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Ad Nauseam

hackerfactor.com

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Re: Ad Nauseam

#21

Post by eva1984 »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #19
eva1984 wrote: post #16

Or a third way, everybody hides content behind paywall, hail the new web 3.0. Maybe not a bad thing, subscription could bring the old qualified journalism back the in the print era. If you don't think anti ad blocker is a problem, where is this article coming from? Hmmm, afraid that more websites would follow the trend so less content to read? The attitude that this is only websites and advertisers' problem is not as…

Yet the news sites demonstrate how utterly clueless they are with the amount they set their online subscriptions to. £1 a day for The Times - very nearly the cost of the actual paper. $1 daily to access Wired. Don't make me laugh. No one consumes all their news from a single source any more. If my usage pattern is anything near representative, 2-5p a day for the Times and .5p a day for Wired, based on how often I vis…

Hmmm, so you now understand advertising is not a evil business really, right?

It is effectively a way to price the information, how much should be paid for your view. Note in print days, you still pay your subscription, yet you get shit loads of ads. And you have a variety choices of publishers.

So why this is the worst model ever?

The article is laughable that it gives no solution, but asks publishers to evolve into oblivion, which I think they won't.

Some people are so pissed that publisher got anti ad blocker in place, yet claim they won't pay to their shitty articles whatsoever. But then again, if you don't read those shitty articles that much, why are you so pissed in the first place?

After all you need to pay what you consume, and ad is one way of it. It is not perfect, nor evil. Your call then.

Re: Ad Nauseam

#22

Post by jarcane »

hackerfactor wrote: post #17
zwetan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Or you could have ad networks that only circulate carefully vetted/curated ads." No, you make it simpler than that you simply forbid ads to be interactive or to contain any code eg. you do only static ads like text, image, video no code, no way to hide nasty stuff

Your proposed approach will stop direct risks to browsers, but does nothing for ads that link to web pages that are hostile. E.g., you click on an ad because you are interested in the product and get directed to a phishing site or a site offering counterfeit goods or a site that has malware and infects your browser. It's not just the graphic used by the ad, it's also the ad's destination.

So disable linking.

The clickthrough rate on internet ads is execrable. Frequently in the fractions of a percent at best.

No other advertising space operates on the assumption that linking represents.

Eliminating linking and leaving pure visual ads would be in line with every other form of advertising in existence, and eliminate the "problem" of click fraud, link-bait, and actually fraudulent links.

Do we really need a business model that exists largely to enable ad networks to defraud each other and consumers? We have advertising standards bodies that are meant to prevent this kind of thing in every other form of advertising, but somehow the internet is "special"?

Re: Ad Nauseam

#23

Post by belorn »

tempestn wrote: post #5

"I think that we need to hold the web sites accountable for the content that they display. If browsers get infected by ads at Forbes or people buy knock-off watches from ads at Yahoo, then we need people to sue Forbes and Yahoo. Remember: these web sites authorized the placement of the ad on their web page." So effectively what you're saying is that we should eliminate ad networks. There is no reasonable way to scree…

Lets look at other media and see if your conclusion is correct. Do TV networks vet, produce and handle the ad-client and ad-publisher relationship, or do they mainly interact through marketing firms? The answer: they work mainly through marketing firms. The TV network is still ultimately responsible for the content they broadcast, as dictated by law.

Do newspaper work with individual advertisers, or do they work mostly through local marketing firms? The answer is again the same as above. Buying a news ad is commonly done through a marketing firm and the news paper is always responsible for what is printed.

Very few publisher in any media deals with individual advertise clients, and yet it works. Responsibility is done through contracts, through professional liability and standards, and as last resort through business insurance. As a result, its quite uncommon to see illegal ads on physical newspapers, on TV, on busses, and on other physical objects.

Re: Ad Nauseam

#24

Post by aikah »

zwetan wrote: post #13

and again Flash is the scapegoat "By converting unsafe flash-based ads to safe HTML5 ads, they lower the risk of infection from a hostile ad." is laughable at best An Ad Network is one of the fastest way to deliver a payload to a lot of users Don't fool yourself, Operating Systems, Browsers and HTML5/JS also have a hell lot of CVE that can be exploited It's funny how a company like Google making Billions from ads, ha…

> It's funny how a company like Google making Billions from ads, having ton of smart engineers, have never figured out during the last decade how to "scan ads for malware".

Google claims they are doing just that :

https://googleblog.blogspot.fr/2016/01/better-ads-report.htm...

Now when did they start doing it is also a relevant question.

Re: Ad Nauseam

#25

Post by jug »

The publishers aren't very innocent themselves. Clickbait articles are nowadays not a dirty strategy to get ad views, but to be expected. Then you have the endemic tracking going on, the tracking that has become intertwined with viewing an ad. Being tracked and seeing an ad... it's the same thing! Nowhere else in the real world but on Internet is this to be expected. And it's a debate that is frustratingly only discussed in organizations like the EFF, never lifted to the general public.

The mafia comparison feels much more like a stretch when talking of ad blockers than when talking of the bulk of the world's news sites secretly (unless inspecting network traffic or HTML code) using a common few advertisement agencies.

I think the recent cookie laws feel pretty useless, especially since cookies aren't nasty by themselves. "Hi! This site uses cookies! Click here to learn more." It doesn't tell me anything. It doesn't imply that the site is evil nor good. However, give me a law requiring web sites to say "Hi! We are part of a tracking network where your behavior on this site will be registered." Then we're talking. Where the link doesn't lead to an explanation by the publisher, but be required to lead to a link on an external part with an easily digestible, up front explanation of what an ad tracker does and can do. I'm honestly quite fed up that this offensive behavior can keep going on behind the scenes. All people see are photos of a new car model. A normal ad that is anything but normal.

For as long as there is this World Wild West on the publishers' sides, I'm not going to change my behavior on defending myself. Because I look at this as a form of defense. It's simply like running antivirus tools on Windows. I wouldn't want a trojan horse to be downloaded that uploads my browsing behavior to some server either. The difference from what these guys are doing seems razor-thin.

Re: Ad Nauseam

#26

Post by tempestn »

belorn wrote: post #23
tempestn wrote: post #5

"I think that we need to hold the web sites accountable for the content that they display. If browsers get infected by ads at Forbes or people buy knock-off watches from ads at Yahoo, then we need people to sue Forbes and Yahoo. Remember: these web sites authorized the placement of the ad on their web page." So effectively what you're saying is that we should eliminate ad networks. There is no reasonable way to scree…

Lets look at other media and see if your conclusion is correct. Do TV networks vet, produce and handle the ad-client and ad-publisher relationship, or do they mainly interact through marketing firms? The answer: they work mainly through marketing firms. The TV network is still ultimately responsible for the content they broadcast, as dictated by law. Do newspaper work with individual advertisers, or do they work most…

Are you sure there aren't scams advertised in newspapers and on TV? The main reason you see more scams online though isn't (only) because of inferior vetting. It's mostly because online ads are much cheaper than TV, so the economics work out better for the scammers. Same reason you get more spam in your inbox than your mailbox. (And there are plenty of shady classified ads in newspapers. You probably don't see them because like most of us, you don't read newspapers.)

Now, they do also do more manual vetting, but they can afford to, because again, the ads cost more. Maybe online ads need to cost more too. It just means that some fraction of the current legitimate advertisers will no longer have sustainable business models.

Re: Ad Nauseam

#27

Post by UweSchmidt »

eva1984 wrote: post #21
anexprogrammer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet the news sites demonstrate how utterly clueless they are with the amount they set their online subscriptions to. £1 a day for The Times - very nearly the cost of the actual paper. $1 daily to access Wired. Don't make me laugh. No one consumes all their news from a single source any more. If my usage pattern is anything near representative, 2-5p a day for the Times and .5p a day for Wired, based on how often I vis…

Hmmm, so you now understand advertising is not a evil business really, right? It is effectively a way to price the information, how much should be paid for your view. Note in print days, you still pay your subscription, yet you get shit loads of ads. And you have a variety choices of publishers. So why this is the worst model ever? The article is laughable that it gives no solution, but asks publishers to evolve into…

I think anexprogrammer meant that literally: "Charge me 1-2£ per day and give me some choice where the money goes". I have paid for online content, and have considered it often for content creators that I like. You can get movies and music for a low monthly fee, why not articles? Hello business model!?

Re: Ad Nauseam

#28

Post by MarcusP »

genedickson wrote: post #20

Stop calling them ad blockers. They block surveillance features that advertisers put in their ads. I do not believe that ads would be blocked by surveillance blockers if they were just ads. Absent the surveillance, how would they recognize them? If ads were identical to the ads in analogue newspapers then surveillance blockers would let them through. When I read an analogue newspaper or magazine nobody is knowing if…

AFAIK, and what it looks like from Adblocks FAQ [1] they work by blocking particular addresses from serving content. I assume surveillance blockers do what you are describing and it sounds like a move away from ad blockers to surveillance blockers might make the web more usable and sustainable.

[1] https://adblockplus.org/faq_internal

Re: Ad Nauseam

#29

Post by marvy »

jarcane wrote: post #22
hackerfactor wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your proposed approach will stop direct risks to browsers, but does nothing for ads that link to web pages that are hostile. E.g., you click on an ad because you are interested in the product and get directed to a phishing site or a site offering counterfeit goods or a site that has malware and infects your browser. It's not just the graphic used by the ad, it's also the ad's destination.

So disable linking. The clickthrough rate on internet ads is execrable. Frequently in the fractions of a percent at best. No other advertising space operates on the assumption that linking represents. Eliminating linking and leaving pure visual ads would be in line with every other form of advertising in existence, and eliminate the "problem" of click fraud, link-bait, and actually fraudulent links. Do we really need…

So you end up with ads that say: copy/paste this URL. What have you solved?

Re: Ad Nauseam

#30

Post by bigbugbag »

tempestn wrote: post #5

"I think that we need to hold the web sites accountable for the content that they display. If browsers get infected by ads at Forbes or people buy knock-off watches from ads at Yahoo, then we need people to sue Forbes and Yahoo. Remember: these web sites authorized the placement of the ad on their web page." So effectively what you're saying is that we should eliminate ad networks. There is no reasonable way to scree…

> So effectively what you're saying is that we should eliminate ad networks. There is no reasonable way to screen every ad before it is shown when using an ad network.

Isn't that what google did when facing the need to monetize their search engine ?

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