3 ms·

If there's an arms race between ad-blockers and ad-blocker-detectors, the latter will win. All of the money and incentives are set up for them to do a better j

If there's an arms race between ad-blockers and ad-blocker-detectors, the latter will win. All of the money and incentives are set up for them to do a better job.

jacquesm 11y ago
You can't really 'win' with an ad-blocker-detector, you can only win by committing virtual suicide on your website. Eyeballs have value other than just ads, for instance someone might have shared an article in an interesting way or to a well matching demographic which in turn led to a viral effect. Very hard to know which part of your audience is the one instrumental to keeping the flow of traffic up, and 20% is in the danger zone. Keep in mind that Wired's audience is fairly tech savvy and that is precisely the segment that may have caused Wired to be as well respected as they are in the first place. You don't risk alienating that 20% unless you're desperate.
- fiatmoney 11y ago
  Presumably they get desperate, then. Look, it's easy to wave your hands and talk about viral articles, but fundamentally they will do what they need to in order to stay alive, or be replaced by a company that will. You can have micropayments (failed experiment), subscriptions, or ads. Empirically it seems like ads or other non-monetary consideration (influence, sponsored content, etc) has outcompeted subscription-based models for most content. Given that the "war" is entirely technical & visible to the end user only by the presence or absence of ads, the question is just whether you'll read a publication that has ads, or not. Empirically, the general population will. (This says nothing about how invasive the ads are).
- jamespo 11y ago
  I think this concept of the "sharing elite" is overstated. You're not that influential.
Fuzzwah 11y ago
I'd need you to clarify your idea of "winning", but I'm pretty sure I'd take the opposite side of this bet. Ad-blockers will win because people find ads very annoying.
- fiatmoney 11y ago
  My contention is that if you want to, you can make ads nearly indistinguishable from "content". On the extreme side, I would say that I have won this bet already; if you pick up something like the Wall Street Journal and count the number of articles that someone involved wanted printed, you'd find that most of what you're reading is one kind of ad or another. But there are technical solutions as well. Obfuscation beats machine parsers for at least the foreseeable future.

If there's an arms race between ad-blockers and ad-blocker-detectors, the latter will win. All of the money and incentives are set up for them to do a better job.

jacquesm 11y ago

You can't really 'win' with an ad-blocker-detector, you can only win by committing virtual suicide on your website. Eyeballs have value other than just ads, for instance someone might have shared an article in an interesting way or to a well matching demographic which in turn led to a viral effect. Very hard to know which part of your audience is the one instrumental to keeping the flow of traffic up, and 20% is in the danger zone. Keep in mind that Wired's audience is fairly tech savvy and that is precisely the segment that may have caused Wired to be as well respected as they are in the first place. You don't risk alienating that 20% unless you're desperate.

fiatmoney 11y ago
Presumably they get desperate, then. Look, it's easy to wave your hands and talk about viral articles, but fundamentally they will do what they need to in order to stay alive, or be replaced by a company that will. You can have micropayments (failed experiment), subscriptions, or ads. Empirically it seems like ads or other non-monetary consideration (influence, sponsored content, etc) has outcompeted subscription-based models for most content. Given that the "war" is entirely technical & visible to the end user only by the presence or absence of ads, the question is just whether you'll read a publication that has ads, or not. Empirically, the general population will. (This says nothing about how invasive the ads are).
jamespo 11y ago
I think this concept of the "sharing elite" is overstated. You're not that influential.

Fuzzwah 11y ago

I'd need you to clarify your idea of "winning", but I'm pretty sure I'd take the opposite side of this bet. Ad-blockers will win because people find ads very annoying.

fiatmoney 11y ago
My contention is that if you want to, you can make ads nearly indistinguishable from "content". On the extreme side, I would say that I have won this bet already; if you pick up something like the Wall Street Journal and count the number of articles that someone involved wanted printed, you'd find that most of what you're reading is one kind of ad or another. But there are technical solutions as well. Obfuscation beats machine parsers for at least the foreseeable future.