4 ms·

> it almost impossible to force people to view ads that they don't want to It's trivial to do, technically. Just embed the ads with in-page (not externally lin

by abcd_f 14y ago

> it almost impossible to force people to view ads that they don't want to It's trivial to do, technically. Just embed the ads with in-page (not externally linked) JS, or proxy 3rd party ad network requests through the hosting server, or splice them in on the server side, etc. I think we are going to see this widely adopted if the adblock rates continue climbing up. This will obviously rub the adblock users the wrong way, but if you are generating the ad revenue from a lot of one-time visitors, it should be fine. Then, to not alienate repeated visitors, offer a paid, ad-free subscription. Perhaps of a freemium flavor. Done. Now the question is why we don't see this being done at scale yet?

ubernostrum 14y ago
You seem to be assuming that the only way to block ads is a blacklist of domains that JS won't be loaded from.
Tuna-Fish 14y ago
That doesn't really help. A simple crowdsourced "see an ad? highlight it and it goes away" system would work against that. Adds have content, and that content can be used to find and block them, even if their source is the same as the page content.
- lenazegher 14y ago
  Yes, that could happen, but it almost certainly wouldn't. The general problem with ad blockers is that they are a set-and-forget scorched-earth solution to the problem of annoying ads. As a web publisher, it doesn't matter if you carefully tweak your ads to be as unobtrusive and relevant to the user as possible, because users running ad blockers won't see them to begin with. Asking users to whitelist your site is a non-starter. If you use some fairly trivial tactics to prevent your ads being blocked by the default settings of the ad blocker, the vast majority of users with an ad blocker will never bother to set up some custom filter to block your specific ads because the default settings are the program for 95% of people. If you have some really obnoxious ads then yes, perhaps more people will go to the bother of blocking them. But if you don't, I assert that almost no-one will bother. If you're facebook, the people who maintain blocklists for popular ad-blockers will write some custom rules for your new ads. But most sites aren't facebook.
skymt 14y ago
The most popular ad blocker, Adblock Plus, not only supports blocking URL patterns, it can hide elements within a page via arbitrary CSS selectors. Any large-scale attempt to bypass Adblock Plus would be a cat-and-mouse game requiring advertisers to constantly change their DOM "signature" to keep ahead of the filter writers.
mike-cardwell 14y ago
Adblock can already block stuff like this, easily. It's much easier to update ad blockers to block new ways of displaying ads, than it is to come up with new ways of displaying ads that can't be blocked.
- tomjen3 14y ago
  I thought so too. But not necessarily. It wouldn't be that difficult to embed the article in an image, with the ad inside the image -- you could then redirect clicks with a box around the ads the advertiser. Leave the first paragraph or so as text for google purposes. That would be really annoying to work around but rather trivial to implement.
  - mike-cardwell 14y ago
    The article text could be extracted trivially with OCR.
eslaught 14y ago
Ad blockers can block this the same way they currently block JS links, by searching for ads embedded in the page and removing them. If the ads contain any sort of recognizable div wrapper, blocking them will be trivial. But even if they don't, you should be able to deploy a statistical ad blocker in the same vein as Paul Graham's spam filter (which is mainstream at this point). None of this stops the situation from continuing to be a cat and mouse game, but hopefully the above points demonstrate that the game is far from over for either side.
tomjen3 14y ago
I don't know what kind of block you use, but adblock plus can be used to block certain elements on sites -- it works even for non-ads such as facebooks "spam your friends inbox and alinate them all" box. So I don't really care where the ad comes from.
phreanix 14y ago
I think one day we'll head in the direction of paid content with an app store-like micro-payment system that allows us to chip in .05-.25 to view a single article if we deem it worth it. I'd personally rather do this than pay a $10/mo subscription fee for content I won't use every single day. Been thinking about how the architecture for this will work for years now, lol. If I don't get to it, I hope someone executes it someday.

by abcd_f 14y ago

ubernostrum 14y ago

You seem to be assuming that the only way to block ads is a blacklist of domains that JS won't be loaded from.

Tuna-Fish 14y ago

That doesn't really help. A simple crowdsourced "see an ad? highlight it and it goes away" system would work against that. Adds have content, and that content can be used to find and block them, even if their source is the same as the page content.

lenazegher 14y ago
Yes, that could happen, but it almost certainly wouldn't. The general problem with ad blockers is that they are a set-and-forget scorched-earth solution to the problem of annoying ads. As a web publisher, it doesn't matter if you carefully tweak your ads to be as unobtrusive and relevant to the user as possible, because users running ad blockers won't see them to begin with. Asking users to whitelist your site is a non-starter. If you use some fairly trivial tactics to prevent your ads being blocked by the default settings of the ad blocker, the vast majority of users with an ad blocker will never bother to set up some custom filter to block your specific ads because the default settings are the program for 95% of people. If you have some really obnoxious ads then yes, perhaps more people will go to the bother of blocking them. But if you don't, I assert that almost no-one will bother. If you're facebook, the people who maintain blocklists for popular ad-blockers will write some custom rules for your new ads. But most sites aren't facebook.

skymt 14y ago

The most popular ad blocker, Adblock Plus, not only supports blocking URL patterns, it can hide elements within a page via arbitrary CSS selectors. Any large-scale attempt to bypass Adblock Plus would be a cat-and-mouse game requiring advertisers to constantly change their DOM "signature" to keep ahead of the filter writers.

mike-cardwell 14y ago

Adblock can already block stuff like this, easily. It's much easier to update ad blockers to block new ways of displaying ads, than it is to come up with new ways of displaying ads that can't be blocked.

tomjen3 14y ago
I thought so too. But not necessarily. It wouldn't be that difficult to embed the article in an image, with the ad inside the image -- you could then redirect clicks with a box around the ads the advertiser. Leave the first paragraph or so as text for google purposes. That would be really annoying to work around but rather trivial to implement.
- mike-cardwell 14y ago
  The article text could be extracted trivially with OCR.

eslaught 14y ago

Ad blockers can block this the same way they currently block JS links, by searching for ads embedded in the page and removing them. If the ads contain any sort of recognizable div wrapper, blocking them will be trivial. But even if they don't, you should be able to deploy a statistical ad blocker in the same vein as Paul Graham's spam filter (which is mainstream at this point). None of this stops the situation from continuing to be a cat and mouse game, but hopefully the above points demonstrate that the game is far from over for either side.

tomjen3 14y ago

I don't know what kind of block you use, but adblock plus can be used to block certain elements on sites -- it works even for non-ads such as facebooks "spam your friends inbox and alinate them all" box. So I don't really care where the ad comes from.

phreanix 14y ago

I think one day we'll head in the direction of paid content with an app store-like micro-payment system that allows us to chip in .05-.25 to view a single article if we deem it worth it. I'd personally rather do this than pay a $10/mo subscription fee for content I won't use every single day. Been thinking about how the architecture for this will work for years now, lol. If I don't get to it, I hope someone executes it someday.