4 ms·

I'm beginning to find the various articles about ad-blocking fatuous, and I doubt I'm the only one. Ads served via a centralized vendor can be blocked triviall

I'm beginning to find the various articles about ad-blocking fatuous, and I doubt I'm the only one. Ads served via a centralized vendor can be blocked trivially, and people are choosing to block them. You can make a whole lot of arguments about ethics, or you can just admit that it's a broken business model. Worse, it is becoming apparent that ads increase the attack surface. Failing to clean that up will cause armies of IT folks to actively work against you. Maybe the business model is that you're serving ads in a non-centralized way, or maybe you're serving centralized ads to people with locked-down computers, but good luck serving blockable ads and relying on the good graces of the population to unblock your ads out of charity.

13 11y ago
Websites offering self hosted, static advertising isn't so much of a problem as random bits of javascript and tracking cookies loaded from god knows where every time you load a page. Harder to block, the advertiser needs to pass their content through the hoster which assures some level of quality and relevance, and some level of privacy for the end viewers.
- eli 11y ago
  And yet ad blockers generally try as hard as they can to block all types of ads.
  - TuringTest 11y ago
    Except for those that don't.
SilasX 11y ago
Similarly, I've wondered why advertisers don't just change how they do the ads: if the ads are non-standard size, are non animated, and link back to a legit landing page from non/shady domain, what adblocker covers that? Wouldn't that just look like ordinary site content? Or do they really update them that quickly and narrowly?
- codezero 11y ago
  Most ads are served by an ad network which requires third party involvement. Adblockers block those. It's not manageable to post individual ads.
  - andygates 11y ago
    I would expect to see a code snippet on host sites which does a bit of pass-through disguising, so that what used to be "iframe src=skeezy_virus_mill.ru" looks local. That seems consistent with the arms race in progress...
    - codezero 11y ago
      Some sites do this already. Either with a locally hosted snippet or by doing a CNAME in their DNS that points to the third party so it looks like it's from the same domain.
  - SilasX 11y ago
    But why can't they arrange some alternate setup where the main site serves the ads (relaying the ads from another server) rather than the ad network? It would be roughly the same effort from the site owner.
    - fwn 11y ago
      I think it's because the ad-networks don't want to trust the site owners. Which is understandable since there are colliding interests between advertisers, site owners, users and ad-networks.
    - lotu 11y ago
      Because the main site owner then has to spend time coordinating with literally thousands of advertisers to get their ads for their champagnes. They then have a build an maintain an adverser that is hosted in their domain, right now ad servers you buy are hosted in a separate domain. This also eliminates the possibility of do programatic buying of ads, think Ad Words. Large companies have the money to spend on this, they don't because they don't have to. What you are suggesting would cut every small company out of the advertising space.
zokier 11y ago
Do you also think that selling movies is broken business model because movies can pirated trivially? Or that free software is broken model because GPL can be violated trivially?
- jpmattia 11y ago
  In principle: If you pirate movies or the GPL, the legal system comes after you. So no, not completely broken. But that's my point: Those industries have taken the path of serving the subsegment of the market that won't break the law/contract. And maybe that's the answer for website advertising, but adblockers are a one-time install and look like less effort than pirating (for movies) or obfuscating (for GPL). So good luck if that's your business model.
- flavor8 11y ago
  In both of your example cases, there are actual legal protections. In the case of a content farm, they're making content available for _free_ without a terms of service in the hope that people visiting them won't be blocking the ads they're also serving. Show me the content farm that makes users agree to a terms of service requiring ad viewing, and then your examples make sense.
lucb1e 11y ago
> Ads served via a centralized vendor can be blocked trivially, and people are choosing to block them. You can make a whole lot of arguments about ethics, or you can just admit that it's a broken business model. Uhm, no, you could say that about a million things to dismiss it as unimportant and "just do it".

13 11y ago

Websites offering self hosted, static advertising isn't so much of a problem as random bits of javascript and tracking cookies loaded from god knows where every time you load a page. Harder to block, the advertiser needs to pass their content through the hoster which assures some level of quality and relevance, and some level of privacy for the end viewers.

eli 11y ago
And yet ad blockers generally try as hard as they can to block all types of ads.
- TuringTest 11y ago
  Except for those that don't.

SilasX 11y ago

Similarly, I've wondered why advertisers don't just change how they do the ads: if the ads are non-standard size, are non animated, and link back to a legit landing page from non/shady domain, what adblocker covers that? Wouldn't that just look like ordinary site content? Or do they really update them that quickly and narrowly?

codezero 11y ago
Most ads are served by an ad network which requires third party involvement. Adblockers block those. It's not manageable to post individual ads.
- andygates 11y ago
  I would expect to see a code snippet on host sites which does a bit of pass-through disguising, so that what used to be "iframe src=skeezy_virus_mill.ru" looks local. That seems consistent with the arms race in progress...
  - codezero 11y ago
    Some sites do this already. Either with a locally hosted snippet or by doing a CNAME in their DNS that points to the third party so it looks like it's from the same domain.
- SilasX 11y ago
  But why can't they arrange some alternate setup where the main site serves the ads (relaying the ads from another server) rather than the ad network? It would be roughly the same effort from the site owner.
  - fwn 11y ago
    I think it's because the ad-networks don't want to trust the site owners. Which is understandable since there are colliding interests between advertisers, site owners, users and ad-networks.
  - lotu 11y ago
    Because the main site owner then has to spend time coordinating with literally thousands of advertisers to get their ads for their champagnes. They then have a build an maintain an adverser that is hosted in their domain, right now ad servers you buy are hosted in a separate domain. This also eliminates the possibility of do programatic buying of ads, think Ad Words. Large companies have the money to spend on this, they don't because they don't have to. What you are suggesting would cut every small company out of the advertising space.

zokier 11y ago

Do you also think that selling movies is broken business model because movies can pirated trivially? Or that free software is broken model because GPL can be violated trivially?

jpmattia 11y ago
In principle: If you pirate movies or the GPL, the legal system comes after you. So no, not completely broken. But that's my point: Those industries have taken the path of serving the subsegment of the market that won't break the law/contract. And maybe that's the answer for website advertising, but adblockers are a one-time install and look like less effort than pirating (for movies) or obfuscating (for GPL). So good luck if that's your business model.
flavor8 11y ago
In both of your example cases, there are actual legal protections. In the case of a content farm, they're making content available for _free_ without a terms of service in the hope that people visiting them won't be blocking the ads they're also serving. Show me the content farm that makes users agree to a terms of service requiring ad viewing, and then your examples make sense.

lucb1e 11y ago

> Ads served via a centralized vendor can be blocked trivially, and people are choosing to block them. You can make a whole lot of arguments about ethics, or you can just admit that it's a broken business model. Uhm, no, you could say that about a million things to dismiss it as unimportant and "just do it".