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And how much money did they make from your viewing of the article? Likely 0. If only companies would learn that tasteful ads are possible and would likely give

And how much money did they make from your viewing of the article? Likely 0. If only companies would learn that tasteful ads are possible and would likely give better returns, but the web has been infested with garbage so most people have their guards up.

stackghost 2y ago
It's a simple risk/reward calculus. The reward of not having to see ads everywhere is absolutely worth the risk that some of these shitty media companies go under. Ads are repulsive. The good companies will find a way to survive.
hedora 2y ago
I've often wondered why the ad blocker can't render the full page to some offscreen buffer to get the ad impression revenue for the site. It could even randomly click an ad or two every few minutes.
- LightHugger 2y ago
  this exists, it's called AdNauseam: https://adnauseam.io/ https://adnauseam.io/ It's banned from the chrome store
- ronsor 2y ago
  This is ad fraud, and while it's not a problem for the end user, it could get the site in trouble.
  - tcfhgj 2y ago
    Ad business self destruct
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    > This is ad fraud Or rather, a pattern of activity that may be easily mistaken for someone else committing ad-fraud. The fraudulent part comes from the agreement between the site-owner and the advertising-entity, where the first agrees to provide "organic" clicks for money. As an independent visitor, I'm not a party to that, and I never agreed to "only click on things when I'm sincerely interested in them", or even "only click on things after firmly observing and registering their presence in my mind", etc. If I were to use an army of bots to deliberately ruin someone's advertising budget out of pure spite, that's arguably a different kind of crime.
- catlikesshrimp 2y ago
  It is only diluting the ads. The paying businesses will notice higher cost per conversion, maybe individual print price will adjust accordingly, then the ad company will need to print even more ads for people who don't use adblockers. Or google finds a way to beat all adblockers everywhere.
dahdum 2y ago
> If only companies would learn that tasteful ads are possible and would likely give better returns, but the web has been infested with garbage so most people have their guards up. For better or worse, many of the brightest minds of the past 25 years have been working in online advertising, if “tasteful ads” worked better that’s all we would see. Consumers must drive the desired outcome with behavior or law.
- crooked-v 2y ago
  If bright minds working in advertising actually corresponded to advertising effectiveness, I wouldn't have an Amazon front page full of slightly different versions of things I've already bought and don't need to replace.
xnx 2y ago
Gizmodo doesn't need money to reword articles from the Wall Street Journal.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
equestria 2y ago
But... there's nothing to learn. The publishers measure this, do A/B testing, and most assuredly, they wouldn't be making more money with fewer ads. Most visitors are not blocking ads, and there's money to be made on every impression you cram onto the page. The long-term side effect is that the prevalence of ad blocking is growing fast. But if you look at how Google and others are responding, it's likely that the publishers are going to make ad blockers harder to use, instead of designing delightful ad experiences for the average Joe.
- rectang 2y ago
  Back in 2003, my boss asked "what if we stack 2 banner ads at the top of each page?". It looked like poo, but I ran it and it increased ad clicks. Stacking 3 banner ads didn't help.
- MikeTheGreat 2y ago
  As I post here on HackerNews (subtitle: News for Nerds. Stuff that- wait, no - nevermind) I'm kinda ashamed that it took me until now to switch to Firefox. I can't count the number of geeks and IT professionals who have told me to use FireFox over the years, and I'd never followed their advice. Chrome was great, until they killed whatever it was that made ad blocking work on YouTube. But ad-blocking seems to be going strong on Firefox, so maybe that's an option for folks?

stackghost 2y ago

It's a simple risk/reward calculus. The reward of not having to see ads everywhere is absolutely worth the risk that some of these shitty media companies go under. Ads are repulsive. The good companies will find a way to survive.

hedora 2y ago

I've often wondered why the ad blocker can't render the full page to some offscreen buffer to get the ad impression revenue for the site. It could even randomly click an ad or two every few minutes.

LightHugger 2y ago
this exists, it's called AdNauseam: https://adnauseam.io/ https://adnauseam.io/ It's banned from the chrome store
ronsor 2y ago
This is ad fraud, and while it's not a problem for the end user, it could get the site in trouble.
- tcfhgj 2y ago
  Ad business self destruct
- Terr_ 2y ago
  > This is ad fraud Or rather, a pattern of activity that may be easily mistaken for someone else committing ad-fraud. The fraudulent part comes from the agreement between the site-owner and the advertising-entity, where the first agrees to provide "organic" clicks for money. As an independent visitor, I'm not a party to that, and I never agreed to "only click on things when I'm sincerely interested in them", or even "only click on things after firmly observing and registering their presence in my mind", etc. If I were to use an army of bots to deliberately ruin someone's advertising budget out of pure spite, that's arguably a different kind of crime.
catlikesshrimp 2y ago
It is only diluting the ads. The paying businesses will notice higher cost per conversion, maybe individual print price will adjust accordingly, then the ad company will need to print even more ads for people who don't use adblockers. Or google finds a way to beat all adblockers everywhere.

dahdum 2y ago

> If only companies would learn that tasteful ads are possible and would likely give better returns, but the web has been infested with garbage so most people have their guards up. For better or worse, many of the brightest minds of the past 25 years have been working in online advertising, if “tasteful ads” worked better that’s all we would see. Consumers must drive the desired outcome with behavior or law.

crooked-v 2y ago
If bright minds working in advertising actually corresponded to advertising effectiveness, I wouldn't have an Amazon front page full of slightly different versions of things I've already bought and don't need to replace.

xnx 2y ago

Gizmodo doesn't need money to reword articles from the Wall Street Journal.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

equestria 2y ago

But... there's nothing to learn. The publishers measure this, do A/B testing, and most assuredly, they wouldn't be making more money with fewer ads. Most visitors are not blocking ads, and there's money to be made on every impression you cram onto the page. The long-term side effect is that the prevalence of ad blocking is growing fast. But if you look at how Google and others are responding, it's likely that the publishers are going to make ad blockers harder to use, instead of designing delightful ad experiences for the average Joe.

rectang 2y ago
Back in 2003, my boss asked "what if we stack 2 banner ads at the top of each page?". It looked like poo, but I ran it and it increased ad clicks. Stacking 3 banner ads didn't help.
MikeTheGreat 2y ago
As I post here on HackerNews (subtitle: News for Nerds. Stuff that- wait, no - nevermind) I'm kinda ashamed that it took me until now to switch to Firefox. I can't count the number of geeks and IT professionals who have told me to use FireFox over the years, and I'd never followed their advice. Chrome was great, until they killed whatever it was that made ad blocking work on YouTube. But ad-blocking seems to be going strong on Firefox, so maybe that's an option for folks?