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Ad-blocking: a sign that web publishers don’t care about readers
- api 11y agoOf course they don't. Readers don't pay.
- eggie 11y agoBut they do pay, in attention, which is monetized using ads.
- acdha 11y agoThe New York Times has a million digital-only subscribers who might disagree: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/05/business/the-new-york-times-reaches-1-million-digital-subscribers.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/05/business/the-n...
- hughperkins 11y agoYeah, I signed up for that. But they still show me ads :-P So, then I installed RequestPolicy et al, and have a guilt-free, ad-free existence :-)
- dogma1138 11y agoOn the anecdotal side their certificate expired a month ago. https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=requestpolicy.com&latest https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=requestpolicy...
- sparkzilla 11y agoI'm fairly sure that if publishers removed popups (ads and subscription forms), ads that move the text while you're reading it, and autoplay video or audio ads, then most people would be happy. As it stands, readers are bombarded with ads that ruin the actual reading experience.
- pavornyoh 11y ago@Sparkzilla, I agree. I don't know which I find the most annoying. The videos that play themselves or the pop-ups which when trying to close takes you to a whole new site. Damn it! I just want to read the news.
- tomp 11y ago> most people would be happy Except those on slow or limited data connections that suffer because of image ads, and everyone who opposes tracking ads on principle.
- JoshTriplett 11y agoAdd in "ads using any kind of animation", "ads that slow site loading in any way", and "ads that use up limited mobile bandwidth" and you'd get closer. When reading text, any kind of animation in view proves quite distracting, which likewise "ruins the actual reading experience". And ad scripts and ad servers use up bandwidth and slow down page loads.
- elorant 11y agoNo, that wouldn't be enough. The real problem is profiling. It's spooky and most tech-savvy people dissent it. And they (aka we) are the ones that influence the general public as to adopting ad blocking technologies. It's one thing having Google serving me personalized ads which I know come from my search history, and a whole other having the same thing happening from various ad-serving companies with which I have no affiliation at all. Where the hell do they get my profile from? And who regulates that market?
- hiphopyo 11y ago> Look at New Yorker, for example. The ads are generally interesting and feature great photography. Wish Google would introduce some sort of minimum design requirements for their AdSense image ads. I also wish they'd give publishers full control over the appearance of their text ads. Right now, these ads look horrible, and only premium publishers (ie. websites with millions users) are given this sort of control.
- hagbardgroup 11y agoThey do. Google also produces the most widely-used ad platform for publishers, which makes it much easier for those publishers to blacklist and whitelist given ads and advertisers. The ads suck for a lot of reasons, but lack of capacity to filter them isn't one of them. Plenty of ad units that you see on a publisher may be filled by Adsense on one pageview and by another ad network in another one. Those networks may or may not have the same quality requirements that Adsense does. Publishers tend to optimize for the amount of money they can make from an ad rather than how good it looks. An ad ops person will filter out offensive or porny ads while otherwise looking to top out their commission pay. They also give some control over how the text ads appear in terms of color and font: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/6002607?hl=en https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/6002607?hl=en It's just that a lot of publishers don't know how to handle the settings or don't care. Most publishers are not tech-first companies, and their websites don't make the bulk of their revenue anyway. For any TV channel, their website is a rounding error in terms of total revenue.
- username223 11y ago> Look at New Yorker, for example. Indeed. I'm not the target demographic for their ads (anorexic women and men who like expensive watches, AFAICT), but the ads on their site aren't aggressive, and they hire good writers. I'm happy to pay for a subscription, and wish there were more of them and less of buzzfeed on the Internet.
- dogma1138 11y agoThe downside of that is that it makes harder to distinguish advertisement from actual content. Some sites are quite good ad hiding sponsored links and there is way too much advertisement masquerading as editorials already.
- striking 11y agoIt was inevitable that this would happen. I remember when Opera first added pop-up blocking and plenty of people got mad. This is the same thing: ads are burning energy, bandwidth, and our time. Now that consumers have been subjected to piles of abusive ads, they're just blocking all of the ads regardless of how bad they are.
- ForkFed 11y agoThis notion of "publishers" vs. "comsumers" is myopic ... we're all sitting in the same boat. Lot of benevolent and ad displaying publishers out there (f.x. stackoverflow) and same goes for lot of consumers who donate to content creators they cherish.
- mtw 11y agoDid you ever give consent for ads in your print newspaper? They "load" on the page, without asking
- jalfresi 11y agoBut they don't cost me actual real money both in terms of bandwidth costs and psychological cost (tracking induces paranoia which curbs my thought, which adjusts my online search behaviour, for one example). Printed adverts in a newspaper do not have these costs.
- mtw 11y agoThey do cost real money. The price of the newspaper is proportional to the number of pages printed, including ad pages. You are right about online tracking though.
- cookiecaper 11y agoThe downside is that ads are going increasingly incognito, precisely to avoid things that explicitly filter them out. The basic act of renting an audience is not going to be stopped.
- Kenji 11y agoI'll be honest, I hate all ads, regardless of how good they are. I think it's creepy and fills my mind with things I do not want it to be filled with. For me, the entire debate is silly because it's my screen -> my decision what appears. I think it barely matters how good the ads are. I've only seen one single website that did ads right (they were perfectly embedded into a mosaic pattern of site functionality, things like a little tile with the coca cola writing). (EDIT: Okay, news.ycombinator.com also does it well with its inline job ads. See, I didn't even think of it as an ad, that's how nicely it's embedded.) The problem is that people used to use the internet to exchange files and information that was then locally stored on each PC. Now, you go to youtube, listen to a song, and 20 minutes later you download the entire video again if you listen to it (if you closed the tab inbetween). That stuff adds up and of course everyone is reluctant to pay that bill. The solution is going back to a decentralized download-culture like it was in the 90's. Storage space is incredibly cheap. Nobody has to pay that bill of transferring the same things over and over and over again.
- zobzu 11y agoIm not sure why people defend ads. They fear the free web would be in danger? It already isn't free if it has ads. In the end if the ads is distracting you from the content its a bad ad, and given the choice you don't want to see it. Thus the only acceptable ads, are things like product placement. You know its an ad but it doesnt cut the flow.
- staunch 11y ago> Im not sure why people defend ads. Nearly all the current voices in media rely on advertising for their existence. Nearly all of the most influential organizations are extremely biased.
- zobzu 11y agoim not sure if they rely on it i think its just part of the money that comes in. Totally weird but sometimes I wonder if enforcing by law that you can't get more than x% profit margins else you redistribute to the govt would actually fix the whole capitalism/corporate issue. Of course this means the govt has to be controlled better - but thats an easier target than "all corporations"
- bitmapbrother 11y agoAds will never go away and these ad blockers will soon become worthless if the advertising companies ever think they're a threat. There are so many easy ways to defeat ad blocking. This is why I despise Apple for trying to publicize web ad blocking while letting their ads be displayed in their little gated community. Apple is essentially ruining it for the people that do use ad blockers because we're going to reach a point where the ad blockers are unable to block ads due to the myriad of ways publishers will use to foil them. It's only a matter of time before this happens and I hope Apple is paid back for this move in spades.
- teddyh 11y ago> Ads will never go away Sure they could. Look at São Paulo, for instance. http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/aug/11/can-cities-kick-ads-ban-urban-billboards http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/aug/11/can-cities-kic...
- bitmapbrother 11y agoI was referring to web ads. The elimination of public display ads is irrelevant in this context. I'm preventing the provider of the content I'm consuming from earning a paycheck by blocking their ads. If the city of São Paulo received a revenue share from public advertising, to put towards government funding and reduce their taxation on the public, I'm sure they would change their mind very quickly.
- rimantas 11y agoOk, so when ad blocking was not possible on iOS it was bad, because walled garden, etc. Now, when iOS users finally have a choice it's bad again. Wonderfull logic. And nope, advertizers will not beat ad blocking.
- bitmapbrother 11y agoYeah, they will. The moment they see any actionable decrease they'll start to foil them.
- 11y ago
- Animats 11y agoThe Mozilla Foundation has come out against ad blocking: "Content blocking software should focus on addressing potential user needs (such as on performance, security, and privacy) instead of blocking specific types of content (such as advertising)."[1] This is sad. Their slogan used to be "Work for mankind, not for the man". But the Mozilla Foundation is ad-funded. They currently have a deal with Yahoo to make Yahoo Search their preferred search engine. Before that, it was Google. Those deals bring in hundreds of millions of dollars a year. So they can't afford to bite the hand that feeds them. This places them in conflict with Apple. Apple makes their money selling stuff to end users at a high markup. They can be very anti-advertiser if they choose. Apple could block all ads on their devices and market that as a feature. [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/10/07/proposed-principles-for-content-blocking/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/10/07/proposed-principles...
- kuschku 11y agoI’m sorry: I got so angry reading this, I accidentally downvoted you :/
- mtw 11y agoYet Apple puts huge ads in metro stations all over the world. They pick what's interesting for them - no ads on mac and iOS, and huge ad campaigns elsewhere
- icebraining 11y ago
- timbits 11y agoEthical ad blockers should let the web page know that they are blocking ads so that the web page can chose to not display the content, or offer a paid option. It will avoid a stupid arm race between the two parties, and it's transparent.
- makeitsuckless 11y agoYes, violating a user's privacy is really ethical...
- gglitch 11y agoIn my opinion, a lot of the discussion about ads and ad-blocking leaves a very key factor undiscussed: that, as with US healthcare, the consumer cannot make an informed decision about whether a given piece of content justifies the loading of a given piece of 3rd party code, because the terms of use of that code are undisclosed. The whole notion of "implied consent" seems laughable to me - about as laughable as the idea of going into a car dealership and buying a car sight unseen and for an unknown price that can be redefined by the seller at any point in the future. [Edited for cell phone typos]
- hiou 11y agoThis site is an ad and no one is blocking it. Many Instagram feeds are ads. This ad blocking debate is taking a very dated and narrow minded view of what an advertisement is.
- njitram 11y agoFrom a business model perspective, the reader is not the 'customer', but the advertisers. The content is just the bait to get traffic, and then a publisher has to monetize the traffic, most of the time by using ads to divert some of the traffic to an advertiser. So a publisher has to walk a very fine line between not anoying the reader too much but at the same time still have value for the advertiser. No wonder that some publishers go (way) too far and only focus on advertisers and almost forget the reader. Doesn't help that the ads are most of the time outside the control of the publisher, but are controlled by big advertising networks of course.
- Puts 11y agoI think we are missing one key thing in this debate. Ads and ad-blocking is just a symptom of the fact that you cannot make money in this industry. The only ones making money on IT are companies who's main thing is not technology, but who can utilize technology to make there business more efficient. A good example is logistic companies who have a business that's been around for ever, but smart algorithms allows them to cut costs and work more effectively. But the money it selves comes from shipping things.
- jalfresi 11y agoA thousand times this; if your business model relies on advertising, you don't have a business model.