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Use of Ad-Blocking Software Rises by 30% Worldwide

274 points by t23 10y ago

mschuster91 10y ago
> By using software to block digital advertising, critics say, users are breaking an unwritten pact with websites and digital publishers, many of which generate the bulk of their revenue from these ads. No. The unwritten pact is "you can show ads, as long as they're not intrusive (layer ads, popup ads), don't distribute malware and don't unneccessarily invade the privacy of the users". Just go back to hosting and managing your own ads - print media most certainly can do this, given their print ad sales teams, and I believe there's a market for advertising brokers which allow a 1:1 connection between advertiser and the content platform. Edit: And for heavens sake, do not roll out fucking video ads, especially not on mobile pages. Not everyone has 50GB+ data volume like in Finland...
- Erik816 10y ago
  In theory, yes. This is what they should have done. But now that they have violated our trust, our ad blockers are going to block even their legitimate self-hosted and managed ads. Some people will white-list, but not nearly enough to make up for the expense of managing ads in house.
  - mikestew 10y ago
    Seems to me that's the genie they can't put back in the bottle. As I said in another comment, up to a point users will tolerate advertising. But go past that point, and users will take the nuclear option, and once it's on their machine there's no going back. Ever get a new machine and surf the web without an ad blocker after using one for a while? Fucking horrible, isn't it? Yup, your grandma thinks so, too. So could you come over and put that ad thing on her new iPad? Similar thing happened to the music industry. File all the lawsuits you want, insist all you like that the accepted way to buy music is on an over-priced piece of plastic, wax eloquently of "unwritten pacts", but users are going to stand in line to splash buckets of cold water in your face until you get it. The advertising industry as a whole could have taken a different, better path. But they're just as lazy as I am, and they took the easy way out. In the long-term, though, they're going to have a tough time of it as a result of short-term thinking. And white-listing? Didn't I just say I'm lazy?
  - problems 10y ago
    Not only that, but lack of ads on a page is truly corrupting. Once you've seen it you can't go back. I can't look at someone without an ad blocker's browser without going "uh, here, install this". I just don't see them anymore, since I don't pay for TV and block ads online, ads are almost entirely outside my daily experience. So when I encounter them now it triggers a burn-it-with-fire response.
  - 5ilv3r 10y ago
    My ublock install doesn't block self hosted ads. They have to come from an ad server to be blocked.
    - gorhill 10y ago
      uBlock Origin can block self-hosted ads. If you see non-blocked ads somewhere, just report the details to filter list maintainers. The tens of thousands of filters in those filter lists are the result of users reporting instances of non-blocked ads, for the benefit of all other users.
  - ouid 10y ago
    I would want my ad blocker to do that anyway. I don't want to experience any advertisements. I do not believe my experiencing an advertisement will enrich anyone, and my life will be made worse.
eistrati 10y ago
Ad blocking is here to stay. Some people compare it to antivirus revolution, allowing end users to protect their browsing experience against malware and malicious use of web. Check this out: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160111/05574633295/forbes-site-after-begging-you-turn-off-adblocker-serves-up-steaming-pile-malware-ads.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160111/05574633295/forbe...
- 1propionyl 10y ago
  Advertisements are very often intended to incept and promote an idea virally. They are, for better or worse, memetic mind viruses. Adblockers are in a very literal sense antivirus.
  - eistrati 10y ago
    Second that! I love the analogy ;)
  - stephengillie 10y ago
    Advertising induces desire to generate economic activity. If desire is suffering, then advertising (in the most extreme sense) can be viewed as a form of paid torture.
    - omarchowdhury 10y ago
      And then you have someone discovering the teachings of the Buddha from an ad ran by their local Dharma center seeking new patrons.
jonawesomegreen 10y ago
It makes sense. I install ublock on my parents computers, because without ads to send them off course when they are browsing, they are much less likely to get malware. And it works. I've often wondered how they ended up with so much malware on their computer and I'm now convinced that ads are a big cause.
- HeavenBanned 10y ago
  uBlock is more useful than full-blown antivirus software, and the fact that my parents too have not had viruses since forcing them to use Chrome/uBlockOrigin just proves that point. Antivirus is good once you've already been screwed. The point to me, though, is to not get screwed in the first place. uBlock is amazing. Interestingly, I think this is why Google is now cracking down hard on bad websites. They're trying to justify people not using adblockers. It's a losing game.
  - Crespyl 10y ago
    I'm not sure why you've been downvoted, and I largely agree with the position that in most cases an adblocker will stop most malware from reaching the user. I suspect the remaining cases mostly come from email and social engineering, where most antivirus aren't likely to be meaningfully better than MSE/Defender/whatever the OS has built in.
- jsin05 10y ago
  I came here to write this. I would have the same problem with my parents computer obtaining malware which I had no clue to how. Since I have installed ad blockers on their computers I haven't had issues with malware on their computers.
- jstalin 10y ago
  This. I installed ublock on my grandpa's computer because he called a day after I sent him a new one to tell me it wasn't working right. In just one day he had loaded it up with malware. I installed ublock, installed a bunch of additional filters, and there's been no problem since.
- 10y ago
mikestew 10y ago
By using software to block digital advertising, critics say, users are breaking an unwritten pact with websites and digital publishers, many of which generate the bulk of their revenue from these ads. ... In those regions, people’s efforts to block malware disguised as online advertising has been the main motivation for downloading ad blockers. First, "critics say" a lot of things. And that "unwritten pact"? Yeah, you wanna know why it's unwritten? Because it doesn't exist. However, the second part that I quote undoes any kind of morality tale "critics" would like to spin. Users were apparently willing to tolerate a degree of advertising (which, BTW, is a loooong way from any kind of a pact), but after a point they'll turn the tap off if there are tools available to do so.
- Nadya 10y ago
  >By serving ads laden with malware, critics say, websites and digital publishers are breaking an unwritten pact with users, many of which are turning to ad blockers to protect themselves. If they want to pretend this unwritten contract exists (I don't think it does) then they need to uphold their part of the deal: don't infect users with malware.
  - matt4077 10y ago
    I've been surfing the web – and sometimes its corners the Pope wouldn't approve – for 20 years, mostly without ad blockers and always without antivirus. To my knowledge, I've never been infected by malware. In regards to the "invisible pact": I believe publishers would find more success by framing it in terms of the users' self-interest: Considering everything that's going on, do you believe the world would be a better place without The Wall Street Journal, NYT, Guardian, Bloomberg, Wired etc? Or even – for people prone to sudden exclamations of "CNN IS FAKE NEWS!", without Breitbart, Drudge, and The Intercept? If you cut out every publisher currently set up as a revenue-based organisation – would you be well informed? Is there some non-professional blogger(s) who could have served as a primary source for all the news of the last week?
    - pavel_lishin 10y ago
fnovd 10y ago
>“Ad blocking is a detriment to the entire advertising ecosystem,” Paul Verna, an analyst at the research firm eMarketer, said in a statement. “The best way for the industry to tackle this problem is to deliver compelling ad experiences that consumers won’t want to block.” Compelling? I'd settle for "non-instrusive" and "won't force my computer to run potentially malicious code".
0xfaded 10y ago
I've just switched to firefox mobile and uBlock origin and self destructing cookies work perfectly. Previously I had used a hosts file which helped but broke some sites and let some ads through. It's marginally slower than chrome but otherwise I couldn't be happier.
- christophilus 10y ago
  Same. I highly recommend it on mobile, even with its quirks. And I actually like their controversial reader view feature on the desktop. It seems to work even on sites that block ad-blocked browsers.
- hyperdunc 10y ago
  This is my setup too and it works very well. It's also worth mentioning that Firefox has built-in tracking protection that can be enabled in all tabs through about:config. There's also a built-in option to block downloading webfonts. Overall, Firefox on Android seems to be a lot more privacy focussed than Chrome.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
1propionyl 10y ago
“Ad blocking is a detriment to the entire advertising ecosystem,” Paul Verna, an analyst at the research firm eMarketer, said in a statement. Yes, and the entire advertising ecosystem is a detriment to the internet. Crafting more "compelling" advertisements won't solve the key problem: online advertisement has become an abuse of our attention spans. We need to stop talking about pragmatism and start considering advertising from an ethical and moral perspective.
- marssaxman 10y ago
  Yeah, exactly: being a detriment to the entire advertising ecosystem is the whole point of using an adblocker. It makes the web mostly tolerable again. (Disabling javascript by default helps a lot with that, too.)
- JohannesH 10y ago
  I work at an ad network and I've tried to push morals and ethics for 7 years now. The problem is that the entire field is driven by sales people with very few exceptions. The only objective is to make more money tomorrow, so they only think about how they can squeeze the market just a bit more... Like "Oh there's an empty spot on that page, put an ad there now!", or "Hey did you see those ads that cover the entire page? Advertisers love those... I want you to implement it on all sites asap!". Ethics, morality, user experience, security and privacy concerns are simply not a part of the equation.
  - tomjen3 10y ago
    Then it seems pointless for you to preach morals and ethics. I don't blame you, but it sounds like the entire industry is about to find out what happens when you only focus on today and it becomes tomorrow. Make sure you have an exit plan.
    - JohannesH 10y ago
      I'm thinking exit plans all the time. Just registered my first company, although I'm not entirely sure what my focus will be yet.
eppsilon 10y ago
I am not sure about the premise that the "surge of mobile ad-blockers" in the developing world will translate to "skyrocketing" usage of ad-blockers in the US. I think the incentive to limit data usage by blocking ads is stronger in the developing world than it is elsewhere (less disposable income, lower data caps, possibly higher data rates). The article seems to trust PageFair's assessment but only mentions in passing that they make money helping companies recoup lost ad revenue, and spreading fear over higher ad-blocker usage probably helps them gain clients.
dgfgfdagasdfgfa 10y ago
Not only should people use them if they don't like the way advertising drives the internet, use Ad Nauseam (https://adnauseam.io/ https://adnauseam.io/) to actively lower the value of clicks.
belorn 10y ago
Since this is about annual increase, it would be interesting to see the adaptation path of spam filters for email vs spam filters for the browser. Are we just seeing history repeat?
grillvogel 10y ago
the whole reason all these stupid ad supported hot take blogs/ "news" sites and networks exist is to cash in on shitty clickbait content. it will be no great loss if they go away.
twentythree 10y ago
Most of the comments here talk about how terrible advertising is. Obviously, malware disguised as ads is a bad thing, and I understand the arguments for preserving our attention spans as well, but is there a space for good ads, which benefit both the user and the advertiser? I have bought many products which add value to my life that I probably wouldn't have found without advertisements. It seems like ads are still the best way to connect people to products. How do we preserve that, while stopping the bad actors from abusing the system?
- soundwave106 10y ago
  I never really minded advertising on the web, personally, until a few years back. Two big negatives prompted me to install an ad blocker. The first negative was the increasing presence of malware reports in advertising. The second negative was the horrible tendency of advertising towards UI intrusiveness (full screen pop-overs, autoplay video, etc.) and causing the performance of the page to significantly slow down. From my perspective, advertising is not terrible in itself. Advertising that punishes the user is terrible. Make the user experience of an advertisement good and useful, and get rid of the nasty malware stuff, and I suspect there will be a lot less motivation for ad blockers.
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  > Most of the comments here talk about how terrible advertising is. Most seem to be complaining about malware. > is there a space for good ads, which benefit both the user and the advertiser? Probably, but how are you going to convince me that your special snowflake ad network is the one that's guaranteed to be malware free?
  - acdha 10y ago
    I think the future is self-hosting: if nytimes.com got the search de-ranking and DNS blacklisting for hosting malware you can bet the advertisements would get way more scrutiny.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
Guest98123 10y ago
Does anyone else here make their living from advertising? Well over 50% of my users run ad block. I get 1.5 million page views a day on my primary site (4,000 Alexa), and the advertisements cover my AWS bill, and pay me an average salary. That's it, and the profits are dropping every year as more people use ad block. It's scary. I have a million users, run the business extremely lean with just myself, and I'm barely scrapping by at the moment. If I can't survive, how is everyone else going to survive? Don't get me wrong, I use ad block too for obvious reasons, but we're going to see more and more businesses closing up shop unless there is a better way to monetize content online in the near future.
- hx87 10y ago
  Paywall?
  - Guest98123 10y ago
    It's a strong community of users, so I'm going to try the donation route soon, with bonuses for donators. I tried having someone well connected in my industry directly sell advertising campaigns. They were able to increase ad revenue by about 30k per year. However, I needed to pay them, so at the end of the day it didn't have any benefit, and I went back to using ad networks. Edit: I run another site as well that has 5,000 daily unique users and 70,000 daily page views. It has two advertisements, one above the fold on the homepage, and one closer to the footer. It earns about $5 per day. That's it. I don't think many people understand how low earnings are for most sites. Lots of publishers have been adding more advertisements, and trying to block users with ad block enabled, and it's not because they're greedy, money grabbers, trying to steal all of your information. Most of them are just trying to stay afloat as the ship sinks. There is not enough money going to content online. How much do you donate to HN, Reddit, StackOverflow, and hundreds of other sites and services you use on a regular basis? I donate $0, and the majority of other people do the same. That's a problem, and we need a solution.
    - HalfwayToDice 10y ago
      "5,000 daily unique users, 70,000 daily page views, earns about $5 per day." If your traffic is mostly US/UK/EU, then you are doing something very very wrong to be only earning $5 per day.
mkonecny 10y ago
I agreed with this "unwritten pact" and felt it was unfair to browse with an ad blocker - however recently the performance impact on my 2016 flagship (Nexus 6P) was atrocious. Once I installed an adblocker, I can't believe how much faster/less frustrating using my phone to find something on the web has been.
- hellogoodbyeeee 10y ago
  What ad blocker are you running? I think you can use some from firefox on Android, but I prefer chrome. Is there anything out there?
  - imandride 10y ago
    I'm not sure how I stubbled upon it, but I'm using Yandex browser on android. It seems to have all the extensions I need, I think it uses anything compatible with opera.
  - crispinb 10y ago
    I use Adguard. Works as an on-device vpn server, so can filter for all apps including Chrome. Works well for me.
mtgx 10y ago
Not as fast as malvertising, unfortunately: ‘Malvertising’ Increased By 132% In 2016 According To New Report: https://www.scribblrs.com/malvertising-rises/ https://www.scribblrs.com/malvertising-rises/
crypt1d 10y ago
Businesses who's revenue is mostly coming from ads are operating in a bubble that should have burst long ago. The sooner it ends the sooner we can get rid of all the click-bait blogs and BS websites that make money from uneducated users. It goes without saying that there are many legitimate websites with great content that make money from ads - but if you have good content then users will be willing to pay for it.
Kinnard 10y ago
I wonder what portion of this is driven by the Brave Browser: https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/ I'm guessing it's small but significant and will grow. I use Brave myself but not exclusively.
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  I'm purely guessing, but I'd imagine that more users are installing addons to their current browsers.
  - cpeterso 10y ago
    It seems like most of Brave's blocking+micropayments functionality could be implemented in a Chrome or Firefox add-on.
- ams6110 10y ago
  I would guess the number of people using the Brave Browser is too small to register with anyone who cares about such things.
dtech 10y ago
I don't understand why so few websites offer alternative methods of payment, subscriptions or donations and rely solely on ads. I was positively surprised to see the New York Times and other newspapers have started offering relatively cheap online subscriptions (still too expensive [1]). I'm waiting for Youtube Red to become available in my country and have Netflix and Spotify. Patreon provides to be a great platform for niche content and I support several creators that cater to my interests. Subscription and pay-what-you-want seems like much more sustainable business model than ads, or at least has good synergy. [1] For ads a CPM (cost per mille) of $1.00 is common, meaning one ad view from me is worth $0.001. If I pay a site $1.00/month I'm paying them much more than I'm "paying" them with ads.
- tomjen3 10y ago
  The problem is that you would need a subscription for six or seven different sites, just to follow the links that are posted on HN. And I am not really interested in giving my money to NYT.
- Balgair 10y ago
  This is true, but I think it tends to favor established players. Look at YouTubers. I follow a few Youtubers and have for years. They all seem to be moving over to Twitch and the Paetreon model for support, specifically the Amazon Prime method. This is in part due to the lessening of Youtube's $$/view. I think this is great for them, and I pay them to continue doing what I love for them to do. However, I find that there are less and less people entering the 'market' over time. Is this a bad/good thing? I have no idea, just an observation.
  - aninhumer 10y ago
    I think the fact that people's Patreon income is visible might make it self-balancing. If you like popular creator, but see that they're already getting quite a bit of money on Patreon, you're less likely to support them than another creator that you only kind of like, but who is currently getting less than you think they deserve. Unless the popular creator can convince you that they can spend the extra money to make their content better, and thus be worth it. So I think with Patreon, creators' revenues will tend to converge on what people think they're actually worth.
emptyfile 10y ago
Since Chrome on Android doesn't allow addons I think it's safe to say websites have a good decade or so poking us in the eye with pop up ads. I'm guessing it will take at least a decade before Firefox or some alternative browser gains any traction on mobile.
- ScroogeMcDoug 10y ago
  The mobile ad market is proof enough that the ad industry as a whole is terrible. Blocking ads on iOS and Android is harder for the average user than on Desktop, and it's abused to a ridiculous degree. Popups, redirects, trying to trick users into installing malicious apps, etc. The ad industry had a second chance with mobile, and they showed they couldn't control themselves.
- rodionos 10y ago
  I just installed Firefox with ublock, thanks for the suggestion.
Animats 10y ago
Now we need tools which delete those annoying "you are running an ad blocker" popups. For sites which do that, right click on "Inspect element"in Firefox, mouse around in the element tree until you find the popup node, and do a Delete Node on it. That usually brings the content back. An add-on to assist with this would be popular. We're going to need browsers which render original pages on a non-visible page, ads and all, then extract the good stuff from the DOM and put it on a visible page. Then the site can't tell if you're blocking ads.
- waterphone 10y ago
  https://reek.github.io/anti-adblock-killer/ https://reek.github.io/anti-adblock-killer/ You can enable it within uBlock Origin.
  - bostand 10y ago
    I would rather just not visit sites that want me to disable my ad blocker.
- kuschku 10y ago
  > We're going to need browsers which render original pages on a non-visible page, ads and all, then extract the good stuff from the DOM and put it on a visible page. Then the site can't tell if you're blocking ads. Firefox does that, it's called the "Reader Mode".
  - sp332 10y ago
    Safari and Edge also have this built-in. For Chrome, you need a plugin.
  - ams6110 10y ago
    Reader mode will not reveal content on paywalled sites, even if it's there. E.g. article content in a hidden div. Elinks (or even just "view source") will.
    - 10y ago
apricot 10y ago
Marketers: "we get to use computers to track you, and boy do we track you, but you can't use computers to try to evade us, that would be unfair."
legohead 10y ago
When the user adblock percentage of our website hit 30%, we decided to try out anti-adblock solutions. We worked with a company that used various tricks to get around the adblock protection, and then serve ads. This was a great success, at first. Eventually our users started notifying adblock[1], and adblock included rules to block the new ads on our site. Then we contacted our vendor, who gave us a software update to circumvent the new adblock rules. This went on, until adblock enabled the nuclear option and blocked all ajax requests on our site. This effectively broke our site for anyone using adblock. So we caved in, took out the software, and begged for mercy from adblock. The rule was taken out, and we are back to losing 30% of our ad revenue. I should mention that we've tried the usual stuff -- subscription service to remove ads. Asking our users nicely to add our site to their whitelist, etc. Both of these have had minuscule impact. [1] When I say "adblock did X", I really mean the caretakers of the "rule lists", which the various adblocking engines use in their browser extensions.
- taf2 10y ago
  Why not try and continue to let the site be broken for people using adblock? It's their choice to break the user agent. If enough sites are broken with adblock enabled and the content is compelling enough - you would assume they would disable adblock?
  - zeta0134 10y ago
    As a user of AdBlock, unless it's a site I desperately need to function (there aren't very many of these), having it be broken with AdBlock turned on clues me in that something shady is going on. I'm more likely to simply leave and never come back. Note here that I'm not against certain kinds of advertising, and I'm all for subscription models and donation incentives and a great many other ways to fund sites. But third party advertising networks have forever lost my trust, and I simply won't tolerate the security risk nor the annoyance any longer. Your site is welcome to require me to disable AdBlock, and that's fine. I don't need to read your posts that badly anyway.
    - dgfgfdagasdfgfa 10y ago
mahyarm 10y ago
Adblock is an autoimmune response. Adoption goes high because ads take too much in resources. Thats why as the article said ad block became really popular in indonesia, because it costed users too much of their data plan compared to the value they got. And the reason why is because rich media ads became more frequent compared to a few years ago. To avoid becoming an autoimmune response victim, you have to do things like google AMP where 'ad-enhanced' becomes a benefit.
callmeed 10y ago
I'm curious why sites/blogs don't start hosting ad assets themselves and serving them from their own domain. My understanding is most ad blocking is done at the host level (maybe I'm wrong and the DOM is involved too). I also think it'd be an interesting startup idea. I get that there would be some technical hurdles to overcome, especially with all the real-time bidding that goes on now. But I'm sure a couple smart people could come up with something. Could start with something as simple as a cron job, a WordPress plugin, or an nginx proxy.
- drcharris 10y ago
  I suspect that if I had a site, piping assets from some arbitrary external company through my host would likely expose me to dramatically larger legal liability than the current set up. It would also radically increase my bandwidth bills if the ads were anything but text or a small amount of (hopefully sanitised) HTML. Both of these could be mitigated by adding an enormous amount of due diligence in terms of what ads I was willing to serve, but that would add a lot of extra cost to running the site. There's no real technical barrier to doing it but I suspect the legal and operational barriers are more significant. And yes, the DOM is involved too - ad blockers block URL patterns but also allow users to block DOM elements based on a selector-type syntax. The hardest ads to remove are ones where the DOM selectors are dynamic - i.e. server-side rendering producing divs with random CSS classes.
  - ssalazar 10y ago
    > piping assets from some arbitrary external company through my host would likely expose me to dramatically larger legal liability than the current set up. > It would also radically increase my bandwidth bills if the ads were anything but text or a small amount of (hopefully sanitised) HTML. To an end user these sounds like features, not problems. > Both of these could be mitigated by adding an enormous amount of due diligence in terms of what ads I was willing to serve The lack of any vetting whatsoever is a big reason why adblock is so widespread. If you don't trust it enough to transmit it through your servers, why should I trust it to run on my computer?
- doozy 10y ago
rustynails 10y ago
They are excellent questions. I am one of those people who has lost faith in mainstream media in the last few years. Your question (despite being simple) is very powerful. The media is manipulative and deceitful. The same prejudice trends carry across almost all media. I've mentioned domestic violence a number of times. Almost all media outlets will show _only_ female victims, despite about 33% of victims being male and many perpetrators being female (source: Australian Bureau of Statistics). You will see similar gendered bullying constantly from most media outlets. Despite the accusations, my research has found NO PROOF this was the opposite 50 years ago (prove me wrong!!). This gender war has become so extreme that it's spilled over to attacking kids. I can't believe how much prejudice the media has against boys. Code.org, BBC shows like Horrible Histories (eg. Repeatedly saying girls had to pretend to be boys to get books published, then mentioning 3 female Brontes, Beatrix Potter, etc, thus contradicting themselves. For what gain?? Wasn't Darwin boycotted? Why not mention that? Can't have a male victim, eh?). Or take Ars Technica's recent coverage on Twitter said that feminists have been saying we need to stop harassment, thus implying the only victims are feminists and that feminists do Not harass (in my view, this is very far removed from the truth on both counts, but it's very Ars, very manipulative). One commenter even said that Ars was irresponsible to represent only one group as victims, to which he was unanimously shouted down and asked "How is Russia?", a very popular comment amongst the Ars crowd. This is the mindset created by continued media manipulation that the only Victims are Female and the only perpetrators are Male. Anyone honest knows this is just not true, so why repeatedly say it? A lot of media reps seem to love sexism and gender Bullying (today). Now, there are some good things that do come from the media. You find out about social events and new infrastructure. There are some useful facts. However, with so much hostility, lying and downright nastiness, I decided I was happier without most media. As a few people said on Ars today, with so much prejudice everywhere you look, where do you get good media today? They were all shouted down :) If I thought there was an unprejudiced and quality media outlet, I'd be happy to pay for it, or whitelist them in Adblock. We are now at a time when many people don't trust the media. I think we would Be better off without most media outlets. However, that may concentrate too much power in a few people's hands. What's the answer? I don't know. Governments Should hold journalists accountable for prejudice. As long as people don't pay for media, expect the quality to be low. Advertising looks like a desperate stand by the media.
thoughtsimple 10y ago
I asked politely to not be tracked by using the opt-in switch in my browsers. Advertisers literally laughed at that and said they wouldn't honor it. So now ads are blocked on my browser. All of them. The advertising industry and the people who use it to monetize are at fault. They did nothing to prevent the awful privacy mess that was made of the web without ad-blocking.
- JohnTHaller 10y ago
  Unfortunately, Microsoft turned it on by default for all installs which killed it. It was supposed to be a user specifically opting in so it would be treated like a request directly to the advertiser. Microsoft's end-run around that gave advertisers the excuse they needed and it died. I think it would have gained some serious traction if it had been specifically opt in.
pillowkusis 10y ago
I think it's important to note that the 30% increase claim comes from PageFair (https://pagefair.com/blog/2017/adblockreport/ https://pagefair.com/blog/2017/adblockreport/), which is a company that helps other companies bypass adblocker and still have ads on their site (ostensibly in a much less offensive manner). They have an active interest in (over)estimating very agressively about the growth of adblockers -- it's their business model.
makecheck 10y ago
The problem is not the ads, it is the implementation. Nobody would care if sites simply inserted a line that said “Brought to you by FooBar, Inc. [Link].”.
kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
Stop serving Javascript. Most of the media industry's problems with malvertising would disappear if they only served up <img> tags. They could also one-up the ad blockers by serving images from within their own domain. Why the media industry hasn't united to clean up their act is baffling. Google certainly isn't going to take leadership on this issue since any solution cuts into their revenue.
- PhantomGremlin 10y ago
  Stop serving Javascript. That would work for me. I don't block ads, I simply block JavaScript from most sites. The paucity of ads served to me is a happy side effect. Why the media industry hasn't united to clean up their act is baffling. The media industry is constantly doubling down, trying to be more and more obnoxious. The exact opposite of cleaning up their act.
surferbayarea 10y ago
Has anyone applied deep learning to the problem of identifying advertisement blocks in a web page?
anotherevan 10y ago
They are not ad-blockers, they are HTML firewalls.
dbg31415 10y ago
Seems relevant. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/h...
j3097736 10y ago
How to NOT "create compelling ad experiences": 1) After the content has loaded it's broken into pieces by blank spots which slowly fill up with ads 2) Loading the page maxes out a recent CPU 3) Page with ads does 3x the number of network requests as the adblocked version
sklivvz1971 10y ago
The elephant in the room here is the assumption that newspapers or other media that rely only on ads to survive should automatically have a viable business model just because they had a viable model with printed media. Clearly, this is not the case. One can't adblock printed media, but can certainly adblock websites. The solution? Find a better business model. For example, stack overflow uses non-intrusive, pertinent ads to entice people to white list the site, and separate revenue streams like a job board to keep the site running. I understand that this might sound simplistic. I am perfectly aware of how hard this problem is to fix -- however the world moves in the direction dictated by the big economic trends. Websites have almost zero variable cost -- most cost is fixed and does not scale as pageviews increase -- so economics tells us that competition will drive the value of a pageview to zero.
- brettz 10y ago
  Maybe sites like Stack Overflow have 0 variable cost but this is more of an exception. The viable model is paywalls and that's where quality content will go. I don't see a big deal with that as I will gladly pay for content that I value.
  - sklivvz1971 10y ago
    > Maybe sites like Stack Overflow have 0 variable cost but this is more of an exception. Interesting, how so? I find it difficult to imagine any media site that, once they produced a piece of content, has to pay any other substantial cost as they get more views. In other words: doubling up page views for the Guardian does not mean doubling up the costs of producing the articles. That's what I mean by "substantially zero variable cost".
    - brettz 10y ago
      Not doubling costs but delivery photo and video does increase costs significantly. Something Stack Overflow doesn't have to do.
- rossy 10y ago
  For starters, I'd love to see online newspapers run ads that behave like print ads. This would mean they show the same ad for everyone (not an ad that the ad network thinks will match your interests,) the ad does not move or play audio, the ad does not track views or clicks, the ad is delivered to you by the same infrastructure that delivers the article (that is, from the same image and JavaScript CDNs, no external resources,) the ads are not overly distracting from the main content and each ad is vetted for misleading and false claims. These ads would be harder to block, mainly because of the CDN thing, but maybe not as many people would want to go out of their way to block them. readthedocs.io sometimes runs ads that fit this criteria and, at least on my machine, uBlock doesn't block them yet.
gregpilling 10y ago
I started using ad blockers for virus protection. I got hit twice through ad networks on big websites. Extra bonus that website loads faster etc. It was 90% the viruses for me.
sundvor 10y ago
I don't mind ads. I do mind malware. Sadly, the line between the two is blurred when former's networks are used as the attack vectors for the latter.
quantum_magpie 10y ago
In the present society, the advertisers managed to completely ruin the way cities look with their endless flashing neon signs (and in the past few years I've noticed a vast increase in audio-based advertisements outside), they have ruined the best observation spots, skylines, and in many cases, even parks with their billboards; the public TV which is funded by tax money is a complete ad-cancer. The same with radio, or sports games. It got me to the point where I consciously block every advertisement, but it sometimes gets really mentally taxing. I've stopped listening to radio, watching TV or basically going to any larger-scale public outing. I am not giving them the internet too! They can take their unwritten pact and starve. The worst offenders however, are the ones that require a payment to use, and still completely overwhelm you with the ads (Public transport in my case). I do subscribe to some services where the subscription removes ads, and I gladly pay for mobile applications that offer a reasonable (<10$) cost to ad-free experience. However, I have observed the overwhelming majority of content to be completely worthless, and I do not lose anything by not coming back.
- satori99 10y ago
  Well said. I have nothing but contempt and loathing for the advertising industry. I think they ruin everything. I also quit watching and listening to commercial broadcasters, and even quit working for one. I have a sister who is a successful advertising creative and executive. Our wildly differing and strong opinions on the topic makes for interesting family dinners. I am longing for the day that AR technology gets to the stage where lightweight sun-glass frames can have the ability to overlay classical art, or any other texture, over real-world ads in real-time. I have also been wondering lately if some sort of Adnix [0] like device could be developed using the incredible machine learning software that is becoming widely available. I know very little about such things but I have been meaning to make time to see if it is within my abilities. I'd love to scare my sister with it. [0] Adnix - http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=2223 http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=2223
  - humbledrone 10y ago
    What do you think about the fact that the website you linked as a reference is ad-supported? Assuming that you use an ad-blocker, have you contributed money directly to the web site in compensation? It seems that you got some value from the web site. Is this consistent with "advertising ruins everything"? Without ads, do you think the web site would exist at all?
lend000 10y ago
It's quite a surprise that so many prominent companies are getting around the best ad-blockers. Obviously it's a game of cat and mouse, but it seems like nothing much has changed with ad blockers since sites started detecting them and limiting content a couple years ago. Are there any open-source ad blocking projects? Or does that defeat the purpose? I'm not convinced it does.
thomastjeffery 10y ago
Ads are pollutants. When people complain about being predominantly supported by ad revenue, and complaining that people block ads, it is exactly the same as people who work in the coal industry complaining about pollution restrictions. They can take their business model, and shove it.
superquest 10y ago
Unfortunately, the usefulness of ad-blocking software is falling just as quickly ...
jakeogh 10y ago
Lots todo, but https://github.com/jakeogh/dnsgate https://github.com/jakeogh/dnsgate makes my web experience way better.
Lucadg 10y ago
Why ad blocker apps require so many permissions as my photos, camera and microphone?
- izacus 10y ago
  They don't, that's probably malware.
  - Lucadg 10y ago
    Could you suggest a good one for Android? Most in Play Store ask these permissions
    - XzetaU8 10y ago
      Adguard https://adguard.com/en/adguard-android/overview.html https://adguard.com/en/adguard-android/overview.html AdAway for rooted devices https://github.com/AdAway/AdAway https://github.com/AdAway/AdAway
CalRobert 10y ago
Philosophically, if I issue a GET request and you choose to respond to it, what the hell business do you have telling me what to do with those bytes? Is using wget, or cURL, or Lynx wrong? Is blocking images on mobile wrong?
known 10y ago
Adblock filters explained in https://adblockplus.org/filter-cheatsheet https://adblockplus.org/filter-cheatsheet
nkkollaw 10y ago
Ad blockers are good. On one hand, advertising on the internet makes it possibile to have free services and websites, so that even people who can't afford a subscription can see the content and IMO is better than data mining as a source of revenue for content providers. On the other hand, it's super-annoying. The rise of ad blockers will make content providers introduce the possibility of paying to access the service with no ads, so that those who can afford it or care can pay to get it with no ads, and everyone else can still get it with ads. It's not really realistic to pretend that some services don't make any money, because after a while there would be no good quality content to go to. Ad blockers are perhaps finally changing the idea that everything on the internet MUST be free, and getting people used to paying for what they want to use.
Lucadg 10y ago
Here in Bangkok when I wait for the sky train I find myself trying to avoid advertisement. I end up looking at people or at the sky (I stopped the data plan to avoid being dragger to my phone). There is basically advertisement everywhere, plus sound for the biggest screens. So unless I do a conscious effort to avoid, I'm 100% of the time looking at some kind of ads. Ads are fine, but yes, this is too much.
bnolsen 10y ago
People claiming the internet is free...well its not. In the US the carriers like comcast make money hand over fist selling expensive plans for a pittance of bandwidth. That's where a huge chunk of the money is going.
touristtam 10y ago
Seriously, we have to think as a society what license to manipulate we give the advertisment business, then we can talk about blocking ads.

274 points by t23 10y ago

> By using software to block digital advertising, critics say, users are breaking an unwritten pact with websites and digital publishers, many of which generate the bulk of their revenue from these ads. No. The unwritten pact is "you can show ads, as long as they're not intrusive (layer ads, popup ads), don't distribute malware and don't unneccessarily invade the privacy of the users". Just go back to hosting and managing your own ads - print media most certainly can do this, given their print ad sales teams, and I believe there's a market for advertising brokers which allow a 1:1 connection between advertiser and the content platform. Edit: And for heavens sake, do not roll out fucking video ads, especially not on mobile pages. Not everyone has 50GB+ data volume like in Finland...

Erik816 10y ago
In theory, yes. This is what they should have done. But now that they have violated our trust, our ad blockers are going to block even their legitimate self-hosted and managed ads. Some people will white-list, but not nearly enough to make up for the expense of managing ads in house.
- mikestew 10y ago
  Seems to me that's the genie they can't put back in the bottle. As I said in another comment, up to a point users will tolerate advertising. But go past that point, and users will take the nuclear option, and once it's on their machine there's no going back. Ever get a new machine and surf the web without an ad blocker after using one for a while? Fucking horrible, isn't it? Yup, your grandma thinks so, too. So could you come over and put that ad thing on her new iPad? Similar thing happened to the music industry. File all the lawsuits you want, insist all you like that the accepted way to buy music is on an over-priced piece of plastic, wax eloquently of "unwritten pacts", but users are going to stand in line to splash buckets of cold water in your face until you get it. The advertising industry as a whole could have taken a different, better path. But they're just as lazy as I am, and they took the easy way out. In the long-term, though, they're going to have a tough time of it as a result of short-term thinking. And white-listing? Didn't I just say I'm lazy?
- problems 10y ago
  Not only that, but lack of ads on a page is truly corrupting. Once you've seen it you can't go back. I can't look at someone without an ad blocker's browser without going "uh, here, install this". I just don't see them anymore, since I don't pay for TV and block ads online, ads are almost entirely outside my daily experience. So when I encounter them now it triggers a burn-it-with-fire response.
- 5ilv3r 10y ago
  My ublock install doesn't block self hosted ads. They have to come from an ad server to be blocked.
  - gorhill 10y ago
    uBlock Origin can block self-hosted ads. If you see non-blocked ads somewhere, just report the details to filter list maintainers. The tens of thousands of filters in those filter lists are the result of users reporting instances of non-blocked ads, for the benefit of all other users.
- ouid 10y ago
  I would want my ad blocker to do that anyway. I don't want to experience any advertisements. I do not believe my experiencing an advertisement will enrich anyone, and my life will be made worse.

eistrati 10y ago

Ad blocking is here to stay. Some people compare it to antivirus revolution, allowing end users to protect their browsing experience against malware and malicious use of web. Check this out: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160111/05574633295/forbes-site-after-begging-you-turn-off-adblocker-serves-up-steaming-pile-malware-ads.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160111/05574633295/forbe...

1propionyl 10y ago
Advertisements are very often intended to incept and promote an idea virally. They are, for better or worse, memetic mind viruses. Adblockers are in a very literal sense antivirus.
- eistrati 10y ago
  Second that! I love the analogy ;)
- stephengillie 10y ago
  Advertising induces desire to generate economic activity. If desire is suffering, then advertising (in the most extreme sense) can be viewed as a form of paid torture.
  - omarchowdhury 10y ago
    And then you have someone discovering the teachings of the Buddha from an ad ran by their local Dharma center seeking new patrons.

jonawesomegreen 10y ago

It makes sense. I install ublock on my parents computers, because without ads to send them off course when they are browsing, they are much less likely to get malware. And it works. I've often wondered how they ended up with so much malware on their computer and I'm now convinced that ads are a big cause.

HeavenBanned 10y ago
uBlock is more useful than full-blown antivirus software, and the fact that my parents too have not had viruses since forcing them to use Chrome/uBlockOrigin just proves that point. Antivirus is good once you've already been screwed. The point to me, though, is to not get screwed in the first place. uBlock is amazing. Interestingly, I think this is why Google is now cracking down hard on bad websites. They're trying to justify people not using adblockers. It's a losing game.
- Crespyl 10y ago
  I'm not sure why you've been downvoted, and I largely agree with the position that in most cases an adblocker will stop most malware from reaching the user. I suspect the remaining cases mostly come from email and social engineering, where most antivirus aren't likely to be meaningfully better than MSE/Defender/whatever the OS has built in.
jsin05 10y ago
I came here to write this. I would have the same problem with my parents computer obtaining malware which I had no clue to how. Since I have installed ad blockers on their computers I haven't had issues with malware on their computers.
jstalin 10y ago
This. I installed ublock on my grandpa's computer because he called a day after I sent him a new one to tell me it wasn't working right. In just one day he had loaded it up with malware. I installed ublock, installed a bunch of additional filters, and there's been no problem since.
10y ago

mikestew 10y ago

By using software to block digital advertising, critics say, users are breaking an unwritten pact with websites and digital publishers, many of which generate the bulk of their revenue from these ads. ... In those regions, people’s efforts to block malware disguised as online advertising has been the main motivation for downloading ad blockers. First, "critics say" a lot of things. And that "unwritten pact"? Yeah, you wanna know why it's unwritten? Because it doesn't exist. However, the second part that I quote undoes any kind of morality tale "critics" would like to spin. Users were apparently willing to tolerate a degree of advertising (which, BTW, is a loooong way from any kind of a pact), but after a point they'll turn the tap off if there are tools available to do so.

Nadya 10y ago
>By serving ads laden with malware, critics say, websites and digital publishers are breaking an unwritten pact with users, many of which are turning to ad blockers to protect themselves. If they want to pretend this unwritten contract exists (I don't think it does) then they need to uphold their part of the deal: don't infect users with malware.
- matt4077 10y ago
  I've been surfing the web – and sometimes its corners the Pope wouldn't approve – for 20 years, mostly without ad blockers and always without antivirus. To my knowledge, I've never been infected by malware. In regards to the "invisible pact": I believe publishers would find more success by framing it in terms of the users' self-interest: Considering everything that's going on, do you believe the world would be a better place without The Wall Street Journal, NYT, Guardian, Bloomberg, Wired etc? Or even – for people prone to sudden exclamations of "CNN IS FAKE NEWS!", without Breitbart, Drudge, and The Intercept? If you cut out every publisher currently set up as a revenue-based organisation – would you be well informed? Is there some non-professional blogger(s) who could have served as a primary source for all the news of the last week?
  - pavel_lishin 10y ago

fnovd 10y ago

>“Ad blocking is a detriment to the entire advertising ecosystem,” Paul Verna, an analyst at the research firm eMarketer, said in a statement. “The best way for the industry to tackle this problem is to deliver compelling ad experiences that consumers won’t want to block.” Compelling? I'd settle for "non-instrusive" and "won't force my computer to run potentially malicious code".

0xfaded 10y ago

I've just switched to firefox mobile and uBlock origin and self destructing cookies work perfectly. Previously I had used a hosts file which helped but broke some sites and let some ads through. It's marginally slower than chrome but otherwise I couldn't be happier.

christophilus 10y ago
Same. I highly recommend it on mobile, even with its quirks. And I actually like their controversial reader view feature on the desktop. It seems to work even on sites that block ad-blocked browsers.
hyperdunc 10y ago
This is my setup too and it works very well. It's also worth mentioning that Firefox has built-in tracking protection that can be enabled in all tabs through about:config. There's also a built-in option to block downloading webfonts. Overall, Firefox on Android seems to be a lot more privacy focussed than Chrome.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

1propionyl 10y ago

“Ad blocking is a detriment to the entire advertising ecosystem,” Paul Verna, an analyst at the research firm eMarketer, said in a statement. Yes, and the entire advertising ecosystem is a detriment to the internet. Crafting more "compelling" advertisements won't solve the key problem: online advertisement has become an abuse of our attention spans. We need to stop talking about pragmatism and start considering advertising from an ethical and moral perspective.

marssaxman 10y ago
Yeah, exactly: being a detriment to the entire advertising ecosystem is the whole point of using an adblocker. It makes the web mostly tolerable again. (Disabling javascript by default helps a lot with that, too.)
JohannesH 10y ago
I work at an ad network and I've tried to push morals and ethics for 7 years now. The problem is that the entire field is driven by sales people with very few exceptions. The only objective is to make more money tomorrow, so they only think about how they can squeeze the market just a bit more... Like "Oh there's an empty spot on that page, put an ad there now!", or "Hey did you see those ads that cover the entire page? Advertisers love those... I want you to implement it on all sites asap!". Ethics, morality, user experience, security and privacy concerns are simply not a part of the equation.
- tomjen3 10y ago
  Then it seems pointless for you to preach morals and ethics. I don't blame you, but it sounds like the entire industry is about to find out what happens when you only focus on today and it becomes tomorrow. Make sure you have an exit plan.
  - JohannesH 10y ago
    I'm thinking exit plans all the time. Just registered my first company, although I'm not entirely sure what my focus will be yet.

eppsilon 10y ago

I am not sure about the premise that the "surge of mobile ad-blockers" in the developing world will translate to "skyrocketing" usage of ad-blockers in the US. I think the incentive to limit data usage by blocking ads is stronger in the developing world than it is elsewhere (less disposable income, lower data caps, possibly higher data rates). The article seems to trust PageFair's assessment but only mentions in passing that they make money helping companies recoup lost ad revenue, and spreading fear over higher ad-blocker usage probably helps them gain clients.

dgfgfdagasdfgfa 10y ago

Not only should people use them if they don't like the way advertising drives the internet, use Ad Nauseam (https://adnauseam.io/ https://adnauseam.io/) to actively lower the value of clicks.

belorn 10y ago

Since this is about annual increase, it would be interesting to see the adaptation path of spam filters for email vs spam filters for the browser. Are we just seeing history repeat?

grillvogel 10y ago

the whole reason all these stupid ad supported hot take blogs/ "news" sites and networks exist is to cash in on shitty clickbait content. it will be no great loss if they go away.

twentythree 10y ago

Most of the comments here talk about how terrible advertising is. Obviously, malware disguised as ads is a bad thing, and I understand the arguments for preserving our attention spans as well, but is there a space for good ads, which benefit both the user and the advertiser? I have bought many products which add value to my life that I probably wouldn't have found without advertisements. It seems like ads are still the best way to connect people to products. How do we preserve that, while stopping the bad actors from abusing the system?

soundwave106 10y ago
I never really minded advertising on the web, personally, until a few years back. Two big negatives prompted me to install an ad blocker. The first negative was the increasing presence of malware reports in advertising. The second negative was the horrible tendency of advertising towards UI intrusiveness (full screen pop-overs, autoplay video, etc.) and causing the performance of the page to significantly slow down. From my perspective, advertising is not terrible in itself. Advertising that punishes the user is terrible. Make the user experience of an advertisement good and useful, and get rid of the nasty malware stuff, and I suspect there will be a lot less motivation for ad blockers.
pavel_lishin 10y ago
> Most of the comments here talk about how terrible advertising is. Most seem to be complaining about malware. > is there a space for good ads, which benefit both the user and the advertiser? Probably, but how are you going to convince me that your special snowflake ad network is the one that's guaranteed to be malware free?
- acdha 10y ago
  I think the future is self-hosting: if nytimes.com got the search de-ranking and DNS blacklisting for hosting malware you can bet the advertisements would get way more scrutiny.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

Guest98123 10y ago

Does anyone else here make their living from advertising? Well over 50% of my users run ad block. I get 1.5 million page views a day on my primary site (4,000 Alexa), and the advertisements cover my AWS bill, and pay me an average salary. That's it, and the profits are dropping every year as more people use ad block. It's scary. I have a million users, run the business extremely lean with just myself, and I'm barely scrapping by at the moment. If I can't survive, how is everyone else going to survive? Don't get me wrong, I use ad block too for obvious reasons, but we're going to see more and more businesses closing up shop unless there is a better way to monetize content online in the near future.

hx87 10y ago
Paywall?
- Guest98123 10y ago
  It's a strong community of users, so I'm going to try the donation route soon, with bonuses for donators. I tried having someone well connected in my industry directly sell advertising campaigns. They were able to increase ad revenue by about 30k per year. However, I needed to pay them, so at the end of the day it didn't have any benefit, and I went back to using ad networks. Edit: I run another site as well that has 5,000 daily unique users and 70,000 daily page views. It has two advertisements, one above the fold on the homepage, and one closer to the footer. It earns about $5 per day. That's it. I don't think many people understand how low earnings are for most sites. Lots of publishers have been adding more advertisements, and trying to block users with ad block enabled, and it's not because they're greedy, money grabbers, trying to steal all of your information. Most of them are just trying to stay afloat as the ship sinks. There is not enough money going to content online. How much do you donate to HN, Reddit, StackOverflow, and hundreds of other sites and services you use on a regular basis? I donate $0, and the majority of other people do the same. That's a problem, and we need a solution.
  - HalfwayToDice 10y ago
    "5,000 daily unique users, 70,000 daily page views, earns about $5 per day." If your traffic is mostly US/UK/EU, then you are doing something very very wrong to be only earning $5 per day.

mkonecny 10y ago

I agreed with this "unwritten pact" and felt it was unfair to browse with an ad blocker - however recently the performance impact on my 2016 flagship (Nexus 6P) was atrocious. Once I installed an adblocker, I can't believe how much faster/less frustrating using my phone to find something on the web has been.

hellogoodbyeeee 10y ago
What ad blocker are you running? I think you can use some from firefox on Android, but I prefer chrome. Is there anything out there?
- imandride 10y ago
  I'm not sure how I stubbled upon it, but I'm using Yandex browser on android. It seems to have all the extensions I need, I think it uses anything compatible with opera.
- crispinb 10y ago
  I use Adguard. Works as an on-device vpn server, so can filter for all apps including Chrome. Works well for me.

mtgx 10y ago

Not as fast as malvertising, unfortunately: ‘Malvertising’ Increased By 132% In 2016 According To New Report: https://www.scribblrs.com/malvertising-rises/ https://www.scribblrs.com/malvertising-rises/

crypt1d 10y ago

Businesses who's revenue is mostly coming from ads are operating in a bubble that should have burst long ago. The sooner it ends the sooner we can get rid of all the click-bait blogs and BS websites that make money from uneducated users. It goes without saying that there are many legitimate websites with great content that make money from ads - but if you have good content then users will be willing to pay for it.

Kinnard 10y ago

I wonder what portion of this is driven by the Brave Browser: https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/ I'm guessing it's small but significant and will grow. I use Brave myself but not exclusively.

CaptSpify 10y ago
I'm purely guessing, but I'd imagine that more users are installing addons to their current browsers.
- cpeterso 10y ago
  It seems like most of Brave's blocking+micropayments functionality could be implemented in a Chrome or Firefox add-on.
ams6110 10y ago
I would guess the number of people using the Brave Browser is too small to register with anyone who cares about such things.

dtech 10y ago

I don't understand why so few websites offer alternative methods of payment, subscriptions or donations and rely solely on ads. I was positively surprised to see the New York Times and other newspapers have started offering relatively cheap online subscriptions (still too expensive [1]). I'm waiting for Youtube Red to become available in my country and have Netflix and Spotify. Patreon provides to be a great platform for niche content and I support several creators that cater to my interests. Subscription and pay-what-you-want seems like much more sustainable business model than ads, or at least has good synergy. [1] For ads a CPM (cost per mille) of $1.00 is common, meaning one ad view from me is worth $0.001. If I pay a site $1.00/month I'm paying them much more than I'm "paying" them with ads.

tomjen3 10y ago
The problem is that you would need a subscription for six or seven different sites, just to follow the links that are posted on HN. And I am not really interested in giving my money to NYT.
Balgair 10y ago
This is true, but I think it tends to favor established players. Look at YouTubers. I follow a few Youtubers and have for years. They all seem to be moving over to Twitch and the Paetreon model for support, specifically the Amazon Prime method. This is in part due to the lessening of Youtube's $$/view. I think this is great for them, and I pay them to continue doing what I love for them to do. However, I find that there are less and less people entering the 'market' over time. Is this a bad/good thing? I have no idea, just an observation.
- aninhumer 10y ago
  I think the fact that people's Patreon income is visible might make it self-balancing. If you like popular creator, but see that they're already getting quite a bit of money on Patreon, you're less likely to support them than another creator that you only kind of like, but who is currently getting less than you think they deserve. Unless the popular creator can convince you that they can spend the extra money to make their content better, and thus be worth it. So I think with Patreon, creators' revenues will tend to converge on what people think they're actually worth.

emptyfile 10y ago

Since Chrome on Android doesn't allow addons I think it's safe to say websites have a good decade or so poking us in the eye with pop up ads. I'm guessing it will take at least a decade before Firefox or some alternative browser gains any traction on mobile.

ScroogeMcDoug 10y ago
The mobile ad market is proof enough that the ad industry as a whole is terrible. Blocking ads on iOS and Android is harder for the average user than on Desktop, and it's abused to a ridiculous degree. Popups, redirects, trying to trick users into installing malicious apps, etc. The ad industry had a second chance with mobile, and they showed they couldn't control themselves.
rodionos 10y ago
I just installed Firefox with ublock, thanks for the suggestion.

Animats 10y ago

Now we need tools which delete those annoying "you are running an ad blocker" popups. For sites which do that, right click on "Inspect element"in Firefox, mouse around in the element tree until you find the popup node, and do a Delete Node on it. That usually brings the content back. An add-on to assist with this would be popular. We're going to need browsers which render original pages on a non-visible page, ads and all, then extract the good stuff from the DOM and put it on a visible page. Then the site can't tell if you're blocking ads.

waterphone 10y ago
https://reek.github.io/anti-adblock-killer/ https://reek.github.io/anti-adblock-killer/ You can enable it within uBlock Origin.
- bostand 10y ago
  I would rather just not visit sites that want me to disable my ad blocker.
kuschku 10y ago
> We're going to need browsers which render original pages on a non-visible page, ads and all, then extract the good stuff from the DOM and put it on a visible page. Then the site can't tell if you're blocking ads. Firefox does that, it's called the "Reader Mode".
- sp332 10y ago
  Safari and Edge also have this built-in. For Chrome, you need a plugin.
- ams6110 10y ago
  Reader mode will not reveal content on paywalled sites, even if it's there. E.g. article content in a hidden div. Elinks (or even just "view source") will.
  - 10y ago

apricot 10y ago

Marketers: "we get to use computers to track you, and boy do we track you, but you can't use computers to try to evade us, that would be unfair."

legohead 10y ago

When the user adblock percentage of our website hit 30%, we decided to try out anti-adblock solutions. We worked with a company that used various tricks to get around the adblock protection, and then serve ads. This was a great success, at first. Eventually our users started notifying adblock[1], and adblock included rules to block the new ads on our site. Then we contacted our vendor, who gave us a software update to circumvent the new adblock rules. This went on, until adblock enabled the nuclear option and blocked all ajax requests on our site. This effectively broke our site for anyone using adblock. So we caved in, took out the software, and begged for mercy from adblock. The rule was taken out, and we are back to losing 30% of our ad revenue. I should mention that we've tried the usual stuff -- subscription service to remove ads. Asking our users nicely to add our site to their whitelist, etc. Both of these have had minuscule impact. [1] When I say "adblock did X", I really mean the caretakers of the "rule lists", which the various adblocking engines use in their browser extensions.

taf2 10y ago
Why not try and continue to let the site be broken for people using adblock? It's their choice to break the user agent. If enough sites are broken with adblock enabled and the content is compelling enough - you would assume they would disable adblock?
- zeta0134 10y ago
  As a user of AdBlock, unless it's a site I desperately need to function (there aren't very many of these), having it be broken with AdBlock turned on clues me in that something shady is going on. I'm more likely to simply leave and never come back. Note here that I'm not against certain kinds of advertising, and I'm all for subscription models and donation incentives and a great many other ways to fund sites. But third party advertising networks have forever lost my trust, and I simply won't tolerate the security risk nor the annoyance any longer. Your site is welcome to require me to disable AdBlock, and that's fine. I don't need to read your posts that badly anyway.
  - dgfgfdagasdfgfa 10y ago

mahyarm 10y ago

Adblock is an autoimmune response. Adoption goes high because ads take too much in resources. Thats why as the article said ad block became really popular in indonesia, because it costed users too much of their data plan compared to the value they got. And the reason why is because rich media ads became more frequent compared to a few years ago. To avoid becoming an autoimmune response victim, you have to do things like google AMP where 'ad-enhanced' becomes a benefit.

callmeed 10y ago

I'm curious why sites/blogs don't start hosting ad assets themselves and serving them from their own domain. My understanding is most ad blocking is done at the host level (maybe I'm wrong and the DOM is involved too). I also think it'd be an interesting startup idea. I get that there would be some technical hurdles to overcome, especially with all the real-time bidding that goes on now. But I'm sure a couple smart people could come up with something. Could start with something as simple as a cron job, a WordPress plugin, or an nginx proxy.

drcharris 10y ago
I suspect that if I had a site, piping assets from some arbitrary external company through my host would likely expose me to dramatically larger legal liability than the current set up. It would also radically increase my bandwidth bills if the ads were anything but text or a small amount of (hopefully sanitised) HTML. Both of these could be mitigated by adding an enormous amount of due diligence in terms of what ads I was willing to serve, but that would add a lot of extra cost to running the site. There's no real technical barrier to doing it but I suspect the legal and operational barriers are more significant. And yes, the DOM is involved too - ad blockers block URL patterns but also allow users to block DOM elements based on a selector-type syntax. The hardest ads to remove are ones where the DOM selectors are dynamic - i.e. server-side rendering producing divs with random CSS classes.
- ssalazar 10y ago
  > piping assets from some arbitrary external company through my host would likely expose me to dramatically larger legal liability than the current set up. > It would also radically increase my bandwidth bills if the ads were anything but text or a small amount of (hopefully sanitised) HTML. To an end user these sounds like features, not problems. > Both of these could be mitigated by adding an enormous amount of due diligence in terms of what ads I was willing to serve The lack of any vetting whatsoever is a big reason why adblock is so widespread. If you don't trust it enough to transmit it through your servers, why should I trust it to run on my computer?
doozy 10y ago

rustynails 10y ago

They are excellent questions. I am one of those people who has lost faith in mainstream media in the last few years. Your question (despite being simple) is very powerful. The media is manipulative and deceitful. The same prejudice trends carry across almost all media. I've mentioned domestic violence a number of times. Almost all media outlets will show _only_ female victims, despite about 33% of victims being male and many perpetrators being female (source: Australian Bureau of Statistics). You will see similar gendered bullying constantly from most media outlets. Despite the accusations, my research has found NO PROOF this was the opposite 50 years ago (prove me wrong!!). This gender war has become so extreme that it's spilled over to attacking kids. I can't believe how much prejudice the media has against boys. Code.org, BBC shows like Horrible Histories (eg. Repeatedly saying girls had to pretend to be boys to get books published, then mentioning 3 female Brontes, Beatrix Potter, etc, thus contradicting themselves. For what gain?? Wasn't Darwin boycotted? Why not mention that? Can't have a male victim, eh?). Or take Ars Technica's recent coverage on Twitter said that feminists have been saying we need to stop harassment, thus implying the only victims are feminists and that feminists do Not harass (in my view, this is very far removed from the truth on both counts, but it's very Ars, very manipulative). One commenter even said that Ars was irresponsible to represent only one group as victims, to which he was unanimously shouted down and asked "How is Russia?", a very popular comment amongst the Ars crowd. This is the mindset created by continued media manipulation that the only Victims are Female and the only perpetrators are Male. Anyone honest knows this is just not true, so why repeatedly say it? A lot of media reps seem to love sexism and gender Bullying (today). Now, there are some good things that do come from the media. You find out about social events and new infrastructure. There are some useful facts. However, with so much hostility, lying and downright nastiness, I decided I was happier without most media. As a few people said on Ars today, with so much prejudice everywhere you look, where do you get good media today? They were all shouted down :) If I thought there was an unprejudiced and quality media outlet, I'd be happy to pay for it, or whitelist them in Adblock. We are now at a time when many people don't trust the media. I think we would Be better off without most media outlets. However, that may concentrate too much power in a few people's hands. What's the answer? I don't know. Governments Should hold journalists accountable for prejudice. As long as people don't pay for media, expect the quality to be low. Advertising looks like a desperate stand by the media.

thoughtsimple 10y ago

I asked politely to not be tracked by using the opt-in switch in my browsers. Advertisers literally laughed at that and said they wouldn't honor it. So now ads are blocked on my browser. All of them. The advertising industry and the people who use it to monetize are at fault. They did nothing to prevent the awful privacy mess that was made of the web without ad-blocking.

JohnTHaller 10y ago
Unfortunately, Microsoft turned it on by default for all installs which killed it. It was supposed to be a user specifically opting in so it would be treated like a request directly to the advertiser. Microsoft's end-run around that gave advertisers the excuse they needed and it died. I think it would have gained some serious traction if it had been specifically opt in.

pillowkusis 10y ago

I think it's important to note that the 30% increase claim comes from PageFair (https://pagefair.com/blog/2017/adblockreport/ https://pagefair.com/blog/2017/adblockreport/), which is a company that helps other companies bypass adblocker and still have ads on their site (ostensibly in a much less offensive manner). They have an active interest in (over)estimating very agressively about the growth of adblockers -- it's their business model.

makecheck 10y ago

The problem is not the ads, it is the implementation. Nobody would care if sites simply inserted a line that said “Brought to you by FooBar, Inc. [Link].”.

kevin_thibedeau 10y ago

Stop serving Javascript. Most of the media industry's problems with malvertising would disappear if they only served up <img> tags. They could also one-up the ad blockers by serving images from within their own domain. Why the media industry hasn't united to clean up their act is baffling. Google certainly isn't going to take leadership on this issue since any solution cuts into their revenue.

PhantomGremlin 10y ago
Stop serving Javascript. That would work for me. I don't block ads, I simply block JavaScript from most sites. The paucity of ads served to me is a happy side effect. Why the media industry hasn't united to clean up their act is baffling. The media industry is constantly doubling down, trying to be more and more obnoxious. The exact opposite of cleaning up their act.

surferbayarea 10y ago

Has anyone applied deep learning to the problem of identifying advertisement blocks in a web page?

anotherevan 10y ago

They are not ad-blockers, they are HTML firewalls.

dbg31415 10y ago

Seems relevant. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/h...

j3097736 10y ago

How to NOT "create compelling ad experiences": 1) After the content has loaded it's broken into pieces by blank spots which slowly fill up with ads 2) Loading the page maxes out a recent CPU 3) Page with ads does 3x the number of network requests as the adblocked version

sklivvz1971 10y ago

The elephant in the room here is the assumption that newspapers or other media that rely only on ads to survive should automatically have a viable business model just because they had a viable model with printed media. Clearly, this is not the case. One can't adblock printed media, but can certainly adblock websites. The solution? Find a better business model. For example, stack overflow uses non-intrusive, pertinent ads to entice people to white list the site, and separate revenue streams like a job board to keep the site running. I understand that this might sound simplistic. I am perfectly aware of how hard this problem is to fix -- however the world moves in the direction dictated by the big economic trends. Websites have almost zero variable cost -- most cost is fixed and does not scale as pageviews increase -- so economics tells us that competition will drive the value of a pageview to zero.

brettz 10y ago
Maybe sites like Stack Overflow have 0 variable cost but this is more of an exception. The viable model is paywalls and that's where quality content will go. I don't see a big deal with that as I will gladly pay for content that I value.
- sklivvz1971 10y ago
  > Maybe sites like Stack Overflow have 0 variable cost but this is more of an exception. Interesting, how so? I find it difficult to imagine any media site that, once they produced a piece of content, has to pay any other substantial cost as they get more views. In other words: doubling up page views for the Guardian does not mean doubling up the costs of producing the articles. That's what I mean by "substantially zero variable cost".
  - brettz 10y ago
    Not doubling costs but delivery photo and video does increase costs significantly. Something Stack Overflow doesn't have to do.
rossy 10y ago
For starters, I'd love to see online newspapers run ads that behave like print ads. This would mean they show the same ad for everyone (not an ad that the ad network thinks will match your interests,) the ad does not move or play audio, the ad does not track views or clicks, the ad is delivered to you by the same infrastructure that delivers the article (that is, from the same image and JavaScript CDNs, no external resources,) the ads are not overly distracting from the main content and each ad is vetted for misleading and false claims. These ads would be harder to block, mainly because of the CDN thing, but maybe not as many people would want to go out of their way to block them. readthedocs.io sometimes runs ads that fit this criteria and, at least on my machine, uBlock doesn't block them yet.

gregpilling 10y ago

I started using ad blockers for virus protection. I got hit twice through ad networks on big websites. Extra bonus that website loads faster etc. It was 90% the viruses for me.

sundvor 10y ago

I don't mind ads. I do mind malware. Sadly, the line between the two is blurred when former's networks are used as the attack vectors for the latter.

quantum_magpie 10y ago

In the present society, the advertisers managed to completely ruin the way cities look with their endless flashing neon signs (and in the past few years I've noticed a vast increase in audio-based advertisements outside), they have ruined the best observation spots, skylines, and in many cases, even parks with their billboards; the public TV which is funded by tax money is a complete ad-cancer. The same with radio, or sports games. It got me to the point where I consciously block every advertisement, but it sometimes gets really mentally taxing. I've stopped listening to radio, watching TV or basically going to any larger-scale public outing. I am not giving them the internet too! They can take their unwritten pact and starve. The worst offenders however, are the ones that require a payment to use, and still completely overwhelm you with the ads (Public transport in my case). I do subscribe to some services where the subscription removes ads, and I gladly pay for mobile applications that offer a reasonable (<10$) cost to ad-free experience. However, I have observed the overwhelming majority of content to be completely worthless, and I do not lose anything by not coming back.

satori99 10y ago
Well said. I have nothing but contempt and loathing for the advertising industry. I think they ruin everything. I also quit watching and listening to commercial broadcasters, and even quit working for one. I have a sister who is a successful advertising creative and executive. Our wildly differing and strong opinions on the topic makes for interesting family dinners. I am longing for the day that AR technology gets to the stage where lightweight sun-glass frames can have the ability to overlay classical art, or any other texture, over real-world ads in real-time. I have also been wondering lately if some sort of Adnix [0] like device could be developed using the incredible machine learning software that is becoming widely available. I know very little about such things but I have been meaning to make time to see if it is within my abilities. I'd love to scare my sister with it. [0] Adnix - http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=2223 http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=2223
- humbledrone 10y ago
  What do you think about the fact that the website you linked as a reference is ad-supported? Assuming that you use an ad-blocker, have you contributed money directly to the web site in compensation? It seems that you got some value from the web site. Is this consistent with "advertising ruins everything"? Without ads, do you think the web site would exist at all?

lend000 10y ago

It's quite a surprise that so many prominent companies are getting around the best ad-blockers. Obviously it's a game of cat and mouse, but it seems like nothing much has changed with ad blockers since sites started detecting them and limiting content a couple years ago. Are there any open-source ad blocking projects? Or does that defeat the purpose? I'm not convinced it does.

thomastjeffery 10y ago

Ads are pollutants. When people complain about being predominantly supported by ad revenue, and complaining that people block ads, it is exactly the same as people who work in the coal industry complaining about pollution restrictions. They can take their business model, and shove it.

superquest 10y ago

Unfortunately, the usefulness of ad-blocking software is falling just as quickly ...

jakeogh 10y ago

Lots todo, but https://github.com/jakeogh/dnsgate https://github.com/jakeogh/dnsgate makes my web experience way better.

Lucadg 10y ago

Why ad blocker apps require so many permissions as my photos, camera and microphone?

izacus 10y ago
They don't, that's probably malware.
- Lucadg 10y ago
  Could you suggest a good one for Android? Most in Play Store ask these permissions
  - XzetaU8 10y ago
    Adguard https://adguard.com/en/adguard-android/overview.html https://adguard.com/en/adguard-android/overview.html AdAway for rooted devices https://github.com/AdAway/AdAway https://github.com/AdAway/AdAway

CalRobert 10y ago

Philosophically, if I issue a GET request and you choose to respond to it, what the hell business do you have telling me what to do with those bytes? Is using wget, or cURL, or Lynx wrong? Is blocking images on mobile wrong?

known 10y ago

Adblock filters explained in https://adblockplus.org/filter-cheatsheet https://adblockplus.org/filter-cheatsheet

nkkollaw 10y ago

Ad blockers are good. On one hand, advertising on the internet makes it possibile to have free services and websites, so that even people who can't afford a subscription can see the content and IMO is better than data mining as a source of revenue for content providers. On the other hand, it's super-annoying. The rise of ad blockers will make content providers introduce the possibility of paying to access the service with no ads, so that those who can afford it or care can pay to get it with no ads, and everyone else can still get it with ads. It's not really realistic to pretend that some services don't make any money, because after a while there would be no good quality content to go to. Ad blockers are perhaps finally changing the idea that everything on the internet MUST be free, and getting people used to paying for what they want to use.

Lucadg 10y ago

Here in Bangkok when I wait for the sky train I find myself trying to avoid advertisement. I end up looking at people or at the sky (I stopped the data plan to avoid being dragger to my phone). There is basically advertisement everywhere, plus sound for the biggest screens. So unless I do a conscious effort to avoid, I'm 100% of the time looking at some kind of ads. Ads are fine, but yes, this is too much.

bnolsen 10y ago

People claiming the internet is free...well its not. In the US the carriers like comcast make money hand over fist selling expensive plans for a pittance of bandwidth. That's where a huge chunk of the money is going.

touristtam 10y ago

Seriously, we have to think as a society what license to manipulate we give the advertisment business, then we can talk about blocking ads.