The adblocking revolution is months away • Hacker News Board

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#91

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:35 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #69

dmritard96 wrote: post #60

And the Ad-network rearchetechture is probably already built. The way all of these adblockers are typically implemented is an IP/DNS Name black list where the requests to those locations are stopped short. There is a super simple solution though, those who want to leverage ads for revenue can just bundle the advertising material into the content of the page rather than including the ads via third party ajax calls. Su…

Apparently the reason they're loaded separately in the first place is fraud detection. Bundling it into the page provides no easy way of independently verifying impressions.

[deleted]

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#92

Post by pseudonym » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:35 PM UTC

tonyblundell wrote: post #53

BukhariH wrote: post #9

As expected this is going to have a negative affect on ad revenues but what people forget is that publishers won't just accept lower revenues. They're going innovate. The easiest thing to implement would be a paywall but after the paywall we are going to see a rise in microtransactions for content. That being said there are advantages to the subscription model. Maybe, publishers will stop posting click-baity headline…

The web is 20 years old. I think if this was going to happen, it would have happened by now. Outside of a few niches, people just aren't willing to pay to read websites. What I could see happening is premium content being bundled by ISPs. Pay for X package from Y ISP, get content from A, B and C websites. Kind-of like how TV channels are bundled. In all likelihood though, I think advertising will continue as is. Adve…

Honestly, I think that we're already moving that direction-- Patreon is comparatively recent, but more and more people are finding that it's actually a viable "microtransaction/subscription" model for online content. The idea of paying a subscription model for some of the things on Patreon would have seemed silly a couple years ago, but I think we're starting to hit the ads-to-content noise/ratio level where people are actually seeing what the alternative looks like.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#93

Post by fluidcruft » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:35 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #72

blinkingled wrote: post #36

How long will this revolution last if content providers decide to not show content to iOS users? I mean if they exist to make money and they can't on iOS would it matter that there were hundreds of millions of them? With ad blocking it would be as if they never existed in first place. Perhaps the idea is for Apple to get the content providers to make apps so they get their cut? Perhaps it is better for the content pr…

It might not be a bad thing if it did trigger a more above-board means of both paying for content and producing content that people want to pay for. At the moment it's a clickbait race to the bottom. Also, bear in mind that we're having this discussion on an ad-free website.

HN has ads. They are rare (and mostly job postings), but they do exist.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#94

Post by Mikushi » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:36 PM UTC

Luc wrote: post #26

vilmosi wrote: post #5

The overall article is of good quality but it reeks of Apple bias I personally find distasteful. >>> User experience is what Apple puts above pretty much everything else, and they’ve decided that they don’t like it the experience available through the ad-supported web, and so they’re going to do something about it. The reason Apple does this is to push content creators away from the Web and into native apps. Apple ge…

Honestly, aren't your comments as much an example of Apple bias as what you're commenting on, but with the sign reversed?

So looking at facts is a bias now?

How about all the different ways Apple breaks the web for its own sake? Things like the HTTP Protocol are fundamentally broken by Apple, and this is not ok.

They are a despicable company, a dragon only interested in increasing its cash reserves. I do not understand the support they are getting from the developer community, they shit on them constantly, make their life difficult, and forces them to buy Apple.

This latest move is even more despicable as its pushed as positive for the user, landing them good PR, when in fact its all about levering Apple's stronghold on users to push iAds. They are a company for profit, and their history shows they don't do anything for users, they do it for them.

They should be criticized and hounded as a toxic company for the web.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#95

Post by andrepd » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:37 PM UTC

robmcm wrote: post #51

roninb wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then they still get the $100 the dev paid to publish the app in the first place.

$100 minus the reviewer salary, bandwidth, support, etc etc

At the scale they are operating, those costs are a drop in the bucket.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#96

Post by dmritard96 » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:38 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #69

dmritard96 wrote: post #60

And the Ad-network rearchetechture is probably already built. The way all of these adblockers are typically implemented is an IP/DNS Name black list where the requests to those locations are stopped short. There is a super simple solution though, those who want to leverage ads for revenue can just bundle the advertising material into the content of the page rather than including the ads via third party ajax calls. Su…

Apparently the reason they're loaded separately in the first place is fraud detection. Bundling it into the page provides no easy way of independently verifying impressions.

That makes some sense. So if I understand the logic, loading the resource (perhaps executing some js) = verified impression. Its interesting because it seems like you could come up with some sort of phone home to the original contents domain to validate the ad loaded as well. So it sounds like the real innovation here is going to be figuring out a way to validate impressions through the content sites. It doesn't seem much more difficult than going to the independent directly but can't say I have a super obvious solution in hand. With that said, I can think of at least a few ways it could be done and in fact might have some interesting incentive changes for that industry. Seems like a big opportunity.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#97

Post by collyw » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:38 PM UTC

vilmosi wrote: post #5

The overall article is of good quality but it reeks of Apple bias I personally find distasteful. >>> User experience is what Apple puts above pretty much everything else, and they’ve decided that they don’t like it the experience available through the ad-supported web, and so they’re going to do something about it. The reason Apple does this is to push content creators away from the Web and into native apps. Apple ge…

Everything that Apple releases is a "revolution" according to Apple fans. I had guessed it was going to be about Safari from the title.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#98

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:38 PM UTC

AlexMuir wrote: post #79

I completely understand why people use Adblock - it improves the user experience. Ironically hiding adverts is a just a side-effect; the improvement comes from speeding up page loads, and cutting down on cpu usage and bandwidth use. (I install Adblock for my mother to stop her seeing scams, but that's another thing entirely.) I've spent the past week optimising How a Car Works for speed (mobile is 55% of our traffic…

That's very considerate of you, thank you. I just clicked an ad on your page as a reward :).

I don't think people are really bothered that there are ads - everyone learns at some point that under current system, people need to earn money to live and websites cost money to keep them up. The problem is with a) the amount of ads, b) obnoxiousness of them, and c) that quite a lot are actually dishonest, annoying and downright malicious. It's because of those people started using ad blockers. The Internet really looks much, much better without all that crap. I'm pretty sure for most the resource use is a secondary consideration to the amount of frustration an ad-laden site can generate.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#99

Post by zodPod » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:38 PM UTC

MadcapJake wrote: post #55

zodPod wrote: post #25

>>Of course, at this point we should step back and ask “why were the adverts there in the first place?” Oh yes, because they help pay for the content. In some – well, many, almost all – cases, they pay for all of the content. Honestly? I don't give a crap. Too many places have abused it and thrown stupid crap in just so they can make money. Just like the idiots who are careless with fireworks and then states ban them…

Like the New York Times....pretty sure they're not all "bullshit media rewriters" there. Expect a LOT more "Become a member" or "Subscribe to..." websites as adblockers become more popular.

Which will likely, hopefully, just create a new media. Things like Periscope. Newer generations will ignore the big media garbage and follow citizen reporting. This is all speculation and I'm sure there are problems with it but these big companies will just be digging their own graves with bull crap like that. They already have enough trouble selling print media who's going to pay them for their content (which is 80% useless filler anyway) when they start doing that.

I do understand smaller bloggers and stuff will have a similar problem but it's people like those that will actually GET subscriptions and who I'd actually be willing to pay for their content if they didn't bombard me with bull crap when I loaded their pages.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#100

Post by smackfu » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:39 PM UTC

vilmosi wrote: post #5

The overall article is of good quality but it reeks of Apple bias I personally find distasteful. >>> User experience is what Apple puts above pretty much everything else, and they’ve decided that they don’t like it the experience available through the ad-supported web, and so they’re going to do something about it. The reason Apple does this is to push content creators away from the Web and into native apps. Apple ge…

Yes, it is not a coincidence that Apple introduced ad blockers at the same time as their own News app that doesn't allow you to block ads.