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Ask HN: Why do adblockers still work?

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Re: Ask HN: Why do adblockers still work?

#11

Post by wizzerking »

tragictrash wrote: post #7

Interesting 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…

Plus here in the U.S.A we have data caps if we have to use AT&T so any bandwidth taken up by ads is bandwidth we can not use for stuff we really want to see. On top of that we are constantly inundated with malware, from drive by's and other malicious websites, that we have to pay for malware protection, on top of having to pay for 70 per month to 100 Megabits per second in the LA ara

Re: Ask HN: Why do adblockers still work?

#12

Post by tragictrash »

PaulHoule wrote: post #9
tragictrash wrote: post #7

Interesting 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 https://tonyortega.org/ 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…

By choosing to not look at them, I'm referring to how ad blockers choose to not retrieve the ads, not a human.

Re: Ask HN: Why do adblockers still work?

#13

Post by aqaq2 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #8
aqaq2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

Harder to block, so I manually skip it...

Re: Ask HN: Why do adblockers still work?

#14

Post by elkos »

aqaq2 wrote: post #13
PaulHoule wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Harder to block, so I manually skip it...

There are browser ad-on that block sponsored content. Having said so, there are a few channels that provide pretty great content without sponsored pitches or with relevant pitches that might be ok-ish.

Re: Ask HN: Why do adblockers still work?

#15

Post by cookiengineer »

This is exactly why almost all advertising companies now offer CNAME cloaking support or a similar technique where their ad server is aware of the DNS domain that it was "called by" and serves ads accordingly.

This way stupid clients just follow the domain and think it's subdomain.publisher.tld and dont care about the CNAME pointer to the advertising tracker.

And you've assumed correctly: This is a cat and mouse game, and if you take a closer look at all those adblocker lists you'll identify lots and lots of randomized subdomains that are there just for the purpose of temporary obfuscation.

Re: Ask HN: Why do adblockers still work?

#16

Post by alisabets »

PaulHoule wrote: post #8
aqaq2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No post body was provided.

Re: Ask HN: Why do adblockers still work?

#17

Post by armchairhacker »

I just posted in another section: most ads simply don't target the kinds of people who use adblockers. Why spend so much effort and resources to force your ads in people's faces when they're just going to ignore them?

Of course, why do advertising companies spend so much effort and resources to force ads in people's faces in TV/billboards/mobile games/unblocked web? I suppose those advertisements actually net the company back revenue. But trying to send advertisements to someone who has uBlock and PiHole, VPN, etc. is not only extremely difficult, but basically useless.

Re: Ask HN: Why do adblockers still work?

#18

Post by dangle1 »

armchairhacker wrote: post #17

I just posted in another section: most ads simply don't target the kinds of people who use adblockers. Why spend so much effort and resources to force your ads in people's faces when they're just going to ignore them? Of course, why do advertising companies spend so much effort and resources to force ads in people's faces in TV/billboards/mobile games/unblocked web? I suppose those advertisements actually net the com…

Sounds like a modern corollary of wondering which half of one's ad dollars are being wasted.

Re: Ask HN: Why do adblockers still work?

#19

Post by t8y »

In the future webpages will be streamed from a server and we will only see a video stream. No ad block will be possible as the whole page will just be a single html canvas (or some new stream element). It will suck.
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