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This discussion makes me wonder why I haven't seen more server side ad solutions that render ads into a page in a way that's harder to detect or block. Of cours

by yosito 9y ago

This discussion makes me wonder why I haven't seen more server side ad solutions that render ads into a page in a way that's harder to detect or block. Of course, advertisers could find ways to abuse that too and then adblockers would have to up their game. I think the best strategy is to render a fallback into your page that looks like an image related to your content and then replace that image on they fly with unobtrusive ads that respect the user experience. If people block the adds they'll see the fallback which is an opportunity to plead your case to users and ask for donations, subscriptions or permission to show respectful ads.

pritambaral 9y ago
There have been attempts to render ads with the page. For example, Facebook and some news sites do it. It's just that it is bad UX to not clearly mark ads as ads. When Facebook launched sponsored ads and posts embedded in its feed, it was only a short while before DOM-manipulating ad blockers could block it because Facebook had to mark those "posts" as "sponsored".
- yosito 9y ago
  That's a good point. But I think there are some ways around that which aren't too intrusive. If you just render a fallback on the server side with a message asking users to support you in some way, and then replace that fallback with your ads, you can mark the ads as sponsored without having to mark the fallback. And if you have image based ads, you could mark the image itself using server-side processing to add some sort of watermark rather than a DOM-based marker.
phicoh 9y ago
A problem I can see with that approach is that code that is served from the content server would have to do browser fingerprinting before ads can be auctioned by the ad network. In the current setup with third part tracking cookies, the ad network sees individual users. If you route everything through the content providers servers, then the ad network may have to work a lot harder to figure out who is who. And the ad networks have no incentive to do so (at the moment)
Cthulhu_ 9y ago
Because that generally implies removing control from the ad networks. Those like to inject the JS so they control what is put in there; the view is put up for auction and whoever wins will get the ad. Second, some longer-living pages like to rotate ads over time. But yeah, I don't get why things like ads and analytics aren't served via the host server.

by yosito 9y ago

pritambaral 9y ago

There have been attempts to render ads with the page. For example, Facebook and some news sites do it. It's just that it is bad UX to not clearly mark ads as ads. When Facebook launched sponsored ads and posts embedded in its feed, it was only a short while before DOM-manipulating ad blockers could block it because Facebook had to mark those "posts" as "sponsored".

yosito 9y ago
That's a good point. But I think there are some ways around that which aren't too intrusive. If you just render a fallback on the server side with a message asking users to support you in some way, and then replace that fallback with your ads, you can mark the ads as sponsored without having to mark the fallback. And if you have image based ads, you could mark the image itself using server-side processing to add some sort of watermark rather than a DOM-based marker.

phicoh 9y ago

A problem I can see with that approach is that code that is served from the content server would have to do browser fingerprinting before ads can be auctioned by the ad network. In the current setup with third part tracking cookies, the ad network sees individual users. If you route everything through the content providers servers, then the ad network may have to work a lot harder to figure out who is who. And the ad networks have no incentive to do so (at the moment)

Cthulhu_ 9y ago

Because that generally implies removing control from the ad networks. Those like to inject the JS so they control what is put in there; the view is put up for auction and whoever wins will get the ad. Second, some longer-living pages like to rotate ads over time. But yeah, I don't get why things like ads and analytics aren't served via the host server.