17 ms·

Insane state of today's advertising part 3

961 points by archon810 9y ago

secabeen 9y ago
Why are they doing it?
- KekDemaga 9y ago
  DDOS?
- heartbreak 9y ago
  Money. They’re faking ad delivery.
  - nomel 9y ago
    Do the ad suppliers have some sort of analytics in place to catch fraud like this? "This ip viewed 200 adds within 10 seconds!"
    - tomlor 9y ago
      Not really, all these shenanigans occur in a nested series of iframes. The original webpage that served up the initial ad iframe can't see down into these. Whatever supply partner the webpage is using doesn't want to shed light of this to the publisher or else that supply partner may be replaced. This issue is illuminated to some degree by 3rd party ad analytics companies that monitor this via crawlers and user panels. This problem is also attacked from the advertiser side that will use 'viewability' providers to ensure their ad is, well, viewed.
      - firebones 9y ago
        Advertisers should have a centralized reporting service that pays bounties for submitting violators. Is fraud worth enough to support a whitehat community exposing the ad equivalent of "vulnerabilities?"
    - heartbreak 9y ago
      It’s a cat and mouse game like any kind of fraud/prevention.
    - thearn4 9y ago
      The Software Engineering Daily podcast has a good ongoing series on ad fraud that explores why that isn't happening.
    - munchbunny 9y ago
      Some do, but like in most fields, fraud is a moving target, so you will always be a bit behind on the defense.
  - mjevans 9y ago
    Reflecting on your statement and the 'incompetence' statement... maybe they're trying to prove an ad displayed for a given duration of time. (As a consumer, I actually hate all ads; they belong as suggested discount incentives after searches; when I'm actually /looking/ for something.)
    - ars 9y ago
      > maybe they're trying to prove an ad displayed for a given duration of time. If that was their goal then 1 request per second would be more than sufficient (and also excessive), but the animated image seems to show a continuous flood of requests.
wheaties 9y ago
Looks like they are calling other ads or reselling fake inventory. This is against every single supply source and publisher's rules. They're not only screwing the browser, they're screwing the advertiser too.
deleted 9y ago
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doctorless 9y ago
I'm actually rather surprised that companies like Google aren't offering solutions to integrate ads into the delivery of the page content itself rather than JavaScript at this point, as it's pretty easy to block the specific domains serving ads. It seems relatively straightforward; the ads would be pre-rendered on the server providing the response and could send the same info a script would for the most part, especially if there was an auxiliary script you could load from your own domain. Not that I'm endorsing the idea, it's just that it seems like an obvious solution to the usage of ad blockers.
- hobs 9y ago
  I was under the impression that while some pure domain blocking occurs, a lot of the rules engines seem to be written against page content that matches specific patterns, not specific domains, so I don't know if it would help serve more ads that much.
- hyperbovine 9y ago
  You've just described internet advertising circa 1997. Then Google came along...
  - LeifCarrotson 9y ago
    Yes, but shortly after Google came along, ad blockers (or simply adding 127.0.0.1 analytics.google.com to your hosts file) also became popular. Why hasn't anyone responded to that?
- nathancahill 9y ago
  Too easy to fake impressions. And it would break with caching.
- mej10 9y ago
  There are plenty of ad servers that offer APIs for doing that.
- mjevans 9y ago
  I suspect the only way ad companies would trust this is if the pages were served from a third party (someone not directly making money off of the ads).
btown 9y ago
[EDIT: As other commenters have mentioned, the simpler answer is that OP's ad is probably an instance of click fraud. Setting that aside, though, the phenomenon I describe below is likely still in effect, even with players playing by the rules.] I imagine that every stakeholder wants verifiable information that the ad was viewed. It would seem to be a problem of both trust (if some centralized ad server was to stream the analytics server-to-server to the stakeholders, there's no guarantee that that central entity is telling the truth, no way to verify unique IPs, and every economic reason for it to lie) and scale (why pay for bandwidth/CPU for a centralized server to make server-to-server connections when the end user can foot the cost). The problem is that the number of stakeholders has ballooned significantly, the same way that any sizable financial market will attract intermediaries like flies. And now we have an untenable situation. AppNexus is possibly the only player I can think of who's built both trust and infrastructure to address this, and indeed they are rolling out products like this: http://productblog.appnexus.com/get-your-logs-streaming/ http://productblog.appnexus.com/get-your-logs-streaming/ ... but it's very possible that the ecosystem becomes fragmented faster than it becomes consolidated.
- mej10 9y ago
  There are other ad server as API companies that provide raw logs of event data. Even DFP has that.
tomlor 9y ago
I've seen some other pretty abhorrent behavior as well. The specific instance that comes to mind is an ad that would load all the resources and content of its click-through landing page into a hidden part of its own iframe. Then in the off chance you click the ad, your browser cache is already warmed and the resulting landing page loads fast. All of that for the 0.1% of us that click ads. It boggles the mind.
- jdangu 9y ago
  That's not the reason, it's ad fraud. They are most likely paid on CPC (cost per click) and forcing clicks in a hidden iframe. Or they are "stuffing cookies" for an affiliation link, betting that you might buy on that store later on - and getting a commission out of it.
baron816 9y ago
A bit off topic, but something I'm interested in: would it be possible for a website to generate revenue by using client machines to mine crypto currencies? I would rather go to a website that uses up my CPU and network resources doing that than use up my CPU and network resources AND spam me with intrusive ads. Edit: solid answers to my question. Thanks everyone.
- Cursuviam 9y ago
  It's been done, but they ran into trouble with New Jersey for a bit. https://www.eff.org/cases/rubin-v-new-jersey-tidbit https://www.eff.org/cases/rubin-v-new-jersey-tidbit
  - jasonkostempski 9y ago
    "And the state itself echoed the comments of Judge Furnari, noting in its press release announcing the consent order "we do not believe Tidbit was created for the purpose of invading privacy."" What about every other ad network in existence? They are specifically designed to invade privacy. Why isn't NJ going after them?
    - DamonHD 9y ago
      Maybe this is a "whoosh" but (legit) ad networks are specifically designed to sell ads (and thus make the network owners some money); it is hyperbole to claim that each and every one of them has only an ulterior/illegal motive in place of the stated (unpopular one).
- mej10 9y ago
  More efficient to separate the mining aspect and just send a micropayment in a web request. Brave (the browser) implements of version of this.
  - darawk 9y ago
    While true, using a browser for mining doesn't require the user to have any cryptocurrency, or even know what cryptocurrency is. It also has a similarly opaque cost to them (in the form of electricity).
deleted 9y ago
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SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
I had to install an ad-blocker today because I got an ad trying to scam me served by Microsoft's news website. If they're not going to take any responsibility for what they're attaching to their pages, then I'm not going to load their random bag of crap.
- exikyut 9y ago
  Wow. What was the ad about? I'm curious, I like filing away disasters like these.
  - SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
    Ad that redirected my page to some shady hosting site with a red background and scary text about how I had some virus and needed to call "Microsoft" at the number they provided with a bunch of personal information to fix it. (I assume a JS "vuln" to take over the page -- not that they really regulate ads from how often it happens.) ...Which is particularly goddamn egregious for a Microsoft website to be serving. If advertisers want me to feel the least bit bad for them and their woes, they need to take some kind of responsibility for those antics. They wanna keep that up? I hope the whole industry dies: getting a warning like that from a Microsoft website could easily have caught my grandma. tl;dr: Fuck ad networks, fuck Microsoft.
    - exikyut 9y ago
      Oh wow, it was one of *those( scams - and [redirected] from the MS site itself. I'm impressed.
- uuoc 9y ago
  I'm actually surprised it took you this long. I have had an ad blocker in one form or another continuously installed since the first ad blockers appeared on the scene. And I'll always have an ad blocker installed.
  - shpx 9y ago
Abishek_Muthian 9y ago
It would be interesting to see how advertising works when Google blocks competitor's ads as "bad ads" in chrome & Apple blocks most ads in safari (iOS 11).
Toast_ 9y ago
Looks like cookie stuffing.
bluetwo 9y ago
If we can't fix this problem, no one is going to be able to do it.
andy_ppp 9y ago
I would love to be able to block JS files individually based on energy usage.
- exikyut 9y ago
  That would be fine until jquery-1.9.1-min.js: 3,389 hours of battery usage would refuse to budge from the absolute top of the "probably the best to block" list. The heuristics would be tricky to implement here...
  - andy_ppp 9y ago
    That it’s only a heuristic would be rather the point; users would be able to select urls they wished to disable. In fact you could probably crowd source training data for a deep learning model so that it could eventually be automated.
  - Endy 9y ago
    What's the problem with blocking this? Remove JavaScript and you basically fix the Web.
pavel_lishin 9y ago
Once again I bring out my trusty analogy of ad tech consistently shitting in a well. Except this time, that's basically where it stops. These guys are shitting in a well, for no good reason, full stop.
whatever9089 9y ago
Brave browser?
- nextlevelwizard 9y ago
  How has it been hardened? It's not just about blocking ads, it's also about preventing malicious content. I'm not willing to risk a beta browser for ads.
HuginnMuninn 9y ago
Has anyone attempted to quantify a rough cost for me to just pay for the http request I'm making and get rid of the middlemen? I look at some of my spur of the moment purchases in shame, yet paying say $0.001 to browse a page somehow is the unthinkable? Most don't like ads, as others have said they add latency and are easily subject to fraudulent clicks for the advertiser. I get the feeling that content-creators and end-users are on the same side here and those in the middle are in the wrong. Not saying get rid of all ads, but it's amazing in 2017 there's no easy pay-to-play on the internet.
- brad0 9y ago
  I quite like this idea. I run a basic http server with a nodejs backend. It gets ~3000 hits a month. It costs around $6 on AWS. It costs around 0.2c per request. It would be simple to build a system that charges per use - most SaaS companies do this. The problem is that someone is willing to pay for that content and repost it on the "free web". 99% of people will read the free version (see freemium mobile games). While content creators agree that they would prefer to charge directly for their content, we live in the attention economy. This means if you don't make yourself hyper accessible then people will go to other places to get their dopamine hit.
  - HuginnMuninn 9y ago
    Excellent points. Seems I was oversimplifying a single part of a bigger problem. I want to pay, but never feel satisfied with time-based subscription models, especially for news, would be so happy to pay upfront for 1000 articles, no time limit, yet to see that offered.
  - nextlevelwizard 9y ago
    I would never be willing to pay per page view. I could pay some specified price on yearly basis, but per page is way out of the question. I'm fine with web sites that use adblocker-blockers. I just don't read their content. Imo that is the way of the future. Obviously these "publications" will lose readers, but maybe we also get rid of most of the junk that's floating around.
jimjimjim 9y ago
whenever there is a problem with ads: assume malice until incompetence is proved.
- FridgeSeal 9y ago
  Yep, especially with the advertising industry: if you give them an inch, they will take a mile. Unfortunately we're in the annoying position where they view themselves as top-shit and "gods gift to the internet" (and admittedly they do provide monetary support to a lot of things) but I don't think that excuses them from behaving as poorly as they have and do and it's long overdue that they're brought into line.
exikyut 9y ago
IMO the way to solve this is a single-click "pay this tiny amount to keep reading" UI. Now that Amazon's one-click checkout patent has expired this is actually legally viable. But it won't happen until Chrome is overturned by a new browser because Google will never let such a model succeed :( It's possible Firefox may successfully do the "phoenix re-viral" thing, in spite of the fact that it would be a literal miracle.
- arich 9y ago
  I've never liked those things that popped up but, as I was reading I thought I'd definitely go for it if I had something like a digital wallet in the browser that I could preload with a balance and simply use to pay for websites like that with one click. Doing a quick google search hasn't shown anything like that. Does anyone know if a browser extension or something like this already exists?
  - FridgeSeal 9y ago
    Seems like that's the idea behind the Brave browser [0]. If I could have some tool that I could put funds into and then frictionlessly pay publishers as I read articles (preferably in a way that didn't let my spending habits be uniquely tracked everywhere) then I would sign up in a heartbeat: I do want to support content producers, don't really want to sign up for n different accounts to do so. [0]: https://www.brave.com/ https://www.brave.com/
  - UncleMeat 9y ago
    This has existed in multiple forms for years. Small micropayments instead of ad views. I believe Google has this feature right now if you opt-in.
    - bonqis 9y ago
      Not really, Flattr distributes your subscription automatically between the content and sites you engage with. Without the need of user interaction.
  - 9y ago
jdangu 9y ago
Awesome to see that subject #1 on HN. At my startup Confiant [1], we block bad ads in stream on behalf of publishers. Cedato aka Algovid aka TLVMedia is one of our prime targets, we block millions of their ad impressions daily. They are essentially buying cheap display ad placements to resell them as fake video preroll ad placements. They sell on video exchanges like AOL's AdapTV and others. To maximize their yield, they resend ad requests in a loop to multiple parties every few seconds until an ad clears, leading to this massive network load. We're on a mission to drive them out of business (and we're hiring ;) ) [1] https://www.confiant.com https://www.confiant.com (edit forgot link)
- driverdan 9y ago
  How is that not fraud?
  - jdangu 9y ago
    it's fraud.
  - phamilton 9y ago
    It absolutely is fraud. I worked on one of those big video exchanges and we'd sometimes see ads run through our own system multiple times. We couldn't spot it until after the ad ran because of the way the ad actually plays. It ends up a bunch of black box Russian dolls, where the spec says you call methods on the ad unit you are playing, which will just wrap another ad unit, which in turn wraps another ad unit. We could piece together what happened sometimes after the fact, but not reliably.
    - Macha 9y ago
      As an example, I'm currently diagnosing an issue where an ad refuses to play in our player as it incorrectly identifies itself as being adblocked. We load the advertiser provided ad (really a DoubleVerify fraud protection module) which loads a custom video player which eventually loads the advertiser's media file. The DoubleVerify script is downloading a bootstrap JavaScript file from their server, which then randomly chooses some other JavaScript to eval to check for whatever they think indicates fraud. It's this JavaScript, dynamically downloaded from their server (possibly even dynamically generated) that thinks our ad player is an ad blocker. And that's just diagnosing a bug, now imagine if you were trying to find some malicious JS.
Qub3d 9y ago
If anyone is curious (like I was) what exactly is being shown here, the author initially wrote a post in 2016 describing VPAID ad interfaces[0]. It appears this whole thing got started when the Author (who founded AndroidPolice) got a bug request about an AP site ad[1]. [0]: https://plus.google.com/+ArtemRussakovskii/posts/VgrLdYcoifr https://plus.google.com/+ArtemRussakovskii/posts/VgrLdYcoifr [1]: https://github.com/archon810/androidpolice-public/issues/67 https://github.com/archon810/androidpolice-public/issues/67
- erikb 9y ago
  This may actually explain why watching videos in the browser sometimes causes the computer to heat up comparably to a new AAA gaming title.
  - etherealG 9y ago
    That's more likely a lack of hardware acceleration I recently learned, if you're talking about youtube. They use VP9 by default, which isn't hardware accelerated in most cases. I installed this recently and the difference in heat and battery life on my Macbook Pro is astounding. https://github.com/erkserkserks/h264ify https://github.com/erkserkserks/h264ify
jasonkostempski 9y ago
Standards should never have allowed third-party scripts to load without insuppressible user prompts. This cluster-fuck could have been avoided.
- GhotiFish 9y ago
  I know what you're saying, but think about things like jquery that every site uses. It's reasonable to source it remotely because everyone has it cached. Unless you had some content ID system in the browsers to pull locally sourced scripts up, we'd lose that instant CDN effect. That said. It's hard to compare the benefits of that to the cost of the nonsense in OP's story. For every 50ms we've gained from cached jquery we've lost 3s to stupid advertising.
  - clarry 9y ago
    My experience (as a uMatrix user -- I get to manually whitelist domains all the time) is that most sites host their own copy of jquery anyway. And the sites that download scripts from external domains are usually the worst offenders -- they download a crapton of things from external domains, definitely not in my cache. As in they probably couldn't care less about performance. Name resolution often takes longer than it would take to serve these request first hand.
- bzbarsky 9y ago
  Third-party script loading is as old as the <script> tag and predates any applicable standards. That is, browsers added <script> before standards did, and allowed cross-site loading of scripts, just like cross-site loading of everything was allowed at that point. Simpler days, 25 years ago...
  - ccozan 9y ago
    Now I have in mind the Terminator scenario, except we need to send it for the guy who though on this <script> tag.
- tannhaeuser 9y ago
aorth 9y ago
In related news, uBlock Origin has finally (today) been converted to a WebExtension and is now fully compatible with Firefox 57 and beyond. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin
- tga_d 9y ago
  it's been a webextension for a while now, the only reason it has been listed as otherwise by Mozilla is because of the update wrapper https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/2576#issue-225417939 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/2576#issue-22541793... https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/2862#issuecomment-321938285 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/2862#issuecomment-3...
  - baobrien 9y ago
    Yep. I've been running it on nightly for a while now just by going to the development channel version.
- SimeVidas 9y ago
  I’ve switched to Ghostery, and it seems to work fine. Should I go back to uBlock Origin?
  - KingMachiavelli 9y ago
    Ghostery has or has had some controversial analytics called GhostRank that it collects(it may be opt-in I'm not sure). But uBlock Origin is definiently the best content filtering extension I've ever used.
    - Vinnl 9y ago
      It's opt-in, and has also been acquired by a company building a privacy-focused browser (I think?).
      - 9y ago
paradite 9y ago
Not sure if the requests are faking clicks or sending tracking information. We had similar incidents before where the requests are for analytics firms to track you: http://donw.io/post/github-comments/ http://donw.io/post/github-comments/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14170041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14170041
- archon810 9y ago
  What's actually happening is they're loading ads in iframes, destroying them, then rinsing and repeating over and over, thus causing all those insane requests.
JeremyHerrman 9y ago
I didn't see any ad blocker recommendations in the comments, so I searched and came across a list on Tom's Hardware of the best ad blockers of 2017. The funny part is that Tom's Hardware was FILLED with these exact kind of ads from algovid and adaptv. Even worse, the list is in a carousel / slideshow format so you have to keep clicking if you didn't GTFO like I did.
- aeleos 9y ago
  If you are still looking for an ad blocker, I have had great experiences with ublock origin.
  - erikb 9y ago
    I also think this is the common suggestion on HN for a year or two now.
  - aryamaan 9y ago
    Any advantages over adBlock?
    - Macha 9y ago
      Their acceptable ads policy turned into "pay to whitelist" which basically pissed people off on all sides. The advertiser's weren't happy about being held to ransom, the users weren't happy with ad blockers that didn't.
  - dkersten 9y ago
    I'm looking for something to block YouTube adverts on iOS (not in the browser, but a standalone app). I hear that ProTube is good, but apparently its only available in the US app store and I don't feel like making a US AppleID right now... Does anybody have any recommendations?
- teolandon 9y ago
  I'd recommend uMatrix, it can be used to block add, but it can also do so much more. It really helps if you want to disable most JavaScript where you don't need it too. Really great addon.
draw_down 9y ago
I can't make it work, what does the ad do?
teolandon 9y ago
It seems so bad that uMatrix is not even allowing me to access the website. I opened up Chrome Dev Tools, and I really wish I hadn't. Holy hell.
smegel 9y ago
Javascript is the new Flash.
smsm42 9y ago
The reason number 2567 why I am using and will keep using adblockers.
jack9 9y ago
Holding up AOL One (Adap.tv rebranded) to represent modern digital advertising is like holding up IBM to represent modern Database design. It's bad context bordering on negligence. Adap developed their ad manager before the IAB produced video standards. Utilizing a team in India, which made it compatible with strange workarounds and primitive browsers from decades past, it has been monkey patched to the current clusterfuck it is today...it will take you awhile to detangle it but you can watch the IFrames in IFrames making async requests all along the way. Adserving platforms are more primitive, the older the company is. The reasons are the same as any other mega-system. Entrenched process and existing revenue stream (fear of change). That being said, look at an actual modern adserver and they don't have the massive multi-call overhead.
dhab 9y ago
Might be off-topic. It seems a majority of people are against ads. What are the top few reasons why people dislike ads, excluding reasons such as them just being a nuisance? My own guesses are: * People don't like the idea that the platform serving the ads is making money through ads which is not directly tied to the main value they derive from that platform * Maybe people feel that they are also indirectly contributing to the platform and that they also should have some stake in the revenue Personally, I have found ads to sometimes remind me of certain things that I could do, or given me new information altogether which I wouldn't have otherwise been aware about normally. And for the most part, my mind mostly tunes them out even when they are there. Are there other good alternatives to get a product known besides ads that can cover the same breadth?
- makecheck 9y ago
  There is nothing wrong with the idea of an ad, it's the implementations that are the major problem. Malware risks, completely unreasonable consumption of resources (battery, locking up the CPU), tracking, and more. No one would really run screaming from ads if they were simply text and images. And indeed, in magazines, they are. It's just that the dynamic nature of the web is too much power and greedy companies go overboard.
- Endy 9y ago
  The main reason I despise ads is because I believe in privacy and anonymity. The goal of Internet advertising is to remove that from me in order to shove more impressions at me. I want to know what I'm choosing to download to my computer, what data is being communicated back, and to whom that data is going. In other words, I demand privacy for myself, and I ask for nothing in return, but when you ask something of me, I demand to know who you are. These services do everything they can to obfuscate that. Beyond that, while this might fall under your "nuisance" category, I don't have a very fast or strong computer; that's why I use Firefox over Chrome (with 4+ processes all running at once, I can barely load Chrome let alone a webpage in it). When ads load, that takes up memory and time that should be spent loading content.
- self_awareness 9y ago
  I don't like ads on the Internet, because I don't want to feel like I'm in a shop when I'm searching for information about something. However I do like ads when I'm actually in a shop. The problem is that 98% of ads I see on the Internet are served on pages that don't sell anything. It's mostly about context; I want to discover new services/goods/whatever only when I want to discover them. Most of the time I don't. There are also lots of technical issues. One technical problem is described in OP's link, so I won't go there. There are also examples when the ad opens a new window. The ad steals focus -- window's focus, and my focus. It switches my context, it wants to hijack or steal my concentration. I didn't give my consent to that. It can track my fingerprint. It slows down my connection by issuing lots of HTTP requests. Also, ads lie. - 20% discount on something? Only with payments $399 and above. - Price goes down from $200 to $50? How do I know that the price was $200 in the first place? Maybe it was always $50 and you just told me it was $200 few weeks ago? - Price that says $200* for something? The asterisk basically tells you that this is a lie. - Best company in the market? Best service in the world? Lowest price in the country? Those are most overused, empty and incorrect sentences in the world. Simply put, ads are wasting my time (most of the time). Most ads are low quality eye catchers and nothing more.
richdougherty 9y ago
I wish ads were sandboxed and given resource limits. I'd like - network limits (rate limited, bandwith capped), animation limits (low fps), sound limits (no sound), CPU usage limits (not much CPU - maybe a burst at page load), etc. Maybe a sandbox option for an iframe?
- poopoopoopoo 9y ago
  Why not resource limit the whole web page? Make it a standard that you have to manually accept a large download, sound, high fps etc like you do for GPS location, camera, etc.
- amelius 9y ago
  If it was in Google's interests, we'd probably have that already.
  - iUsedToCode 9y ago
    Why isn't it? I'm sure Google can make well behaved ads that bring them lots of money. Implementing this would make it even harder for any competition to get a foothold into the market. Now a google ad is treated (by customers with adblock) the same way as the most shitty ads = gets blocked. Maybe if chrome blocked the worst kinds on its own, less people would use adblockers in general. Ad blocking is not a hobby. It's a must nowadays. Google needs to step in or face the possibility of 80% of users adblocking. And when you install Ublock you don't pick and choose only "light" filters. You go all the way, to zero ads. Mozilla should have bundled an adblock with firefox ages ago. They could start with blocking only the worst ads. That would be some pressure on the market.
    - amelius 9y ago
      I don't know why it isn't in Google's interest, but you can bet it isn't. My guess: they don't want to feed and speed up the cat-and-mouse game, so whenever ad-blockers become ubiquitous they still have a chance to outsmart them. Anyway, I think at some point AI will bust all ads, and Google will have to come up with really smart ways to still make money while not annoying its users.
mastazi 9y ago
Google Ads, interstitials, multiple Tag Manager accounts, Analytics' tracking cookies, Facebook and Twitter buttons + embedded feeds, Video pre roll ads, Nielsen Tags... At every new request from marketing you die a little bit inside, because you know you'll never win if you try to make a case against this stuff. Then one day a manager finally emails you and goes "the website is a bit slow". And you smile while you start preparing your technical report.
konradzikusek 9y ago
<iframe max-transfer-size="300KB" src="..."> Proposed Transfer Size Policy will allow site owners and ad networks to block abusive ads - https://github.com/WICG/transfer-size https://github.com/WICG/transfer-size
- maxwellito 9y ago
  It's a brilliant idea! And so simple at the same time. +1
- konradzikusek 9y ago
  Ability to pause iframes, which Transfer Size Policy depends on, is already on Chrome's radar: https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5141555102875648 https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5141555102875648
- ffumarola 9y ago
  Alternatively, capping the number of network requests would be valuable.
TekMol 9y ago
I wonder how much junk like this gets through Adsense. I would have thought Google keeps the ads on their network under tight control. But I see tons of requests to other domains even on pages with just one Adsense ad and no other external content. Example: googlesyndication.com google.com voicefive.com gwallet.com doubleclick.net doubleverify.com mediaplex.com scorecardresearch.com t4ft.de r1-cdn.net afy11.net dotomi.com All contacted multiple times on a single pageview with a single adsense ad and no other external content. What is all that?
- Freak_NL 9y ago
  Trackers, beacons, telemetry; stuff to follow you around the internet and compile a profile on you.
donkeyd 9y ago
I recently tried to browse Groupon to see whether they had any interesting deals. After opening a couple of deals in new tabs, the site became completely unresponsive and every page that I opened to ages to load. I noticed that uBlock was blocking hundreds of things and only after the counter stopped increasing, the page would become responsive. Solution was to open a browser that doesn't have an ad blocker and the site became pretty responsive. I understand that it's probably a bunch of tracking to predict what I want to see. But why would they need to much stuff if I'm probably there to buy stuff anyway?
perfunctory 9y ago
There is a trivial solution to this problem. If you don't like ads, just start paying for the content. Don't support publishers that use advertisement as their business model. Alternatives exist.
- azag0 9y ago
  Yes, but then the whole ecosystem is missing micropayments. I subscribe to some sources, but sometimes I just want to read a single article. Would gladly pay 20 cents, if it was a matter of a click.
- tim333 9y ago
  Not that trivial in practice. How do I negotiate with the 100s of sites I visit to accept a small payment and not show ads? Now installing uBlock is trivial.
steve-327_stuff 9y ago
nice article.............
BerLord 9y ago
Hope ads like this will drop form internet soon. You are right, they are annoying and useless.
the6threplicant 9y ago
Is this what is bricking Safari on the occasional YouTube video? Sometimes a reload works, other times I need to copy the URL and paste in a new tab.
Kiro 9y ago
I don't understand. How can a big company like Cedato aka Algovid aka TLVMedia get away with this apparent abuse? I'm thinking that they would be shut down by the ad company immediately.
intrasight 9y ago
And let's not forget about the "Ad Blocking DMCA Debacle" A good summary here: https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2017/08/15/explaining-ad-blocking-dmca-debacle/ https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2017/08/15/explaining-ad-blo... My takeaway is that DCMA is a powerful weapon to use against ad blocking. It'll be interesting to see how this aspect of the industry plays out.
squarefoot 9y ago
"uBlock Origin has prevented the following page from loading: http://adap.tv/" http://adap.tv/"
orang55 9y ago
Possibly best represented by this ridiculous infographic: https://martechtoday.com/infographic-marketing-technology-landscape-113956 https://martechtoday.com/infographic-marketing-technology-la...

961 points by archon810 9y ago

secabeen 9y ago

Why are they doing it?

KekDemaga 9y ago
DDOS?
heartbreak 9y ago
Money. They’re faking ad delivery.
- nomel 9y ago
  Do the ad suppliers have some sort of analytics in place to catch fraud like this? "This ip viewed 200 adds within 10 seconds!"
  - tomlor 9y ago
    Not really, all these shenanigans occur in a nested series of iframes. The original webpage that served up the initial ad iframe can't see down into these. Whatever supply partner the webpage is using doesn't want to shed light of this to the publisher or else that supply partner may be replaced. This issue is illuminated to some degree by 3rd party ad analytics companies that monitor this via crawlers and user panels. This problem is also attacked from the advertiser side that will use 'viewability' providers to ensure their ad is, well, viewed.
    - firebones 9y ago
      Advertisers should have a centralized reporting service that pays bounties for submitting violators. Is fraud worth enough to support a whitehat community exposing the ad equivalent of "vulnerabilities?"
  - heartbreak 9y ago
    It’s a cat and mouse game like any kind of fraud/prevention.
  - thearn4 9y ago
    The Software Engineering Daily podcast has a good ongoing series on ad fraud that explores why that isn't happening.
  - munchbunny 9y ago
    Some do, but like in most fields, fraud is a moving target, so you will always be a bit behind on the defense.
- mjevans 9y ago
  Reflecting on your statement and the 'incompetence' statement... maybe they're trying to prove an ad displayed for a given duration of time. (As a consumer, I actually hate all ads; they belong as suggested discount incentives after searches; when I'm actually /looking/ for something.)
  - ars 9y ago
    > maybe they're trying to prove an ad displayed for a given duration of time. If that was their goal then 1 request per second would be more than sufficient (and also excessive), but the animated image seems to show a continuous flood of requests.

wheaties 9y ago

Looks like they are calling other ads or reselling fake inventory. This is against every single supply source and publisher's rules. They're not only screwing the browser, they're screwing the advertiser too.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

doctorless 9y ago

I'm actually rather surprised that companies like Google aren't offering solutions to integrate ads into the delivery of the page content itself rather than JavaScript at this point, as it's pretty easy to block the specific domains serving ads. It seems relatively straightforward; the ads would be pre-rendered on the server providing the response and could send the same info a script would for the most part, especially if there was an auxiliary script you could load from your own domain. Not that I'm endorsing the idea, it's just that it seems like an obvious solution to the usage of ad blockers.

hobs 9y ago
I was under the impression that while some pure domain blocking occurs, a lot of the rules engines seem to be written against page content that matches specific patterns, not specific domains, so I don't know if it would help serve more ads that much.
hyperbovine 9y ago
You've just described internet advertising circa 1997. Then Google came along...
- LeifCarrotson 9y ago
  Yes, but shortly after Google came along, ad blockers (or simply adding 127.0.0.1 analytics.google.com to your hosts file) also became popular. Why hasn't anyone responded to that?
nathancahill 9y ago
Too easy to fake impressions. And it would break with caching.
mej10 9y ago
There are plenty of ad servers that offer APIs for doing that.
mjevans 9y ago
I suspect the only way ad companies would trust this is if the pages were served from a third party (someone not directly making money off of the ads).

btown 9y ago

[EDIT: As other commenters have mentioned, the simpler answer is that OP's ad is probably an instance of click fraud. Setting that aside, though, the phenomenon I describe below is likely still in effect, even with players playing by the rules.] I imagine that every stakeholder wants verifiable information that the ad was viewed. It would seem to be a problem of both trust (if some centralized ad server was to stream the analytics server-to-server to the stakeholders, there's no guarantee that that central entity is telling the truth, no way to verify unique IPs, and every economic reason for it to lie) and scale (why pay for bandwidth/CPU for a centralized server to make server-to-server connections when the end user can foot the cost). The problem is that the number of stakeholders has ballooned significantly, the same way that any sizable financial market will attract intermediaries like flies. And now we have an untenable situation. AppNexus is possibly the only player I can think of who's built both trust and infrastructure to address this, and indeed they are rolling out products like this: http://productblog.appnexus.com/get-your-logs-streaming/ http://productblog.appnexus.com/get-your-logs-streaming/ ... but it's very possible that the ecosystem becomes fragmented faster than it becomes consolidated.

mej10 9y ago
There are other ad server as API companies that provide raw logs of event data. Even DFP has that.

tomlor 9y ago

I've seen some other pretty abhorrent behavior as well. The specific instance that comes to mind is an ad that would load all the resources and content of its click-through landing page into a hidden part of its own iframe. Then in the off chance you click the ad, your browser cache is already warmed and the resulting landing page loads fast. All of that for the 0.1% of us that click ads. It boggles the mind.

jdangu 9y ago
That's not the reason, it's ad fraud. They are most likely paid on CPC (cost per click) and forcing clicks in a hidden iframe. Or they are "stuffing cookies" for an affiliation link, betting that you might buy on that store later on - and getting a commission out of it.

baron816 9y ago

A bit off topic, but something I'm interested in: would it be possible for a website to generate revenue by using client machines to mine crypto currencies? I would rather go to a website that uses up my CPU and network resources doing that than use up my CPU and network resources AND spam me with intrusive ads. Edit: solid answers to my question. Thanks everyone.

Cursuviam 9y ago
It's been done, but they ran into trouble with New Jersey for a bit. https://www.eff.org/cases/rubin-v-new-jersey-tidbit https://www.eff.org/cases/rubin-v-new-jersey-tidbit
- jasonkostempski 9y ago
  "And the state itself echoed the comments of Judge Furnari, noting in its press release announcing the consent order "we do not believe Tidbit was created for the purpose of invading privacy."" What about every other ad network in existence? They are specifically designed to invade privacy. Why isn't NJ going after them?
  - DamonHD 9y ago
    Maybe this is a "whoosh" but (legit) ad networks are specifically designed to sell ads (and thus make the network owners some money); it is hyperbole to claim that each and every one of them has only an ulterior/illegal motive in place of the stated (unpopular one).
mej10 9y ago
More efficient to separate the mining aspect and just send a micropayment in a web request. Brave (the browser) implements of version of this.
- darawk 9y ago
  While true, using a browser for mining doesn't require the user to have any cryptocurrency, or even know what cryptocurrency is. It also has a similarly opaque cost to them (in the form of electricity).

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

SomeStupidPoint 9y ago

I had to install an ad-blocker today because I got an ad trying to scam me served by Microsoft's news website. If they're not going to take any responsibility for what they're attaching to their pages, then I'm not going to load their random bag of crap.

exikyut 9y ago
Wow. What was the ad about? I'm curious, I like filing away disasters like these.
- SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
  Ad that redirected my page to some shady hosting site with a red background and scary text about how I had some virus and needed to call "Microsoft" at the number they provided with a bunch of personal information to fix it. (I assume a JS "vuln" to take over the page -- not that they really regulate ads from how often it happens.) ...Which is particularly goddamn egregious for a Microsoft website to be serving. If advertisers want me to feel the least bit bad for them and their woes, they need to take some kind of responsibility for those antics. They wanna keep that up? I hope the whole industry dies: getting a warning like that from a Microsoft website could easily have caught my grandma. tl;dr: Fuck ad networks, fuck Microsoft.
  - exikyut 9y ago
    Oh wow, it was one of *those( scams - and [redirected] from the MS site itself. I'm impressed.
uuoc 9y ago
I'm actually surprised it took you this long. I have had an ad blocker in one form or another continuously installed since the first ad blockers appeared on the scene. And I'll always have an ad blocker installed.
- shpx 9y ago

Abishek_Muthian 9y ago

It would be interesting to see how advertising works when Google blocks competitor's ads as "bad ads" in chrome & Apple blocks most ads in safari (iOS 11).

Toast_ 9y ago

Looks like cookie stuffing.

bluetwo 9y ago

If we can't fix this problem, no one is going to be able to do it.

andy_ppp 9y ago

I would love to be able to block JS files individually based on energy usage.

exikyut 9y ago
That would be fine until jquery-1.9.1-min.js: 3,389 hours of battery usage would refuse to budge from the absolute top of the "probably the best to block" list. The heuristics would be tricky to implement here...
- andy_ppp 9y ago
  That it’s only a heuristic would be rather the point; users would be able to select urls they wished to disable. In fact you could probably crowd source training data for a deep learning model so that it could eventually be automated.
- Endy 9y ago
  What's the problem with blocking this? Remove JavaScript and you basically fix the Web.

pavel_lishin 9y ago

Once again I bring out my trusty analogy of ad tech consistently shitting in a well. Except this time, that's basically where it stops. These guys are shitting in a well, for no good reason, full stop.

whatever9089 9y ago

Brave browser?

nextlevelwizard 9y ago
How has it been hardened? It's not just about blocking ads, it's also about preventing malicious content. I'm not willing to risk a beta browser for ads.

HuginnMuninn 9y ago

Has anyone attempted to quantify a rough cost for me to just pay for the http request I'm making and get rid of the middlemen? I look at some of my spur of the moment purchases in shame, yet paying say $0.001 to browse a page somehow is the unthinkable? Most don't like ads, as others have said they add latency and are easily subject to fraudulent clicks for the advertiser. I get the feeling that content-creators and end-users are on the same side here and those in the middle are in the wrong. Not saying get rid of all ads, but it's amazing in 2017 there's no easy pay-to-play on the internet.

brad0 9y ago
I quite like this idea. I run a basic http server with a nodejs backend. It gets ~3000 hits a month. It costs around $6 on AWS. It costs around 0.2c per request. It would be simple to build a system that charges per use - most SaaS companies do this. The problem is that someone is willing to pay for that content and repost it on the "free web". 99% of people will read the free version (see freemium mobile games). While content creators agree that they would prefer to charge directly for their content, we live in the attention economy. This means if you don't make yourself hyper accessible then people will go to other places to get their dopamine hit.
- HuginnMuninn 9y ago
  Excellent points. Seems I was oversimplifying a single part of a bigger problem. I want to pay, but never feel satisfied with time-based subscription models, especially for news, would be so happy to pay upfront for 1000 articles, no time limit, yet to see that offered.
- nextlevelwizard 9y ago
  I would never be willing to pay per page view. I could pay some specified price on yearly basis, but per page is way out of the question. I'm fine with web sites that use adblocker-blockers. I just don't read their content. Imo that is the way of the future. Obviously these "publications" will lose readers, but maybe we also get rid of most of the junk that's floating around.

jimjimjim 9y ago

whenever there is a problem with ads: assume malice until incompetence is proved.

FridgeSeal 9y ago
Yep, especially with the advertising industry: if you give them an inch, they will take a mile. Unfortunately we're in the annoying position where they view themselves as top-shit and "gods gift to the internet" (and admittedly they do provide monetary support to a lot of things) but I don't think that excuses them from behaving as poorly as they have and do and it's long overdue that they're brought into line.

exikyut 9y ago

IMO the way to solve this is a single-click "pay this tiny amount to keep reading" UI. Now that Amazon's one-click checkout patent has expired this is actually legally viable. But it won't happen until Chrome is overturned by a new browser because Google will never let such a model succeed :( It's possible Firefox may successfully do the "phoenix re-viral" thing, in spite of the fact that it would be a literal miracle.

arich 9y ago
I've never liked those things that popped up but, as I was reading I thought I'd definitely go for it if I had something like a digital wallet in the browser that I could preload with a balance and simply use to pay for websites like that with one click. Doing a quick google search hasn't shown anything like that. Does anyone know if a browser extension or something like this already exists?
- FridgeSeal 9y ago
  Seems like that's the idea behind the Brave browser [0]. If I could have some tool that I could put funds into and then frictionlessly pay publishers as I read articles (preferably in a way that didn't let my spending habits be uniquely tracked everywhere) then I would sign up in a heartbeat: I do want to support content producers, don't really want to sign up for n different accounts to do so. [0]: https://www.brave.com/ https://www.brave.com/
- UncleMeat 9y ago
  This has existed in multiple forms for years. Small micropayments instead of ad views. I believe Google has this feature right now if you opt-in.
  - bonqis 9y ago
    Not really, Flattr distributes your subscription automatically between the content and sites you engage with. Without the need of user interaction.
- 9y ago

jdangu 9y ago

Awesome to see that subject #1 on HN. At my startup Confiant [1], we block bad ads in stream on behalf of publishers. Cedato aka Algovid aka TLVMedia is one of our prime targets, we block millions of their ad impressions daily. They are essentially buying cheap display ad placements to resell them as fake video preroll ad placements. They sell on video exchanges like AOL's AdapTV and others. To maximize their yield, they resend ad requests in a loop to multiple parties every few seconds until an ad clears, leading to this massive network load. We're on a mission to drive them out of business (and we're hiring ;) ) [1] https://www.confiant.com https://www.confiant.com (edit forgot link)

driverdan 9y ago
How is that not fraud?
- jdangu 9y ago
  it's fraud.
- phamilton 9y ago
  It absolutely is fraud. I worked on one of those big video exchanges and we'd sometimes see ads run through our own system multiple times. We couldn't spot it until after the ad ran because of the way the ad actually plays. It ends up a bunch of black box Russian dolls, where the spec says you call methods on the ad unit you are playing, which will just wrap another ad unit, which in turn wraps another ad unit. We could piece together what happened sometimes after the fact, but not reliably.
  - Macha 9y ago
    As an example, I'm currently diagnosing an issue where an ad refuses to play in our player as it incorrectly identifies itself as being adblocked. We load the advertiser provided ad (really a DoubleVerify fraud protection module) which loads a custom video player which eventually loads the advertiser's media file. The DoubleVerify script is downloading a bootstrap JavaScript file from their server, which then randomly chooses some other JavaScript to eval to check for whatever they think indicates fraud. It's this JavaScript, dynamically downloaded from their server (possibly even dynamically generated) that thinks our ad player is an ad blocker. And that's just diagnosing a bug, now imagine if you were trying to find some malicious JS.

Qub3d 9y ago

If anyone is curious (like I was) what exactly is being shown here, the author initially wrote a post in 2016 describing VPAID ad interfaces[0]. It appears this whole thing got started when the Author (who founded AndroidPolice) got a bug request about an AP site ad[1]. [0]: https://plus.google.com/+ArtemRussakovskii/posts/VgrLdYcoifr https://plus.google.com/+ArtemRussakovskii/posts/VgrLdYcoifr [1]: https://github.com/archon810/androidpolice-public/issues/67 https://github.com/archon810/androidpolice-public/issues/67

erikb 9y ago
This may actually explain why watching videos in the browser sometimes causes the computer to heat up comparably to a new AAA gaming title.
- etherealG 9y ago
  That's more likely a lack of hardware acceleration I recently learned, if you're talking about youtube. They use VP9 by default, which isn't hardware accelerated in most cases. I installed this recently and the difference in heat and battery life on my Macbook Pro is astounding. https://github.com/erkserkserks/h264ify https://github.com/erkserkserks/h264ify

jasonkostempski 9y ago

Standards should never have allowed third-party scripts to load without insuppressible user prompts. This cluster-fuck could have been avoided.

GhotiFish 9y ago
I know what you're saying, but think about things like jquery that every site uses. It's reasonable to source it remotely because everyone has it cached. Unless you had some content ID system in the browsers to pull locally sourced scripts up, we'd lose that instant CDN effect. That said. It's hard to compare the benefits of that to the cost of the nonsense in OP's story. For every 50ms we've gained from cached jquery we've lost 3s to stupid advertising.
- clarry 9y ago
  My experience (as a uMatrix user -- I get to manually whitelist domains all the time) is that most sites host their own copy of jquery anyway. And the sites that download scripts from external domains are usually the worst offenders -- they download a crapton of things from external domains, definitely not in my cache. As in they probably couldn't care less about performance. Name resolution often takes longer than it would take to serve these request first hand.
bzbarsky 9y ago
Third-party script loading is as old as the <script> tag and predates any applicable standards. That is, browsers added <script> before standards did, and allowed cross-site loading of scripts, just like cross-site loading of everything was allowed at that point. Simpler days, 25 years ago...
- ccozan 9y ago
  Now I have in mind the Terminator scenario, except we need to send it for the guy who though on this <script> tag.
tannhaeuser 9y ago

aorth 9y ago

In related news, uBlock Origin has finally (today) been converted to a WebExtension and is now fully compatible with Firefox 57 and beyond. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin

tga_d 9y ago
it's been a webextension for a while now, the only reason it has been listed as otherwise by Mozilla is because of the update wrapper https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/2576#issue-225417939 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/2576#issue-22541793... https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/2862#issuecomment-321938285 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/2862#issuecomment-3...
- baobrien 9y ago
  Yep. I've been running it on nightly for a while now just by going to the development channel version.
SimeVidas 9y ago
I’ve switched to Ghostery, and it seems to work fine. Should I go back to uBlock Origin?
- KingMachiavelli 9y ago
  Ghostery has or has had some controversial analytics called GhostRank that it collects(it may be opt-in I'm not sure). But uBlock Origin is definiently the best content filtering extension I've ever used.
  - Vinnl 9y ago
    It's opt-in, and has also been acquired by a company building a privacy-focused browser (I think?).
    - 9y ago

paradite 9y ago

Not sure if the requests are faking clicks or sending tracking information. We had similar incidents before where the requests are for analytics firms to track you: http://donw.io/post/github-comments/ http://donw.io/post/github-comments/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14170041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14170041

archon810 9y ago
What's actually happening is they're loading ads in iframes, destroying them, then rinsing and repeating over and over, thus causing all those insane requests.

JeremyHerrman 9y ago

I didn't see any ad blocker recommendations in the comments, so I searched and came across a list on Tom's Hardware of the best ad blockers of 2017. The funny part is that Tom's Hardware was FILLED with these exact kind of ads from algovid and adaptv. Even worse, the list is in a carousel / slideshow format so you have to keep clicking if you didn't GTFO like I did.

aeleos 9y ago
If you are still looking for an ad blocker, I have had great experiences with ublock origin.
- erikb 9y ago
  I also think this is the common suggestion on HN for a year or two now.
- aryamaan 9y ago
  Any advantages over adBlock?
  - Macha 9y ago
    Their acceptable ads policy turned into "pay to whitelist" which basically pissed people off on all sides. The advertiser's weren't happy about being held to ransom, the users weren't happy with ad blockers that didn't.
- dkersten 9y ago
  I'm looking for something to block YouTube adverts on iOS (not in the browser, but a standalone app). I hear that ProTube is good, but apparently its only available in the US app store and I don't feel like making a US AppleID right now... Does anybody have any recommendations?
teolandon 9y ago
I'd recommend uMatrix, it can be used to block add, but it can also do so much more. It really helps if you want to disable most JavaScript where you don't need it too. Really great addon.

draw_down 9y ago

I can't make it work, what does the ad do?

teolandon 9y ago

It seems so bad that uMatrix is not even allowing me to access the website. I opened up Chrome Dev Tools, and I really wish I hadn't. Holy hell.

smegel 9y ago

Javascript is the new Flash.

smsm42 9y ago

The reason number 2567 why I am using and will keep using adblockers.

jack9 9y ago

Holding up AOL One (Adap.tv rebranded) to represent modern digital advertising is like holding up IBM to represent modern Database design. It's bad context bordering on negligence. Adap developed their ad manager before the IAB produced video standards. Utilizing a team in India, which made it compatible with strange workarounds and primitive browsers from decades past, it has been monkey patched to the current clusterfuck it is today...it will take you awhile to detangle it but you can watch the IFrames in IFrames making async requests all along the way. Adserving platforms are more primitive, the older the company is. The reasons are the same as any other mega-system. Entrenched process and existing revenue stream (fear of change). That being said, look at an actual modern adserver and they don't have the massive multi-call overhead.

dhab 9y ago

Might be off-topic. It seems a majority of people are against ads. What are the top few reasons why people dislike ads, excluding reasons such as them just being a nuisance? My own guesses are: * People don't like the idea that the platform serving the ads is making money through ads which is not directly tied to the main value they derive from that platform * Maybe people feel that they are also indirectly contributing to the platform and that they also should have some stake in the revenue Personally, I have found ads to sometimes remind me of certain things that I could do, or given me new information altogether which I wouldn't have otherwise been aware about normally. And for the most part, my mind mostly tunes them out even when they are there. Are there other good alternatives to get a product known besides ads that can cover the same breadth?

makecheck 9y ago
There is nothing wrong with the idea of an ad, it's the implementations that are the major problem. Malware risks, completely unreasonable consumption of resources (battery, locking up the CPU), tracking, and more. No one would really run screaming from ads if they were simply text and images. And indeed, in magazines, they are. It's just that the dynamic nature of the web is too much power and greedy companies go overboard.
Endy 9y ago
The main reason I despise ads is because I believe in privacy and anonymity. The goal of Internet advertising is to remove that from me in order to shove more impressions at me. I want to know what I'm choosing to download to my computer, what data is being communicated back, and to whom that data is going. In other words, I demand privacy for myself, and I ask for nothing in return, but when you ask something of me, I demand to know who you are. These services do everything they can to obfuscate that. Beyond that, while this might fall under your "nuisance" category, I don't have a very fast or strong computer; that's why I use Firefox over Chrome (with 4+ processes all running at once, I can barely load Chrome let alone a webpage in it). When ads load, that takes up memory and time that should be spent loading content.
self_awareness 9y ago
I don't like ads on the Internet, because I don't want to feel like I'm in a shop when I'm searching for information about something. However I do like ads when I'm actually in a shop. The problem is that 98% of ads I see on the Internet are served on pages that don't sell anything. It's mostly about context; I want to discover new services/goods/whatever only when I want to discover them. Most of the time I don't. There are also lots of technical issues. One technical problem is described in OP's link, so I won't go there. There are also examples when the ad opens a new window. The ad steals focus -- window's focus, and my focus. It switches my context, it wants to hijack or steal my concentration. I didn't give my consent to that. It can track my fingerprint. It slows down my connection by issuing lots of HTTP requests. Also, ads lie. - 20% discount on something? Only with payments $399 and above. - Price goes down from $200 to $50? How do I know that the price was $200 in the first place? Maybe it was always $50 and you just told me it was $200 few weeks ago? - Price that says $200* for something? The asterisk basically tells you that this is a lie. - Best company in the market? Best service in the world? Lowest price in the country? Those are most overused, empty and incorrect sentences in the world. Simply put, ads are wasting my time (most of the time). Most ads are low quality eye catchers and nothing more.

richdougherty 9y ago

I wish ads were sandboxed and given resource limits. I'd like - network limits (rate limited, bandwith capped), animation limits (low fps), sound limits (no sound), CPU usage limits (not much CPU - maybe a burst at page load), etc. Maybe a sandbox option for an iframe?

poopoopoopoo 9y ago
Why not resource limit the whole web page? Make it a standard that you have to manually accept a large download, sound, high fps etc like you do for GPS location, camera, etc.
amelius 9y ago
If it was in Google's interests, we'd probably have that already.
- iUsedToCode 9y ago
  Why isn't it? I'm sure Google can make well behaved ads that bring them lots of money. Implementing this would make it even harder for any competition to get a foothold into the market. Now a google ad is treated (by customers with adblock) the same way as the most shitty ads = gets blocked. Maybe if chrome blocked the worst kinds on its own, less people would use adblockers in general. Ad blocking is not a hobby. It's a must nowadays. Google needs to step in or face the possibility of 80% of users adblocking. And when you install Ublock you don't pick and choose only "light" filters. You go all the way, to zero ads. Mozilla should have bundled an adblock with firefox ages ago. They could start with blocking only the worst ads. That would be some pressure on the market.
  - amelius 9y ago
    I don't know why it isn't in Google's interest, but you can bet it isn't. My guess: they don't want to feed and speed up the cat-and-mouse game, so whenever ad-blockers become ubiquitous they still have a chance to outsmart them. Anyway, I think at some point AI will bust all ads, and Google will have to come up with really smart ways to still make money while not annoying its users.

mastazi 9y ago

Google Ads, interstitials, multiple Tag Manager accounts, Analytics' tracking cookies, Facebook and Twitter buttons + embedded feeds, Video pre roll ads, Nielsen Tags... At every new request from marketing you die a little bit inside, because you know you'll never win if you try to make a case against this stuff. Then one day a manager finally emails you and goes "the website is a bit slow". And you smile while you start preparing your technical report.

konradzikusek 9y ago

maxwellito 9y ago
It's a brilliant idea! And so simple at the same time. +1
konradzikusek 9y ago
Ability to pause iframes, which Transfer Size Policy depends on, is already on Chrome's radar: https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5141555102875648 https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5141555102875648
ffumarola 9y ago
Alternatively, capping the number of network requests would be valuable.

TekMol 9y ago

I wonder how much junk like this gets through Adsense. I would have thought Google keeps the ads on their network under tight control. But I see tons of requests to other domains even on pages with just one Adsense ad and no other external content. Example: googlesyndication.com google.com voicefive.com gwallet.com doubleclick.net doubleverify.com mediaplex.com scorecardresearch.com t4ft.de r1-cdn.net afy11.net dotomi.com All contacted multiple times on a single pageview with a single adsense ad and no other external content. What is all that?

Freak_NL 9y ago
Trackers, beacons, telemetry; stuff to follow you around the internet and compile a profile on you.

donkeyd 9y ago

I recently tried to browse Groupon to see whether they had any interesting deals. After opening a couple of deals in new tabs, the site became completely unresponsive and every page that I opened to ages to load. I noticed that uBlock was blocking hundreds of things and only after the counter stopped increasing, the page would become responsive. Solution was to open a browser that doesn't have an ad blocker and the site became pretty responsive. I understand that it's probably a bunch of tracking to predict what I want to see. But why would they need to much stuff if I'm probably there to buy stuff anyway?

perfunctory 9y ago

There is a trivial solution to this problem. If you don't like ads, just start paying for the content. Don't support publishers that use advertisement as their business model. Alternatives exist.

azag0 9y ago
Yes, but then the whole ecosystem is missing micropayments. I subscribe to some sources, but sometimes I just want to read a single article. Would gladly pay 20 cents, if it was a matter of a click.
tim333 9y ago
Not that trivial in practice. How do I negotiate with the 100s of sites I visit to accept a small payment and not show ads? Now installing uBlock is trivial.

steve-327_stuff 9y ago

nice article.............

BerLord 9y ago

Hope ads like this will drop form internet soon. You are right, they are annoying and useless.

the6threplicant 9y ago

Is this what is bricking Safari on the occasional YouTube video? Sometimes a reload works, other times I need to copy the URL and paste in a new tab.

Kiro 9y ago

I don't understand. How can a big company like Cedato aka Algovid aka TLVMedia get away with this apparent abuse? I'm thinking that they would be shut down by the ad company immediately.

intrasight 9y ago

And let's not forget about the "Ad Blocking DMCA Debacle" A good summary here: https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2017/08/15/explaining-ad-blocking-dmca-debacle/ https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2017/08/15/explaining-ad-blo... My takeaway is that DCMA is a powerful weapon to use against ad blocking. It'll be interesting to see how this aspect of the industry plays out.

squarefoot 9y ago

"uBlock Origin has prevented the following page from loading: http://adap.tv/" http://adap.tv/"

orang55 9y ago

Possibly best represented by this ridiculous infographic: https://martechtoday.com/infographic-marketing-technology-landscape-113956 https://martechtoday.com/infographic-marketing-technology-la...