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VPAID ads destroy performance and are still served by major ad networks

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Re: VPAID ads destroy performance and are still served by major ad networks

#381

Post by dave2000 »

dredmorbius wrote: post #360
dave2000 wrote: post #145

I block ads so perhaps one of the many "we owe it to site owners to not block ads" types can explain an alternative solution which doesn't involve me paying for stuff I don't want and which both slows my devices and drains their batteries.

Universal content syndication / income-indexed broadband (or total content) tax. $100/year will cover all Internet ads. $500/year will cover all advertising. Period. That's money you're already paying. Oh, and that's Europe, North America, Japan, and Australia, pretty much. The rest of the world gets awesome content for no charge.

I'm already paying that? I would never opt into advertising like that were it available. Most of the sites on the internet can just die for all I care. I'd still do online banking, buy stuff from amazon, read news on the BBC's sites. I don't mind paying individual sites if they ever wake up and offer that possibility but i'm not holding my breath. But as long as the choice is "streaming video/running javascript/annoying popups/privacy violation" vs that site going away, well...bye bye.

Re: VPAID ads destroy performance and are still served by major ad networks

#382

Post by ojii »

tlrobinson wrote: post #238

One of the ad blocker blockers I came across had the balls to suggest blocking ads could negatively affect the performance of the site. I laughed, then dropped into the DOM inspector to remove the blocker overlay element.

Probably bloomberg? They have this hilarious ad-blocker blocker popup:

  We noticed that you're using an ad blocker, 
  which may adversely affect the performance 
  and content on Bloomberg.com. For the 
  best experience, please whitelist the site.
No bloomberg, the ad-blocker positively affects the performance and content on your site. For the best experience, make sure your adblocker blacklist is up to date.

Re: VPAID ads destroy performance and are still served by major ad networks

#383

Post by phamilton »

lpgauth wrote: post #324
phamilton wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's mostly true. The player decides how long to allow the ads to play. It's very possible to put multiple ads in a single VPAID unit.

Sure, but the player will decide how many ads to play.

That's my point. The player will decide how many VPAID units to play. The VPAID unit can show multiple ads and essentially lie to the player saying it's a single ad. This happens, and is actually on the mild end of abuse.

Re: VPAID ads destroy performance and are still served by major ad networks

#384

Post by mercer »

lostlogin wrote: post #342
mercer wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've spent months working on the video players for all the brands for one of the largest media companies in the world. I did plenty unpleasant work for them, like building a clean redesign, agonizing over page load speeds, and then filling up the page with multi-megabyte tracking tools and every possible ad under sun (which would not only ruin the design, but often inexplicably and randomly break the page because of…

I always feel like people are brave to admit they do this sort of work, and I have less of this feeling reading about much older professions. However it's very interesting and the stories are often both amusing and horrifying whatever my overriding view.

I'm not entirely sure what you're saying (or implying), but I'm curious. Could you elaborate?

Re: VPAID ads destroy performance and are still served by major ad networks

#385

Post by lostlogin »

mercer wrote: post #384
lostlogin wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always feel like people are brave to admit they do this sort of work, and I have less of this feeling reading about much older professions. However it's very interesting and the stories are often both amusing and horrifying whatever my overriding view.

I'm not entirely sure what you're saying (or implying), but I'm curious. Could you elaborate?

I perceive the industry to be a waste of very talented people's time and skill sets. The brains doing this stuff could solve some huge problems yet they are just working on ways of serving up more adverts in more distracting ways. Somewhat in conflict with this view of mine is my interest in the stories that come out of the industry and the clever ways hard problems are solved.

Re: VPAID ads destroy performance and are still served by major ad networks

#386

Post by Dylan16807 »

DanBC wrote: post #12
matthewmacleod wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also had paid content, which is absolutely taboo and vilified today Is this the case? I've seen absolutely tonnes of blatantly paid-for content across the web, and if anything there seems to be much more than there ever was.

I'm not sure vilified is the right word, but the FTC in the US and the ASA in the UK have both said that paid-for content needs to be marked as such. The ASA rules are pretty tight. The user has to know something is paid for content before clicking. So a YouTuber putting out a sponsored video needs to include something in the title of the video, and the link, saying "sponsored content". A banner at the start of the v…

Be wary of terms such as “sponsorship” and “in association with”

The ASA is generally likely to consider terms such as “sponsored content” as referring to a traditional sponsorship relationship, where material has been financially sponsored but over which the creator retains editorial control. Sponsorship of this kind is not covered by the CAP Code.

Using such terms to describe an ad feature is unlikely to be acceptable. Following an ASA challenge, the ASA ruled against an ad that was included in a “sponsored section” of a website and labelled as “in association with”, considering that the labels in themselves did not make clear the commercial nature of the content

Re: VPAID ads destroy performance and are still served by major ad networks

#387

Post by Dylan16807 »

ojosilva wrote: post #164
Faint wrote: post #158

This whole thing would actually be technically quite easy to solve: just introduce new attribute to iframe, say f.ex. you could have traffic-limit="10MB", and request-limit="5". Browser would block the iframe and anything that runs in it cold, if it exceeds limits. In an ad-auction one would sell the ad space with the knowledge of those limits. Publisher would have perfect control on how heavy ads they allow on their…

Wouldn't it be easy to just... var iframe = document.createElement('iframe'); iframe.src = '(ad url here)'; document.body.appendChild(iframe); For every new ad?

Sure, and since that code runs inside the frame because you're not crazy enough to let it out of its box, the new nested frame shares the same budget. No problem.

Re: VPAID ads destroy performance and are still served by major ad networks

#388

Post by dhimes »

dsl wrote: post #376
dhimes wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Is the story online? Do you want to share?

Sales people sign up publishers, I make the determination they are fraudulent, VP of Sales overrides my decisions, I leave company, advertisers demand refunds of dollars already paid out to publishers, rinse, repeat.

Hmmm. ok. Service trumps network then, for sure.

Re: VPAID ads destroy performance and are still served by major ad networks

#389

Post by CannisterFlux »

sleepychu wrote: post #130
CannisterFlux wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mark everything I buy on Amazon as a gift. This seems to stop the silly recommendation behaviour, and also stops Amazon emailing you asking for reviews or to provide answers to other customers' questions.

Neat tip, thanks. Have you found a way to disable browsing history cross-device? They seem to switch it back on for no reason.

No, sorry. I tend to only browse logged-in from one device.

Re: VPAID ads destroy performance and are still served by major ad networks

#390

Post by chris_wot »

idlewords wrote: post #316
manigandham wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adblockers are just software and there are already dozens of ways to work around this. It's not the end of the world but a new paradigm that requires more work than before. Part of the benefit is that it's a reset in the industry that should get rid of some of the bad vendors and help improve the experience by showing advertisers that consumers do care about UX and choice. Advertising will always be around though. No…

How is digital advertising 'better than ever' when everyone seems to agree that the situation is untenable? I admire your optimism that putting consumers and advertisers in a directly adversarial relationship (by forcing them into an arms race around blocking) will somehow make everything great, but I have a hard time sharing it.

Digital advertising is genuinely not good for anyone. I now work at a major media organization and the other day I was forced to install uBlock Origin on their news desk because they were viewing their own paper's online edition and doing digital story editing, and the ads were preventing the stories from being written because they were crashing their preferred browser.

I told the lady she'd better not tell anyone if she wanted to get her work done and allow stories to be published on the same website that serves those same ads.

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