41–50 of 334 posts
Is there a reason more sites don't do self hosted ads? Is there a general way these can be blocked as well? If the ad is coming from their own server and displayed with their own custom HTML/CSS, I can't see an obvious way these could be detected and blocked in general.
Personally, if there was an easy and private way to do so, I'd much rather pay for content than getting "free" stuff financed by ads. Inevitably, sites will be extremely reluctant to write anything negative about products from companies that buy lots of ads. For this reason, I consider many of the reviews on tech sites, for example, kinda worthless.
So, I'm glad to see this ad financed business model break down. Buying access to content with a cryptocurrency could be real easy (and relatively private). But it does not help that many governments want you to calculate capital gain/loss everytime you make such a purchase.
I think governments ought to make an exception in the capital gains tax for small personal purchases. Maybe promoters who loudly proclaim that cryptocurrencies will soon replace "legacy" government fiat currencies are part of the problem. No wonder governments are so negative. But I don't think cryptocurrencies necessarily will replace fiat currencies anytime soon. Cryptocurrencies work great for small purchases online, but I wouldn't want to put my lifesavings into one - oh no! My computer got hacked - my life savings are gone!
Edit: replacing the entire capital gains tax with a wealth tax would probably be even better.
I'm not saying ad blockers had no effect on their business, but I find it extremely hard to believe 50% of their visitors discovered and started using ad blockers in the past year.
I'm not saying ad blockers had no effect on their business, but I find it extremely hard to believe 50% of their visitors discovered and started using ad blockers in the past year.
Is there a reason more sites don't do self hosted ads? Is there a general way these can be blocked as well? If the ad is coming from their own server and displayed with their own custom HTML/CSS, I can't see an obvious way these could be detected and blocked in general.
> Is there a reason more sites don't do self hosted ads? Google Adsense (for example) is a live auction clearing house where you paste a snippet of code into your site that resolves into the highest bidder for the keywords on each page. You're done. Meanwhile, hosting your own ads entails finding advertisers, wooing them, developing a relationship with them, maintaining that relationship, negotiating a contract, sett…
That way you can get the benefits of a network + the benefits of serving from the same server that is serving the content
This is so common for the many anti-adblock texts you see these days - they all avoid to talk about the major issues here. (I say that with the background that a significant part of my income comes from ad-financed news pages.) That is: * Security risk through ads (malvertising, ad networks not supporting https etc.). * Ads killing performance (70% CPU for a flash ad is not uncommon). * Privacy (Ad vendors having mos…
Those are all valid reasons, but they are not the reason I first started to block ads: • They impose a surprisingly huge cognitive load. Even if you (like most people nowadays) are used to them and hence “do not notice them”, that very habit of ignoring them actually takes more brain power than you’d think.
This reminds me of the copyright/piracy debate. The copyright industry was screaming about lost profits , but would not change it business models. Well, it turns out, all they had to do was change their business models to something people actually wanted. Now piracy rates are falling where appropriate services are available. Patreon (and youtube community in general) have, together with projects like gog.com, humbleb…
Just charge money. Have we all forgotten how commerce worked for ~5000 years before the ad-supported model came along?
Is there a reason more sites don't do self hosted ads? Is there a general way these can be blocked as well? If the ad is coming from their own server and displayed with their own custom HTML/CSS, I can't see an obvious way these could be detected and blocked in general.
Self-hosted ads are at a competitive disadvantage, because they are not as targeted as ads that can track you over several websites.
I think we really, really need cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin. Buying access to stuff online with a credit card is totally inconvenient, and even worse, you have no privacy then. I guess this is part of the reason why sites financed by advertising have become so prevalent. Personally, if there was an easy and private way to do so, I'd much rather pay for content than getting "free" stuff financed by ads. Inevitabl…
Or just something where I could pay, say 10 Euro per year, and every website that participates gets a fraction to my number of visits or reading time.
As far as I understand, Google is trying to do this. But it does not provide a 'no ads' guarantee and there are other ad networks with even more obnoxious ads.