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The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

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Re: The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

#221

Post by imgabe »

icebraining wrote: post #216
imgabe wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. And addressing issues like poverty is one of the many better things we could be doing than trying to figure out how Buzzfeed can get paid to tell us about 35 Things Only Parapalegic Law School Students from Cincinatti Will Understand.

Even if the personal targeting in bad_user's post is uncalled for, the point is still valid: right now, ads serve as a redistribution mechanism, and pretending that Buzzfeed and the likes are the only sites that will be blocked to the lower classes in a paywall-laden web is just demagogy. In fact, Buzzfeed will probably still be available to the general public, since they already engage in "native advertising", where…

I agree there is value in making useful information available to people who can't afford it. I don't think advertising is the only way or even the best way to make this happen. We used to consider this such a valuable endeavor that we had whole institutions dedicated to making information available for free, without ads. They were called "libraries".

Re: The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

#222

Post by icebraining »

userbinator wrote: post #101
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate ads for all the reasons you cite and because some are hugely distracting. But small websites are not in a position to change the state of affairs, and if nothing changes and people keep blocking their ads, they're going to be dying in large numbers. As a result, everything will be locked into app stores with even less privacy and with many restrictions on the type of content that is allowed. The sort of answer…

Actually, there are many "small websites" which are completely adless and will continue to remain, because the group or individual (usually the latter) is paying for their hosting. Some are hosted on the ISPs of their owners. I've spent many hours on these sites and they also tend to have the most esoteric and interesting content. Unfortunately they do seem to be disappearing from Google's search results , which is a…

Yes, there are (I run one), but how are they relevant to this discussion?

Re: The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

#223

Post by DanBlake »

greggman wrote: post #140
junto wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sites need to consider going back to the pre-Double-Click world, where they self hosted and self managed ads. I'd accept that without issue. I don't mind ads, I just can't accept the intrusive tracking, including being retargeted.

I don't think that's what will happen. Ad firms will come up with a server side API you plug into your website so ads can come through your site. You've just made the security problem worse not better as coming from the same site they are allowed to read everything that site does vs coming from iframes from different domains in which case they are allowed to read nothing.

The main reason this has not happened is that it requires the ad networks to trust the publisher on things like visits/impressions/clicks.

If your server has the ability to say "Hey, Jane doe saw your ad just now" when she didnt, thats a recipe for massive fraud.

You might say CPC would work and then just send to unique urls the ad network can track- This too wont work, as it allows the publisher to do things like auto-pop the link, hide it in 1x1 iframes, etc.. Overall its a security and fraud nightmare that involves huge cat-and-mouse games.

Not to mention the fact that the ad networks have no incentive to change. As more inventory drys up, the spends go up with them (competition increases) - Supply and demand, mostly.

Re: The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

#224

Post by jensen123 »

mindslight wrote: post #81
jensen123 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin stores every single transaction that ever happens in a public ledger. Ok, I admit I'm not a Bitcoin expert. But if I buy Bitcoin with cash, or mine some myself, is this really a problem?

Yes, because in the best case you're still creating a single pseudononymous profile and one identity-tied transaction will deanonymize the whole thing. Even without that, enough usage activity means a shadow profile can be inferred that is effectively tracking you, just without a specific name. FINCEN has been developing this type of technology for decades. And this is magnified when you're talking about essentially…

Interesting. Apparently, there is much I don't know. I wasn't necessarily thinking about micro transactions, though. It would be nice to for example buy a 1 year full access to a site like Guru3D easily and anonomously. But yeah, I guess the profiling you mention is still a problem.

Re: The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

#225

Post by icebraining »

analog31 wrote: post #85
Jweb_Guru wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This strikes me as pretty similar to the usual "record labels are evil" defense for pirating music, in that it's a rationalization for something people were going to do anyway. While your points are true ones, they're not the reasons most people are using ad blockers (for instance, I am quite confident that most people have no idea about the security risks involved in simply loading an advertisement).

That's true in a sense for me. I originally installed an ad blocker because I'm annoyed by the ads, and by the bandwidth that they were consuming. I wasn't even aware of the security and privacy issues at first. When I became aware of those issues, I installed additional blocking software even though I was already not seeing any ads. In my defense, content blocking has been around since time immoral. The first browse…

* time immemorial

Re: The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

#226

Post by jhall1468 »

lazyjones wrote: post #219
jhall1468 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's good for the majority of publishers if they accept it as their preferred solution as you wrote. Unless you think they ought to be driven by other motives than making sound business decisions - like cruelty or whatever you were trying to insinuate with your slanted rhetoric. Perhaps my rhetoric is slanted, but yours is fully bent. When only one solution eventually exists, it doesn't make it the preferred soluti…

> When only one solution eventually exists, it doesn't make it the preferred solution, it makes it the nuclear option. [...] I'm suggesting that advertising-supported businesses are eventually going to have one remaining option. That isn't slanted rhetoric. That's common sense. Unless of course we come up with a completely new way for content creators to earn a living with their content outside of charging for it, or…

> Why would it become the only option when other forms keep popping up? Even with very hypothetical 100% penetration of (unblockable) ad blockers, this won't be the case.

Name me one other form of a successful website that does not use one of the following methods of monetization:

ads, donations, currency-exchange or none (free)

Because none of those are recent.

> You must have missed the NY times, the largest german newspaper (BILD) and other large publications switching to paywalls then. Perhaps look around some more before beating dead horses here... Also, your inflammatory language hurts your cause.

Because I'm not talking about organizations that already have millions of customers as a base. They are going to survive regardless of the ad-blocking penetration. Just like Google and Facebook will. What won't survive is anything that isn't enormous.

And you started the inflammatory nonsense by putting words into my mouth.

Re: The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

#227

Post by dmethvin »

bad_user wrote: post #181
imgabe wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most content is worthless. Content that has actual monetary value to someone, market research data for instance, has no trouble finding people willing to pay for it. The fact is most "news" and other article type sites do not serve a purpose other than satisfying some idle curiosity or passing time. Very little of it has a material impact on anyone's day to day life. The purpose can easily be filled by some alternate…

You are probably a middle-class caucasian male from a western country. I can make that assumption because this willingness to pay that you're talking about cannot be a reality for the poor or for citizens of underdeveloped countries, or in other words ... the majority.

...and this is the unspoken truth of advertising. There is no reason for advertisers to reach that majority who cannot or will not pay for whatever is being advertised. However the publishers resent ad blockers because they reduce the pool and that's a bad thing in a world where cost-per-impression is common, or even cost-per-click where inadvertent clicks can make money.

At the bottom of it all though, there need to be enough people who actually do follow through on the call to action in order for the ads to be profitable. In casino parlance these are the "whales" who make all the freeloaders at the buffet worthwhile. In the 1990s the "whales" of the Internet were AOL users, they had that sweet combination of impulsive action and disposable income that advertisers love. I don't know who their target market is today, but it's not me.

Re: The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

#229

Post by icebraining »

JDDunn9 wrote: post #127
sologoub wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are describing is a world where only big, well financed, or well known entities can survive. In order to keep the amazing internet we actually have, we need to come up with a model that can be used by small upstarts to either serve smaller markets or to give them time to figure things out and become large over time. Requiring people to publish things for free will only result in the most extreme of views. Lo…

The world where only the big players can win is the one we live in now. It's difficult for a small player to be heard when Buzzfeed-type click-bate headlines dominate the landscape. Switch it around, who would pay for access to Buzzfeed? On the other hand, I would pay for an expert's opinion on a topic I'm passionate about. You only need 1,000 people paying $10 a month to make a good living. To get $120k from ads, yo…

But Buzzfeed et all will survive, since their content is already ads itself (see "native advertising").

And $10/month is a tremendous amount. Follow 10 sites and you've spent 1/10 of the average wage in my European country, and more than 1/6 of the minimum wage. It'll only lead to a balkanization of the web, with good sites pricing for wealthy American and northern European visitors, and everyone else being left out.

Re: The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

#230

Post by icebraining »

imgabe wrote: post #221
icebraining wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the personal targeting in bad_user's post is uncalled for, the point is still valid: right now, ads serve as a redistribution mechanism, and pretending that Buzzfeed and the likes are the only sites that will be blocked to the lower classes in a paywall-laden web is just demagogy. In fact, Buzzfeed will probably still be available to the general public, since they already engage in "native advertising", where…

I agree there is value in making useful information available to people who can't afford it. I don't think advertising is the only way or even the best way to make this happen. We used to consider this such a valuable endeavor that we had whole institutions dedicated to making information available for free, without ads. They were called "libraries".

I also agree that ads aren't the only or best way to make it happen. But they are the existing way. It's well known what tends to happen when structures are eliminated with promises of better tomorrows.
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