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I know this is probably a very naive question, but what is the end goal putting so much effort into getting past ad blockers? Surely, someone with an ad blocker

• SvenL 2mo ago
  Aren’t ads payed also via „impressions“, like 10k people saw your advertisement so please pay x money?
  • seattle_spring 2mo ago
    Partially, yes. Ads are also psychological, and tracked cross-platform. If you see a BMW ad on Facebook, drive by a BMW billboard on the highway, search BMW on Google, and then go buy a BMW, they have ways of fractionally allocating the conversion to the different impressions. It's pretty crazy.
    • StilesCrisis 2mo ago
      I always thought last-click attribution was generally used even though partial attribution was technically possible. But my info is a few years stale.
  • teshaq 2mo ago
    Yes, but if a user doesn’t convert the advertiser will see worse performance metrics as cost per click/conversion/install is higher. That isn’t a good long term outcome for the platform, since advertisers can switch their budgets elsewhere (to Google/Youtube) There’s a delicate balance, more impressions isn’t always a good outcome. Id assume here given the battle against ad blockers that the platforms do believe the aggregate impression mix leads to good performance for advertisers though
    • deleted 2mo ago
      [deleted]
• Lammy 2mo ago
  Ads are for surveillance as much if not more than they are for money
  • criddell 2mo ago
    Presumable the ads on Facebook are served by Facebook and they know who you are and what you are doing on Facebook.
    • darig 2mo ago
      [dead]
  • axus 2mo ago
    I believe that, as long as you add that the surveillance is also for money.
    • dfee 2mo ago
      in that money is the atomic unit of economic control, sure. government's don't surveil for money, unless you bend the argument a bit to say the government has finite resources and is run off money itself. which is kinda true, but also kinda fuzzy (the Fed).
      • axus 2mo ago
        I don't think governments are the majority buyers of the surveillance, no doubt they buy a little bit.
• kakacik 2mo ago
  I go a bit further - if something penetrates firefox + ublock origin combo, I'll go out of my way to make sure I'll never, ever buy such product or service if I can avoid that (not always possible but reasonably frequent). Its quichotesque effort but the only thing that can move the needle a bit since everybody involved cares only about money here - waiting for some toothless legislation is useless when harm is happening now.
  • kevin_thibedeau 2mo ago
    There is a ton of shady stuff that UBO let's through. Some of it can be filtered with the optional lists but not all. You really need NoScript and LocalCDN in the arsenal to pare back the invasive abuse of privacy.
    • inigyou 2mo ago
      Literally nothing works through NoScript any more since all the bootcamps started teaching React.
• hn_submit 2mo ago
  I believe tracking and privacy invasions cannot be solved through technological means, it needs to be solved through laws and regulations. We need to prod our representatives to ban the selling of our private information. Websites themselves can use the information but they're prohibited from selling it to anyone else. Why? Because the data changes hands and borders several times after which we lose all control over it.
  • inigyou 2mo ago
    It can be solved through technological means, but these ones aren't sufficient. I remember how that Luigi guy tried to solve a different problem by technological means and it worked for a few months.
    • hn_submit 2mo ago
      No it can't. The only thing you'll end up with is an arms race. An arms race companies like Google and Facebook are destined to win because they have unlimited budgets to fight ad-blocking because it's what made them filthy rich. uBlock Origin is one guy holding back the sea with his finger in the dike.
• nemomarx 2mo ago
  Do we no longer habitually install an ad block for friends and family? There's gotta be some naive users with an ad blocker that way, or default within brave or whatever
  • StilesCrisis 2mo ago
    They are no longer handling Facebook in the ad blocker. Installing an ad blocker won't help.
• thewebguyd 2mo ago
  Online advertising is less and less about forcing a pitch to conversion in the moment its viewed. Even if someone with an ad blocker would never click on the ad anyway, repeat "impressions" build implicit trust just through exposure. Six months or even a year from then, when that user is looking for a specific SaaS tool, for example, the brand they saw 40 times already is the one that feels established and safe, and it's more likely to lead to a conversion without ever clicking the original ad. The second part of putting so much effort into getting past ad blockers is tracking & fingerprinting, especially across devices. In general, ads work by anchoring a brand name in your memory for when you eventually are looking for said product or service, the goal isn't always to force a conversion on the spot.
  • consp 2mo ago
    What if the conversation is negative? I have very little patience for halfbaked ads disguised as posts. Some companies just show what they are and sell, but too often these days it's a memey post-like advertisement which will be a negative the next conversation "ah, yes that company with those annoyingly fake ads, just like their [product]". But I do not rule out I'm the odd one out and the people deciding the tools to for upon people fall for those ads.
    • tomnipotent 2mo ago
      It doesn't matter if your personal interaction is negative if on the whole it's positive across a larger corpus of users. By and large this exposure tactic works more than not.
  • titzer 2mo ago
    > repeat "impressions" build implicit trust just through exposure. This is exactly why I don't want to see their shit, ever. It just doubles my resolve to not see it. They are targeting my underbrain, my subconscious, and do not want it. There's one particular insurance company that continued to evade my ad blocking attempts for literally years. I will never buy from them. My current insurance is fine and the ad-mongers can get bent until their business dies.
• creatonez 2mo ago
  > is not going to click on their ads and buy the advertised products anyway Even cringy ads that digust or anger users in the moment have a subtle effect of making them more likely to buy or recommend that brand in the future. The name recognition is what advertisers are buying, it doesn't have to immediately persuade the user to click for them to get what they want.
• sicktriple 2mo ago
  You don't actually need to click on an ad or purchase something from an ad site in order for Facebook to make money selling ad space. The moment these ads are loaded on the page, real time auction occurs, where advertisers place bids algorithmically and automatically, based on your profile. Facebook makes it's money by selling this ad space. It doesn't particularly care whether you click on them or not. But if they don't load in the first place, there's nothing for Facebook to sell. The real insideous part is that advertisers don't need to actually bid on the auction to participate, and anyone participating gets to havest your ad profile. This is one of the big ways data brokers are able to build profiles on you. They can then do whatever they want with this info, and you'd probably never know.
  • tristor 2mo ago
    This is correct, and the extra insidious part is that folks who are tech-savvy and privacy-conscious are more valuable profiles than normies, because we generally work in higher income jobs/industries. So whether we click or not is irrelevant, Facebook gets paid more for showing us ads than they do for typical normies.
  • globalnode 2mo ago
    and thats why you lock down your privacy, so they get nothing other than "generic privacy enthusiast #1000101010101"
    • gh02t 2mo ago
      Good luck. I'd wager that most methods to protect your privacy aren't nearly as effective as we think they are. While I don't think it means that you shouldn't try to protect your information, I typically assume that anything short of very extreme measures is only mildly effective.
      • gopher_space 2mo ago
        One of the biggest problems in software development is that our graph of authoritative personal data is cyclical. You might have heard about how difficult it was for someone erroneously declared dead to change the record, and I'm sure most of us have experienced problems with changing an address. A friend recently went through two name changes and one phone number change, and it took like eight months for the bottom-feeders to realign. We are now in an adversarial situation regarding our personal information, but our adversaries depend on sources we have a modicum of control over. If I signed my dog up for a physical mailer, I wonder how long would it take for a portion of the internet to consider Doctor-Professor Kensington a legal individual.
• sodapopcan 2mo ago
  I don't like ads and don't want to buy random stuff, but they totally work me sometimes, and I'm sure there has got to be many like me. It's one of the big reasons I don't go on social media really anymore. I mostly have willpower, but in moments of weakness I'll see a perfectly targeted ad, it'll be for something affordable, and I'll but it. It was never a big problem for me as it's only happened a handful of times, but everything I've bought this way has been useless and I've gotten rid of it all.
  • StilesCrisis 2mo ago
    Story time? I want to know about the useless items.
    • sodapopcan 2mo ago
      lol, no, it's mostly embarrassing :P Well, they included a silicone sponge and a massive blanket.
      • robocat 2mo ago
        Did you notice any change in the adverts targeting you after an impulse purchase?
        • sodapopcan 2mo ago
          Good question but I honestly can't remember, even though it wasn't even that long ago. I've given up services slowly over the past few years, but since I used all the big stuff: Google search/email, instagram, and facebook, and am (still) addicted to YouTube that the ads were already soooooo specific to me that I doubt they got any more specific. I would assume that after I bought that stupid sponge that didn't work I probably got more cooking ads, but I honestly can't remember. I've mostly ditched everything but YouTube now. Honestly, just not using Google seach and gmail makes a HUGE difference in how targeted ads get. I still have an instagram account that a very rarely check, but since I'm not a big cookie blocker, I'll see ads for stuff I was recently searching for. Oh! And I feel like one of those "I don't have a TV" people from the 90s, but I no longer carry a smartphone either. I haven't bought anything from an ad in a few years at this point. It likely still counts but the closest is buying something a YouTuber has recommended from a video I sought out for an interest I already had.
• thrownaway561 2mo ago
  ads are like billboards. the company doesn't make money by making sure your buy the product, it make money by getting the product in front of you. You might not buy the product today, but there is a chance that since you've seen the product, you might buy it in the future. many of times, i have looked to purchase a product or service and remember an ad that i saw that has alter my decision.
  • stubish 2mo ago
    And by raising awareness, they cannibalize sales from their competitors. So their competitors have to buy ads to compete. And everyone ends up spending lots of money, which consumers pay for. And that is why I gravitate to cheaper, unknown brands when the market allows it.
• allthetime 2mo ago
  Ads do a lot more than advertise. They track and collect data about you without you interacting at all. I don’t use an adblocker to not see ads, i use an ad blocker to not load ads or interact with their providers servers at all.
  • Terr_ 2mo ago
    Yeah, I'm less-concerned about seeing an ad than I am about the spyware/surveillance networks behind them. If some magic-genie offered the tradeoff of "You can't install third-party adblockers, but your privacy will be magically guaranteed", that would be really appealing.
  • inigyou 2mo ago
    Facebook does that, even when you aren't seeing an ad.
• jaharios 2mo ago
  100% higher up decision, I bet they loose more on this than the powerpoint slide says they are earning.
• rchaud 2mo ago
  The biggest buyers of ads are not promoting products, they're shilling for politicians. The same way junk mail props up the postal service, political ads keep the lights on at local TV channels. They are unwatchable during election season, and there's some election campaign happening all the time. Mayors, governors, senators, congress. Facebook and Youtube are just the newest battlefields. If it's not politician ads, it's military ads, partisan "nonprofit" ads, or ads for podcasts. I don't need to see any of them. That said, as long as UBO keeps up the good fight on the open web, I'm good. Facebook is basically a memory now, and there are other ways to access Youtube that are actually less taxing on their bandwidth because they don't have auto-play enabled and don't show a 45-minute podcast episode as a pre-roll.
• __MatrixMan__ 2mo ago
  Ads are a type of malware, they're often used to bootstrap more aggressive types of malware. The door to door sales person wants to unlock your door so they can sell the info to somebody else who shows up and steals your TV.
• GuB-42 2mo ago
  First thing is that Facebook makes money by showing ads, not by selling the product shown on the ad. Second thing is that besides a small minority of people who refuse to buy advertised products out of spite, some would be blockers still do if the ad get shown. Maybe less than those without ad blockers, but still more than zero. Third thing is that the point of advertising is not just direct sales. Some companies put up ads just to "take space", to establish themselves as leaders in their sector and not let others in. That's why you see som much advertisement for Coca-Cola. They don't expect you to buy a can of Coke just after you have seen the ad, you probably already have some in your fridge anyways. But by doing that, they make sure that when you want a drink, you think about Coca-Cola and not something else.
• charcircuit 2mo ago
  >someone with an ad blocker installed is not going to click on their ads and buy the advertised products anyway This is not true. Most people with ad blockers are everyday people. And even for people who are hardcore against ads, they may find a useful product or see something that they will think of again in the future.
• tshaddox 2mo ago
  Advertising is and always has been a fundamentally adversarial relationship between the consumer and the publisher. Everyone knows that, with few exceptions, no one ever wants to see ads. So I guess I'm not sure why you're surprised that advertisers still want to show ads to people who would rather not see them. That's everyone.
• karel-3d 2mo ago
  First it's literally how they make money. Selling ads. Meta doesn't have any other real source of income. (RayBan glasses don't count.) If they don't show you ads, they lose money. (Because they need to pay for the servers, traffic.) Second. Lots of people say "I don't look at ads, I don't care, they don't work on me", but actual behaviour says otherwise. Third some people just install uBlock to their families and they don't even know they have it.
• weavie 2mo ago
  I have ad blockers everywhere apart from the instagram app. I have bought a ton of stuff off the ads on there. I'm not proud, but have to admit I am powerless against them. Underwear, t-shirts, soap, online courses I have never used, I am a sucker, which is why I need these ad blockers.
  • v17 2mo ago
    If you have android phone, you could try Instander, even though the last update was ~3 years ago, works like a charm for me