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Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

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Re: Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

#141

Post by kbenson »

BrainInAJar wrote: post #124
RyanZAG wrote: post #113

I was thinking about this further, and while it comes off as fairly irrelevant to start with, it's actually an extremely bad thing. In essence, this has set up two tiers of advertising: those we have paid for white list privileges, and those who haven't. This is heavily in Google's interests as they are the only advertiser powerful enough to get by with only text adverts - nobody else has a platform like Google searc…

The bad precedent was when Adblock introduced the concept of "acceptable ads" in the first place.

I think the bad precedent is that AdBlock didn't make this distinction in the very beginning. I believe that requiring ads to be interspersed in the presentation of the information is a right of the entity presenting the information as part of an implicit contract through your request for that information.

I believe requiring authentication, or requiring performing some prior action (such as watching/seeing an ad for some time period) are also examples of this.

I do not believe pop-under ads are subject to this. They try to force behavior (viewing of an ad) after the implicit contract is concluded (you are done consuming the media presented) through altering the state of items outside the presentation experience.

I think with the proliferation of ad blocking software, we've only allowed bad behavior to go unpunished more often by continuing to use resources that behave in irritating ways because a large portion of people get to skip the irritating behavior entirely. I think this has the dual negative consequences of not causing feedback for the behavior to reach the originator, as well as causing them to increase the behavior to capitalize more on those that are not immune to it.

Re: Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

#142

Post by md224 »

sandossu wrote: post #135
md224 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that people are upset about Google being able to pay to get their content around certain barriers, when this is essentially what Google AdWords is: a system for advertisers to pay to get their content displayed in prominent locations rather than relying on position in organic search. And yet nobody really takes it seriously as a Real Problem. Not trivializing your complaint, btw... just pointing out…

"I think we would all like to live in a world where purchasing decisions are based on reviews from people that have actually used a good or service, and I would think that the ubiquity of the web has made this kind of crowdsourced intelligence quite feasible." Would you really like all advertising to move in that direction? You should realize it's impossible to know if a person really owns and likes a product or it's…

That's a good point to raise. Two questions:

Would you agree that opinion manipulation in online reviews is already taking place?

If so, would reducing the presence of explicitly-labelled advertisements result in an increase in covert opinion manipulation?

I'm pretty sure there are already issues with regard to the trustworthiness of online reviews. But if we define the value of testimonial by impartiality, then ads are pretty worthless by default. It could be better to rely on sources that at least have the potential of impartiality. I admit this is definitely a complex issue.

I can also understand the ethical argument that it's better to allow sponsored content because otherwise companies would resort to more illegal methods. It's sort of like the drug legalization argument: companies are going to market anyway, so we might as well focus on harm reduction. But it still feels suboptimal in this case. I guess I'd prefer if we focused on preventing misinformation rather than a strategy of appeasement.

Re: Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

#144

Post by RyanZAG »

kbenson wrote: post #123
RyanZAG wrote: post #113

I was thinking about this further, and while it comes off as fairly irrelevant to start with, it's actually an extremely bad thing. In essence, this has set up two tiers of advertising: those we have paid for white list privileges, and those who haven't. This is heavily in Google's interests as they are the only advertiser powerful enough to get by with only text adverts - nobody else has a platform like Google searc…

You really equate paying a third party to reduce their negative impact on your business to paying a third party to start negatively impacting a competitor? One takes advantage of market conditions their benefit, the other changes market conditions to the detriment of the competitor.

You can just twist the words a bit then - instead of Google paying for Bing's traffic to be reduced, they could simply pay for their traffic to always be sent first. Not affecting anybody but Google then, right?

Also, sponsoring Adblock is changing the market conditions. Adblock can use the money provided by Google to make sure any non-Google ad is blocked more efficiently. They can also advertise their addon better, provide better support, etc. Google sponsoring Adblock directly affects Adblock's ability to block the adverts of other companies around the world.

To me, this is changing market conditions in the same way as my AT&T example. Google paying AT&T enough money for priority could allow AT&T to build new 'Google only' cables that Bing couldn't use. Google paying Adblock enough money to whitelist their ads could allow Adblock to grow enough to block Bing ads on a large percentage of user's browsers. Very, very similar.

Re: Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

#145

Post by bpatrianakos »

md224 wrote: post #122
RyanZAG wrote: post #113

I was thinking about this further, and while it comes off as fairly irrelevant to start with, it's actually an extremely bad thing. In essence, this has set up two tiers of advertising: those we have paid for white list privileges, and those who haven't. This is heavily in Google's interests as they are the only advertiser powerful enough to get by with only text adverts - nobody else has a platform like Google searc…

It's interesting that people are upset about Google being able to pay to get their content around certain barriers, when this is essentially what Google AdWords is: a system for advertisers to pay to get their content displayed in prominent locations rather than relying on position in organic search. And yet nobody really takes it seriously as a Real Problem. Not trivializing your complaint, btw... just pointing out…

I don't want to live in an ad-free, review-only world myself. Advertising and reviews serve two different purposes. The one gets the word out about a product or service and lets the creator point out why their audience would like it. A review's purpose is to let others know if the product or service lives up to the advertising and lets you gauge how good a fit a given product is in relation to competitors or on its own.

We need both. Advertising can be unethical at times but its no reason to do away with it all together. Reviews cAn be flawed too.

As far as AdBlock goes, I'm still uncertain of why people dislike advertising so much to begin with. Okay, they collect information about you. I understand the desire to not want to be tracked like that. But lets imagine for a moment that advertisers are collecting your information but they're not doing anything unethical with it. They're just trying to show you add that are relevant. In that situation I really don't care if I see advertisements online at all. I also think the definition of unethical comes into play here too though. For me, advertisers sharing my data with each other is something I don't see as unethical. Others I suspect do. Living the lifestyle I live, I can't think of anything advertisers could know about me that would be at all harmful. I suppose everyone's mileage may vary.

My question is, in the end, what part of online advertising is so distasteful to everyone? Is it the data collection or is it seeing the ads?

Re: Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

#146

Post by md224 »

bpatrianakos wrote: post #145
md224 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that people are upset about Google being able to pay to get their content around certain barriers, when this is essentially what Google AdWords is: a system for advertisers to pay to get their content displayed in prominent locations rather than relying on position in organic search. And yet nobody really takes it seriously as a Real Problem. Not trivializing your complaint, btw... just pointing out…

I don't want to live in an ad-free, review-only world myself. Advertising and reviews serve two different purposes. The one gets the word out about a product or service and lets the creator point out why their audience would like it. A review's purpose is to let others know if the product or service lives up to the advertising and lets you gauge how good a fit a given product is in relation to competitors or on its o…

Sincere question: do you feel that you, personally, have gained useful information from advertisements? Was it about a new kind of product or service that you didn't previously know about, or just a brand that was better than the ones you currently knew about?

Your point about product discovery is well-taken. In the case of discovery of new product types, it seems to be a valid issue. For product types that a person already has knowledge of, however, I would think it would be preferable to skip the ads and simply compare reviews. In other words, if I'm searching for a hammer, looking at ads for hammers will not give me the best information.

I do wonder if there are other ways to enable product discovery besides paid placement, but I'm not sure.

Re: Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

#147

Post by BrainInAJar »

kbenson wrote: post #141
BrainInAJar wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bad precedent was when Adblock introduced the concept of "acceptable ads" in the first place.

I think the bad precedent is that AdBlock didn't make this distinction in the very beginning. I believe that requiring ads to be interspersed in the presentation of the information is a right of the entity presenting the information as part of an implicit contract through your request for that information. I believe requiring authentication, or requiring performing some prior action (such as watching/seeing an ad for…

I believe you're wrong. There's no implicit contract, and I'm free to view or not view anything I feel like. I'm also free to refuse to use my resources (bandwidth) in the furtherance of your flawed business strategy (ads)

I'm a good citizen, in that when I'm offered the opportunity to fund resources I enjoy through means that don't involve advertising I do. Often this comes with extra benefits to entice me. That's why I pay for Reddit Gold, and Strava Premium.

If you as a business owner have decided that advertising is the only way you wish to fund your business, I'm not going to feel like I'm slighting you by refusing to participate any more than I would by muting my television and getting up to grab a snack when commercials come on.

Re: Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

#148

Post by nitrogen »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #138
nitrogen wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's #3 that is evil. Unless there's a large print disclaimer sayong "notice: ad networks pay for whitelisting" in the extension description and next to thethe acceptable ads checkbox, Adblock Plus is being deceptive. The ad networks themselves should never be paying an ad blocker for special treatment. It's either bribery by the networks, or extortion by ABP.

I feel some charge is acceptable as the ad network needs to be assessed against the whitelist criteria.

But having the ad networks (or sites hosting ads) pay a charge creates misaligned incentives.

Re: Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

#149

Post by bpatrianakos »

md224 wrote: post #146
bpatrianakos wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to live in an ad-free, review-only world myself. Advertising and reviews serve two different purposes. The one gets the word out about a product or service and lets the creator point out why their audience would like it. A review's purpose is to let others know if the product or service lives up to the advertising and lets you gauge how good a fit a given product is in relation to competitors or on its o…

Sincere question: do you feel that you, personally, have gained useful information from advertisements? Was it about a new kind of product or service that you didn't previously know about, or just a brand that was better than the ones you currently knew about? Your point about product discovery is well-taken. In the case of discovery of new product types, it seems to be a valid issue. For product types that a person…

I think that's a difficult question for most people but I can honestly say yes. Sometimes its hard to tell what exactly motivated you to buy a certain thing. My first car was a Volkswagen Jetta. The advertisements made me aware of the brand and its personality. That sounds superficial but its a real part of the appeal of a lot of products. It's hard to be zen and take your ego out of buying decisions. Sometimes it can be one of the few differentiating points of a product. For me, a car is made to drive from point A to point B. I don't care about performance or most tech specs. So to me, without the advertising there's no difference between a VW, Chevy, or Mercedes. They're all cars that'll get me where I want to go and all 3 have some model that looks nice to me. So I identified with the brand personality of VW and chose it. Reviews came into play in the one area where the ads were, to me, misleading: reliability. I heard great things about the reliability of VWs from reviews and that clinched it.

I learned about DigitalOcean from advertisements. I saw the ad, read the site, and their advertising convinced me to try them. They were much newer at the time so I didn't have anything else to go on and never heard of them before. To me, for my preferences, DO is a strong competitor to Linode but what kept me from moving my important projects to DigitalOcean was the reputation of the Linode brand. So its hard to separate the advertising from other information from other sources.

Apple's "it just works" campaign led to me getting my first Mac. I identified with the issues they brought up in the ads, switched, and found out I really did like Macs better. Now, Macs aren't without their own set of problems so when it comes to what would make me choose a Mac over a Windows PC, those intangible, marketing-speak little things is what gets me.

A lot of people try to act like they're above all that but I can't believe that. I know we all hate to think we're swayed by advertising because we want to protect our individuality. I feel like I can still be an individual even if I buy into some marketing.

Re: Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

#150

Post by nwilliams »

chc wrote: post #109
nwilliams wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are text ads on Bing and Yahoo searches invasive and annoying? The article appears to say they're still blocked by default while Google's are not.

That hardly seems relevant. The fact that they do not unblock every ad you consider not to be invasive and annoying is unsurprising. They entered into an arrangement with Google where Google agreed to meet certain standards and be vetted; Bing and Yahoo have not.

That is very relevant here.

chez17's comment implied that the whitelist applies to non-invasive and non-annoying ads, while there are a number of new qualifiers here, including a payment which you have omitted from your post.

>They entered into an arrangement with Google where Google agreed to meet certain standards and be vetted; Bing and Yahoo have not.

..and perhaps most importantly, have paid for it.

The whitelist standard is not just about non-intrusive ads as the title of the setting implies to users, it's about a payment too.

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