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Interesting conclusions, but they seem to be inevitable: One is that ad blockers will evolve to valving systems for accepting advertising’s wheat while rejecti

Interesting conclusions, but they seem to be inevitable: One is that ad blockers will evolve to valving systems for accepting advertising’s wheat while rejecting its chaff. (I explain the difference in the first post in this series. And, sez AdExchanger, 71% of Ad-Block Users Would Consider Whitelisting Sites That Don’t Suck.) The other is that we’ll help marketers think past abuse and coercion as ways to get what they want out of customers. After that happens, they’ll realize that — 1. Free customers are far more valuable than captive ones 2. Genuine relationships are worth far more than the kind that is coerced 3. Volunteered (and truly relevant) personal data is worth far more than the kind that is involuntarily fracked 4. Expressions of real intent by customers are worth far more than guesswork fed by fracked data

LesZedCB 11y ago
> One is that ad blockers will evolve to valving systems for accepting advertising’s wheat while rejecting its chaff. Well, I guess that is essentially what Ad-Block Plus is doing. They whitelist ads that are not intrusive and make the web a reasonable place to browse, while making a little money in the meantime. I like that idea, of purifying the web of bad content.
- irl_zebra 11y ago
  It is a good idea, but I've had some annoying content slip through the whitelist, so usually I just turn it off. If you whitelist Reddit for example, it often displays these creepy "non-ad" ads [1] to "thank you" for not using an adblocker. I would rather there just be no ads versus non-ad ads + real ads. So I just keep the whitelist off and see no ads at all, ever. [1] https://55b8aba7dfd6c1911d2f4669ef645bd07e319f75.googledrive.com/host/0B8LRS7vgjAmhT01jNzVhUU5LUk0/img/reddit2.png https://55b8aba7dfd6c1911d2f4669ef645bd07e319f75.googledrive...
liotier 11y ago
> accepting advertising’s wheat while rejecting its chaff What makes you believe that users see any value in ads ?
- irl_zebra 11y ago
  I see value in ads when they target me specifically and alert me to some product or product alternative that I didn't know about before the ad. But that is a very small sliver of ads. There's a blog I follow that doesn't use ads but rather product recommendations with Amazon affiliate links. This type of advertising is pretty valuable to me and when/if I want to purchase the product, I use the affiliate link to do so to "pay" the blog author for the high quality content.
monochromatic 11y ago
> One is that ad blockers will evolve to valving systems for accepting advertising’s wheat while rejecting its chaff. Probably so. But at the moment, all we have is some ad blockers accepting money from advertisers for whitelisting their ads. This is such an obvious conflict of interest that I'm sort of shocked it even happens. I wonder if it would be workable to have some sort of centralized, disinterested group to make those determinations of wheat/chaff... instead of leaving it to the venal whims of individual blockers.
vdaniuk 11y ago
Most of your premises in a numbered list are quite inaccurate from a business POV but this one is definitively wrong: "Free customers are far more valuable than captive ones". Captive customers aka vendor lock-in aka high switching costs is a very significant factor of a long term company valuation/capitalization. Absolute majority of companies would prefer totally locked-in customers if such lock-in doesn't hurt customer acquisition.

LesZedCB 11y ago

> One is that ad blockers will evolve to valving systems for accepting advertising’s wheat while rejecting its chaff. Well, I guess that is essentially what Ad-Block Plus is doing. They whitelist ads that are not intrusive and make the web a reasonable place to browse, while making a little money in the meantime. I like that idea, of purifying the web of bad content.

irl_zebra 11y ago
It is a good idea, but I've had some annoying content slip through the whitelist, so usually I just turn it off. If you whitelist Reddit for example, it often displays these creepy "non-ad" ads [1] to "thank you" for not using an adblocker. I would rather there just be no ads versus non-ad ads + real ads. So I just keep the whitelist off and see no ads at all, ever. [1] https://55b8aba7dfd6c1911d2f4669ef645bd07e319f75.googledrive.com/host/0B8LRS7vgjAmhT01jNzVhUU5LUk0/img/reddit2.png https://55b8aba7dfd6c1911d2f4669ef645bd07e319f75.googledrive...

liotier 11y ago

> accepting advertising’s wheat while rejecting its chaff What makes you believe that users see any value in ads ?

irl_zebra 11y ago
I see value in ads when they target me specifically and alert me to some product or product alternative that I didn't know about before the ad. But that is a very small sliver of ads. There's a blog I follow that doesn't use ads but rather product recommendations with Amazon affiliate links. This type of advertising is pretty valuable to me and when/if I want to purchase the product, I use the affiliate link to do so to "pay" the blog author for the high quality content.

monochromatic 11y ago

> One is that ad blockers will evolve to valving systems for accepting advertising’s wheat while rejecting its chaff. Probably so. But at the moment, all we have is some ad blockers accepting money from advertisers for whitelisting their ads. This is such an obvious conflict of interest that I'm sort of shocked it even happens. I wonder if it would be workable to have some sort of centralized, disinterested group to make those determinations of wheat/chaff... instead of leaving it to the venal whims of individual blockers.

vdaniuk 11y ago

Most of your premises in a numbered list are quite inaccurate from a business POV but this one is definitively wrong: "Free customers are far more valuable than captive ones". Captive customers aka vendor lock-in aka high switching costs is a very significant factor of a long term company valuation/capitalization. Absolute majority of companies would prefer totally locked-in customers if such lock-in doesn't hurt customer acquisition.