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The author gets one thing massively wrong. So do the reddit commentors they quote. The quote: "Ad blockers could end up saving the ad industry from its worst

The author gets one thing massively wrong. So do the reddit commentors they quote. The quote: "Ad blockers could end up saving the ad industry from its worst excesses. If blocking becomes widespread, the ad industry will be pushed to produce ads that are simpler, less invasive and far more transparent about the way they’re handling our data" Oh? And how are you so sure they won't go the other direction? Because that's where I'd place my money in a heart beat. Adblockers rely on blocking requests to known ad networks and affiliates. If the ads are instead served up locally, from the site the person is visiting itself, it can't block the ads. Ad blockers are 100% ineffective in those instances. A company like google or any other major ad network just needs to create some sort of back-end, plugin or server side program that serves up ads from the domain you're visiting. The ad blocker wouldn't know if it's a picture of a cat or an ad for Netflix since it's all coming from randomsite.com Several smaller companies have already started doing this and it could very well signal the end of ad blockers if it becomes widespread and adopted by the big players (specifically adsense). The one thing I don't see is ad companies becoming more transparent & open. That's silly to even think about since it's less profitable alternative. The companies that don't do this will cannibalize the ones that do since they'll be shooting themselves in the foot. No, I see ad companies becoming more clever. As far as content creators go, I don't even know how this is a debate. Just how entitled are people nowadays? Is this why they call millennials the entitled generation? If someone creates content, and wants people to see an ad for Pepsi before you can consume that content, that is the creators prerogative, not yours. End of story. There's no further argument here. I don't know why people think everything should be free. Nothing is free, everything is subsidized by something.

mintplant 11y ago
If the ads are instead served up locally, from the site the person is visiting itself, it can't block the ads. Why not? I don't see why an ad blocker couldn't identify and block certain URL schemes/patterns, common scripts, or element structures. Also -- doesn't cross-site tracking rely on third-party cookies from a shared (separate) domain?
- cpeterso 11y ago
  Yep. That is exactly how modern ad blockers work. :)
- mahranch 11y ago
  > Why not? I think you missed the point, the plugin or program wouldn't have a distinct pattern or scheme since it would be coming from the website you're visiting. Say, for example, I want to show an ad for denture cream. Nothing fancy, just a gif. Well, the URL would look like http://www.randomsite.com/img/filename.gif http://www.randomsite.com/img/filename.gif How do you block that without blocking every image on the website? Granted, what you propose would be easier to do for more advanced systems, but the key here, is that 95% of adblockers almost exclusively look for calls to ad networks. If you eliminate that, you open up that 95%.
  - anonymousab 11y ago
    >How do you block that without blocking every image on the website? By blocking that specific asset? Blocklists will be much larger and slower reactively, but still far better than nothing.
MichaelGG 11y ago
Ad blockers already have element rules so yes, you can block ads served from the same site. As long as it's possible for an intelligence to distinguish ads from content, it'll be possible to remove ads. It might get more difficult, but you're simply wrong to say it's the end of ad blockers.
- mahranch 11y ago
  Ad blockers can do what you suggest, but it's very rudamentary. What it relies on, almost exclusively, is blocking calls to known ad networks. In my experience, about 95% of ads are blocked this way. Even if it was only 50%, that's still a gigantic number of previously unseen ads being seen.

mintplant 11y ago

If the ads are instead served up locally, from the site the person is visiting itself, it can't block the ads. Why not? I don't see why an ad blocker couldn't identify and block certain URL schemes/patterns, common scripts, or element structures. Also -- doesn't cross-site tracking rely on third-party cookies from a shared (separate) domain?

cpeterso 11y ago
Yep. That is exactly how modern ad blockers work. :)
mahranch 11y ago
> Why not? I think you missed the point, the plugin or program wouldn't have a distinct pattern or scheme since it would be coming from the website you're visiting. Say, for example, I want to show an ad for denture cream. Nothing fancy, just a gif. Well, the URL would look like http://www.randomsite.com/img/filename.gif http://www.randomsite.com/img/filename.gif How do you block that without blocking every image on the website? Granted, what you propose would be easier to do for more advanced systems, but the key here, is that 95% of adblockers almost exclusively look for calls to ad networks. If you eliminate that, you open up that 95%.
- anonymousab 11y ago
  >How do you block that without blocking every image on the website? By blocking that specific asset? Blocklists will be much larger and slower reactively, but still far better than nothing.

MichaelGG 11y ago

Ad blockers already have element rules so yes, you can block ads served from the same site. As long as it's possible for an intelligence to distinguish ads from content, it'll be possible to remove ads. It might get more difficult, but you're simply wrong to say it's the end of ad blockers.

mahranch 11y ago
Ad blockers can do what you suggest, but it's very rudamentary. What it relies on, almost exclusively, is blocking calls to known ad networks. In my experience, about 95% of ads are blocked this way. Even if it was only 50%, that's still a gigantic number of previously unseen ads being seen.