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Adblocking: How about Nah?

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Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#291

Post by 18pfsmt »

dkersten wrote: post #193
Godel_unicode wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the democratizing effect of services that make money through advertising is vastly underestimated. There are a lot of people on the internet who can't afford to pay for Microsoft Office, or a set of encyclopedias, or courses like those which can be found on YouTube or blogs. It's all well and good to say that you hate ads because you can afford to pay to remove them. Many can't, and we should think very…

The best content I’ve found in recent years has been either on sites that don’t contain advertisement (because they’re someone’s personal hobby blog, for example, or HN) or from videos where the person was supported directly by fans through Patreon. Anecdotally, the advertisement-supported content is mostly garbage.

I believe your comment and Godel_unicode's are both correct, and I am pro-choice. Some people may prefer adverts over payment. I don't agree, but that is their choice. I can't stand to hear from NPR's underwriters any more, and will start singing songs loudly (I'm a bad singer to boot) when they come on. In other words, I am personally ad-adverse. My 80-something parents, however, don't even mute the channel, let alone change it, when watching TV and the advertising starts (it drives me nuts). Some people don't mind, and I think they have a right not to be denied content via advertising if that is an "offer on the table."

If one looks at the history of the HBO cable channel vs. broadcast channels (i.e. ABC, NBC, and CBS), and also Netflix, I think one can see there are similar dynamics at play.

The chaos of freedom is a beautiful thing, but using the government to enforce your version of utopia is scary.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#292

Post by jefftk »

wybiral wrote: post #280
jefftk wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You would only do business with companies you trust to not cheat. That massively increases the barrier to entry. Right now you can make a new site, sign up with an ad network, and start showing ads. No one involved needs to trust you (much) since the ad network is in a good position to detect cheating. Remove that, and big trusted publishers (NYT, FB, Google) are still fine, but smaller ones wouldn't be able to demo…

> Right now you can make a new site, sign up with an ad network, and start showing ads. With the tiny payout you get from Adsense, unless your site is really popular to begin with, you're not going to make much of anything. Pennies maybe (which you won't receive until hitting a threshold anyway). So I don't see how it helps with entry. By the time your service is popular enough to make real money you could approach s…

AdSense and other networks primarily exist to automate matchmaking. Publishers and advertisers can already find each other, but this requires a lot of work. By automating this work, it can make more money for publishers (in aggregate) and make things cheaper for advertisers at the same time.

My understanding of your argument is that no publisher should be using Adsense etc today, and they should all be negotiating direct deals instead, is that right? What would you say to publishers (and I've talked to many) who are happy to have the "collect bids from people who want to advertise on my site" portion automated for them so they can focus on running their sites?

(Still speaking only for myself)

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#293

Post by LeoNatan25 »

jefftk wrote: post #166
jacobobryant wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really care if ads stop being profitable. If ads stopped being a good source of revenue, the tech industry would adapt, and my guess is that the end result would be much more favorable to society. I'm working on an early-stage startup right now, and I'm certainly not going to use ads as part of my revenue model. Google might not be too happy about an outcome like that, but I'm not overly concerned about Googl…

> I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this since you work on ads: are ads actually essential in the software industry, or could we do just fine without them? The industry would definitely adapt, but I don't think it would be more favorable to society. Here's what I would expect to happen if we stopped letting third party ad networks detect ad fraud: * Facebook, Youtube, Reddit, etc and other huge sites are alr…

> funding to push worldviews. The latter worries me a lot.

This is already happening in the advertisement world of today, where certain topics—some political but some not—are not "friendly to advertising", and so get demonetized on various platforms. How is that different from the scenario you worry so much about?

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#294

Post by afiori »

nostrademons wrote: post #108
jedberg wrote: post #96

For many many years I resisted installing an ad-blocker. As someone who worked at a website that made the bulk of it's revenue from ads, it felt hypocritical, and also, I wanted to make sure that the experience of our website was bearable without ad blocking, by forcing myself to experience it every day. I gave up about two years ago. The web just go so bad I had to install ad-block. My computer would spin like a jet…

Yeah, for many years I figured "Let the website owners make money, I get to use their service for free anyway, and I can always mentally tune the ads out." And then sometime around 2015 or 2016, I started noticing ads that would lock up my CPU, or get my laptop's fan running, or prevent the page from loading entirely, or increase page loading time by 10x. And then I decided enough was enough, and installed an adblock…

For me the moment was when some websites started putting popup ads in every single link and navigation.

I a specific instance there was no way to use the site, every link would redirect directly without opening the correct page at all.

I literally needed an ad-blocker to be able to use the website.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#295

Post by j_m_b »

wybiral wrote: post #67

I don't actually want to block ads. If you want to put a small text or image blurb anywhere on the page... Good for you. I'll gladly accept those on a webpage so that the content creator can make a bit of cash. But these companies are intentionally blurring the lines between advertisement and digital surveillance. You don't need to collect everything about my operating system, browser, monitors, GPU, every click I ma…

This sounds like such a rational comment, but it is based on the naive idea that ads can be effectively targeted simply based on content. You're never going to have ads that people are willing to pay for (i.e. a certain threshold click-through rate) without some sort of direct targeting. For example, you can't tell if your article on basic car maintenance is being read by a 30 year old male who might be interested in a beer ad or a 30 year old female with two kids who might be more interested in a new iphone cover.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#296

Post by ikeboy »

bredren wrote: post #264
ikeboy wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how the study is establishing causation. It does not prove that advertising is creating an externality, as you claim. In fact, it explicitly says that it does not show causation and recommends further research. It's easy to come up with theories to explain it that don't have anything to do with the one you proposed. For instance, higher advertising could be caused by weakness in the economy that doesn't s…

I have managed to block advertising out of my life so effectively for so long I nearly recoil when a normal tv advertisement at someone’s home or a bar catches me somehow at full volume. That or I marvel to those around me at the amazing production value of some stupid commercial that’s aired to them countless times is. I have no doubt a barrage of ads day in and day out, regardless of economic condition is bad for a…

Perhaps you're free-loading on other people that don't.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#297

Post by Silhouette »

jefftk wrote: post #119
deanc wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. I’d go as far as forbidding embedded JS altogether which removes the attack vector for malware within advertising networks. The networks have proved time and time again they are not able to prevent distribution of malware, and this is the primary reason I use an adblocker. Maybe a new tag which points to a resource which can only serve an image, video or text. Absolutely no scripting. Pass along only the adver…

> Maybe a new tag which points to a resource which can only serve an image, video or text. Absolutely no scripting. Pass along only the advertiser ID and the bare minimum. How would fraud detection work in this model? How do advertisers know the requests are coming from real users and not bots? Without assurance there, advertisers would pay much less, and publishers would earn much less. (Disclosure: I work on ads at…

How would fraud detection work in this model?

Honest but blunt answer: We (my businesses acting as advertisers) don't rely on your (Google's, or any other ad network's) claims anyway. The only thing that matters is the metrics we measure on our own sites, and we're going to be able to separate those by ad campaign anyway. We don't care about getting more Facebook likes or how many Instagram views some image gets or how many impressions Google claims to have shown on third party sites. We only care whether a given campaign gave a good return on investment in terms of direct benefits and/or actionable leads.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#298

Post by lttlrck »

j_m_b wrote: post #295
wybiral wrote: post #67

I don't actually want to block ads. If you want to put a small text or image blurb anywhere on the page... Good for you. I'll gladly accept those on a webpage so that the content creator can make a bit of cash. But these companies are intentionally blurring the lines between advertisement and digital surveillance. You don't need to collect everything about my operating system, browser, monitors, GPU, every click I ma…

This sounds like such a rational comment, but it is based on the naive idea that ads can be effectively targeted simply based on content. You're never going to have ads that people are willing to pay for (i.e. a certain threshold click-through rate) without some sort of direct targeting. For example, you can't tell if your article on basic car maintenance is being read by a 30 year old male who might be interested in…

Direct targeting basic car maintenance alone covers a lot of ground doesn’t it? cars, spares and consumables, accessories, tools, car shows, workshop equipment, vacuum cleaners, mechanical things in general and diy... it’s endless.

Edit: ok endless is hyperbole, but content targeting is hardly useless.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#299

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

tossAfterUsing wrote: post #154
deanc wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. I’d go as far as forbidding embedded JS altogether which removes the attack vector for malware within advertising networks. The networks have proved time and time again they are not able to prevent distribution of malware, and this is the primary reason I use an adblocker. Maybe a new tag which points to a resource which can only serve an image, video or text. Absolutely no scripting. Pass along only the adver…

> as far as forbidding embedded JS altogether I do this on my iOS device. It's a bit of a pain to not have JS enabled in safari, but I can always share a page from Safari --> Duckduckgo's browser which i have installed for just such occasions. Settings > Safari > Advanced > Javascript off

Good idea, but I wish there was a less harsh method. I have been using my iPad a lot recently and the thing that bugs me is that it’s almost impossible to listen to Spotify uninterrupted as you use Safari because of auto-playing videos (not just advertisements).

It’s completely obnoxious and there is no way to stop it. Safari takes control of sound even if the video does not have audio toggled on and pauses your Spotify. Then if you use control center to start it again, it plays iTunes. I can’t believe this hasn’t been fixed.

EDIT: Just tried Brave Browser and this is pretty great so far. Seems to be the best compromise. Thanks!

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#300

Post by ebiester »

ralphm wrote: post #282
Baeocystin wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a company called Blendle that offers a curated source of news/op-ed/etc to read, where you pay some fraction of a dollar per read, usually in the 10-25¢ range. If you feel the article wasn't worth it, you can click a link to get an immediate refund, no questions asked. I like the idea, and I do use their service. They have plenty of room to improve- the articles they pick tend to almost always have a certain…

Blendle has stopped pay-per-article, moving to subscriptions entirely.

The biggest problem I’ve had with Blendle is that I want to read an NYT article due to a recommendation, not because I go to their app. I just would forget to go there. There was no “open with blendle” option to move into my flow.
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