The adblocking revolution is months away • Hacker News Board

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#211

Post by cousin_it » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 3:36 PM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #193

MadcapJake wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

With all my respect to quality media like NYT, I don't want a full-scale subscription. What I'd like is paying a few cents for a specific article in a hassle-free way. Micropayments are hard because of the transaction costs, but this seems to slowly change (see e.g. flattr). I wish more sites offered a per-view zero-setup one-click micropayment solution. What's more interesting is what Google will do if their ads rev…

I don't think micropayments are the future. Flattr has been around since 2010 and I don't think even a single person has made a living wage from it.

The main problem when charging for content is justifying to the user why the price is "fair" before they've actually seen the content. If you can get around that problem, e.g. by using teasers or word of mouth to instill a need, then you can get away with charging much more than a few cents. And if you can't, very few people will be wililng to pay even one cent, because of the huge perceptual gap between zero and one cent.

This model works best for huge chunks of content like books, movies or video games, where you can create compelling teasers that don't give away the whole experience. It's much harder for stuff like music or NYT articles, where the consumable chunks of content are small and teasers don't make much sense. I don't know any good answer for those.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#212

Post by WorldWideWayne » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 3:36 PM UTC

smackfu wrote: post #100

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.

It's a revolution though! Apple finally enabled users of their gimped mobile OS to do something that they've been able to do for 20 years on desktop computers.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#213

Post by interpol_p » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 3:37 PM UTC

roninb wrote: post #66

Luc wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$100 per year and per company, for unlimited Mac, iOS and Apple Watch apps.

Sorry wasn't saying it was anywhere near as much as a cut of ad revenue. Just that they are still getting something from you as a developer.

They give you value for your $100.

You get two technical support incidents per year: an Apple engineer will assist with code issues. They handle all necessary tax withholding in countries which require it. This is something you had to do yourself with Google Play (unsure if this is still the case). You also get access to CloudKit and various other Apple-hosted services which can be used within your apps.

I don't doubt that they make a profit on your developer enrolment fee, but it's almost nothing in the scheme of things, and you are actually paying for something.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#214

Post by unprepare » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 3:38 PM UTC

kuni-toko-tachi wrote: post #84

"People are getting p*ssed off with the huge data loads pages impose without their consent" This is an absurd statement. Users know that many sites are ad-supported. Whether they like it or not is independent of that, but consent is given by visiting them. Complaining that sites need ad revenue to support their operations is childish. The fair solution is not ad-blocking tools, but a general browser settings that say…

>Doing an end-run around ads is no different that sneaking into the backdoor of a venue without buying a ticket.

This is a curious statement.

Tickets are sold in limited quantities

Venues have limited available space

Those alone make the comparison completely moot.

A better comparison would be:

If I video tape (download) a tv show (website), and then watch it by fast-forwarding through commercials (ad-blocking) - have i done something akin to sneaking into a concert? Have i stolen something? I've certainly kept the content creators from gaining an additional ad impression, which is how they make money. What exactly was wrong here?

In what way is adblocking any different from using a DVR to skip commercials?

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#215

Post by orf » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 3:39 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…

Try CloudFlare? That should get the page weight down a bit while costing you nothing.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#216

Post by smsm42 » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 3:40 PM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #85

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…

Yup. If everyone starts blocking all ads, I hope you like native ads that look and feel just like content.

That would probably get some regulators' attention pretty soon. And would create some serious reputation problems for those who have it - it's one thing reading WaPo article, another reading WaPo article where each paragraph could be an ad insert instead.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#217

Post by interpol_p » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 3:42 PM UTC

Mahn wrote: post #112

zubspace wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I would love to see is putting this whole advertising market into the hands of the webmasters. A system installed on the webserver, where the webmaster offers ad-space which can be bought directly by the advertiser. Ads will be hosted from the same url as the page. I believe, this could be a win-win situation for the website owner and the advertiser. - More revenue for websites - Better adds, because webmasters…

Except this wouldn't work well when you are an advertiser looking to advertise on hundreds of medium size sites simultaneously. That's one of the reasons middlemen like ad networks exist in the first place, so that you don't have to contact, negotiate and set up advertising with every single site individually.

You could still make the attempt to advertise on hundreds of sites simultaneously, it would just require the authors of those sites to approve your content and deem it suitable for their readers.

This is something that should be in your interest as an advertiser too, because if an author thinks your ad won't do well with her readers, then you are wasting your money by targeting them.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#218

Post by saiya-jin » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 3:43 PM UTC

ska wrote: post #180

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would venture to say that the relentless push to move as much as possible to the client has much more impact on battery life than the handful of ads we typically see.

What do you base this on? Every measurement (not many) I've seen suggest that screen (size/resolution) and network are the main culprits, outside of very intense CPU/GPU client (e.g. games). I don't think I've seen a really good analysis, though, so would be interested if you've got a reference.

number one killer of my battery with last 2 phones? Wifi enabled. Doesn't matter that much if actually used. Turn it off completely, phone lasts 2-3x more.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#219

Post by eevilspock » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 3:43 PM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #13

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…

That's too simple. Apple (and others) have relentlessly tried to optimize power saving. People like phones with a good battery time, plus I assume that there can be significant cost saving if you can use smaller capacity batteries. They have probably come to a point where a significant amount of power use during mobile browsing is caused by ads (both rendering and the extra network use that it incurs). Blocking ads c…

Another HN front page story compares Power usage of the worlds most popular websites calculated on different browsers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9974615

While the article isn't about mobile versions of these browsers, it speaks both to the importance of this issue as well adds to the debate about whether "User experience is what Apple puts above pretty much everything else."

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#220

Post by JoeAltmaier » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 3:44 PM UTC

unprepare wrote: post #214

kuni-toko-tachi wrote: post #84

"People are getting p*ssed off with the huge data loads pages impose without their consent" This is an absurd statement. Users know that many sites are ad-supported. Whether they like it or not is independent of that, but consent is given by visiting them. Complaining that sites need ad revenue to support their operations is childish. The fair solution is not ad-blocking tools, but a general browser settings that say…

>Doing an end-run around ads is no different that sneaking into the backdoor of a venue without buying a ticket. This is a curious statement. Tickets are sold in limited quantities Venues have limited available space Those alone make the comparison completely moot. A better comparison would be: If I video tape (download) a tv show (website), and then watch it by fast-forwarding through commercials (ad-blocking) - hav…

I find it very curious indeed. In my browser on my hardware in my home, the marketing types are insisting that I MUST watch their ads or I am cheating.

This is of course a natural impulse, for them. They put a lot of effort into creating manipulative words and images, and there I go ignoring them. Must be frustrating. But to claim I'm in the wrong is a species of hubris I don't subscribe to.

When I buy the sunday newspaper, I dump the wad of ads in the trash before I leave the convenience store. Nobody jumps out of the bushes and claims I'm stealing.

In fact I make an effort to ignore ads all day long, whether its ignoring billboards, posters, spam email etc. None of that is 'stealing'.

I sympathize with folks who see their livelihood disappearing as the Internet evolves. But blamethrowing isn't going to move us forward. They'll just have to come up with something new.