4 ms·

My guess is to prevent ad-fraud by website owners. It's a lot harder to detect fraudulent clicks/impressions if all data are routed through website. The cost o

My guess is to prevent ad-fraud by website owners. It's a lot harder to detect fraudulent clicks/impressions if all data are routed through website. The cost of potentially blocked by ad blockers is finite (A percentage of total revenue), but the cost of ad-fraud is not bounded.

callmeal 7y ago
>My guess is to prevent ad-fraud by website owners. It's a lot harder to detect fraudulent clicks/impressions if all data are routed through website. Isn't the solution to that problem a flat rate fee (similar to how advertisements on tv, newspapers and magazines work)? Instead of a pay-per-click it could be a simple $X dollars and your ad will be visible for Y days/weeks.
- uponcoffee 7y ago
  I don't see how that would work. If my site gets zero traffic, would I still get paid a flat rate to 'serve' ads? Pay per impression/click works to pay proportionally to individual site traffic and the extent of a campaign. The current solution is effectively a flat rate as far as an ad campaign is concerned: impressions/$
  - michaelt 7y ago
    People would either (a) pay to place ads on sites they knew had a decent amount of traffic just from reputation, or (b) would hire ad-buying companies which made it their business to know what different sites' ad space is worth. Needless to say, this could be inconvenient for the adwords-make-me-five-bucks-a-month scale sites. It'd work out OK for the New York Times-es of the world though.
amelius 7y ago
What would happen if browsers simply didn't allow cross domain referencing? Would the web break (and would it be worse than NoScript)?
- laughinghan 7y ago
  I've thought about this before, since NoScript is too disruptive for me. One issue is that it's common for scripts to served from assets.whateverwebsite.com. I also thought of allowing anything from the same second-level domain (so anything on .whateverwebsite.com), but that would allow anything on .co.uk. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ in Chrome I trust, for now.
  - naniwaduni 7y ago
    Sounds like a job for the public suffix list.
    - laughinghan 7y ago
      Ooh, cool, hadn't heard of that before! TIL. But even with the added complexity of regularly pulling in the public suffix list, the problems keep going: e.g., facebook.com's scripts are all served from static.xx.fbcdn.net.

callmeal 7y ago

>My guess is to prevent ad-fraud by website owners. It's a lot harder to detect fraudulent clicks/impressions if all data are routed through website. Isn't the solution to that problem a flat rate fee (similar to how advertisements on tv, newspapers and magazines work)? Instead of a pay-per-click it could be a simple $X dollars and your ad will be visible for Y days/weeks.

uponcoffee 7y ago
I don't see how that would work. If my site gets zero traffic, would I still get paid a flat rate to 'serve' ads? Pay per impression/click works to pay proportionally to individual site traffic and the extent of a campaign. The current solution is effectively a flat rate as far as an ad campaign is concerned: impressions/$
- michaelt 7y ago
  People would either (a) pay to place ads on sites they knew had a decent amount of traffic just from reputation, or (b) would hire ad-buying companies which made it their business to know what different sites' ad space is worth. Needless to say, this could be inconvenient for the adwords-make-me-five-bucks-a-month scale sites. It'd work out OK for the New York Times-es of the world though.

amelius 7y ago

What would happen if browsers simply didn't allow cross domain referencing? Would the web break (and would it be worse than NoScript)?

laughinghan 7y ago
I've thought about this before, since NoScript is too disruptive for me. One issue is that it's common for scripts to served from assets.whateverwebsite.com. I also thought of allowing anything from the same second-level domain (so anything on .whateverwebsite.com), but that would allow anything on .co.uk. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ in Chrome I trust, for now.
- naniwaduni 7y ago
  Sounds like a job for the public suffix list.
  - laughinghan 7y ago
    Ooh, cool, hadn't heard of that before! TIL. But even with the added complexity of regularly pulling in the public suffix list, the problems keep going: e.g., facebook.com's scripts are all served from static.xx.fbcdn.net.