Ad Nauseam • Hacker News Board

Re: Ad Nauseam

#31

Post by bigbugbag » Mon, Feb 29, 2016, 10:38 AM UTC

MarcusP wrote: post #28

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

Adblock plus is on the way out, the new kid in town is µblock origin.

The difference ? Adblock plus can be extended to block trackers by adding block lists to the default, while ublock origin has those lists activated by default. Then adblock plus let through some ads they whitelist for money and supposedly good behavior, ublock origin has no such policy for the reason that ublock is the work of an individual who wants a better online experience while adblock plus is now the product of a commercial company.

Re: Ad Nauseam

#32

Post by CM30 » Mon, Feb 29, 2016, 10:44 AM UTC

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…

Sure, they block surveillance features, and that's definitely a reason why a lot of people use them. But people would still use adblockers with traditional, static ads, because they detract from the look of the page on a visual level and use up extra bandwidth on top of that.

Re: Ad Nauseam

#33

Post by CM30 » Mon, Feb 29, 2016, 10:49 AM UTC

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…

And then the sites not set up for business reasons end up getting the lion's share of the traffic? Because for however many sites might add a paywall for pay for 'journalism', there's an equal number of sites run by people for fun/a side hobby that are willing to give it out for free.

That's always going to significantly limit paywalls online. Too much competition from hobbyists and non profits that see their goal as helping people rather than selling their work.

Re: Ad Nauseam

#34

Post by manigandham » Mon, Feb 29, 2016, 11:10 AM UTC

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…

Ad blockers dont block ads. They arent even "ad" blockers but just filters - browser extensions that block anything on a page from loading if its coming from a blacklisted domain. Whether it's ads, trackers, social widgets or just an image - it gets blocked by canceling the network request.

Surveillance is not the leading cause for adblock, it's because people don't like ads and a 1-click install to remove them is incredibly easy.

Advertising online will always have some sort of tracking because that is the benefit of advertising online - to know the real metrics of who has seen and clicked and engaged with an ad. If you're worried about real privacy issues, you should focus on Facebook/Google and government agencies.

Re: Ad Nauseam

#35

Post by bigbugbag » Mon, Feb 29, 2016, 11:14 AM UTC

jug wrote: post #25

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 discu…

It actually depends on the publisher, the french news site nextinpact[1] listen to criticism of ads, looked into the issues and made their move: ads are limited to display format, no behavioral targeting, no animation, no mixing content and ads, no tracker on client-side (tracking is on server side with a locally installed piwik).

The mafia comparison is targeting adblock plus for their "do your ads as we say, give us a 30% cut of the money you make and we may whitelist your ads (only if you're big enough as in at least 10m ad impressions)" feature[3].

[1]: http://www.nextinpact.com/blog/97835-pourquoi-next-inpact-ar... [2]: http://www.nextinpact.com/publicite-partenariat [3]: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/25/adblock-pl...

Re: Ad Nauseam

#36

Post by manigandham » Mon, Feb 29, 2016, 11:14 AM UTC

CM30 wrote: post #33

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…

And then the sites not set up for business reasons end up getting the lion's share of the traffic? Because for however many sites might add a paywall for pay for 'journalism', there's an equal number of sites run by people for fun/a side hobby that are willing to give it out for free. That's always going to significantly limit paywalls online. Too much competition from hobbyists and non profits that see their goal as…

There really isnt any competition from "hobbyists/non-profits". The top publishers on the web all produce a ton of content, none of it can be run without a big business operation which has to earn something, either through advertising or paywalls.

Re: Ad Nauseam

#37

Post by manigandham » Mon, Feb 29, 2016, 11:17 AM UTC

jug wrote: post #25

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 discu…

Advertisers run ads on the internet precisely because of the richer metrics it offers - knowing exactly who/how many saw, clicked, or otherwise engaged with an ad. This makes advertising more efficient and better for both the advertiser and you the user.

The implementation is current broken largely due to a lack of regulation and enforcement in the industry but this can easily be fixed by having better opt-out mechanisms online (3rd party cookie removal went the opposite way). This would allow you to get more generic ads if that's your wish.

Re: Ad Nauseam

#38

Post by manigandham » Mon, Feb 29, 2016, 11:19 AM UTC

tempestn wrote: post #3

"But keep in mind: not everyone is Google, not ever web site has a huge amount of traffic. With online ads, payment is usually tied to the click-through rate (CTR). The CTR is typically around 1% (actual percentage varies by web site). So if 100 people visit your web page, then 1 person will probably click on the ad, generating a fraction of a cent. If each click pays $0.001, then you need 1000 clicks to earn $1. And…

Yes, much of the info in this article seems completely made up. The cheapest clicks in the entire industry are probably around 2-3c and these are the worst of the worst. Many are far higher, probably somewhere between 20-70c and going up to $$ depending on ad quality and conversion ROI.

Re: Ad Nauseam

#39

Post by manigandham » Mon, Feb 29, 2016, 11:22 AM UTC

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.

We solve all this by having a platform that syndicates sponsored content directly to the user. They click but stay on a rendered page controlled by us. No 3rd party assets or destination to worry about.

Re: Ad Nauseam

#40

Post by manigandham » Mon, Feb 29, 2016, 11:23 AM UTC

sdrothrock wrote: post #11

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. Or you could have ad networks that only circulate carefully vetted/curated ads. Imagine if you had an ad network that was picky and only allowed ads that were clever/interesting, short, not annoying, and didn't lead to malicious/fake products!

Our ad network does this. It works. The problem is that the larger global ad industry doesn't have much regulation or enforcement so it's very easy to run scams and nobody gets in trouble for it. The infrastructure players don't care since they make money on volume, not quality.

Basic incentives - until they're fixed nothing will change.