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Web advertising always seemed like a losing proposition to me from a technical standpoint. Imagine if, instead of an MPEG stream, the Super Bowl was delivered t

Web advertising always seemed like a losing proposition to me from a technical standpoint. Imagine if, instead of an MPEG stream, the Super Bowl was delivered to your television with instructions like "draw the field, draw the players, now put this ad here, that ad there...", and you could easily program your TV to ignore all instructions related to ads, while perfectly preserving the game content you came for. Wouldn't advertisers be losing their minds? And yet this is exactly the situation with your Web browser. Even applications that push the traditional boundaries of the Web seem easily defeated... for example, with my very basic ad blocking setup (just uBlock Origin, nothing fancy, anyone could get this setup in minutes), I have never seen an ad on YouTube, not once. So why does YouTube make money exactly?

gt2 7y ago
Because the vast majority don't adblock and someone there has decided it's better to respect the wishes of the adblocking user than alienate them from their service and also they likely have other ways[0,1,2] of harvesting value from users than just showing them ads. 0: knowing what kind of users block ads, and what adblockers they are using 1: knowing how sophisticated users use the internet 2: I could go on edit: formatting
- bonoboTP 7y ago
  > it's better to respect the wishes of the adblocking user than alienate them from their service I have a theory that this is like a pressure valve for power users who would not tolerate being forced to view ads. The majority doesn't care, doesn't understand the technicalities, doesn't know what would be possible and how. But there is a sizable portion of people who are stubborn enough that they know the background and won't put up with locked down platforms. It's better to let them have it their way rather than causing much alienation and outrage among the techie types / power users / early adopters / hackers / tinkerers.
username90 7y ago
Most adblockers blockers doesn't just block ads from rendering, they block the entire call to the ad-server so it isn't counted as a view.
bonoboTP 7y ago
Ad blocking is significantly more difficult on mobile.

gt2 7y ago

Because the vast majority don't adblock and someone there has decided it's better to respect the wishes of the adblocking user than alienate them from their service and also they likely have other ways[0,1,2] of harvesting value from users than just showing them ads. 0: knowing what kind of users block ads, and what adblockers they are using 1: knowing how sophisticated users use the internet 2: I could go on edit: formatting

bonoboTP 7y ago
> it's better to respect the wishes of the adblocking user than alienate them from their service I have a theory that this is like a pressure valve for power users who would not tolerate being forced to view ads. The majority doesn't care, doesn't understand the technicalities, doesn't know what would be possible and how. But there is a sizable portion of people who are stubborn enough that they know the background and won't put up with locked down platforms. It's better to let them have it their way rather than causing much alienation and outrage among the techie types / power users / early adopters / hackers / tinkerers.

username90 7y ago

Most adblockers blockers doesn't just block ads from rendering, they block the entire call to the ad-server so it isn't counted as a view.

bonoboTP 7y ago

Ad blocking is significantly more difficult on mobile.