Correlation behind adblock growth surge and AdSense revenue doldrums • Hacker News Board

Re: Correlation behind adblock growth surge and AdSense revenue doldrums

#51

Post by thaumaturgy » Fri, Jul 11, 2014, 2:08 PM UTC

furyg3 wrote: post #24

thaumaturgy wrote: post #18

I predicted a showdown between users and advertisers back around 2010, and every year since, I've been surprised it hasn't happened yet. Malicious advertising is probably the biggest driver of AdBlock Plus growth. Anecdotally, we just had another customer get hit by a remote computer service scam because she searched for something like "canon ink technical support", and an ad was listed at the top with an 800 number…

This this this. There are some huge players in the online advertising world who are supposed pillars of innovation and sustainability, but they have really failed at keeping sketchy, scammy, or downright malicious advertisers away. Inaction here will kill their industry. Google ads look like results and link to sites with malicious software downloads. iOS apps are full of "you have one unread message!" misinformation…

> Inaction here will kill their industry.

That's the part I'm less certain about. I would've expected it to happen already; they're hurting themselves, but so far not fatally.

Re: Correlation behind adblock growth surge and AdSense revenue doldrums

#52

Post by Ricapar » Fri, Jul 11, 2014, 2:11 PM UTC

seanblanchfield wrote: post #44

coldpie wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested to see how the web business model changes in the next decade. I think it's likely that web advertising is a dead end. There's been a number of articles about how Facebook advertising is a waste of money, ad impressions are down in general, and like this article describes, Adblock is really taking off. I think, and desperately hope, that we're going to see more voluntary subscription type services like…

I used to block ads before we noticed that 30% of our website revenue was lost to adblocking. We realised that people weren't intentionally blocking ads on our site, but probably due to some bad advertising that pushed them over the edge somewhere else on the internet. There was nothing we could do, so started a new business (PageFair). In your post, you are correctly angry at advertisers. But adblocking doesn't puni…

> I used to block ads before we noticed that 30% of our website revenue was lost to adblocking.

I'm curious how you came at that number.

I'm inclined to believe that at least some of the population that does click on and interact with advertising is part of a very different group than that would install AdBlock.

I find myself in the latter - I run AdBlock, but even if I didn't, I wouldn't be clicking on ads anyways. Am I part of that 30% lost revenue?

Re: Correlation behind adblock growth surge and AdSense revenue doldrums

#53

Post by slipstream- » Fri, Jul 11, 2014, 2:12 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #15

seanblanchfield wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We think (@pagefair) it's clear that adblock is being promoted just fine by word of mouth. It's the ad industry that's got to change somehow. We're trying to be part of that. What's shocking to us is how the ad industry mostly doesn't even recognise how fast adblock is growing. To them, it just looks like more people have switched off their PCs, because they just can't see that segment of the audience anymore. Theref…

I'm interested to see how the web business model changes in the next decade. I think it's likely that web advertising is a dead end. There's been a number of articles about how Facebook advertising is a waste of money, ad impressions are down in general, and like this article describes, Adblock is really taking off. I think, and desperately hope, that we're going to see more voluntary subscription type services like…

I installed adblock when i finally got fed up of 30 second-1 minute unskippable ads on 1-3 minute youtube videos.

Of course, the killing of malvertising/download-software-with-adware etc ads is another good thing.

In my opinion, if there was an easy link to report an ad directly on the search results, I'd pause adblock to search for various terms and report the fake support/adware laden download links/etc ads.

But as it is, I think tipping is the future. But maybe that's just my connections to the Dogecoin community coming through.

Re: Correlation behind adblock growth surge and AdSense revenue doldrums

#54

Post by ehurrell » Fri, Jul 11, 2014, 2:13 PM UTC

seanblanchfield wrote: post #47

leephillips wrote: post #16

In your graph captioned "Observed Desktop Adblocking Rate vs Predicted Rate", where does the curve for predicted rate come from? It's not explained in the text. You do not show how much of the decline in ad revenue is caused by adoption of adblock, or even whether the amount of decline attributable to adblock is significant or measurable. You merely point out that revenue has declined and that adblock adoption has in…

Fair points. We need to provide the source data and a full explanation. We're going to publish a detailed report in August with everything in it. To answer one of your questions, the predicted desktop rate is based on an assumption that adblock adoption is driven by word of mouth (we have a basis for this assumption), and a compound growth rate is fitted to raw adblock rate data. It's hard to combine the google trend…

Sounds reasonable, I look forward to seeing the full details in August to get the full picture, but those assumptions seem fair.

Re: Correlation behind adblock growth surge and AdSense revenue doldrums

#55

Post by cliveowen » Fri, Jul 11, 2014, 2:15 PM UTC

thaumaturgy wrote: post #18

I predicted a showdown between users and advertisers back around 2010, and every year since, I've been surprised it hasn't happened yet. Malicious advertising is probably the biggest driver of AdBlock Plus growth. Anecdotally, we just had another customer get hit by a remote computer service scam because she searched for something like "canon ink technical support", and an ad was listed at the top with an 800 number…

I always wondered how much advertising, in any shape or form, works. I know for a fact that advertising didn't convince me to buy anything this far.

Re: Correlation behind adblock growth surge and AdSense revenue doldrums

#56

Post by SteveGerencser » Fri, Jul 11, 2014, 2:20 PM UTC

cliveowen wrote: post #55

thaumaturgy wrote: post #18

I predicted a showdown between users and advertisers back around 2010, and every year since, I've been surprised it hasn't happened yet. Malicious advertising is probably the biggest driver of AdBlock Plus growth. Anecdotally, we just had another customer get hit by a remote computer service scam because she searched for something like "canon ink technical support", and an ad was listed at the top with an 800 number…

I always wondered how much advertising, in any shape or form, works. I know for a fact that advertising didn't convince me to buy anything this far.

While advertising may not have convinced you to buy anything, which is doubtful that it hasn't has some influence, there are millions of people that are influenced by advertising. This is why it's done.

What is sad is that obvious marketing attempts work so well. One weird trick ads really do work. I was as surprised as anyone when we started running these for a client assuming that they would fail and we could stop. Sales nearly doubled for that ad group.

It's hard to blame the marketers for the dumbed down advertising when it works so well.

Re: Correlation behind adblock growth surge and AdSense revenue doldrums

#57

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 11, 2014, 2:24 PM UTC

seanblanchfield wrote: post #47

leephillips wrote: post #16

In your graph captioned "Observed Desktop Adblocking Rate vs Predicted Rate", where does the curve for predicted rate come from? It's not explained in the text. You do not show how much of the decline in ad revenue is caused by adoption of adblock, or even whether the amount of decline attributable to adblock is significant or measurable. You merely point out that revenue has declined and that adblock adoption has in…

Fair points. We need to provide the source data and a full explanation. We're going to publish a detailed report in August with everything in it. To answer one of your questions, the predicted desktop rate is based on an assumption that adblock adoption is driven by word of mouth (we have a basis for this assumption), and a compound growth rate is fitted to raw adblock rate data. It's hard to combine the google trend…

[deleted]

Re: Correlation behind adblock growth surge and AdSense revenue doldrums

#58

Post by jpmattia » Fri, Jul 11, 2014, 2:35 PM UTC

The article seems to imply that by cleaning up scammy/spammy advertising, that users will dispense with Adblock.

I disagree: I think it is more a case of uneducated users not knowing that Adblock was out there. Now that the cat is out of the bag, no amount of cleanup is going to make them decide that they want to view an ad-infested web, no matter what the quality of the ads. They will simply leave adblockers on. Moreover, network effects are present, so the knowledge of adblock will continue to propagate.

Re: Correlation behind adblock growth surge and AdSense revenue doldrums

#59

Post by jonknee » Fri, Jul 11, 2014, 2:51 PM UTC

I've been an AdSense publisher for over a decade. Since AdSense primarily pays you by the click (there are some CPM based ads, but it's a fairly small number), users who have AdBlock don't usually end up costing you much because they're very unlikely to have clicked on the ads in the first place. Mobile is a big deal though. A huge deal. You can bring up the reports quite easily, the eCPMs for mobile is way less than for desktop while mobile traffic is ballooning month over month.

Interestingly, all this new mobile traffic means less users have AdBlock (but the traffic is still worth less so it averages out against the publisher's favor).

Re: Correlation behind adblock growth surge and AdSense revenue doldrums

#60

Post by jonknee » Fri, Jul 11, 2014, 2:56 PM UTC

hiphopyo wrote: post #33

a2tech wrote: post #17

Google needs to start cleaning up their ad inventory NOW or they're going to lose the whole business to adblocking. If you'd like to see how toxic Google ads are simply do a google search for 'skype' on a fresh Windows machine without Adblock enabled. Now look at the ads-what are they for? Virus laden websites/fake installers. This is for a major keyword-why is Google allowing their ad pool to be poisoned by such bad…

They also need to stop toying around with amateur designs at the expense of the whole AdSense programme: http://adsense.blogspot.se/2014/05/a-new-look-for-text-ads-o... I've seen the past works of the designers on the AdSense team and I'm not impressed. Plus it's quite naive to think that one design will fit all websites. Why can't AdSense, like other ad and affiliate networks, just open up an API so publishers thems…

Why do you say amateur designs? Google knows what converts, I would wager that their designs are the antithesis of amateur. You may not find them pretty, but those are different things. AdSense does let you specify all sorts of things about the look of the text ads though (font, colors, etc). They also have a tool for you to automate A/B testing of different combinations.