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Study of Ad-Blocking Software Suggests Wide Use
- jug5 11y agoSurely no conflict of interest... "... according to the report, put together by Adobe and PageFair, a Dublin-based start-up that helps companies and advertisers recoup some of this lost revenue."
- applecore 11y agoThis article makes an important point: ad-blocking is not just a means to remove annoying (and often disgusting) advertisements; it's also to prevent data being collected about you without any consent or oversight.
- iwwr 11y agoI'm not sure how successful it is in that regard. Just browser fingerprinting is enough to track most people; cookies and third party connections are not essential. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Fingerprinting https://wiki.mozilla.org/Fingerprinting
- octo_t 11y agoIt prevents ad companies from fingerprinting you, you never make the connection to seedy-ad-company-X, you only make the connection to facebook/nyt/WaPo etc
- leni536 11y agoYou should avoid tracking pixels too, or downloading any 3rd party content (like CSS). You can use umatrix for this though.
- talmand 11y agoOk, this is new. Why exactly must we not download CSS?
- throwaway7767 11y ago3rd-party CSS. I.e., if the page includes CSS from an ad network, the network gets the request and can track it. Basically using CSS instead of a 1px tracking bug. One of the many shitty, underhanded methods these companies use to track people without their knowledge or consent. I will shed no tears for these companies when they go bankrupt as people push back against their methods.
- talmand 11y agoI understand now, but the idea of CSS in this is what threw me off. This is valid for any file that the computer makes a request for, if queries are attached to it.
- troels 11y agoIt's an arms race. Blocking cookies currently works.
- rmc 11y agoIs it possible to track someone without using cookies? Maybe. Do most of these advert sites make heavy use of cookies? Oh yes.
- lorenzhs 11y agoDon't forget the security perspective -- as ad networks are being abused for malware delivery more and more, ad-blocking is also a way to stay safe. Not to mention all the fake "DOWNLOAD!!1" buttons that an ad-blocker removes, eliminating a large percentago of malware installations for less tech-savvy users.
- iwwr 11y agoI wonder if the audience for ad-blocking software is also not that "valuable" to begin with (from an advertiser's perspective). These are more sophisticated people that don't fall for blinking warnings, fake browser UI and who don't tend to install stuff without meaning to.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoMaybe they're losing the less tech-savvy folks too, as their "computer whiz" friends and family members grow tired of fixing yet another drive-by toolbar or ransomware install. Myself, when working on someone's computer, I now download Adblock as a first thing after a clean browser installation.
- benbristow 11y agoI now install this on other people's computers as well as ABP. http://unchecky.com/ http://unchecky.com/ Automatically unchecks most 'related/sponsored offers' in installers for software. Most of the adware that people install often tends to be a result of not reading the installer properly.
- nly 11y agoSome ads are presumably responsibly implemented and for decent products
- ethanbond 11y agoAnd by some you mean nearly all. At least the ones that sustain the "important" parts of our Internet (Google, Facebook, news media, etc.)
- TeMPOraL 11y agoFacebook forces some sanity into the form, but not into the content. As for the rest, no, most ads (especially on news media sites) are neither reasonably implemented nor for decent products. Products that are advertised are not the ones best for you, but the ones the company will make most money off.
- lawl 11y agoSeeing how a lot of browser/flash/java drivebys seem to come from ads, I also consider them good security practice these days. See for example the recent firefox exploit. https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2015/08/06/firefox-exploit-found-in-the-wild/ https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2015/08/06/firefox-exploit... We need a better system than ads.
- aikah 11y ago> We need a better system than ads. We already have that, it's called a link with text or an image file with no scripting or plugin. But since there are 3 parties involved who don't trust each others (content providers,ad networks,advertisers) , it's not going to happen.
- bobajeff 11y agoI've been thinking lately that websites should just do static ads. No ad networks, scripts, cookies, etc. Just the content of the ad (video, audio, text, images). Not only will they be harder to block and lead to a better experience for users they could possibly negotiate for higher rates since there would be no middle man.
- debacle 11y agoThat would lead to lower rates because you can't prove your impressions. No honor among thieves.
- VLM 11y agoFlip it and host all your content on the ad servers? Or at least some important parts, such that blocking them would make the site unusable? Of course someone could startup a sniffer built to do nothing but prove impressions.
- debacle 11y agoI've worked with a few companies that have used log files as proof of impressions to get around ad blockers. Every few months I would have to do wrong and disgusting things to the log files until the numbers looked like what they wanted to show customers. They don't trust each other to be honest.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago> The numbers come as tech companies, publishers and advertisers grow anxious that their efforts to reach users through increasingly sophisticated online advertisements are having little effect. Herein lies their problem. Had they stick to simple ads, people wouldn't rush to block them. Per a HN comment I saved in my quotes file, "Any sufficiently advanced business model is indistinguishable from a scam." -- dsirijus, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8227941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8227941 > “What’s causing grave concern for broadcasters and advertisers is video advertising, which is some of their most valuable content, is starting to be blocked,” Video advertising is a whole new class of shitting on your users, and they're surprised people are blocking it? It's as if those people lived on another planet. I wonder how many executives and ad-network people use ad blockers personally. I find it hard to believe they can't see the manure they're dumping on the Internet.
- weland 11y agoPersonal, but fun anecdote: my girlfriend works in marketing and kept away from ad blockers for a long time, partly due to professional sympathy, partly simply because she wanted to see the ads, since she has a professional interest in that sort of stuff. She eventually caved about a year ago and installed ABP. No matter how interesting it was, nor how much she sympathized with the folks working in media agencies, browsing the web simply became completely impossible, especially over an occasionally flimsy 3G connection. Simple ads are "collateral damage" in this case, but even those can be worth blocking, e.g. to protect against tracking.
- Drakim 11y agoSometimes it's like we live in a parody of the real world. I feel that the online video ad situation is akin to advertisers blasting loud commercial jingles in the middle of the night, while complaining that people are getting sound isolated walls and how that's hurting their business, some even going so far as to talk about how thick walls should be illegal. When I navigate to an url I don't get a fully rendered webpage ready from the server, but instead I get served a bunch of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It's then up to my computer to compose those things into the interactive website, using the rendering engine of my choice. How the website turns out being rendered can depend on a number of factors, like what screen resolution I use, what fonts I have on my system, etc. Maybe I'm using a text browser that can't render pictures or video. So, it's so darn crazy to me that some people would say that I'm stealing or being dishonest by not rendering the ads in the website. Is it really my duty to render those ads, even if I don't intend to click on them? Would I still be stealing if I rendered them, but never moved my eyesight over to where the ad is placed? How far do I have to pretend?
- leni536 11y ago> Ad-blocking will lead to almost $22 billion of lost advertising revenue this year, according to the report, put together by Adobe and PageFair, a Dublin-based start-up that helps companies and advertisers recoup some of this lost revenue. I guess assuming that the users of ad blocker users would visit the sites with the same frequency as without ad blockers, and they click on ads with the same probability if they see them as people who don't use ad blockers. This is the same fallacy as counting the lost money on pirated content. Most people who pirate wouldn't buy a product even if they couldn't pirate it. The solution is much simpler for ad ridden websites: what about not serving the main content for ad block users? If you don't like them then don't serve them, it shouldn't be that hard. Maybe they don't do this because: - Ad blockers are still a minority on most websites - They don't eat up much bandwidth - It would be really bad advertising (ha!) for them doing more harm than good
- aikah 11y ago> what about not serving the main content for ad block users? Some porn sites have started to do that. Well it's not like there is only 1 porn site on the planet... There lies the issue with that method. Unless every content provider does that it is not going to work. And it's also a cat and mouse game just like piracy. The technology will always be ahead of whatever scheme they use to block content. As a musician, I get somehow a taste of revenge from all that crowd that is freaking out, the same crowd told us to "adapt or die" 10 years ago. Well they now need to adapt or die, because ad revenue will not be a viable business model 3 years from now...
- davidgerard 11y agoPublishers have the same problem musicians do: it's (a) ridiculously easy to publish now (text or music), (b) you're literally competing with every other publisher/musician in the entire world. There's a larger consumer pie, but a ridiculously larger producer pie. http://rocknerd.co.uk/2013/09/13/culture-is-not-about-aesthetics-punk-rock-is-now-enforced-by-law/ http://rocknerd.co.uk/2013/09/13/culture-is-not-about-aesthe...
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- xcombelle 11y agoAd networks is also a pretty convenient to spread malware. see for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising
- Lancey 11y agoMaybe this study will prompt advertisers to consider why a third of the internet is blocking their ads? Just kidding. They'll just get mad at blockers and continue to make their users' lives a living hell.
- ekianjo 11y agoWow, only something like 10 to 20% in the US ? For the first Internet nation of the world, I was expecting better.
- lcswi 11y agoI expected much less, 10% is great!
- matwood 11y agoWhat is the best ad blocking plugin for Chrome nowadays?
- smickie 11y agoI've found ublock to be the best for both chrome and firefox. Take up much less cpu than adblockplus.
- uptown 11y agoI suppose "best" is subjective, but I'm using "uBlock Origin", "Flashcontrol", and "HTTPS Everywhere" together and am satisfied. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/flashcontrol/mfidmkgnfgnkihnjeklbekckimkipmoe?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/flashcontrol/mfidm... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/https-everywhere/gcbommkclmclpchllfjekcdonpmejbdp?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/https-everywhere/g...
- quinndupont 11y agoAhh, the free market is great, until it totally isn't. I look forward to seeing what new revenue strategies the truly innovative companies will come up with. We've all been lulled into the complacency of cheap and easy ad dollars -- let's innovate instead.
- chii 11y agotrue innovation isn't cheap, and sometimes it's cheaper to try warping the market instead of innovating. After all, money is like water - it flows through the path of least resistance.
- SCdF 11y agoSo I just started using ad blockers (uBlock Origin on Chrome, adblock + ghostery on Safari) because I was finally sick of the amount of extra bandwidth, CPU and just noise they are creating with this crap. I've intentionally not used ad blockers for years, because I get that's how companies make money, but heaven's to betsy if they don't dig their own graves with the intrusive over-intensive crap these days. My old tactic was to just not visit sites with offensive, intrusive or band-width heavy ads. These sites, bar some outliers, no longer exist. Every tech, current events and editorial site pulls down half the fucking internet to show me some words on a screen these days.
- jcadam 11y agoI just started using ad-blockers for similar reasons. I found an increasing number of sites (especially news sites) were becoming so obnoxious with the advertising that it was causing my browser to frequently freeze and/or crash. I really don't mind a simple, static banner ad, but this crap has gotten out of control.
- lostcolony 11y agoI started using adblocking software -years- ago, when an ad on a reputable, syndicated comics page (gocomics.com I think) minimized my browser, and popped up an ad to look like a system dialog telling me my computer was at risk. That was it for me. Since then, uBlock occasionally gets disabled on Chrome because I don't even know, and it usually is just a few pageviews before an ad is so obnoxious that I notice and re-enable it. I don't understand how people without adblockers even use the web at this point.
- seandhi 11y agoI recently just hit my limit, too. The final straw was advertising videos that grabbed focus and refused to let it go. Worse, the videos were at the bottom of the page and would force my browser to scroll to those videos, refuse to yield focus until X seconds were played. Then, after I was able to scroll back to the top of the page to view the content I was after, the whole thing would start again as the next video played. AdBlock was installed after that.
- merrua 11y ago
- JohnTHaller 11y agoI've had more friends/family request ad-blockers. This has become an even bigger issue with auto-playing video ads on mobile which both suck up bandwidth and randomly begin playing loud audio on your phone when it's otherwise silent. We're talking mainstream sites like Slate, Salon.com, Daily Beast, Bust.com, etc, all of which automatically played loud video ads on my girlfriend's phone. On Android, this necessitates switching to Firefox and using something like AdBlock Plus or uBlock since Google Chrome on Android doesn't even support plugins. I'm unsure if these ads are intentional auto-playing video ads or AdSense's broken "hover to expand" ads which are always triggered accidentally and are, for all intents and purposes, auto-playing video ads.
- HSO 11y agoI use adblock, ghostery, several JS blacklists etc., uninstalled all Flash from all computers years ago, and still I regularly catch "funny calls" to strange IPs I don't even visit in Little Snitch. Highly recommend this little utility. The logs make for unexpectedly interesting reading.
- mikegerwitz 11y agoThe article alludes to this, but doesn't state it: let's be clear that by blocking ads, you're not just blocking annoying advertisements---you're blocking software, most of which spys on you. Some sites load megabytes of JavaScript. Another perspective: for free software advocates, these simply must be blocked, because they're non-free.
- quonn 11y agoI started blocking ads about a year ago when some mainstream tech sites began to show ads that I felt make me unhappy, such as "The 10 signs of getting a heart attack/Alzheimer's/cancer", etc. Usually with a picture of someone in their 60's looking quite sad or disoriented. I find this kind of advertising very offensive and I'm sorry that I'm now also blocking all other kind of ads, too.
- billyhoffman 11y agoI was recently giving a screen-shared demo to a media company that makes the vast majority of their revenue from online ads. One of the execs saw the adblock extension button in the browser chrome, interrupted the demo, and proceeded to tell me how terrible I was. Needless to say we did not make the sale. Lesson learned: When giving demos, open an incognito window since most plugins are disabled by default.
- wslh 11y agoThe next time tell him that you are finding flaws in adblock to help ad companies. If he asks you for more details tell that this is a support 1 yr service because you have a dedicated team constantly researching new adblock versions.
- benbristow 11y ago> proceeded to tell me how terrible I was Because that's probably cutting into his paycheck ;)
- Fiahil 11y agoI have a similar anecdote. I work for a company selling a recommendation platform to travel agencies, and the content we display is often similar in layout to regulars ads. It happens, from time to time, to demo a version of their own website to them, with the proper recommendation block injected (mostly to seek the client's validation on the look and feel). And, I recall having one of them congratulate us for the fast loading and clean display of their pages (on my ublock-running-browser). I didn't pick this up. Obviously, the original page was literally cluttered with ads..
- talmand 11y agoSomeone good at their job would have taken the opportunity to find out why you were using the ad blocker and considered the impact on their industry based off your response. It wasn't professional to have such a childish outburst during a meeting, and to interrupt at that. I would think it's possible you are better off in the long run not getting the business.
- geromek 11y agoThe irony is that Ghostery is reporting 14 trackers on the page as I read the article...
- sritrisna 11y agoI can’t actually remember when I began using ABP. I install it on all browser by default and I believe about a year ago have begun using Ghostery to block annoying beacons everywhere. Never had much success with it on my Google Nexus Tablet and because of it simply stopped surfing the web on tablets and smartphones altogether. However, since the release of Adblock Browser - big big kudos to the team for creating such a fantastic piece of software - I can resume browsing the web on my portable devices. I don’t mind relevant and unobtrusive ads. However, some sites simply have gone overboard with 30 plus beacons included and ads everywhere. I will never support such an aggressive approach to monetising a resource. Especially by those large publishers which believe they can do whatever they want on the web, simply because they're now not limited by physical space anymore, as they are with their print magazines.
- benbristow 11y agoIf you're rooted download F-Droid (Open Source Play Store Alternative) and download 'AdAway'. https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.adaway https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.adaway Works a charm ;)
- dublinben 11y agoIf you're not running a rooted device, uBlock works excellent in Firefox for Android. You get all the same filtering power in a mobile browser.
- owenwil 11y agoI don't want to get into arguing about adblocking too much, but it is notable that all studies, including this one, about adblock reach are from companies who have a vested interest in growing ad blocking's reach... yet the press gobbles it up.
- davidgerard 11y agoWith ad-network malware from major news sites, it is actually dangerous for your nontechnical friends and relatives not to run an ad-blocker. "Ad blockers are safe sex for the Internet." "You could sleep with lots of people and demand their test results every time ... or you could just use a condom. Same with ad blockers."
- lowpro 11y agoIf I remember correctly, ad blocking software overlays the ad with blank HTML right? So blocking ads doesn't actually reduce data usage, since the browser still downloads everything, Adblock just has to parse it and get rid of the junk. I believe because of this download-then-parse model, webpages actually load slower. I remember an HN article on the front page about it. Nonetheless, I still use Adblock. The sites worth supporting I normally pay money for in some way, such as premium on a forum.
- ronjouch 11y ago> If I remember correctly, ad blocking software overlays the ad with blank HTML right? Don't know why you're being downvoted, you're simply unsure about a (wrong) assumption and asking about it, which to me simply calls for a correction / explanation. Anyway, no, uBlock for example actually blocks http requests, based on huge community-maintained blacklists. Just try loading theverge.com : - Without uBlock: 131 requests - With uBlock: 37 requests
- lowpro 11y agoThank you, I've been here for a long time, still a noob though. I figured if I wasn't sure there had to be others thinking the same thing.
- a3n 11y agoI actually wrote to the NYT about this some weeks back. In essence: feel free to block me, charge enough subscription to cover your needs, or go out of business. Or, display static ads that don't collect and forward information about me. It just occurred to me that if adblocking is made illegal, then the next generation of adblocking software won't block ads, they'll block sites. "This site is known to use intrusive ads, which are illegal to block. Whitelist or Blacklist?"
- a3n 11y agoI've been using adblockers for a few years. Something happened at work, I had to reinstall a browser, and I only install addons as the need arises, so it takes awhile to get a new browser installation up to speed with the ten or so addons I eventually end up with. Ad blocker was first, and almost immediate. To paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke, "My God, it's full of ads!" Not to mention the risk to my employer by allowing ads across the firewall. EDIT: And there's an opportunity for people who want to sell into the enterprise. Businesses should be blocking ads at the firewall. My employer blocks egregiously non-work related sites, but they don't yet seem to care about ads riding in on allowed sites. I expect that to change.
- a3n 11y agoTo ad sellers: We may be technical here, but we all have friends and families. I just helped my all-but computer-phobic ex-wife with a computer task last night. She had ABP installed. I think my teenage son did it. Reap it.
- littletimmy 11y agoOf course there's widespread use. When you put in 2-4 video ads with sounds per page and clog up my browser, you'd be out of your mind to think I'm not going to take steps to stop this assault on my senses. I don't see how advertisers don't get this. Surely they are not entitled to my eyes and ears.
- plg 11y agoMaybe ad blocking and the ensuing evisceration of the "free but agree to view ads tailored to you via the deep profiling of your identity using information you would ordinarily presume to be private" business model will be good for us (good for privacy)
- cheald 11y agoThe ad companies have, IMO, brought it on themselves. Flash ads, Java ads, ads with auto-playing sound, popups that interupt the UX, insane analytics deliverables that can increase total page payload and runtime by multiples of the original page size - they are the problem. I work for a company that makes much of its revenue off of advertising, so this issue is near-and-dear to my heart. As ad blocking has increased in popularity, the networks' response is to impose even more intrusive, resource-intensive, user-hostile requirements on their ad deliverables, and it's only been getting worse. Browsing ad-supported sites is so painful these days because the advertising networks are no longer a relatively minimal ride-along with the parent page - they're practically their own webapp that gets injected along with the host content. Instrumentation shows payload times 4-5x larger than the host page, and total load times can be 10-20x greater than just the host page. The problem is that ad networks don't feel the pain of increased payload sizes, user-hostile deliverables, degraded UX, and user frustration. There is no feedback mechanism with which to economically punish the bad ads and reward the good ads. The lifetime of an ad unit is so relatively short that there's no incentive to develop a quality deliverable, or to fix problems unless a publisher's development team notices a specific unit and can call out specific problems with it (which generally only happens when the ad is doing something like, I dunno, crashing the entire tab). I have exactly zero sympathy for the advertising industry's AdBlock problem - it's a problem they've wrought of their own doing. If you want to fix it, there has to be a hard focus on ads that don't actively make it harder for users to get and ingest publishers' content. Reduce deliverable sizes, get rid of long transitive dependency chains (scripts loading scripts loading scripts loading scripts is awful), get rid of stuff that is constantly causing network overhead (viewability trackers are easily the worst offenders here), aggressively police against flash/java ads, police against ads that autoplay audio, ban ads that pre-load video (I have instrumentation on ads which load thirty megabytes of video before the user ever interacts with them), minimize reflows and DOM manipulation - tl;dr, stop being so incredibly user hostile. Ads are, as far as users are concerned, malware that is painful enough that they'll seek out ways to avoid it rather than just tolerating it. That's the ad networks' problem, and nobody else's.
- hsod 11y agoWhen accessing an ad-supported website, there is an implied agreement to not automatically block ads. Using AdBlock is an immoral violation of this implied agreement.