13 ms·

It's strange that the most simple and elegant solution to ad-blocking, self hosted ads are not considered by anyone. Magazines and papers have always done this

by Puts 10y ago

It's strange that the most simple and elegant solution to ad-blocking, self hosted ads are not considered by anyone. Magazines and papers have always done this in print. Yes there is overhead, because you have to handle the content manually and it's hard, even tough not impossible to measure impressions. But with print it's always been this way and now the media industry wants to both have the cake and eat it, because they don't want to handle ads but they want the revenue. And maybe I should clarify, how does self-hosted ads solve the problem? - It's hard to block ads on the same domain as the main content. - Just loading an image with an ad is not as much of an performance hit as javascript loaded tracking ads and thus should not annoy users as much. - More secure, because you can not hack one single ad service and distribute mallware to thousands of sites. Besides, the solution is less complex, and complexity always leads to bad security.

chx 10y ago
Ah, my naive friend. How can an advertiser know it's not being shortcharged? Having a "neutral" third party helps here.
- distances 10y ago
  The same way it works with newspapers, I'd say. Check that it is there when you expect it to be there.
  - danielhughes 10y ago
    Even with newspapers advertisers don't simply accept the circulation numbers that the publishers report. They pay third parties to provide independent numbers. It's not just about whether the ad appears but rather knowing how many people saw it.
    - hawski 10y ago
      So maybe there could be 3rd party company to check such things. Also ads could be sold at auction. I.e. auction for 24h display of ad in header from $1 on some news site.
      - cmdrfred 10y ago
        Actually that's not a bad idea. Why not hit the site that the ad's are reportedly on from some IP addresses unknown to the ad provider. Do this over and over again until you have enough data to assume that say 1/5th of impressions are you then compare that to a neutral 3rd party source (Google Analytics comes to mind) of the total hits for that day. 5000 hits / 1/5 of those are impressions of your ad = 1000 impressions. Compare this to the numbers provided by the ad provider itself. All you'd need to do is spot check and it should keep everyone honest. I'm surprised people don't do this already.
- syshum 10y ago
  Independent Auditing happens in all kinds of industries and for all kinds of reasons There is no reason a neutral 3rd party can not review logs, software, or other data to ensure in house ad metrics are accurate.
- AznHisoka 10y ago
  Advertisers can track clicks very easily on their own via google analytics and other platforms. What's so hard about that?
  - a_small_island 10y ago
    Because if it's CPM, then you're paying for users on the publisher who simply view it.
- hammock 10y ago
  Advertisers have not cared much to date. For example the amount of money they pour into Facebook ads despite massive click fraud.
- anoctopus 10y ago
  They could always use a platform that is pay-per-action, so that you aren't paying unless people actually buy things. (I work on the ad systems team of an affiliate marketing company, where essentially all advertisement contracts are done on a PPA basis, rather than PPC)
mjevans 10y ago
Ads really need to be put on a diet. * Either a /static/ image or colored text * Normalized (re-packed, stripped of all other data, etc) * Vetted by a human somewhere to not be 'misleading in appearance' (not checking facts, but making sure that it doesn't look like a download button or anything else not obviously an ad) * Based on the content of the context and nothing else (you can bake them statically based on the story and/or comments thread on the page)
- Puts 10y ago
  Yes, the vetting part is also important. As it is now renowned newspapers are serving ads that are border fraudulent, and I don't really understand how they are putting their reputation at risk this way by letting third parties publish non-vetted content on their site.
  - huehehue 10y ago
    I'm wondering when the Google Play Store wild west era will end. I've seen numerous apps containing ads with text (e.g. "Install Candy Crash!") laid over borderline pornographic images that have nothing to do with the advertised service. I guess it catches the eye? I don't think shifting responsibility to publishers is the answer. A half-serious idea would be to have a neutral regulatory body issue "licenses to advertise" but how long until corporate interests took that over?
  - jerf 10y ago
    "I don't really understand how they are putting their reputation at risk this way by letting third parties publish non-vetted content on their site." I read it as a measure of their financial desperation. They're eating their seed corn (their reputation is their most valuable asset in that without that, what else do they have?), and, well, what other choice do they have? HN has been talking about the other choices for years, but every time I see someone try one, they sink.
madshiva 10y ago
I agree it's a very good idea. This would also promote more local ads than big commercial ads. At the end, I know they need to get money but ads don't serve any purpose. I mean I never buy product from ad, I have only things that suite what I have search 10 minute ago. Why putting ads for that? I already know the product and this will never push me to buy something.
- developer2 10y ago
  Try telling this to anyone in the ad marketing business. They'll claim their tactics are extremely effective. Regarding "I never buy product from ad", they'll tell you "yes you do, we're manipulating your subconscious and you don't even know it's working!". Really, they're mostly spinning a web of lies that keeps them employed. You won't find employment doing this for a living if you don't pretend like most of what you do really impacts everyone. I'm one of those people who will actively abandon products that market too heavily or with material that manipulates its consumers. I switched away from Dove soaps/shampoos back when they started their viral "Campaign for Real Beauty" shenanigans. Pretending you care about your customers' self-image problems... to market soap... turned me off.
- madeofpalk 10y ago
  There's two types of advertisements - Direct Action marketing, where they want a very specific outcome out of the ad (to buy something), and 'brand advertisement' where they just want you to be aware of the ad. It's the difference between Coke & Budweiser, and Squarespace & Geico ads.
paulrouget 10y ago
But then tracking and targeting is not possible.
- Puts 10y ago
  Targeting is very much possible, just as with magazines. If you have a recipes site you could have ads for kitchen tools. If you have a music site you have ads for local events. If you have lifestyle magazine you have clothing and interior ads. I would even go as far and say that this type of targeting is better then now when you go to a webshop, search for a product and suddenly starts seeing that product plastered all over the web, often even after you actually already bought the freaking product.
- alkonaut 10y ago
  > But then tracking and targeting is not possible That is kind of the point. Online ads should go back being exactly like print ads are. Sold individually, static, untargeted and un-trackable. Not because the ad-networks, advertisers or site owners think its best, but because its the only type of ad that the viewers will accept eventually.
madeofpalk 10y ago
I work for a 'big online old media company' and can offer some insight for all of this. First up, I strongly believe our industry has dug ourselves into the hole and really fucked itself over. Daily I use an adblocker to make the internet faster and easier to use (which is ironic because I'm the one who implemented the 'plz disable adblocker' banner on our site and i see it every single day http://i.imgur.com/xQza4fS.png http://i.imgur.com/xQza4fS.png) Problems with self hosting: - It's super duper hard to change the status quo. For them, the current solution 'works fine', once they fight the supposed evil that ad blockers are. Trust me, I fight for this sort of stuff and they just don't understand things the way we do. - You can't do as much or sell ads for as much. You can charge more if you know more data about your visitors and can sell the ads to clients under the impression that it'll reach the exact demographic they're looking for. - For some companies, it's already too much of a chore to have an in-house dev team to manage the content website. Have to have _people_ manage all these self hosted ads is not appealing to these companies. Very similar to AWS vs self-hosting - An image is less interactive, so you can't sell it for as much. Those big fancy ads that are interactive are sold more many many more times the price as just a single jpg more. - If you're 'lucky' to work in a media org big enough to have a sales team, even they don't sell out every single ad placement all the time - there's a big tailed on these states they still want to monetise and ad networks helps them do that. That aside, things are changing. Everything on our site happens over HTTPS, which is a plus. We do win 'arguments' to move things in-house and not served from an ads network, where appropriate. We have an in-house 'studio team' who creates custom campaigns and creatives for clients, and they're almost entirely self hosted.
- imglorp 10y ago
  Would it help to have an off the shelf, self-hosted ad platform available? Perhaps a plugin to an existing CMS?
  - madeofpalk 10y ago
    That might help, but it depends what problem you're trying to solve then - if everyone was using the same platform, then it would be easy for adblockers to block it. If part of your pitch is that you avoid adblockers, then once you get big enough you'll constantly be fighting an uphill battle.
nimbix 10y ago
Self hosted ads would change nothing when it comes to blocking. Some ad servers allow you to proxy all the requests through your subdomain, but ads still get blocked. CSS selector based blocking is widespread and adding another `.sidebar > .ad` rule to adblock is no big deal.
- onion2k 10y ago
  There's no reason why the ads and the CSS for them can't be served by a small proxy application that runs on the server(s) of the site, and works by changing the name of any selector to a random string on every page load. Potentially it could also generate random DOM nodes in the HTML so xpath based blocking wouldn't work either.
  - valine 10y ago
    I suppose you could have a stateful adblocker that looks for the element changing between page loads, and ignores the randomly generated elements that aren't visible to the user. Of course it would only work the second time you load the page. The adblocker could load a second copy of the page in the background, and then update the DOM of the first page after it determines which elements were regenerated.
    - onion2k 10y ago
      That'd be an interesting approach. I like the idea of diff'ing a page to detect sneaky ad injection.
    - jackmaney 10y ago
      An interesting idea, but it would be difficult at best to prevent false positives on sites with dynamic elements.
  - Thiez 10y ago
    Those random DOM nodes will probably be easy to recognize because they can't affect how the final page looks. If all else fails there is still the option of rendering the page, using image-based add detection, and killing/hiding the associated DOM nodes. There are only so many ways to obfuscate your DOM without screwing up the page layout and making your UI people angry. The battle against add blockers cannot be won.
amelius 10y ago
> It's hard to block ads on the same domain as the main content. Well, I'm sure that it would not be impossible: - ads are the changing part of a webpage, so they can be identified - ads could be collaboratively removed, by allowing the user to select the ad, then send its fingerprint to a central entity, so that others can benefit - AI techniques could be used to identify and remove ads.
stevesearer 10y ago
I self-host the ads on my site in addition to selling the space directly. Because the content of the site is narrow (photo tours of office design projects) it ends up attracting a certain group of people who are interested in office design and office furniture (self-targeting if you will).
hammock 10y ago
Social media (Facebook/Twitter/Instagram) ads are self-hosted, and while they evade adblockers it has not kept users from being annoyed.
eli 10y ago
Uh, self hosted ads get blocked too - just check a popular filter subscription. Any moderately popular news site will have filter authors going out of their way to block their ads in the filters regardless of URL domain. I feel like there's this myth that adblock is just trying to block "bad" ads, but the evidence shows most blockers really try very hard to block all ads. Trying to stay one step ahead of that is a losing proposition for media companies.

by Puts 10y ago

chx 10y ago

Ah, my naive friend. How can an advertiser know it's not being shortcharged? Having a "neutral" third party helps here.

distances 10y ago
The same way it works with newspapers, I'd say. Check that it is there when you expect it to be there.
- danielhughes 10y ago
  Even with newspapers advertisers don't simply accept the circulation numbers that the publishers report. They pay third parties to provide independent numbers. It's not just about whether the ad appears but rather knowing how many people saw it.
  - hawski 10y ago
    So maybe there could be 3rd party company to check such things. Also ads could be sold at auction. I.e. auction for 24h display of ad in header from $1 on some news site.
    - cmdrfred 10y ago
      Actually that's not a bad idea. Why not hit the site that the ad's are reportedly on from some IP addresses unknown to the ad provider. Do this over and over again until you have enough data to assume that say 1/5th of impressions are you then compare that to a neutral 3rd party source (Google Analytics comes to mind) of the total hits for that day. 5000 hits / 1/5 of those are impressions of your ad = 1000 impressions. Compare this to the numbers provided by the ad provider itself. All you'd need to do is spot check and it should keep everyone honest. I'm surprised people don't do this already.
syshum 10y ago
Independent Auditing happens in all kinds of industries and for all kinds of reasons There is no reason a neutral 3rd party can not review logs, software, or other data to ensure in house ad metrics are accurate.
AznHisoka 10y ago
Advertisers can track clicks very easily on their own via google analytics and other platforms. What's so hard about that?
- a_small_island 10y ago
  Because if it's CPM, then you're paying for users on the publisher who simply view it.
hammock 10y ago
Advertisers have not cared much to date. For example the amount of money they pour into Facebook ads despite massive click fraud.
anoctopus 10y ago
They could always use a platform that is pay-per-action, so that you aren't paying unless people actually buy things. (I work on the ad systems team of an affiliate marketing company, where essentially all advertisement contracts are done on a PPA basis, rather than PPC)

mjevans 10y ago

Ads really need to be put on a diet. * Either a /static/ image or colored text * Normalized (re-packed, stripped of all other data, etc) * Vetted by a human somewhere to not be 'misleading in appearance' (not checking facts, but making sure that it doesn't look like a download button or anything else not obviously an ad) * Based on the content of the context and nothing else (you can bake them statically based on the story and/or comments thread on the page)

Puts 10y ago
Yes, the vetting part is also important. As it is now renowned newspapers are serving ads that are border fraudulent, and I don't really understand how they are putting their reputation at risk this way by letting third parties publish non-vetted content on their site.
- huehehue 10y ago
  I'm wondering when the Google Play Store wild west era will end. I've seen numerous apps containing ads with text (e.g. "Install Candy Crash!") laid over borderline pornographic images that have nothing to do with the advertised service. I guess it catches the eye? I don't think shifting responsibility to publishers is the answer. A half-serious idea would be to have a neutral regulatory body issue "licenses to advertise" but how long until corporate interests took that over?
- jerf 10y ago
  "I don't really understand how they are putting their reputation at risk this way by letting third parties publish non-vetted content on their site." I read it as a measure of their financial desperation. They're eating their seed corn (their reputation is their most valuable asset in that without that, what else do they have?), and, well, what other choice do they have? HN has been talking about the other choices for years, but every time I see someone try one, they sink.

madshiva 10y ago

I agree it's a very good idea. This would also promote more local ads than big commercial ads. At the end, I know they need to get money but ads don't serve any purpose. I mean I never buy product from ad, I have only things that suite what I have search 10 minute ago. Why putting ads for that? I already know the product and this will never push me to buy something.

developer2 10y ago
Try telling this to anyone in the ad marketing business. They'll claim their tactics are extremely effective. Regarding "I never buy product from ad", they'll tell you "yes you do, we're manipulating your subconscious and you don't even know it's working!". Really, they're mostly spinning a web of lies that keeps them employed. You won't find employment doing this for a living if you don't pretend like most of what you do really impacts everyone. I'm one of those people who will actively abandon products that market too heavily or with material that manipulates its consumers. I switched away from Dove soaps/shampoos back when they started their viral "Campaign for Real Beauty" shenanigans. Pretending you care about your customers' self-image problems... to market soap... turned me off.
madeofpalk 10y ago
There's two types of advertisements - Direct Action marketing, where they want a very specific outcome out of the ad (to buy something), and 'brand advertisement' where they just want you to be aware of the ad. It's the difference between Coke & Budweiser, and Squarespace & Geico ads.

paulrouget 10y ago

But then tracking and targeting is not possible.

Puts 10y ago
Targeting is very much possible, just as with magazines. If you have a recipes site you could have ads for kitchen tools. If you have a music site you have ads for local events. If you have lifestyle magazine you have clothing and interior ads. I would even go as far and say that this type of targeting is better then now when you go to a webshop, search for a product and suddenly starts seeing that product plastered all over the web, often even after you actually already bought the freaking product.
alkonaut 10y ago
> But then tracking and targeting is not possible That is kind of the point. Online ads should go back being exactly like print ads are. Sold individually, static, untargeted and un-trackable. Not because the ad-networks, advertisers or site owners think its best, but because its the only type of ad that the viewers will accept eventually.

madeofpalk 10y ago

I work for a 'big online old media company' and can offer some insight for all of this. First up, I strongly believe our industry has dug ourselves into the hole and really fucked itself over. Daily I use an adblocker to make the internet faster and easier to use (which is ironic because I'm the one who implemented the 'plz disable adblocker' banner on our site and i see it every single day http://i.imgur.com/xQza4fS.png http://i.imgur.com/xQza4fS.png) Problems with self hosting: - It's super duper hard to change the status quo. For them, the current solution 'works fine', once they fight the supposed evil that ad blockers are. Trust me, I fight for this sort of stuff and they just don't understand things the way we do. - You can't do as much or sell ads for as much. You can charge more if you know more data about your visitors and can sell the ads to clients under the impression that it'll reach the exact demographic they're looking for. - For some companies, it's already too much of a chore to have an in-house dev team to manage the content website. Have to have _people_ manage all these self hosted ads is not appealing to these companies. Very similar to AWS vs self-hosting - An image is less interactive, so you can't sell it for as much. Those big fancy ads that are interactive are sold more many many more times the price as just a single jpg more. - If you're 'lucky' to work in a media org big enough to have a sales team, even they don't sell out every single ad placement all the time - there's a big tailed on these states they still want to monetise and ad networks helps them do that. That aside, things are changing. Everything on our site happens over HTTPS, which is a plus. We do win 'arguments' to move things in-house and not served from an ads network, where appropriate. We have an in-house 'studio team' who creates custom campaigns and creatives for clients, and they're almost entirely self hosted.

imglorp 10y ago
Would it help to have an off the shelf, self-hosted ad platform available? Perhaps a plugin to an existing CMS?
- madeofpalk 10y ago
  That might help, but it depends what problem you're trying to solve then - if everyone was using the same platform, then it would be easy for adblockers to block it. If part of your pitch is that you avoid adblockers, then once you get big enough you'll constantly be fighting an uphill battle.

nimbix 10y ago

Self hosted ads would change nothing when it comes to blocking. Some ad servers allow you to proxy all the requests through your subdomain, but ads still get blocked. CSS selector based blocking is widespread and adding another `.sidebar > .ad` rule to adblock is no big deal.

onion2k 10y ago
There's no reason why the ads and the CSS for them can't be served by a small proxy application that runs on the server(s) of the site, and works by changing the name of any selector to a random string on every page load. Potentially it could also generate random DOM nodes in the HTML so xpath based blocking wouldn't work either.
- valine 10y ago
  I suppose you could have a stateful adblocker that looks for the element changing between page loads, and ignores the randomly generated elements that aren't visible to the user. Of course it would only work the second time you load the page. The adblocker could load a second copy of the page in the background, and then update the DOM of the first page after it determines which elements were regenerated.
  - onion2k 10y ago
    That'd be an interesting approach. I like the idea of diff'ing a page to detect sneaky ad injection.
  - jackmaney 10y ago
    An interesting idea, but it would be difficult at best to prevent false positives on sites with dynamic elements.
- Thiez 10y ago
  Those random DOM nodes will probably be easy to recognize because they can't affect how the final page looks. If all else fails there is still the option of rendering the page, using image-based add detection, and killing/hiding the associated DOM nodes. There are only so many ways to obfuscate your DOM without screwing up the page layout and making your UI people angry. The battle against add blockers cannot be won.

amelius 10y ago

> It's hard to block ads on the same domain as the main content. Well, I'm sure that it would not be impossible: - ads are the changing part of a webpage, so they can be identified - ads could be collaboratively removed, by allowing the user to select the ad, then send its fingerprint to a central entity, so that others can benefit - AI techniques could be used to identify and remove ads.

stevesearer 10y ago

I self-host the ads on my site in addition to selling the space directly. Because the content of the site is narrow (photo tours of office design projects) it ends up attracting a certain group of people who are interested in office design and office furniture (self-targeting if you will).

hammock 10y ago

Social media (Facebook/Twitter/Instagram) ads are self-hosted, and while they evade adblockers it has not kept users from being annoyed.

eli 10y ago

Uh, self hosted ads get blocked too - just check a popular filter subscription. Any moderately popular news site will have filter authors going out of their way to block their ads in the filters regardless of URL domain. I feel like there's this myth that adblock is just trying to block "bad" ads, but the evidence shows most blockers really try very hard to block all ads. Trying to stay one step ahead of that is a losing proposition for media companies.