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I fear that with adblocking nearing 25% market penetration we're going to see fundamental changes in the way ads are delivered in response. Maybe a transition f

I fear that with adblocking nearing 25% market penetration we're going to see fundamental changes in the way ads are delivered in response. Maybe a transition from third party ad servers to locally hosted ads that have to be added to block lists individually. Maybe YouTube will start inserting unblockable ads directly into the video stream. Fine people like Raymond Hill will keep fighting the good fight but I wonder if someday we'll look back on the era where web content was paid for by the 90 percent of people who don't block ads so the 10 percent could block them effortlessly as a sort of golden age.

yepguy 7y ago
If that happens, projects like Adblock Radio will hopefully step in to make "unblockable" ads more tolerable, by automatically turning the volume down for example. https://www.adblockradio.com/en/ https://www.adblockradio.com/en/
- papln 7y ago
  Isn't that a Browser feature that was/is fixed in 2019? Unrequested audio is flat-out absurd behavior in a browser.
  - yepguy 7y ago
    I was responding to the possibility of YouTube just embedding ads directly into the video to thwart current ad-blocking techniques. If that happens the audio would already be playing before an advertisement started. Something like Adblock Radio is a more sophisticated approach that could still detect ads like that.
gregmac 7y ago
I think you're right. For me personally, if a site was toxic enough with ads (eg: the reason I started using an adblocker originally) I'd just completely avoid it. I did originally try that, but in particular "chum boxes" started appearing everywhere on more sites than I could remember to avoid and that was the last straw. The easiest solution was an ad blocker, and unfortunately for publishers, it's just easier to block all ads everywhere than try to be selective and only block annoying ones. If enough sites started using anti-adblock techniques with toxic ads, my next step would be a 'site blocker' plugin that would effectively eradicate it from the internet for me. This is kind of the nuclear option. No links from others sites, no showing up in search results. The technology exists already for blocking adult sites: the thing missing is the ability to add to your block list from a search result page or on the site itself. The next logical extension to that is sharing block lists among users, and projects that maintain block lists you can subscribe to. It actually would be nice if there's a way to notify the site when you were blocking them, such as your browser hitting `/.well-known/eradicated?origin=http://page/containing/link` http://page/containing/link`.
squaresmile 7y ago
> inserting unblockable ads directly into the video stream. In a sense, it's already kinda happening with Twitch. A few months ago, they rolled out Server Side Ad Insertion [1] which broke ad blockers. Now, ublock origin and streamlink can still block them though but the arms race will continue. I don't think it'll ever come to reencoding the video to incorporate ads because most ads are dynamics but maybe future encoders or hardware are really fast. [1] https://aws.amazon.com/media/tech/what-server-side-ad-insertion-ssai/ https://aws.amazon.com/media/tech/what-server-side-ad-insert...
RandomBacon 7y ago
Maybe news (and other) websites will stop auto-loading megabytes of scripts, images, auto-playing video etc because because they can no longer fund it. Maybe we'll get a resurgence of text-only websites.
whyever 7y ago
Regarding performance, safety and privacy, locally hosted ads would be a huge improvement over the current situation.
lunchables 7y ago
>but I wonder if someday we'll look back on the era where web content was paid for by the 90 percent of people who don't block ads so the 10 percent could block them effortlessly as a sort of golden age. Yes! I think what has staved it off is the lack of adblocking on mobile devices. I use uBlock on every computer I have, but on my iPhone? Not so much. I think as more traffic moved to mobile it has offset ad blocking to some degree. I can't imagine that 25% of people are blocking ads on mobile?
- Causality1 7y ago
  I can't speak for anyone else but on my phone I adblock through the Hosts file and additionally have Ublock Origin and Noscript installed in Firefox Mobile.
ksangeelee 7y ago
I struggle to see how the past five or ten years could ever be seen as a "golden age", if so then the future must be bleak. I would argue that too much of the content that is paid for is created purely to generate page-views to carry advertising. Those people who are motivated to share knowledge and opinions sincerely are crowded out by click-bait.
- Causality1 7y ago
  Agreed. It's been sad to see so many sites fall into the temptation. These days even Ars Technica is quick to twist and contort their headlines for maximum flammability.

yepguy 7y ago

If that happens, projects like Adblock Radio will hopefully step in to make "unblockable" ads more tolerable, by automatically turning the volume down for example. https://www.adblockradio.com/en/ https://www.adblockradio.com/en/

papln 7y ago
Isn't that a Browser feature that was/is fixed in 2019? Unrequested audio is flat-out absurd behavior in a browser.
- yepguy 7y ago
  I was responding to the possibility of YouTube just embedding ads directly into the video to thwart current ad-blocking techniques. If that happens the audio would already be playing before an advertisement started. Something like Adblock Radio is a more sophisticated approach that could still detect ads like that.

gregmac 7y ago

I think you're right. For me personally, if a site was toxic enough with ads (eg: the reason I started using an adblocker originally) I'd just completely avoid it. I did originally try that, but in particular "chum boxes" started appearing everywhere on more sites than I could remember to avoid and that was the last straw. The easiest solution was an ad blocker, and unfortunately for publishers, it's just easier to block all ads everywhere than try to be selective and only block annoying ones. If enough sites started using anti-adblock techniques with toxic ads, my next step would be a 'site blocker' plugin that would effectively eradicate it from the internet for me. This is kind of the nuclear option. No links from others sites, no showing up in search results. The technology exists already for blocking adult sites: the thing missing is the ability to add to your block list from a search result page or on the site itself. The next logical extension to that is sharing block lists among users, and projects that maintain block lists you can subscribe to. It actually would be nice if there's a way to notify the site when you were blocking them, such as your browser hitting `/.well-known/eradicated?origin=http://page/containing/link` http://page/containing/link`.

squaresmile 7y ago

> inserting unblockable ads directly into the video stream. In a sense, it's already kinda happening with Twitch. A few months ago, they rolled out Server Side Ad Insertion [1] which broke ad blockers. Now, ublock origin and streamlink can still block them though but the arms race will continue. I don't think it'll ever come to reencoding the video to incorporate ads because most ads are dynamics but maybe future encoders or hardware are really fast. [1] https://aws.amazon.com/media/tech/what-server-side-ad-insertion-ssai/ https://aws.amazon.com/media/tech/what-server-side-ad-insert...

RandomBacon 7y ago

Maybe news (and other) websites will stop auto-loading megabytes of scripts, images, auto-playing video etc because because they can no longer fund it. Maybe we'll get a resurgence of text-only websites.

whyever 7y ago

Regarding performance, safety and privacy, locally hosted ads would be a huge improvement over the current situation.

lunchables 7y ago

>but I wonder if someday we'll look back on the era where web content was paid for by the 90 percent of people who don't block ads so the 10 percent could block them effortlessly as a sort of golden age. Yes! I think what has staved it off is the lack of adblocking on mobile devices. I use uBlock on every computer I have, but on my iPhone? Not so much. I think as more traffic moved to mobile it has offset ad blocking to some degree. I can't imagine that 25% of people are blocking ads on mobile?

Causality1 7y ago
I can't speak for anyone else but on my phone I adblock through the Hosts file and additionally have Ublock Origin and Noscript installed in Firefox Mobile.

ksangeelee 7y ago

I struggle to see how the past five or ten years could ever be seen as a "golden age", if so then the future must be bleak. I would argue that too much of the content that is paid for is created purely to generate page-views to carry advertising. Those people who are motivated to share knowledge and opinions sincerely are crowded out by click-bait.

Causality1 7y ago
Agreed. It's been sad to see so many sites fall into the temptation. These days even Ars Technica is quick to twist and contort their headlines for maximum flammability.