I have wondered for a long time, but the article at the top of HN as i write, "Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web" reminded me.
Am I wrong that all a publisher needs to do to defeat ad blockers is to serve ads from their own domain? Or at least make it appear as such? Surely the money at stake would make that an easy problem to solve.
But obviously I must be wrong. Why?
Ask HN: Why do adblockers still work?
1–10 of 22 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why do adblockers still work?
#2Third parties are necessary in advertising for this reason.
If ads were served by the publisher than the advertiser would always think that the publisher was cheating and claiming they showed more impressions and generated more clicks.
If ads were server by the advertiser then the publisher would always think that the advertiser was cheating and claiming that they showed fewer impressions and got fewer clicks.
Both could believe that a third party is honest. Both will feel even more assured if the site has 50 different trackers from 50 different third parties tracking the process.
Re: Ask HN: Why do adblockers still work?
#3Third parties are necessary in advertising for this reason. If ads were served by the publisher than the advertiser would always think that the publisher was cheating and claiming they showed more impressions and generated more clicks. If ads were server by the advertiser then the publisher would always think that the advertiser was cheating and claiming that they showed fewer impressions and got fewer clicks. Both c…
That does make sense and I hadn't thought of that.
But considering the huge portion of internet users with adblock enabled, wouldn't it make sense for the advertiser, publisher and third party to collaborate on a system installed on the publisher's servers that the third party verifies is an accurate metric?
Or maybe the naysayers are correct that the whole ad tech universe could never and will never work and is doomed?
Re: Ask HN: Why do adblockers still work?
#4Third parties are necessary in advertising for this reason. If ads were served by the publisher than the advertiser would always think that the publisher was cheating and claiming they showed more impressions and generated more clicks. If ads were server by the advertiser then the publisher would always think that the advertiser was cheating and claiming that they showed fewer impressions and got fewer clicks. Both c…
That does make sense and I hadn't thought of that. But considering the huge portion of internet users with adblock enabled, wouldn't it make sense for the advertiser, publisher and third party to collaborate on a system installed on the publisher's servers that the third party verifies is an accurate metric? Or maybe the naysayers are correct that the whole ad tech universe could never and will never work and is doom…
This exists, but is rare and only for larger players. At the end of the day, if the end user can identify the DOM slot the ad goes into, it gets blocked either way. It'll forever be a cat and mouse game.
Re: Ask HN: Why do adblockers still work?
#5Third parties are necessary in advertising for this reason. If ads were served by the publisher than the advertiser would always think that the publisher was cheating and claiming they showed more impressions and generated more clicks. If ads were server by the advertiser then the publisher would always think that the advertiser was cheating and claiming that they showed fewer impressions and got fewer clicks. Both c…
That doesn't make sense for Youtube videos? Unless Alphabet doesn't trust itself?
Re: Ask HN: Why do adblockers still work?
#6Third parties are necessary in advertising for this reason. If ads were served by the publisher than the advertiser would always think that the publisher was cheating and claiming they showed more impressions and generated more clicks. If ads were server by the advertiser then the publisher would always think that the advertiser was cheating and claiming that they showed fewer impressions and got fewer clicks. Both c…
That does make sense and I hadn't thought of that. But considering the huge portion of internet users with adblock enabled, wouldn't it make sense for the advertiser, publisher and third party to collaborate on a system installed on the publisher's servers that the third party verifies is an accurate metric? Or maybe the naysayers are correct that the whole ad tech universe could never and will never work and is doom…
Yup this is sometimes done, where the third party stuff is served out of a first party subdomain instead of a third party domain. It's still uncommon except in the big publishers because it requires more effort to do the integration.
The topic of "accurate metric" is also challenging. When I worked on this, I would often find discrepancies of up to 5% depending on the technical implementation of the metric. There was never a clear explanation, just that the sequence of events from mouseover to click to redirect to more redirects to the final landing looked more like a very wide funnel with leaky correlation than the straight pipeline you might naively assume.
Re: Ask HN: Why do adblockers still work?
#7Interesting question.
I think it boils down to the fact that the ads are delivered with the content. You can just choose to not look at the ads, right? This is the same principle that the ad blockers work on.
To get around that, Another way to do it is to deliver the ads first, have the browser attest the ads were played and then serve the content. The problem is the end user can always modify what you serve them. Getting the browser to attest to something like that is very hard if not impossible.
There's no good way to do it. The advertisers will always be playing a game of cat and mouse. They take what they can get, because that's all they can do.
Re: Ask HN: Why do adblockers still work?
#8Third parties are necessary in advertising for this reason. If ads were served by the publisher than the advertiser would always think that the publisher was cheating and claiming they showed more impressions and generated more clicks. If ads were server by the advertiser then the publisher would always think that the advertiser was cheating and claiming that they showed fewer impressions and got fewer clicks. Both c…
That doesn't make sense for Youtube videos? Unless Alphabet doesn't trust itself?
Google has to be careful for how it treads for anti-trust reasons.
For instance Google has a blocker for "annoying ads" in Chrome. Needless to say it is never going to block an annoying ad that is served by Google. The whole thing is asking for a lawsuit.
If Google is aggressive against adblockers it similarly becomes a target in a way it would be if there were 4 major players that each got 20% of the market and then a bunch of small players.
The most interesting thing happening in online advertising today is the pitch made by the video or podcast creator that is embedded in the content. I've got an emotional connection with Nate Silver or Ana Psychology that makes me more responsive to their pitch than the average pre-roll.
Re: Ask HN: Why do adblockers still work?
#9Interesting question. I think it boils down to the fact that the ads are delivered with the content. You can just choose to not look at the ads, right? This is the same principle that the ad blockers work on. To get around that, Another way to do it is to deliver the ads first, have the browser attest the ads were played and then serve the content. The problem is the end user can always modify what you serve them. Ge…
You can't always choose not to look at them.
This blog drives me up the wall with ads that cover the content, particularly on mobile devices
The buttons for closing the content are hard enough to hit on a touch screen that at least 50% of the time I am going to wind up clicking on the ad by accident. I don't want to reward that behavior so I don't attempt to close the ads.
It's a certain sign that Scientology is a shadow of what it used to be that David Miscavige hasn't unleashed his flying monkeys to make accusations of click fraud against that site. Maybe they just aren't as internet saavy as Heaven's Gate.
Re: Ask HN: Why do adblockers still work?
#10Third parties are necessary in advertising for this reason. If ads were served by the publisher than the advertiser would always think that the publisher was cheating and claiming they showed more impressions and generated more clicks. If ads were server by the advertiser then the publisher would always think that the advertiser was cheating and claiming that they showed fewer impressions and got fewer clicks. Both c…
No post body was provided.