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The market is working very well on advertisements. They grow increasingly obnoxious, and the adblockers keep getting better and more prevalent in response. The

The market is working very well on advertisements. They grow increasingly obnoxious, and the adblockers keep getting better and more prevalent in response. The end result is either reasonable ads (probably too late for this) or the death of this particular flavor of the ad-driven revenue model. I fully expect we'll look back on Internet advertising as a bootstrapper for the early Internet economy as opposed to a lasting model.

thesuitonym 9y ago
I'd love to believe that, but I felt much the same way in the double-dickities, when popups and popunders were rampant, and popup blockers started becoming common place. Eventually, only the oldest and least tech literate of people still had browsers that allowed popups, and they started to go away. It seemed like advertising like that was going away, but it didn't, it just changed, and instead of opening in a new window, it just opens as a DIV in the same one. Only this time it's controlled by the same javascript that is required to make the site even work, so it probably won't ever go away.
PhasmaFelis 9y ago
I think that's optimistic. As thesuitonym says, when bad internet advertising is blocked, it evolves into even worse (and less blockable) advertising. We're already seeing the rise of "native advertising," i.e. "pay websites to run ads masquerading as their own content."
xg15 9y ago
Cue the rise of ad-blocker-blockers where you're faced with a) allow a possible vector of malware or b) don 't consume the site et all. Of course at some point there might be ad-blocker-blocker-blockers which will postpone the problem to another round. But do we really want an economy based on an arms race?
- DashRattlesnake 9y ago
  > ad-blocker-blocker-blockers An ad-blocker-blocker-blocker is just an ad-blocker.
  - xg15 9y ago
    Not quite. An ad-blocker removes ads. An ad-blocker-blocker detects ad-blockers and refuses to serve content if one is detected. (Instead a "disable your ad-blocker if you want to use this site" message is shown) An ad-blocker-blocker-blocker masks the ad-blocker against detection, so content can still be consumed. Etc...

thesuitonym 9y ago

I'd love to believe that, but I felt much the same way in the double-dickities, when popups and popunders were rampant, and popup blockers started becoming common place. Eventually, only the oldest and least tech literate of people still had browsers that allowed popups, and they started to go away. It seemed like advertising like that was going away, but it didn't, it just changed, and instead of opening in a new window, it just opens as a DIV in the same one. Only this time it's controlled by the same javascript that is required to make the site even work, so it probably won't ever go away.

PhasmaFelis 9y ago

I think that's optimistic. As thesuitonym says, when bad internet advertising is blocked, it evolves into even worse (and less blockable) advertising. We're already seeing the rise of "native advertising," i.e. "pay websites to run ads masquerading as their own content."

xg15 9y ago

Cue the rise of ad-blocker-blockers where you're faced with a) allow a possible vector of malware or b) don 't consume the site et all. Of course at some point there might be ad-blocker-blocker-blockers which will postpone the problem to another round. But do we really want an economy based on an arms race?

DashRattlesnake 9y ago
> ad-blocker-blocker-blockers An ad-blocker-blocker-blocker is just an ad-blocker.
- xg15 9y ago
  Not quite. An ad-blocker removes ads. An ad-blocker-blocker detects ad-blockers and refuses to serve content if one is detected. (Instead a "disable your ad-blocker if you want to use this site" message is shown) An ad-blocker-blocker-blocker masks the ad-blocker against detection, so content can still be consumed. Etc...