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Although in theory AMP makes sense, I think the issue is actually more broad than just mobile. On desktop, lots of people rely on an ad blocker to make sites us

Although in theory AMP makes sense, I think the issue is actually more broad than just mobile. On desktop, lots of people rely on an ad blocker to make sites usable again. That mobile doesn't have a way to block ads is probably a failure of Google, Apple and other players to allow extensions. Google has a majority share of the first impression for ads so it's hard for me to really understand how they can't just strong arm other advertisers and other networks into having better ads. Maybe that's the AMP play but it's a pretty weak appeal to consumers and (as evident from this thread) publishers. Ad blockers proliferating are a response to this inaction in my mind.

EricBurnett 10y ago
> That mobile doesn't have a way to block ads is probably a failure of Google, Apple and other players to allow extensions. To be honest, I see this as short-term painful, long-term desirable. Ad blockers make the incentives of the web worse - they mean that publishers get punished for bad behaviour of other sites. Whereas without, users make more direct value judgements...if your site is covered in ads and a terrible experience, I'll stop visiting it. (I'd accept arguments that 100% ad blocker adoption could push us to a better place so we should let this run its course instead, but when I think it through I think it more likely pushes towards walled gardens and the death of the open web, so I'm skeptical.) To your second point, I don't think that Google has the power you think it does to strong-arm other ad networks, and that'd be a really dangerous thing for Google to consider doing anyways. Publishers are often struggling right now (especially newspapers), and so revenue is their only thought. They'll go with whoever brings in the most money, because otherwise hastens the death of their company. This is why I like the AMP argument - it isn't forcing anyone, but it makes the argument that "if users can expect a good experience, you'll make more money, in spite of not being able to be as free with the technologies you jam onto the page". Yes, it's a weaker appeal, but that's what I like about it...because it has to be predicated on actually working better, rather than about pushing people around.
- jasonthevillain 10y ago
  > I don't think that Google has the power you think it does to strong-arm other ad networks Not strong arm per se, but just having _any_ built in enforcement of technical standards built into DFP would solve the lionshare of the problem. At the moment, publishers have to play whack-a-mole with poorly-built creatives. IAB's LEAN standard would be a fine place to start. (To your point about not pushing people around, I agree, we should be talking about performance as an industry standard, like viewability or HTTPS.)
  - EricBurnett 10y ago
    The catch here is that if DFP were to enforce technical standards to the extent of including performance, publishers would leave en masse. What they want from DFP (as I understand it) is hosting that just works; they don't want anyone in the way causing some ad campaigns to not get trafficked at the right time, or killed after serving for a while, or anything else. And worse, I think that you'd find that a very large number of ads wouldn't comply with any such standard - display ads aren't good, by and large. So even with a perfect offering publishers would look at the numbers and say "you know what, nevermind...turn the crappy ads back on." A pretty good approximation for publishers I've found was to say "if you give them a knob between anything and revenue, they'll turn it towards revenue." That by and large includes sacrificing user-first principles. So one difference to your example is that viewability is desired - it's a direct metric that helps to approximate value, which advertisers like. But performance is not. Users cannot generally tell _which_ ad made their browser lag, or that it wasn't the page's fault. The best you could possibly do is to measure long-term-value, but because any given publisher only gets a tiny fraction of a user's time, and any single ad that much less, my recollection is that the LTV isn't really moved at all regardless of experience. It's going to take an industry-wide shift to move the needle here. HTTPS is a closer comparison, except that it takes big parties again to force the issue - it's user positive but revenue negative and lots of work. So it comes back to the issue of who can get this change pushed through, without some party (pubs, advertiser, or users) just walking away. Look at examples of where/why HTTPS has been adopted if you want to see more. AMP may get to that point, we'll see, but I like it as a possibility. And it's doing more to simply not show ads if they're taking too many resources (with browser assistance iirc? Delay loading? Don't recall what I've read), which is good in other ways. Which reminds me, that's another plausible solution that I'm liking...if browsers can be more involved in aborting rendering bad iframe'd content, or preventing them from janking the page, etc, then the burden is squarely on the advertisers to fix or suffer reduced impact, irrespective of publisher/ad network. That's great, it puts the incentives cleanly where they should be. So I'm also hopeful that browsers can push through positive results here. Doesn't help with content badness (only latency and other such browser-measurable "bad ad" issues), but is a great starting place. (And to be fair, I don't think AMP solves for content badness either).
majewsky 10y ago
> That mobile doesn't have a way to block ads is probably a failure of Google, Apple and other players to allow extensions. Mobile ad-blocking works just fine for me (uBlock on Firefox for Android).

EricBurnett 10y ago

> That mobile doesn't have a way to block ads is probably a failure of Google, Apple and other players to allow extensions. To be honest, I see this as short-term painful, long-term desirable. Ad blockers make the incentives of the web worse - they mean that publishers get punished for bad behaviour of other sites. Whereas without, users make more direct value judgements...if your site is covered in ads and a terrible experience, I'll stop visiting it. (I'd accept arguments that 100% ad blocker adoption could push us to a better place so we should let this run its course instead, but when I think it through I think it more likely pushes towards walled gardens and the death of the open web, so I'm skeptical.) To your second point, I don't think that Google has the power you think it does to strong-arm other ad networks, and that'd be a really dangerous thing for Google to consider doing anyways. Publishers are often struggling right now (especially newspapers), and so revenue is their only thought. They'll go with whoever brings in the most money, because otherwise hastens the death of their company. This is why I like the AMP argument - it isn't forcing anyone, but it makes the argument that "if users can expect a good experience, you'll make more money, in spite of not being able to be as free with the technologies you jam onto the page". Yes, it's a weaker appeal, but that's what I like about it...because it has to be predicated on actually working better, rather than about pushing people around.

jasonthevillain 10y ago
> I don't think that Google has the power you think it does to strong-arm other ad networks Not strong arm per se, but just having _any_ built in enforcement of technical standards built into DFP would solve the lionshare of the problem. At the moment, publishers have to play whack-a-mole with poorly-built creatives. IAB's LEAN standard would be a fine place to start. (To your point about not pushing people around, I agree, we should be talking about performance as an industry standard, like viewability or HTTPS.)
- EricBurnett 10y ago
  The catch here is that if DFP were to enforce technical standards to the extent of including performance, publishers would leave en masse. What they want from DFP (as I understand it) is hosting that just works; they don't want anyone in the way causing some ad campaigns to not get trafficked at the right time, or killed after serving for a while, or anything else. And worse, I think that you'd find that a very large number of ads wouldn't comply with any such standard - display ads aren't good, by and large. So even with a perfect offering publishers would look at the numbers and say "you know what, nevermind...turn the crappy ads back on." A pretty good approximation for publishers I've found was to say "if you give them a knob between anything and revenue, they'll turn it towards revenue." That by and large includes sacrificing user-first principles. So one difference to your example is that viewability is desired - it's a direct metric that helps to approximate value, which advertisers like. But performance is not. Users cannot generally tell _which_ ad made their browser lag, or that it wasn't the page's fault. The best you could possibly do is to measure long-term-value, but because any given publisher only gets a tiny fraction of a user's time, and any single ad that much less, my recollection is that the LTV isn't really moved at all regardless of experience. It's going to take an industry-wide shift to move the needle here. HTTPS is a closer comparison, except that it takes big parties again to force the issue - it's user positive but revenue negative and lots of work. So it comes back to the issue of who can get this change pushed through, without some party (pubs, advertiser, or users) just walking away. Look at examples of where/why HTTPS has been adopted if you want to see more. AMP may get to that point, we'll see, but I like it as a possibility. And it's doing more to simply not show ads if they're taking too many resources (with browser assistance iirc? Delay loading? Don't recall what I've read), which is good in other ways. Which reminds me, that's another plausible solution that I'm liking...if browsers can be more involved in aborting rendering bad iframe'd content, or preventing them from janking the page, etc, then the burden is squarely on the advertisers to fix or suffer reduced impact, irrespective of publisher/ad network. That's great, it puts the incentives cleanly where they should be. So I'm also hopeful that browsers can push through positive results here. Doesn't help with content badness (only latency and other such browser-measurable "bad ad" issues), but is a great starting place. (And to be fair, I don't think AMP solves for content badness either).

majewsky 10y ago

> That mobile doesn't have a way to block ads is probably a failure of Google, Apple and other players to allow extensions. Mobile ad-blocking works just fine for me (uBlock on Firefox for Android).