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AdNauseam: uBlock Origin fork silently clicking ads on behalf of users

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Re: AdNauseam: uBlock Origin fork silently clicking ads on behalf of users

#21

Post by lolinder »

redeux wrote: post #11
endisneigh wrote: post #6

Fight against ads by giving the ad networks money and further incentivizing captcha and other tech to stop bots.

It gives them money in the short term but it costs their clients money and makes the service overall less valuable. If everyone installed this it would basically wreck the online ads industry overnight.

But if only a few people install it then it's just a little bit more money taken from advertisers and given to ad companies. The tiny number of people who would actually consider installing an extension like this aren't going to substantially impact the perceived value of online advertising.

Re: AdNauseam: uBlock Origin fork silently clicking ads on behalf of users

#23

Post by janalsncm »

xypage wrote: post #13
endisneigh wrote: post #6

Fight against ads by giving the ad networks money and further incentivizing captcha and other tech to stop bots.

It gives the networks money but it also hurts the companies actually running the ads, which would disincentivize them to do it at all, and the networks will only make more money if companies don't see a decrease in pay off for clicks and reduce their offers/stop running ads through that service altogether. That being said realistically this is too niche for nearly enough people to run it to make any significant diffe…

It raises the cost per conversion, but whether that will translate to fewer ad-spend dollars isn’t clear to me. Maybe they will increase their budgets to maintain the same conversion numbers.

There was also an interesting Freakonomics episode on whether ads work at all. The incentives for advertising aren’t exactly rational. What’s good for a company isn’t always good for an individual working in the ads department of that company. Plus, the money is often there whether it works or not, and advertising departments will always insist that they do.

Re: AdNauseam: uBlock Origin fork silently clicking ads on behalf of users

#24

Post by coldtea »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #14
xwdv wrote: post #8

Of all the ad blockers, AdNauseam is the one that is feared the most. If everybody used it, it would kill the industry.

What economic model would you like to supplant the one which is currently serving a whole load of websites to us all for free?

One that has us pay for websites would be far better. Including services like Gmail and such. We would be paying customers, not eyeballs for sale, and only websites deemed worthy of that level of loyalty would survive.

Any websites that prefer it could still be free then, but the costs to host them would have to be paid by their owner (like most personal or business websites today), not sponsored by ads.

Re: AdNauseam: uBlock Origin fork silently clicking ads on behalf of users

#25

Post by imglorp »

neilv wrote: post #20

As someone who's been interested in tracker defeating since that became a thing around 25 years ago, I'm just a little concerned that something like this AdNauseum -- if ever adopted significantly -- could invite blowback that also hits more conventional tracker blocking, or other current liberties. Not making certain HTTP requests seems to be protected right now. However, click fraud, with which this might be confla…

> force even more invasive user identity requirements or device attestation

I think those are both coming. All the major forces are aligned against users: governments, content holders, advertisers, police, and authoritarians everywhere. It's inevitable unless we take the power back.

Re: AdNauseam: uBlock Origin fork silently clicking ads on behalf of users

#26

Post by brightlancer »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #14
xwdv wrote: post #8

Of all the ad blockers, AdNauseam is the one that is feared the most. If everybody used it, it would kill the industry.

What economic model would you like to supplant the one which is currently serving a whole load of websites to us all for free?

Personally, I like pay-per-use and subscription models.

And I'm not entirely opposed to advertising; TV and radio have been ad supported for generations, but we've now added surveillance which is unacceptable. (The ads themselves are also more intrusive, but that's my secondary concern.)

Re: AdNauseam: uBlock Origin fork silently clicking ads on behalf of users

#27

Post by nvy »

paulpauper wrote: post #16
nvy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the purpose to cause ad networks to lower fee payments due to rampant click fraud and thus to destroy the business model?

The problem is it does not destroy the model of annoying ads, it jsut makes it less profitable for publishers. It works like an auction, which is that advertisers place bids. assuming there are lots of fraudulent clicks, advertisers would notice a lower conversion rate, which would hurt ROI and advertisers would adjust by lowering bids, so the problem sorta corrects itself by adjusting to a new equilibrium of profita…

I don't personally run this extension (because I've read that the fraudulent clicks are easy to detect) but supposing that the clicks from this extension were both pervasive and indistinguishable from real clicks, it would seem to me that that would cause ROI to asymptotically approach zero which would result in the collapse of ad networks as a viable business model.

Re: AdNauseam: uBlock Origin fork silently clicking ads on behalf of users

#28

Post by aeyes »

neilv wrote: post #20

As someone who's been interested in tracker defeating since that became a thing around 25 years ago, I'm just a little concerned that something like this AdNauseum -- if ever adopted significantly -- could invite blowback that also hits more conventional tracker blocking, or other current liberties. Not making certain HTTP requests seems to be protected right now. However, click fraud, with which this might be confla…

“click fraud”? That is very very far fetched. I’m just following links your website serves me. If you don’t like it you don’t have to serve your ads to me.

Re: AdNauseam: uBlock Origin fork silently clicking ads on behalf of users

#30

Post by candiddevmike »

redeux wrote: post #11
endisneigh wrote: post #6

Fight against ads by giving the ad networks money and further incentivizing captcha and other tech to stop bots.

It gives them money in the short term but it costs their clients money and makes the service overall less valuable. If everyone installed this it would basically wreck the online ads industry overnight.

Marketing departments don't care. Attribution is already a joke, click fraud is the cost of doing business.

Folks think most marketing departments are these sophisticated analytics driven masterminds, when it's really number go up == throw more money at it.

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