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AdBlock Plus will soon allow "non-intrusive" ads by default

adblockplus.org

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Re: AdBlock Plus will soon allow "non-intrusive" ads by default

#161

Post by nupark2 »

darklajid wrote: post #159
nupark2 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not actually sure if you intended to respond to my post, or another one in the thread. I've only addressed incentives involved, and the inexorable conclusion of misaligned incentives. Whether that results in Adblock plus plus or not isn't something I tried to address, though the eventuality seems likely. > Are you, by chance, using applications on the mobile OS of your choice that displays ad to gain revenue? No.…

Yes, I wanted to respond to your post and the subthread that you started with 'he is selling ads'. I think that gives your position away. Now it's fine to be critical and to dislike that change, but I considered your 'he takes money (according to another subthread that's planned but not the case just yet) and that will lead to more and more ads being "okay"' too - simple. Mobile apps w/ ads: Angry Birds on Android?

> Yes, I wanted to respond to your post and the subthread that you started with 'he is selling ads'. I think that gives your position away.

Well, the fact that he plans to financially benefit from displaying advertisements (or allowing them to be displayed) is key to understanding the alignment of his incentives: money for ads, insofar as his userbase will put up with it.

> Mobile apps w/ ads: Angry Birds on Android?

Haven't played it; I'd assumed it was a paid game. It's 99 cents on iOS. Unclear why it's free on Android.

Re: AdBlock Plus will soon allow "non-intrusive" ads by default

#162

Post by nathanb »

gwern wrote: post #155
nathanb wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed

Is Googling that hard? http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Search-Engines/Google-Mozilla-Still... or https://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9222404/Update_Mozil... > Confidence is good, because there's no understating the importance of the deal for Mozilla. The search deal with Google accounted for roughly $100 million of Mozilla's $123 million in sales for 2010. That's a whopping 84 percent.

The Googling I did, as well as your quote, seem to disagree with your assertion. You say that Google have apparently declined to renew the deal, while those two links say that we don't know, but (per your quote) it's likely that they have. The fact that I couldn't find a link which conclusively states that either party chose not to renew the deal is why I asked for a citation.

Re: AdBlock Plus will soon allow "non-intrusive" ads by default

#163

Post by gwern »

nathanb wrote: post #162
gwern wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Googling that hard? http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Search-Engines/Google-Mozilla-Still... or https://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9222404/Update_Mozil... > Confidence is good, because there's no understating the importance of the deal for Mozilla. The search deal with Google accounted for roughly $100 million of Mozilla's $123 million in sales for 2010. That's a whopping 84 percent.

The Googling I did, as well as your quote, seem to disagree with your assertion. You say that Google have apparently declined to renew the deal, while those two links say that we don't know, but (per your quote) it's likely that they have. The fact that I couldn't find a link which conclusively states that either party chose not to renew the deal is why I asked for a citation.

Gee, thanks for explaining what you wanted the cite for, the part of my comment that presupposed the most in-depth knowledge of the issues and so is the least likely for any random commenter to drop a snarky {{fact}} on.

That made it very easy for me to understand which claim you were questioning, and so either correct myself or provide further information.

Re: AdBlock Plus will soon allow "non-intrusive" ads by default

#164

Post by gujk »

rishi wrote: post #46
hammock wrote: post #8

Beginning of the end. It's nice that the developers are giving users a choice, even if it's opt-out not opt-in. But AdBlock Plus is a tool to remove ads- that's it. And they're extremely good at it. The moment they become politicized and try to be "a tool to support small websites" or whatever nonsense, marks the beginning of the end.

I totally agree. It doesn't make any sense from a marketing/branding standpoint. The company is called "AdBlock" not "SomeAdsBlock". Lots of people still have no clue about this company. How will new users perceive it moving forward?

Think of it as "block of ads"

Re: AdBlock Plus will soon allow "non-intrusive" ads by default

#165

Post by gujk »

gst wrote: post #25

No reason for me to enable ads, as long as they have a huge impact on my privacy. I don't intend to send a list of every single site I view to Google. Make a sane ad system, where ads are proxied through the same webserver as the remainder of the page, and I would have no problems with activating them.

If ads were proxies through he content site, the site would still send your ID to Google to personalize the ad, but you would be unable to block it.

Re: AdBlock Plus will soon allow "non-intrusive" ads by default

#166

Post by dmauro »

Wow, lots of doom and gloom on here. As someone who doesn't use AdBlock Plus (not particularly to support websites, but that does factor in) I think this is move should be applauded. They continue to serve their customers with the same product they always have (an adblock list manager) and might be able to pull in some money from it as well.

The obtrusiveness of the ads they let through will directly affect the number of users they have, so their interests are still aligned with their users. But they are simply more aligned with the 75% who don't blanket oppose all ads.

Re: AdBlock Plus will soon allow "non-intrusive" ads by default

#167

Post by Kaizyn »

ceol wrote: post #36
Kaizyn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does there have to be a compromise? Please don't take this as some sort of flame bait. Instead it is a serious question about why some advertising must exist and be tolerated.

I don't believe advertising itself is necessarily evil, and it provides an easy way for website owners to fund operations. You're provided a service for no monetary cost but, in return, you must requite some of your focus to an advertisement. This seems fair to me. There is no answer to why advertising must exist aside from it being the best answer we have to a growing problem of who's going to pay for the Web. I'd r…

I very much doubt that this is the best answer. We are using a model that pre-dates the Internet to cover the expenses of site content. Given how unpopular it is for the readers of print publications and viewers of television, it seems a mistake to consider something so obtrusive the best available solution. While I don't as yet have a better solution, the fact that no real research into alternatives has been done makes me believe that there has to be a better available model.

Re: AdBlock Plus will soon allow "non-intrusive" ads by default

#168

Post by Deestan »

huhtenberg wrote: post #157
Deestan wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since it's a one-time notification, it should've explained the rationale behind this feature and asked for a decision. That would mean treating users as intelligent adults. I disagree. This is the cowardly and helpless solution to the problem: When in doubt, throw Yet Another Dialog or installation wizard page in the user's face. Programs should confidently do Something Sensible by default, and instead let the 25%…

Huh? Cowardly ? Are you serious? If I am installing Ad Block , I quite naturally expect it - surprise! - to block things. It is double more so if I am already running the AdBlock and just going through an upgrade. So for all intents and purposes the Sensible Thing to do is to opt users out by default from this new feature. This however would provide zero traction to the feature as it needs an exposure. Now, do tell m…

You are yelling angrily. Stop that. It is annoying.

> Huh? Cowardly? Are you serious?

Yes, if the developer knows at least 75% of the user base needs and wants A, but still gives the choice between A and B, it is just because he is afraid of dealing with the noisy minority afterwards.

> If I am installing Ad Block, I quite naturally expect it - surprise! - to block things.

And it does block things. Whether it blocks all the things, blacklisted things, non-whitelisted things or whatever is another discussion.

> It is double more so if I am already running the AdBlock and just going through an upgrade.

A completely valid concern. The behavior of an existing product should not change during an upgrade.

> So for all intents and purposes the Sensible Thing to do is to opt users out by default from this new feature.

No, that would be an Insensible Thing, because 75% of users want the other thing.

> Now, do tell me how the hell one would let discerning users know and opt-in without throwing yet another dialog at them?

There's nothing to opt-in to, because the partial block isn't a "feature". It's now the core functionality of AdBlock.

The Hell A) The Block Everything feature could be available in happy colors in the first page of the options.

The Hell B) The AdBlock plugin blurb could say "The entire purpose of AdBlock is to block the "bad" ads [feasability of deciding badness is another discussion]. If you want to block all ads, consider installing NameOfTheAdBlockFork instead."

Re: AdBlock Plus will soon allow "non-intrusive" ads by default

#169

Post by quotemstr »

gujk wrote: post #165
gst wrote: post #25

No reason for me to enable ads, as long as they have a huge impact on my privacy. I don't intend to send a list of every single site I view to Google. Make a sane ad system, where ads are proxied through the same webserver as the remainder of the page, and I would have no problems with activating them.

If ads were proxies through he content site, the site would still send your ID to Google to personalize the ad, but you would be unable to block it.

If ads were proxied through the site, the site would have no way of giving Google the information that would allow them to tell you from Adam. The entire purpose of externally-served advertising is cross-site tracking and correlation.

Re: AdBlock Plus will soon allow "non-intrusive" ads by default

#170

Post by tripzilch »

randomwalker wrote: post #24

It is unfortunate that many people commenting here didn't bother to RTFA. In particular, from the FAQ: Are you stupid? Nobody wants this! The results of our user survey say something different. Only 25% of the Adblock Plus users seem to be strictly against any advertising. They will disable this feature and that's fine. The other users replied that they would accept some kinds of advertising to help websites. Some us…

I encourage people to also RTFS (read the survey). Because there's more to it than just "only 25% of the Adblock Plus users seem to be strictly against any advertising"--which Wladimir Palant gladly ignores:

* 43% (agree) to 70% (somewhat agree) believe ABP should block more ads

* 54% (important) to 82% (somewhat important) use ABP because they care about privacy. Yet they do not require the whitelisted parties to have "Do Not Track" support because they "are not yet in a position to enforce that requirement"--of course they wouldn't because the first thing they whitelisted are Google Ads which will never support "Do Not Track".

* his assertion that it needs to be default because the majority of users "never change any settings" is simply false: 63% of users already sometimes disable ABP all by theirselves on a website, 56% manage their filter preferences, 63% change the blockable items list and 60% adds or removes filter subscriptions.

Really, I think it's absolutely awesome that a software developer holds a survey to find out which way future development of an open-source project should go, but he might just as well saved himself the trouble if he's just going to ignore the data he doesn't agree with.

Finally, the result that "only 25% of the Adblock Plus users seem to be strictly against any advertising" is mentioned nowhere in either of the three posts about this survey. So there's no way to tell what question(s) this number is based on, what the alternative answers were or whether these other 75% of people consider SEDO domainsquatting ads "acceptable" or not.

Finally there's Wladimir Palant repeatedly asserting he doesn't actually have any experience conducting surveys, as evidenced by the lack of methodology (while taking a rather negative defensive heels-in-the-sand position towards anyone who questions him, or comments on the survey), and especially the nearly unreadable pie and stacked bar charts (only the two worst choices for pretty much any kind of data visualisation and they make Edward Tufte cry). And then there's the "mysterious" case of the non-English users that got a translated survey selecting the "I don't know/What is this?" option much more often! Gee ..

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