Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Adblock Plus announces members of independent Acceptable Ads Committee

acceptableads.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 105 posts

Re: Adblock Plus announces members of independent Acceptable Ads Committee

#81

Post by manigandham »

II2II wrote: post #53
manigandham wrote: post #31

We're one of the companies on the committee. Lots of strong emotions here, as usual with anything ad related on HN. The fact is that advertising pays for much of the internet content you consume for free. Yes, it's not ideal and the online implementation is poorly done most of the time. It's because of perverse incentives and a lack of regulation in the entire industry that force bad formats, fraudsters, malware, and…

I don't know how representative I am here, but it seems as though the listed acceptable ad criteria miss the point. The criteria focus upon the presentation of advertising. That is nice, but the reality is that users can choose to leave a site and avoid visiting it in the future if the presentation of advertising is annoying. A more important question is: how can you keep advertisers honest? Clearly labeling content…

This is the regulation I'm referring to. A global industry moving billions of dollars with very little oversight.

You can write some code, wrangle together some sites (or even make some fake ones) and start selling your inventory on the exchanges today. Nobody will stop you and there are so many vendors that you will undoubtedly get paid by some large brands who don't know where all their ads are running. It is a mess, to put it lightly.

So yes, privacy and data regulations are sorely needed but we need to start somewhere. GDPR is something we (as in our company) is watching to see how that plays out.

Re: Adblock Plus announces members of independent Acceptable Ads Committee

#82

Post by manigandham »

click170 wrote: post #46
manigandham wrote: post #31

We're one of the companies on the committee. Lots of strong emotions here, as usual with anything ad related on HN. The fact is that advertising pays for much of the internet content you consume for free. Yes, it's not ideal and the online implementation is poorly done most of the time. It's because of perverse incentives and a lack of regulation in the entire industry that force bad formats, fraudsters, malware, and…

There's something Ive been curious about, and as one of the companies on that committee I wonder what your thoughts are on this. I honestly expected advertising industry folks to recognize the adblock problem and to take meaningful action long before the prevalence of adblocking tech got to this stage of such common household use . Instead, it feels like they've doubled down on the obnoxious ads. I figured they'd rea…

Perverse incentives and lack of regulation means nobody cares.

The adtech industry isn't full of idiots, it's thousands of people like you and me. Most people know how it all works, but unfortunately these companies are currently setup to make money on data and scale by any means - not by quality. The advertisers who hold all the money could do something by only spending it on good vendors - but who's going to tell them that? The agencies who sell them the ad campaigns and have inside deals with their own vendors?

Also the most annoying ads are the ones that show the most "engagement" - precisely because they are annoying. The ad that overlays the page and gets in your face will show more impressions and more time on screen than the less intrusive versions, and so these formats continue to get more money. Same with the outstream video (the ads that open up between paragraphs). Everyone wanted video, there wasn't enough inventory to go around, so these companies just created new spots for it. Unfortunately you can't escape from watching it so their stats look great and now these companies are massive.

What about data collection? Even the FCC/FTC hasn't really done much around proper disclaimers or data rights. Europe is leading the way with GDPR but that's still waiting to play out.

This is a tough industry where doing the right thing doesnt make you much money, and so you get the results you see.

Re: Adblock Plus announces members of independent Acceptable Ads Committee

#83

Post by pharrington »

manigandham wrote: post #70
pharrington wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explain where the progress is in creating a committee that's packed with advertisers who decide which ads the ad-blocker software does or doesn't block.

The entire advertising mechanism is a balance between advertisers, the supply chain (vendors, agencies, publishers, etc) and the consumer. ABP is on behalf of the consumer, but you can't change an industry from one side. Progress comes from discussion and commitments to do something, so you need all sides at the table. Our ad network was designed from day 1 to be simple, static, fast, private and safe. It's one of th…

I agree with you completely; the balance indeed is among advertisers, the supply chain, and consumers.

I assert that balance, in this case, means all parties trying to optimize for their own best interests. This self-interested optimization, in turn, plays out in a give and take among all parties. The balance is maintained through checks and balances; the parties act as adversaries when necessary to prevent any individual party from gaining too much power or subverting the interests of another. Otherwise the system becomes unstable.

Re: Adblock Plus announces members of independent Acceptable Ads Committee

#84

Post by maxaf »

accountface wrote: post #48
maxaf wrote: post #43

I'm opposed to all advertising and marketing on ethical grounds. In my book human attention isn't for sale, and all attempts to sell my attention will be dealt with by technical means with extreme prejudice. It's true that content producers need to get paid; it's not true that human attention is an acceptable currency for which this payment must be exchanged. Find some other way. Show some fucking adaptability.

The current concept of advertising has been around for more than 200 years now... I think the "all ads have to go away forever" approach is doomed to fail.

You have a point. To be fair, I don't really care what happens to advertising at large as long as advertising is kept as far away as possible from me and mine.

Re: Adblock Plus announces members of independent Acceptable Ads Committee

#85

Post by k1m »

SEJeff wrote: post #8

And if you don't want acceptable ads, use uBlock Origin: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa... https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

My Block Ads! site https://blockads.fivefilters.org tries to detect your browser and recommend a suitable version of uBlock Origin. Links to Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Edge extensions. Intended to be an easy way to get friends and family to install for their browser.

Re: Adblock Plus announces members of independent Acceptable Ads Committee

#86

Post by sgdread »

manigandham wrote: post #74
mlmlmasd wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ISP are providing access/transit, not content. If you want to go that route, then none of the advertising companies, or companies that make money from advertising are providing the content either. There are several steps before the content comes from some person's mind to your computer, the ISP is one of those steps. > Care to explain how this is backwards progress and lifts pressure on the industry? You want me to…

Those companies are contracted and put in place by the content producers and owners to monetize their content, in exchange for giving it to you for free. Some content producers dont do this and charge you directly instead. There will not be an internet without ads. So that is not a logical or reasonable goal. The very vast majority are fine with advertising but the current situation is out of hand - so yes, working o…

Just because it's done this way at the time, it doesn't mean it's right.

To be fair, the monetization of "free" content should be done different way: utility payment model is the way to go. YouTube Red got it right, they just haven't pushed it all the way - eliminate ALL ads. Apple Music and Spotify got it right too.

As a customer, I have fixed amount of hours to spent in a day to consume content, so content providers have to compete for this time to get compensated. If you pay flat fee at ISP level, then it can distributed to content owners minus platform service fee. This way you don't stuff people with gazillions of non-relevant ads and there's natural flow to get higher quality content to attract customers to your site.

Ads are not needed to get "free" internet.

Re: Adblock Plus announces members of independent Acceptable Ads Committee

#87

Post by danbruc »

sgdread wrote: post #77
danbruc wrote: post #5

I just read the criteria for acceptable ads the first time. Not that I really expected otherwise, but all the criteria are just about non-intrusiveness and recognizability, tracking is not mentioned once on the entire site. At least for me blinking text is not the primary concern, it is being tracked on every click I make. So in my opinion acceptable ads is not even roughly heading in the right direction.

Context is the king. Ads acceptable only when their subject matches context of browsing and the user intent. And works only when done in non-interruptible manner. If you break context and/or flow, people get uncomfortable, frustrated, angry. Angry people will install ad-blockers. Some examples: - if you search for a solution on how to fix a fridge, then fridge ads are acceptable. Google does exactly that in their sea…

As long as the context is what you are watching or searching right here and right now, that seems acceptable. If the context includes what I did a few minutes ago on another site, that is in my opinion no longer acceptable. And personally I would not mind if the entire advertising industry just went out of business, I think ads are simply a bad idea.

Re: Adblock Plus announces members of independent Acceptable Ads Committee

#88

Post by manigandham »

sgdread wrote: post #86
manigandham wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those companies are contracted and put in place by the content producers and owners to monetize their content, in exchange for giving it to you for free. Some content producers dont do this and charge you directly instead. There will not be an internet without ads. So that is not a logical or reasonable goal. The very vast majority are fine with advertising but the current situation is out of hand - so yes, working o…

Just because it's done this way at the time, it doesn't mean it's right. To be fair, the monetization of "free" content should be done different way: utility payment model is the way to go. YouTube Red got it right, they just haven't pushed it all the way - eliminate ALL ads. Apple Music and Spotify got it right too. As a customer, I have fixed amount of hours to spent in a day to consume content, so content provider…

Right for who though? The important thing is to have choice as a consumer, both ads and paid or ideally a spectrum between both extremes.

Advertising is the most egalitarian method because everyone regardless of money can access the same things. This is an important issue in a world full of great wealth and power disparity.

Also what you're asking for is basically a cable bundle for the internet. It's in the works by a few companies, we'll see if it goes anywhere.

Re: Adblock Plus announces members of independent Acceptable Ads Committee

#89

Post by rustynails »

mlmlmasd wrote: post #42
manigandham wrote: post #31

We're one of the companies on the committee. Lots of strong emotions here, as usual with anything ad related on HN. The fact is that advertising pays for much of the internet content you consume for free. Yes, it's not ideal and the online implementation is poorly done most of the time. It's because of perverse incentives and a lack of regulation in the entire industry that force bad formats, fraudsters, malware, and…

> The fact is that advertising pays for much of the internet content you consume for free. I've never had free internet... which ISP do you use? > It's because of perverse incentives and a lack of regulation in the entire industry that force bad formats, fraudsters, malware, and the pursuit of data and volume to win over quality and user experience. The whole point of advertising is to trick people into buying shit t…

I run uBlock and I have nothing to do with this campaign (other than a strong dislike of multiple Conde Nast publications due to their one-sided gender prejudice on sites like Ars Technica. Conde Nast are part of the committee).

Why give flippant answers like "which ISP is free?".

I'm at a point where I have been antagonised and vilified by the MSM (because I have a penis) that I'd be willing to fund decent media that has a clean track record on being sexism free, especially if it openly goes against the current PC intolerance that has become the norm.

If the ads are decent and non-intrusive, I'd support them. However, context makes the ads meaningful and more valuable. The easiest way to do that is to track users. That is a tricky catch 22 as I don't want my web habits tracked for the sake of ads (eg. I don't Facebook). You can try to pick your articles and place selected ads for that, but, I expect the miss ratio to be much higher.

Maybe, you could specify a way to let users determine where the money goes. This may offer an incentive to reward or punish by the tick of a box.

Re: Adblock Plus announces members of independent Acceptable Ads Committee

#90

Post by manigandham »

srssays wrote: post #60
accountface wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: Do you pay for your media?

I find that the best media is created by people who have a job other than "content creation to farm eyeballs for ads". If advertising disappeared, there'd be a lot less crap on the internet.

So you've never watched a good movie or tv show or listened to good music? Millions of people work very hard fulltime on creating the best content.

Some people might produce some gems as a hobby but much of that is also crap.

Post reply on HN