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

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

#121

Post by acdha »

manigandham wrote: post #17
crtasm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't all the ad networks use JavaScript? Has any network never let malicious code from advertisers slip through? (I guess Google? But I'd prefer not to have even more people embedding their js everywhere I browse)

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.

> there are networks that have always remained clean

Can you name them? The major ones have had persistent failures which make me think this is more due to not being targeted or being some of the niche networks like The Deck which didn’t have capacity to scale up.

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

#122

Post by acdha »

dmortin wrote: post #55
TeMPOraL wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

It already does. This would increase the incentive not to switch to some claiming to offer slightly higher payouts and hope that they’re not cutting corners.

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

#123

Post by manigandham »

gwern wrote: post #84
matt4077 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is absolutely no doubt that all those sites, and many others, are continuously running such experiments. There are also new financing methods, paywall implementations, prices, cooperations, etc. being tested all the time, with some successes and many failures. While people here and in general often seem to consider publishers to be rather stupid, I think there's enough evidence at this point to conclude that it…

> There is absolutely no doubt that all those sites, and many others, are continuously running such experiments. They are running randomized experiments, but they are not necessarily running the right experiments. If the bottom line is revenue, then attrition may not be directly measured; if they are testing on per page-view or per session instead of bucketing users permanently , then they can miss effects too; and i…

Do you mean where are the published results? That's not something publishers do, so most of the intel will be internal. It's also unlikely that are running experiments constantly as the basic stuff has been figured out.

Also most of the innovation happens with adtech vendors who try out new ways to get attention and payments. TrueX and Sourcepoint have been working on some new stuff, along with the various formats that keep being invented.

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

#124

Post by gwern »

manigandham wrote: post #123
gwern wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is absolutely no doubt that all those sites, and many others, are continuously running such experiments. They are running randomized experiments, but they are not necessarily running the right experiments. If the bottom line is revenue, then attrition may not be directly measured; if they are testing on per page-view or per session instead of bucketing users permanently , then they can miss effects too; and i…

Do you mean where are the published results? That's not something publishers do, so most of the intel will be internal. It's also unlikely that are running experiments constantly as the basic stuff has been figured out. Also most of the innovation happens with adtech vendors who try out new ways to get attention and payments. TrueX and Sourcepoint have been working on some new stuff, along with the various formats th…

> Do you mean where are the published results? That's not something publishers do

Publishers like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo do publish many research papers going in depth on A/B tests - such as the effects of page load time - and I've benefited from reading them over the years. So yes, it is something they do.

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

#125

Post by dest »

kasbah wrote: post #120
dest wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do adblockradio.com. Thanks for the link about Pandora's AB testing!

Super cool, hadn't heard of this, trying it out right now. I have often thought about trying to do something like this for the AntennaPod pod-catcher. Do you have an ETA on your open source release? https://github.com/AntennaPod/AntennaPod/

A few weeks I hope

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

#126

Post by manigandham »

gwern wrote: post #124
manigandham wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean where are the published results? That's not something publishers do, so most of the intel will be internal. It's also unlikely that are running experiments constantly as the basic stuff has been figured out. Also most of the innovation happens with adtech vendors who try out new ways to get attention and payments. TrueX and Sourcepoint have been working on some new stuff, along with the various formats th…

> Do you mean where are the published results? That's not something publishers do Publishers like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo do publish many research papers going in depth on A/B tests - such as the effects of page load time - and I've benefited from reading them over the years. So yes, it is something they do.

None of those companies are considered publishers, and that seems to be more generic UX research rather than ad focused.

For example, Washington Post runs experiments specifically with ads as a digital media/news publisher, but you won't see that research published anywhere.

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

#127

Post by asdf1234tx »

I don't object to advertising. Highly optimized images can load quickly. I object like a banshee to the insane amounts of js that is raining down on my connection. The bad things that people are doing with that js, from crooked, inept, unprincipled, to down right criminal, well that's just the icing on the cake...

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

#128

Post by manigandham »

Kalium wrote: post #51
manigandham wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> fundamental right to generate revenue based on advertising.

What? Who's talking about rights here? Especially to a business model? That's a strange interpretation and companies are free to do what they want. Advertising is itself a business model, and marketing (of which advertising is a subset) is critical to the commercial success of pretty much every corporation that exists.

The biggest issue with directly negotiated ad campaigns is scale. Unless you are a major publisher, no advertiser is going to spend time dealing with small buys across multiple small sites, which is the whole point of small sites using ad networks that can aggregate and streamline demand and optimize yield. Also much of that 3rd party javascript is for measurement. Digital ads require accurate metrics and the industry won't be going back to blind buys with no visibility and only the publishers promise.

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

#129

Post by zzzcpan »

manigandham wrote: post #128
Kalium wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> fundamental right to generate revenue based on advertising. What? Who's talking about rights here? Especially to a business model? That's a strange interpretation and companies are free to do what they want. Advertising is itself a business model, and marketing (of which advertising is a subset) is critical to the commercial success of pretty much every corporation that exists. The biggest issue with directly negot…

The point of small sites using ad networks is for ad networks to make a lot of money on many small sites in aggregate. The amount of money each small site gains from this is tiny and unimportant.

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

#130

Post by fliesblackflags »

asdf1234tx wrote: post #127

I don't object to advertising. Highly optimized images can load quickly. I object like a banshee to the insane amounts of js that is raining down on my connection. The bad things that people are doing with that js, from crooked, inept, unprincipled, to down right criminal, well that's just the icing on the cake...

This is why I block nearly all adverts. I wouldn't object to ads that don't track me, or autoplay sound/video, or obscure the content, or waste my bandwidth.
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