the ad-tech side. Every publisher can enjoy the tech provided by Google, and participate in gaining money from this system, relative to it's popularity. So what we see is that small players within the ad-tech business are dying, while bigger players (Google, Facebook) can not only adapt to the law, but also help writing the law. So a hypothetical switch to…

> So a hypothetical switch to first-party/server side ads won't have a negative effect on small blogs, because they can simply chose Google as their ad partner, which will create the necessary solutions. With client side ad serving the ad serving network can be very fast, because google, etc. provides the cdn for this. If it is done on the server side then when loading the page the server will have to do additional r…

It's the opposite, actually. Servers have very good and very fast network connections to other servers. Clients have very shitty network connections, especially with wi-fi or mobile devices.

CDN's can help with this somewhat, but a server-to-server network connection will still always be better and faster.