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Adblocking: How about Nah?

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Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#331

Post by wnevets »

wybiral wrote: post #67

I don't actually want to block ads. If you want to put a small text or image blurb anywhere on the page... Good for you. I'll gladly accept those on a webpage so that the content creator can make a bit of cash. But these companies are intentionally blurring the lines between advertisement and digital surveillance. You don't need to collect everything about my operating system, browser, monitors, GPU, every click I ma…

>I don't actually want to block ads. If you want to put a small text or image blurb anywhere on the page... Good for you. I'll gladly accept those on a webpage so that the content creator can make a bit of cash.

For years I allowed google text ads because of non invasion and distracting they were. However the of amount tracking taking place forced me to also disable them.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#332

Post by Silhouette »

jefftk wrote: post #327
Silhouette wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would fraud detection work in this model? Honest but blunt answer: We (my businesses acting as advertisers) don't rely on your (Google's, or any other ad network's) claims anyway. The only thing that matters is the metrics we measure on our own sites, and we're going to be able to separate those by ad campaign anyway. We don't care about getting more Facebook likes or how many Instagram views some image gets or h…

I used to work at an advertising company that worked this way, doing lead gen. In some verticals there's nothing better, and as long as your own metrics are good you can figure out how much a traffic source is worth. If a traffic source goes bad and starts being 50% spam, no problem, your automatic system lowers its bids by 50% and you're fine. The thing is, only a very small fraction of the ads ecosystem works this…

I recognize that other advertisers may have different goals, such as for large, brand-centric advertising campaigns. I'm not an expert on those so can't offer an informed opinion on any specifics. From a casual observer's point of view, I don't see how they're any worse off than the classic "everyone is wasting half of their ad budget, they just don't know which half" of the print/broadcast era. As you say, at least with online ad networks there can be some indication of where the ads are being shown, allowing a level of independent scrutiny by the advertiser if they wish.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#333

Post by lolinder »

j_m_b wrote: post #295
wybiral wrote: post #67

I don't actually want to block ads. If you want to put a small text or image blurb anywhere on the page... Good for you. I'll gladly accept those on a webpage so that the content creator can make a bit of cash. But these companies are intentionally blurring the lines between advertisement and digital surveillance. You don't need to collect everything about my operating system, browser, monitors, GPU, every click I ma…

This sounds like such a rational comment, but it is based on the naive idea that ads can be effectively targeted simply based on content. You're never going to have ads that people are willing to pay for (i.e. a certain threshold click-through rate) without some sort of direct targeting. For example, you can't tell if your article on basic car maintenance is being read by a 30 year old male who might be interested in…

When I turned 25 I started getting nothing but hard soda ads from YouTube. I don't drink.

I went and disabled personalized advertising, and for the first time in years I started seeing ads that tempted me to click through, ads from tech companies about tech. Why the difference? Because YouTube started showing me ads related to the content I'm actually watching rather than based on their faulty neural network profile of me.

Obviously this is just one anecdote, but it's illustrative of the point: don't try to advertise either beer or iPhone covers on a car maintenance site. If I'm on a car maintenance site, you know all you need to know about where my interests are at that exact moment. Why try to hijack my attention (difficult when I'm trying to solve a car problem) when you could instead subtly redirect my attention to an ad for a local mechanic?

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#334

Post by cameronbrown »

intopieces wrote: post #316
la_barba wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "we" do you mean only people who agree with you? Or do you accept that in a democratic society there can be ads? Personally, I don't block ads on principle. I simply don't visit websites that feature blaring over the top ads or otherwise feature annoyances. When you block ads you are explicitly signalling that you are receiving something of value by visiting the website. I prefer to not send that signal.

>When you block ads you are explicitly signalling that you are receiving something of value by visiting the website. This is not the case. I have visited thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of websites in which the content was not valuable to me, and I blocked those ads, too. When I block ads, I send the signal that my attention is not for sale, and moreover, the content creators' business model is not my conce…

Except you're also blocking their analytics scripts, so you don't send any signal at all.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#335

Post by elwell »

noisy_boy wrote: post #114

I never click on ads. Never ever. I get that every ad doesn't need to be clicked e.g. videos that mindlessly show you a product. But atleast there is no direct feedback going back on those in terms of ad placement effectiveness/click-rate etc. They can keep burning their money showing ads - I just won't provide them any feedback on whether/where their money was wasted vs well spent. Also the best way to kill them is…

Click frauders will always ensure a steady stream of 'conversions'.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#336

Post by dontbenebby »

tyingq wrote: post #44
shrimp_emoji wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's crazy Steve Gibson (of all people) calls this too impractical to use. If you're a total tech-novice, sure, but as a power user it's fine. I'm blocking ycombinator.com right now. I can still submit this. If something doesn't work, just click the icon and trust its domain. If pictures don't show, trust a CDN. Amazon, Paypal, 99% of sites work with an initial adjustment of trust settings.

The percentage of sites that function without JavaScript enabled is decreasing over time. Things like React are accelerating that curve. Even for sites that could function without it, they are throwing up hands with "welp, they can't disable it anyway because other sites...so let's not test that use case anymore." I don't like it, but it is what it is. Technical people aren't going to drive the decision to work witho…

You can often enable it for the site, but block the doubleclick et al tracking scripts. It's not all or nothing.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#337

Post by dangrossman »

DoubleGlazing wrote: post #148

I'm amazed that all the interested parties haven't got together to flesh out a microtransaction standard. The whole ad-blocking debate would be moot if we could pay a few cents to read an article free of distracting ads. If you choose not to pay, you get the ads and don't get to complain about ad-blocker-blockers because you were offered an alternative. I know it has been attempted in the past with little success, bu…

> The whole ad-blocking debate would be moot if we could pay a few cents to read an article free of distracting ads.

It would not. You're worth more to the advertisers than a few cents, so even if you and everyone else chipped in, many ad-supported sites would see their revenue plummet, and close their doors. Consumers spend a lot of money buying things, from groceries to appliances, and a percentage of each of those sales goes to the ad budget to steer that buying. Unless everything in every store got a few percent cheaper, consumers literally don't have the money to distribute to the websites at anywhere near the level advertisers pay. Every single American would have to pay Facebook $15-20 per month to match the advertising revenue Facebook generates per user, not a few cents. The cost of using Google's services would be similar to a cable or cell phone bill, assuming every single person that uses them continues to and signs up for that bill.

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#338

Post by TravisLS »

Is it necessary that ad blockers be totally all-or-nothing in their approach? Pop-up blockers didn't kill all ads. They just killed pop-ups. If it's really the privacy violations that are the problem, and not the user experience of seeing a bunch of ads, why not find a middle ground?

Make an ad blocker that just dishonors cookies, clears localStorage, etc for the ad domains, rather than blocking the requests altogether. Publishers won't make as much money since advertisers won't be able to track you. But at least you could give the publishers the ability to make some money from ads served to you.

If this approach gained adoption, you might see a growth in the market for non-tracking ads (analogous to the growth in the market for non-popup ads described in the article).

Why not?

Re: Adblocking: How about Nah?

#340

Post by ShinTakuya »

amfsn wrote: post #191
bobblywobbles wrote: post #95

Firefox offers blocking you from "third-party tracking cookies" by default, so if you are concerned - make the switch. https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/06/04/firefox-now-availab...

It's simply better to go to the options of your browser and disable third-party cookies altogether. And at that point why not keep using Chrome, which is faster, heh

Chrome isn't faster anymore in my experience. FF has made great advances in performance.
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