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For smaller websites (also referred to the democratization of the internet), I am sure many people may (or have) feel (felt) guilty for using an ad-blocker. Th

For smaller websites (also referred to the democratization of the internet), I am sure many people may (or have) feel (felt) guilty for using an ad-blocker. Then you see all those shitty ads for: - finding a russian bride - getting rich through some millionaires secret - anti-aging remedies - adware and you realize that the ad-model only benefits Google and the peddlers pushing the dodgy adverts. Everyone else is losing. People keep saying that "journalism is dying", but this industry and its ad-model isn't very "old" in historical terms. For every Business Insider that dies, the world will carry on. For quality journalism (an oxymoron of sorts) and news that matters to people and their circumstances, I assume people will keep forking out money (like they do for The Economist). If someone smarter than myself can elaborate, how is Googles business-model for ads on 3rd-party websites sustainable for the long-term?

reaperducer 9y ago
Just so you know, there's this one crazy trick for getting free news without ads while Oprah refinances Obama's secret mortgage...
eli 9y ago
With the notable exception of AdBlock Plus (which has its own problems) the big ad block plugins tend to be philosophically opposed to all ads of any type, quality or quantity. This is a bummer for sites like ours where the ads are sold directly to advertisers (no network) and are relevant to the audience and subject matter.
- nebabyte 9y ago
  It's actually kind of amazing how many wrong notes this 2-line comment hits (A) The plugins do not actually have any particular philosophy. They act as facilitators for different lists which certainly have their own. (B) The creators of the plugins' philosophies (which again, aren't actually in the plugin - usually you have to look into the creator) tend to be varied, and several of them (notably the best ones) do promote supporting content creators, either directly or via whitelist (C) You can always control your adblocker, and many users (especially those who care about a site, are interested in related content, or so on) do disable it for their favorite sites. The extensions (that I've used, anyways) specifically account for this and remember whitelisted sites. If your site is significantly suffering because of adblocking and you've mentioned your concerns to users, adblockers are not your problem, your users are. There's no fix for resource leeches.
  - eli 9y ago
    You're mostly arguing semantics. I believe the default options -- that most users never adjust -- are very aggressive for nearly all major ad blockers, blocking all ads possible as well as adblock detection scripts. We can call that something other than a philosophy if you wish, but that stuff matters.. My sites are not suffering significantly at all due to ad blocking, but some peers say it's a problem. It's a bummer, though, that we don't even have an opportunity to show adblock users that our ads are relevant and not too obnoxious. The filter list author has made that decision for them, and it's almost always "block every ad."
- yorwba 9y ago
  If you are already directly selling the ads, why not host them on your own domain? Then they won't be blocked automatically. If you still see people going out of their way to add site-specific rules to their ad blocker, the ads probably weren't as relevant or unintrusive as you thought.
  - piquadrat 9y ago
    Troy Hunt wrote about his experience with self-hosted ads a while ago [1]. Basically, he added a as-non-intrusive-as-possible "banner" (if you can even call it that) at the top of the content. Ad blockers blocked it. He changed the markup to avoid being caught by a false positive. Ad blockers (Adblock Plus with EasyList in this case) blocked it again. I made similar experiences in the past, to the point where our API broke because we had the audacity to call one of our API endpoints "metric" (for a metrics service), which got caught by one of the over-zealous regexes of EasyList. [1]: https://www.troyhunt.com/ad-blockers-are-part-of-the-problem/ https://www.troyhunt.com/ad-blockers-are-part-of-the-problem...
  - eli 9y ago
    It wouldn't work for very long. If you're site is even moderately popular, the self hosted ads will be blocked by a specific rule. There also aren't any good self hosted ad servers, among other reasons. .
dheera 9y ago
My attitude toward ad blockers was always "meh". I have the right to render your bits and bytes however I wish. Using an ad blocker is just modifying the rendering algorithm, much the same way as I could use a French to Russian translator, something that increases font sizes, or throwing on a custom stylesheet. I can write my own web browser, if I wish. Some percentage of users will use ad blockers, and businesses should account for that. If it is not sustainable, new business models will be invented. One thing I've been hoping for is inventing some form of advertising that was actually fun for the user -- fun enough that they would not want to block them. Or invent a system by which 10% of the ad revenue gets cut out to the end user. That will incentivize people to unblock ads.
- pabl0rg 9y ago
  Check out the brave browser. I think that's their business plan
- gruez 9y ago
  >Or invent a system by which 10% of the ad revenue gets cut out to the end user. That will incentivize people to unblock ads. microsoft tried that with bing rewards. i suspect it's not working well because i only heard of it in the context of botting it to get free money. the advertiser wants to spend as little money to gain as many sales, whereas the viewer (and blackhats) want to get as much money as possible. the two parties' objectives do not line up.
  - hysan 9y ago
    Bing rewards actually got me to use Bing as my primary search engine for half a year. The rewards were enticing enough to convince me to give them a fair shot. There were some nice things in Bing, but after 6 months, I decided that the quality of their results just weren't good enough even with the rewards. Maybe if their search quality or features (ala DDG) were better, it would have worked. In the end, quality >> incentives.
    - downrightmike 9y ago
ajross 9y ago
I'm sort of confused. That list of yours is a bunch of stuff that (at least not generally) Google doesn't advertise. So where does the "only benefits Google and the peddlers pushing the dodgy adverts" bit come from? Seems like you're only angry at the peddlers. What did Google do?
- stonemetal 9y ago
  If they are going to spend a million man hours of effort playing wack a mole with content creators, why haven't they spent a tenth of that effort keeping the ads they get paid to run safe and clean? Easy. Poor search results reflects poorly on them, when they put a dodgy ad on a site they get paid, and the site gets blamed.
  - Ajedi32 9y ago
    I think perhaps you're underestimating the amount of effort that they do put into keeping their ads clean. A few highlights from [their 2016 report][1]: > we disabled more than 5 million payday loan ads > In 2016, our systems detected and disabled a total of 112 million ads for “trick to click,” 6X more than in 2015. > We disabled more than 68 million bad ads for healthcare violations, up from 12.5 million in 2015. > We took down more than 17 million bad ads for illegal gambling violations in 2016. > In 2016, we took down nearly 80 million bad ads for deceiving, misleading and shocking users. > in 2016, our systems detected and disabled more than 23,000 self-clicking ads on our platforms, a huge increase year over year. > Last year, we took down almost 7 million bad ads for intentionally attempting to trick our detection systems. > In 2016, we suspended more than 1,300 accounts for tabloid cloaking. > We took action on 47,000 sites for promoting content and products related to weight-loss scams. > We took action on more than 15,000 sites for unwanted software and disabled 900,000 ads for containing malware.' > And we suspended around 6,000 sites and 6,000 accounts for attempting to advertise counterfeit goods, like imitation designer watches. [1]: https://blog.google/topics/ads/how-we-fought-bad-ads-sites-and-scammers-2016/ https://blog.google/topics/ads/how-we-fought-bad-ads-sites-a...
    - MichaelGG 9y ago
sfilargi 9y ago
> Then you see all those shitty ads for: > - finding a russian bride > - getting rich through some millionaires secret > - anti-aging remedies > - adware > and you realize that the ad-model only benefits Google and the peddlers pushing the dodgy adverts. Everyone else is losing. Sorry for the shameless plug, but check out https://hotlinkx.com https://hotlinkx.com if you want. What you mentioned are a few of the other things it tries to address by letting publishers manually choose what they want to advertise.
ysub 9y ago
I used to feel there was something bad about using ad-blockers, then Google started paying AdBlock to allow some types of Google ads through. I learned this while working for Google in DoubleClick circa 2014. I no longer work for Google. PSA -- just so you know.
- milcron 9y ago
  Yes, that's been known about AdBlock. These days I recommend uBlock Origin.
- matt_wulfeck 9y ago
  I always allowed the text ads to go through. They are the least intrusive, least dangerous ads for the longest time. I found them generally relevant.
ams6110 9y ago
I block all ads and don't feel one bit of guilt about it.
emmelaich 9y ago
What I fear is that smart people with money (like you and me) use ad-blockers. So the ads that do get shown are exactly the low quality crappy ads that appeal to the great unwashed. This is certainly evident to me on Facebook for instance. The very first ads that get shown do not have the benefit of the marketing analytics about me so they're very low quality ones like the ads in the article. The second wave (after about 5 seconds) are vastly improved and often touch on my interests or have some connection to friends interests or real current news events.
- sundvor 9y ago
  Not sure how the relationship between "smart" and "with money" plays out here. Last time I checked, ublock was completely free. That aside, yep, it's hard to ignore how incredibly dumb the lowest common denominator appears to be - if viewed as a reflection of those ads.
  - emmelaich 9y ago
    Yeah, I was suggesting a correlation between intelligence (r expertise) to use an ad-blocker and (at least) a certain level of income.
graycat 9y ago
Okay, question on ad blockers: So far I have not tried to use one. And my Web site for my startup, to be ad supported, has not gone live yet. But, what if: What if my Web server sends the actual ads, as JPG, GIF, WEBM, etc. files instead of just URLs to ad servers at some ad network? Then will an ad blocker still work?
- SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
  The adblocker can block download of easily identifiable URLs, so if your images look like http://my.coolwebsite.com/ad/jdhe73yd.jpg http://my.coolwebsite.com/ad/jdhe73yd.jpg, the adblocker will refuse anything from http://my.coolwebsite.com/ad/ http://my.coolwebsite.com/ad/ or similar. Also, it can stop rendering, so if your ad has a custom CSS class, element name, etc then it will refuse to render that element (and children) even if it downloads the image.
  - yorwba 9y ago
    But it will probably not come with these rules out of the box. I don't know how it is for others, but I only ever use the curated block lists and then whitelist a few sites I want to support.
- kalmari 9y ago
  those are embeded most adblockers do not block those.
- executesorder66 9y ago
  Generally the adblockers won't detect it if you host your ads like that. But if your website becomes popular, then someone will figure out whatever pattern is used to display the ads (url location, css class etc) and add it to a list that adblockers can use.
- pjc50 9y ago
  Hardly anyone will pay for that kind of ad, because it can't be audited and you could just forge ad impressions.
jsz0 9y ago
> Then you see all those shitty ads Still somewhat better than creepy targeted advertising. I bought a new garbage can a few weeks ago now many sites are full of ads for garbage cans. Although this may be one example where the targeting is working. Most of the sites showing those ads are garbage.
- leggomylibro 9y ago
  Or extremely specific advertising. For several months, I saw no ads on AdSense except for those advertising the Vive. None whatsoever. I saw plenty of ads, they were just the exact same one with an attractive person doing some sort of dance in a headset and controllers. So...okay, Google. I guess you've figured out that I'm interested in technology, graphics, games, that sort of thing? Is this all that you've got? It's creepy in that it makes me wonder WHEN you're listening to me, not if.
- ploxiln 9y ago
  This example is brought up all the time - "I just bought something which I buy every few years at most, and now I'm getting ads for it after I bought it". Obviously it's usually completely ineffective. BUT I think it might make a purchase correlation score go up. Imagine that no human working for the company buying the ads is fully understanding what the correlation score means, and they are effectively using or subscribing to a machine learning model that is trying to increase the correlation score. And they're seeing the score go up. I'm no expert in the ad targeting ecosystem, and I'm sure I'll be told that's not what it does. But I'm more familiar with systems software, databases, distributed services and such, and I've seen many things that didn't really do what they were supposed to do. It just takes a lot of smarts and a lot of focus, such as Aphyr does with distributed databases, to show that they don't actually do what they claim, due to some mundane bugs or subtle design flaws. I think there's a good chance that the complex ad targeting ecosystem is just fooling advertisers into thinking it works, without actually working.
- nikcub 9y ago
  I take it your using Chrome, disable third-party cookies.
- 9y ago
cpeterso 9y ago
I don't mind ads; I just don't want clickbait crap about shocking celebrity photos and "deep searches" for local singles. <plug> So I created a minimal blocklist for the worst clickbait (mostly Outbrain and Taboola): https://github.com/cpeterso/clickbait-blocklist/ https://github.com/cpeterso/clickbait-blocklist/ The list is compatible with uBlock Origin and Adblock Plus. If you know of any other bad clickbait ad networks, please let me know! As the article describes, I now see clickbait ads from Google that are almost as bad, but I'm not quite ready to block all Google ads in what was supposed to be a minimal blocklist. </plug>
- duskwuff 9y ago
  A few years ago, I wrote something similar: https://github.com/duskwuff/syndicationblock/ https://github.com/duskwuff/syndicationblock/ Is Yavli still a thing? I had a hell of a time blocking their ads -- they served content from custom subdomains, and used class names "borrowed" from Google to evade ad blockers.
  - cpeterso 9y ago
    Thanks! I check out your syndication blocklist. I haven't seen Yavli in my testing.
- flukus 9y ago
  Where are these "deep searches" for local singles? The lack of search functionality is my biggest problem with dating sites.
chrissnell 9y ago
What infuriates me is that I've paid for subscriptions to online editions of newspapers like the New York Times and still--even though I am a paid subscriber--they show me ads. It's obscene. How much do I have to pay not to get pestered? I have no idea because that's not even an option. I won't pay a cent for any site that shows me ads on a paid subscription. In fact, I'll go out of my way to cancel the subscription and block the ads and do everything I can to subvert their paywalls and read the content for free.
- HillaryBriss 9y ago
  i think, way back in the old days, some cable tv channels didn't have commercials. but they found out they could make more money with commercials and people kept subscribing anyways.
- kome 9y ago
  Use adblocks and stop paying until they understand.
michaelbrooks 9y ago
I really tried to hold off on using an ad blocker as I want to support as many content creators as possible, but the minority spoil it for the majority. Websites like Mashable and Windows Central bombard you with ads to a point where it affects loading times. If it starts affecting speed, then there is definitely something wrong with how your site is designed and it should be looked at again.
boyce 9y ago
What about alternative ad business models like http://projectwonderful.com http://projectwonderful.com
- davidgerard 9y ago
  Project Wonderful is the ad network I explicitly enable. They're really nice so far. Very little money in it though.
Fiahil 9y ago
> Then you see all those shitty ads for [...] Nowadays, when a family member is asking which "antivirus should I pick?", my answer goes along the lines of "just install uBlock Origin, activate this and that filter and allow it in incognito mode. You can do it on your own, it's super easy and super effective". Even better, this also "fix" most of the "slow computer" complaints.
Ntrails 9y ago
I probably forgive those idiot bad image ads way more than i do the fact that there are still websites autoplaying video and audio in The Year of Our Lord 2017
MarkMc 9y ago
At least for me here in Australia, Google AdSense ads aren't obnoxious. Below is the result of a quick scan of a few websites in private mode. I wonder why OP has such a different experience? Maybe the ad market in South Africa is very different? Or maybe GroundUp hasn't spent the necessary time to filter out bad ads? ----- New York Times: Cycling clothing Microsoft Enterprise Health Insurance Avoid overeating Mortgage ----- Forbes: Unfair Dismissal Lawyers 'JobActive' - Aust govt ad for employment service Cancer council Australia - funding drive Commonwealth bank Australia ----- Bloomberg: Doesn't seem to use AdSense ----- Fox News: Save the children (charity) Find best debit card Business Travel saver
- richardkeller 9y ago
  As a South African, I can attest to the exact ads shown by the author on various site, both in incognito mode as well as during normal browsing. I have seen every one of them, and they are awfully persistent and incredibly annoying. Even selecting "Don't show this ad again" seems to do nothing, despite repeated efforts. Particularly frustrating is that there seems to be no way of flagging an advert as fraudulent or malicious.
thr0waway1239 9y ago
>> Then you see all those shitty ads for I remembered an old maxim. Apparently, a successful copywriter was asked "How do you write a good ad?" and his answer was "Its very easy. Get the Yellow pages for this year, last year and the year before. See which ads repeat. They are repeating because they are working. Now just copy those ads for your purpose" The point is, those shitty ads keep repeating on those websites because their ROI is positive. Google wants to help these people by providing them every imaginable and conceivable tool so they can do it better. This also answers your last question about how their business model is sustainable for the long term. It is actually really sustainable because you think Google is a search engine, and I think Google morphed long ago into an internet scale ad-ROI measurement engine which keeps improving (by violently invading privacy of course) both the measurement tools and the actual ROI itself for those who keep pouring money into these ads.
matchagaucho 9y ago
Direct mail campaigns with a 2% response rate are considered wildly successful. Similarly, Google Advertisers are paying exceptionally low CPM rates for inventory that would otherwise go unfilled. Even a 1% click-through rate justifies the acquisition costs.
chuckdries 9y ago
I work at my college newspaper. We get some money from the university but I can tell you without a doubt that we would be in far worse shape if we didn't have an ad sales team that sold our ad space directly.
abandonliberty 9y ago
I find it really funny when a site asks me to turn off my adblocker, and my blocked element count is displaying 60-100+. Not a chance. Meanwhile, duckduckgo never asked. They're pretty awesome (check their wikipedia page) so I turned blocking off. They rewarded me with a couple subtle, text-only ads that didn't disrupt my load time or experience. <3 If we want the web to be a better place, we have to use and support companies who are making it one even if it means not getting to use the 'best'. Like Firefox. Damn I miss Chrome's performance, but the alternatives won't get better and compete unless we back them.
abritinthebay 9y ago
> this industry and its ad-model isn't very "old" in historical terms. It dates back to the 1700s-era newspapers. That's... pretty old in terms of the medium.

reaperducer 9y ago

Just so you know, there's this one crazy trick for getting free news without ads while Oprah refinances Obama's secret mortgage...

eli 9y ago

With the notable exception of AdBlock Plus (which has its own problems) the big ad block plugins tend to be philosophically opposed to all ads of any type, quality or quantity. This is a bummer for sites like ours where the ads are sold directly to advertisers (no network) and are relevant to the audience and subject matter.

nebabyte 9y ago
It's actually kind of amazing how many wrong notes this 2-line comment hits (A) The plugins do not actually have any particular philosophy. They act as facilitators for different lists which certainly have their own. (B) The creators of the plugins' philosophies (which again, aren't actually in the plugin - usually you have to look into the creator) tend to be varied, and several of them (notably the best ones) do promote supporting content creators, either directly or via whitelist (C) You can always control your adblocker, and many users (especially those who care about a site, are interested in related content, or so on) do disable it for their favorite sites. The extensions (that I've used, anyways) specifically account for this and remember whitelisted sites. If your site is significantly suffering because of adblocking and you've mentioned your concerns to users, adblockers are not your problem, your users are. There's no fix for resource leeches.
- eli 9y ago
  You're mostly arguing semantics. I believe the default options -- that most users never adjust -- are very aggressive for nearly all major ad blockers, blocking all ads possible as well as adblock detection scripts. We can call that something other than a philosophy if you wish, but that stuff matters.. My sites are not suffering significantly at all due to ad blocking, but some peers say it's a problem. It's a bummer, though, that we don't even have an opportunity to show adblock users that our ads are relevant and not too obnoxious. The filter list author has made that decision for them, and it's almost always "block every ad."
yorwba 9y ago
If you are already directly selling the ads, why not host them on your own domain? Then they won't be blocked automatically. If you still see people going out of their way to add site-specific rules to their ad blocker, the ads probably weren't as relevant or unintrusive as you thought.
- piquadrat 9y ago
  Troy Hunt wrote about his experience with self-hosted ads a while ago [1]. Basically, he added a as-non-intrusive-as-possible "banner" (if you can even call it that) at the top of the content. Ad blockers blocked it. He changed the markup to avoid being caught by a false positive. Ad blockers (Adblock Plus with EasyList in this case) blocked it again. I made similar experiences in the past, to the point where our API broke because we had the audacity to call one of our API endpoints "metric" (for a metrics service), which got caught by one of the over-zealous regexes of EasyList. [1]: https://www.troyhunt.com/ad-blockers-are-part-of-the-problem/ https://www.troyhunt.com/ad-blockers-are-part-of-the-problem...
- eli 9y ago
  It wouldn't work for very long. If you're site is even moderately popular, the self hosted ads will be blocked by a specific rule. There also aren't any good self hosted ad servers, among other reasons. .

dheera 9y ago

My attitude toward ad blockers was always "meh". I have the right to render your bits and bytes however I wish. Using an ad blocker is just modifying the rendering algorithm, much the same way as I could use a French to Russian translator, something that increases font sizes, or throwing on a custom stylesheet. I can write my own web browser, if I wish. Some percentage of users will use ad blockers, and businesses should account for that. If it is not sustainable, new business models will be invented. One thing I've been hoping for is inventing some form of advertising that was actually fun for the user -- fun enough that they would not want to block them. Or invent a system by which 10% of the ad revenue gets cut out to the end user. That will incentivize people to unblock ads.

pabl0rg 9y ago
Check out the brave browser. I think that's their business plan
gruez 9y ago
>Or invent a system by which 10% of the ad revenue gets cut out to the end user. That will incentivize people to unblock ads. microsoft tried that with bing rewards. i suspect it's not working well because i only heard of it in the context of botting it to get free money. the advertiser wants to spend as little money to gain as many sales, whereas the viewer (and blackhats) want to get as much money as possible. the two parties' objectives do not line up.
- hysan 9y ago
  Bing rewards actually got me to use Bing as my primary search engine for half a year. The rewards were enticing enough to convince me to give them a fair shot. There were some nice things in Bing, but after 6 months, I decided that the quality of their results just weren't good enough even with the rewards. Maybe if their search quality or features (ala DDG) were better, it would have worked. In the end, quality >> incentives.
  - downrightmike 9y ago

ajross 9y ago

I'm sort of confused. That list of yours is a bunch of stuff that (at least not generally) Google doesn't advertise. So where does the "only benefits Google and the peddlers pushing the dodgy adverts" bit come from? Seems like you're only angry at the peddlers. What did Google do?

stonemetal 9y ago
If they are going to spend a million man hours of effort playing wack a mole with content creators, why haven't they spent a tenth of that effort keeping the ads they get paid to run safe and clean? Easy. Poor search results reflects poorly on them, when they put a dodgy ad on a site they get paid, and the site gets blamed.
- Ajedi32 9y ago
  I think perhaps you're underestimating the amount of effort that they do put into keeping their ads clean. A few highlights from [their 2016 report][1]: > we disabled more than 5 million payday loan ads > In 2016, our systems detected and disabled a total of 112 million ads for “trick to click,” 6X more than in 2015. > We disabled more than 68 million bad ads for healthcare violations, up from 12.5 million in 2015. > We took down more than 17 million bad ads for illegal gambling violations in 2016. > In 2016, we took down nearly 80 million bad ads for deceiving, misleading and shocking users. > in 2016, our systems detected and disabled more than 23,000 self-clicking ads on our platforms, a huge increase year over year. > Last year, we took down almost 7 million bad ads for intentionally attempting to trick our detection systems. > In 2016, we suspended more than 1,300 accounts for tabloid cloaking. > We took action on 47,000 sites for promoting content and products related to weight-loss scams. > We took action on more than 15,000 sites for unwanted software and disabled 900,000 ads for containing malware.' > And we suspended around 6,000 sites and 6,000 accounts for attempting to advertise counterfeit goods, like imitation designer watches. [1]: https://blog.google/topics/ads/how-we-fought-bad-ads-sites-and-scammers-2016/ https://blog.google/topics/ads/how-we-fought-bad-ads-sites-a...
  - MichaelGG 9y ago

sfilargi 9y ago

> Then you see all those shitty ads for: > - finding a russian bride > - getting rich through some millionaires secret > - anti-aging remedies > - adware > and you realize that the ad-model only benefits Google and the peddlers pushing the dodgy adverts. Everyone else is losing. Sorry for the shameless plug, but check out https://hotlinkx.com https://hotlinkx.com if you want. What you mentioned are a few of the other things it tries to address by letting publishers manually choose what they want to advertise.

ysub 9y ago

I used to feel there was something bad about using ad-blockers, then Google started paying AdBlock to allow some types of Google ads through. I learned this while working for Google in DoubleClick circa 2014. I no longer work for Google. PSA -- just so you know.

milcron 9y ago
Yes, that's been known about AdBlock. These days I recommend uBlock Origin.
matt_wulfeck 9y ago
I always allowed the text ads to go through. They are the least intrusive, least dangerous ads for the longest time. I found them generally relevant.

ams6110 9y ago

I block all ads and don't feel one bit of guilt about it.

emmelaich 9y ago

What I fear is that smart people with money (like you and me) use ad-blockers. So the ads that do get shown are exactly the low quality crappy ads that appeal to the great unwashed. This is certainly evident to me on Facebook for instance. The very first ads that get shown do not have the benefit of the marketing analytics about me so they're very low quality ones like the ads in the article. The second wave (after about 5 seconds) are vastly improved and often touch on my interests or have some connection to friends interests or real current news events.

sundvor 9y ago
Not sure how the relationship between "smart" and "with money" plays out here. Last time I checked, ublock was completely free. That aside, yep, it's hard to ignore how incredibly dumb the lowest common denominator appears to be - if viewed as a reflection of those ads.
- emmelaich 9y ago
  Yeah, I was suggesting a correlation between intelligence (r expertise) to use an ad-blocker and (at least) a certain level of income.

graycat 9y ago

Okay, question on ad blockers: So far I have not tried to use one. And my Web site for my startup, to be ad supported, has not gone live yet. But, what if: What if my Web server sends the actual ads, as JPG, GIF, WEBM, etc. files instead of just URLs to ad servers at some ad network? Then will an ad blocker still work?

SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
The adblocker can block download of easily identifiable URLs, so if your images look like http://my.coolwebsite.com/ad/jdhe73yd.jpg http://my.coolwebsite.com/ad/jdhe73yd.jpg, the adblocker will refuse anything from http://my.coolwebsite.com/ad/ http://my.coolwebsite.com/ad/ or similar. Also, it can stop rendering, so if your ad has a custom CSS class, element name, etc then it will refuse to render that element (and children) even if it downloads the image.
- yorwba 9y ago
  But it will probably not come with these rules out of the box. I don't know how it is for others, but I only ever use the curated block lists and then whitelist a few sites I want to support.
kalmari 9y ago
those are embeded most adblockers do not block those.
executesorder66 9y ago
Generally the adblockers won't detect it if you host your ads like that. But if your website becomes popular, then someone will figure out whatever pattern is used to display the ads (url location, css class etc) and add it to a list that adblockers can use.
pjc50 9y ago
Hardly anyone will pay for that kind of ad, because it can't be audited and you could just forge ad impressions.

jsz0 9y ago

> Then you see all those shitty ads Still somewhat better than creepy targeted advertising. I bought a new garbage can a few weeks ago now many sites are full of ads for garbage cans. Although this may be one example where the targeting is working. Most of the sites showing those ads are garbage.

leggomylibro 9y ago
Or extremely specific advertising. For several months, I saw no ads on AdSense except for those advertising the Vive. None whatsoever. I saw plenty of ads, they were just the exact same one with an attractive person doing some sort of dance in a headset and controllers. So...okay, Google. I guess you've figured out that I'm interested in technology, graphics, games, that sort of thing? Is this all that you've got? It's creepy in that it makes me wonder WHEN you're listening to me, not if.
ploxiln 9y ago
This example is brought up all the time - "I just bought something which I buy every few years at most, and now I'm getting ads for it after I bought it". Obviously it's usually completely ineffective. BUT I think it might make a purchase correlation score go up. Imagine that no human working for the company buying the ads is fully understanding what the correlation score means, and they are effectively using or subscribing to a machine learning model that is trying to increase the correlation score. And they're seeing the score go up. I'm no expert in the ad targeting ecosystem, and I'm sure I'll be told that's not what it does. But I'm more familiar with systems software, databases, distributed services and such, and I've seen many things that didn't really do what they were supposed to do. It just takes a lot of smarts and a lot of focus, such as Aphyr does with distributed databases, to show that they don't actually do what they claim, due to some mundane bugs or subtle design flaws. I think there's a good chance that the complex ad targeting ecosystem is just fooling advertisers into thinking it works, without actually working.
nikcub 9y ago
I take it your using Chrome, disable third-party cookies.
9y ago

cpeterso 9y ago

I don't mind ads; I just don't want clickbait crap about shocking celebrity photos and "deep searches" for local singles. <plug> So I created a minimal blocklist for the worst clickbait (mostly Outbrain and Taboola): https://github.com/cpeterso/clickbait-blocklist/ https://github.com/cpeterso/clickbait-blocklist/ The list is compatible with uBlock Origin and Adblock Plus. If you know of any other bad clickbait ad networks, please let me know! As the article describes, I now see clickbait ads from Google that are almost as bad, but I'm not quite ready to block all Google ads in what was supposed to be a minimal blocklist. </plug>

duskwuff 9y ago
A few years ago, I wrote something similar: https://github.com/duskwuff/syndicationblock/ https://github.com/duskwuff/syndicationblock/ Is Yavli still a thing? I had a hell of a time blocking their ads -- they served content from custom subdomains, and used class names "borrowed" from Google to evade ad blockers.
- cpeterso 9y ago
  Thanks! I check out your syndication blocklist. I haven't seen Yavli in my testing.
flukus 9y ago
Where are these "deep searches" for local singles? The lack of search functionality is my biggest problem with dating sites.

chrissnell 9y ago

What infuriates me is that I've paid for subscriptions to online editions of newspapers like the New York Times and still--even though I am a paid subscriber--they show me ads. It's obscene. How much do I have to pay not to get pestered? I have no idea because that's not even an option. I won't pay a cent for any site that shows me ads on a paid subscription. In fact, I'll go out of my way to cancel the subscription and block the ads and do everything I can to subvert their paywalls and read the content for free.

HillaryBriss 9y ago
i think, way back in the old days, some cable tv channels didn't have commercials. but they found out they could make more money with commercials and people kept subscribing anyways.
kome 9y ago
Use adblocks and stop paying until they understand.

michaelbrooks 9y ago

I really tried to hold off on using an ad blocker as I want to support as many content creators as possible, but the minority spoil it for the majority. Websites like Mashable and Windows Central bombard you with ads to a point where it affects loading times. If it starts affecting speed, then there is definitely something wrong with how your site is designed and it should be looked at again.

boyce 9y ago

What about alternative ad business models like http://projectwonderful.com http://projectwonderful.com

davidgerard 9y ago
Project Wonderful is the ad network I explicitly enable. They're really nice so far. Very little money in it though.

Fiahil 9y ago

> Then you see all those shitty ads for [...] Nowadays, when a family member is asking which "antivirus should I pick?", my answer goes along the lines of "just install uBlock Origin, activate this and that filter and allow it in incognito mode. You can do it on your own, it's super easy and super effective". Even better, this also "fix" most of the "slow computer" complaints.

Ntrails 9y ago

I probably forgive those idiot bad image ads way more than i do the fact that there are still websites autoplaying video and audio in The Year of Our Lord 2017

MarkMc 9y ago

At least for me here in Australia, Google AdSense ads aren't obnoxious. Below is the result of a quick scan of a few websites in private mode. I wonder why OP has such a different experience? Maybe the ad market in South Africa is very different? Or maybe GroundUp hasn't spent the necessary time to filter out bad ads? ----- New York Times: Cycling clothing Microsoft Enterprise Health Insurance Avoid overeating Mortgage ----- Forbes: Unfair Dismissal Lawyers 'JobActive' - Aust govt ad for employment service Cancer council Australia - funding drive Commonwealth bank Australia ----- Bloomberg: Doesn't seem to use AdSense ----- Fox News: Save the children (charity) Find best debit card Business Travel saver

richardkeller 9y ago
As a South African, I can attest to the exact ads shown by the author on various site, both in incognito mode as well as during normal browsing. I have seen every one of them, and they are awfully persistent and incredibly annoying. Even selecting "Don't show this ad again" seems to do nothing, despite repeated efforts. Particularly frustrating is that there seems to be no way of flagging an advert as fraudulent or malicious.

thr0waway1239 9y ago

>> Then you see all those shitty ads for I remembered an old maxim. Apparently, a successful copywriter was asked "How do you write a good ad?" and his answer was "Its very easy. Get the Yellow pages for this year, last year and the year before. See which ads repeat. They are repeating because they are working. Now just copy those ads for your purpose" The point is, those shitty ads keep repeating on those websites because their ROI is positive. Google wants to help these people by providing them every imaginable and conceivable tool so they can do it better. This also answers your last question about how their business model is sustainable for the long term. It is actually really sustainable because you think Google is a search engine, and I think Google morphed long ago into an internet scale ad-ROI measurement engine which keeps improving (by violently invading privacy of course) both the measurement tools and the actual ROI itself for those who keep pouring money into these ads.

matchagaucho 9y ago

Direct mail campaigns with a 2% response rate are considered wildly successful. Similarly, Google Advertisers are paying exceptionally low CPM rates for inventory that would otherwise go unfilled. Even a 1% click-through rate justifies the acquisition costs.

chuckdries 9y ago

I work at my college newspaper. We get some money from the university but I can tell you without a doubt that we would be in far worse shape if we didn't have an ad sales team that sold our ad space directly.

abandonliberty 9y ago

I find it really funny when a site asks me to turn off my adblocker, and my blocked element count is displaying 60-100+. Not a chance. Meanwhile, duckduckgo never asked. They're pretty awesome (check their wikipedia page) so I turned blocking off. They rewarded me with a couple subtle, text-only ads that didn't disrupt my load time or experience. <3 If we want the web to be a better place, we have to use and support companies who are making it one even if it means not getting to use the 'best'. Like Firefox. Damn I miss Chrome's performance, but the alternatives won't get better and compete unless we back them.

abritinthebay 9y ago

> this industry and its ad-model isn't very "old" in historical terms. It dates back to the 1700s-era newspapers. That's... pretty old in terms of the medium.