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I would find it hard to believe that giants like Google aren't making significant investments into solving the ad blocking 'problem'. It's an arms race that re

I would find it hard to believe that giants like Google aren't making significant investments into solving the ad blocking 'problem'. It's an arms race that represents an existential threat to too many companies and too much money.

beloch 11y ago
It's an arms race with a very easy to predict winner. Any scheme to force users to see ads is likely going to conform very closely to the precedent set by DRM. e.g. MPAA and RIAA vs fair-use and content sharing. A few 9-to-5 corps don't have a hope in hell of building something that will thwart everyone who hates advertising.
- chimeracoder 11y ago
  > It's an arms race with a very easy to predict winner. Any scheme to force users to see ads is likely going to conform very closely to the precedent set by DRM. e.g. MPAA and RIAA vs fair-use and content sharing. A few 9-to-5 corps don't have a hope in hell of building something that will thwart everyone who hates advertising. That doesn't bode well for adblockers, then. DRM has been incredibly successful at (a) acclimating consumers to the idea that they can't own digital goods[0], even the ones that they have purchased; and (b) stifling innovation in the music industry for the last 15 years[1]. The status quo is that users have both the right and the ability to block ads. (The only missing piece is the knowledge or awareness of how to do so). In a DMCA-like situation, I can't see how things would realistically change for consumers for the better. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9414211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9414211 [1] Spotify doesn't count, since it's partially owned by the record labels. So the last major leap forward was.... iTunes? That was 2001.
  - WalterGR 11y ago
    Spotify doesn't count, since it's partially owned by the record labels. So the last major leap forward was.... iTunes? That was 2001. Also in 2001, http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsody_(online_music_service) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsody_(online_music_servic... : "Rhapsody was the first streaming on-demand music subscription service to offer unlimited access to a large library of digital music for a flat monthly fee..."
- rtpg 11y ago
  the major difference is that with ads, there is a solution to hide the ads in the content (native advertising). Native advertising is what's going to get us.
  - gnoway 11y ago
    I usually see this in the context of movies and TV, not web stuff. How would you do native advertising in a web article? As for native advertising in tv/movies, we've had that already for years if not decades; if that were going to be 'the answer' it would already be the answer.
    - quotemstr 11y ago
      > How would you do native advertising in a web article? With the whole article. http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/243797/forbes-puts-native-ad-on-cover.html http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/243797/forbes-... http://www.experiencetheblog.com/2014/08/new-york-times-native-advertising-FTC.html http://www.experiencetheblog.com/2014/08/new-york-times-nati...
oh_sigh 11y ago
Didn't google invest in AdBlock? Or some how give them money?
- healsdata 11y ago
  AdBlock allows companies to pay to have their ads reviewed as "non-intrusive" and then those ads are allowed to be displayed by default. Users can still opt to block those as well.
- Buge 11y ago
  From the article: >Eyeo GmbH [...] collects millions or[sic] euros from large players such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Taboola, who all gave in to Eyeo blackmail to have their ads whitelisted.
bzz01 11y ago
Google/Facebook/Apple may not be as concerned by this as you may think; strategically, they would probably be happy if slow decline of advertising income on desktop would eventually make every publisher to move to walled gardens of mobile platforms, completely controlled by them. You may end up with a world with nearly unblockable, more creepy ads, and no more open web as we know it today.
- pen2l 11y ago
  > [...] would eventually make every publisher to move to walled gardens of mobile platforms, completely controlled by them. Ad-blocking is ad-blocking, you'll always be able to do it another way if one current way no longer works. It might be inconvenient (as it is on an iPhone, for example), but we'll get there.
healsdata 11y ago
Google is trying Contributor, which allows you (the user) to spend a few dollars per month to remove ads while still benefiting the sites you visit. They're trying to get buy in by showing the amount of money you're giving to each site. For example, my local newspaper got 4 cents from me today because I read an article about a bridge closing. But besides getting people to pay, Contributor is facing a problem with sites using multiple ad networks. The Onion, for example, is both participating in Contributor and continuing to run ads from other sources. So if I turn uBlock off for their site, I see the "Thanks for being a contributor!" message (instead of one ad) right under two giant ads.
- pen2l 11y ago
  I'm not a 'contributor' yet (but I like the idea... and I DESPISE ads, so I will look this 'contributor' thing), but I have to say, the "Thank for being a contributor" message seems too redundant (and corny). I want as little distractions as possible, I wouldn't want to be seeing the gratuitous thank you messages filling up the space that ads used to -- please just use it for content, or just leave it blank.
  - healsdata 11y ago
    You do get an option of what to display as the contributor. The message is the default, but there's a transparent option, as well as an option to show cat pictures instead of ads. But it is very muted and I very rarely note it is there. Here's an example: http://imgur.com/28jjUjr http://imgur.com/28jjUjr
- lewisl9029 11y ago
  Thank you for bringing this up. I haven't heard of Contributor until now, but I'm curious as to how the technology works. Would privacy extensions like Ghostery interfere with the collection of visit statistics that would determine the distribution of your contributions?
  - healsdata 11y ago
    It is served just like any other ad from Google, it just shows a "Thank You" message in place of the ad. If Ghostery prevents Google ads from working, it would also disable tracking for Contributor. When I first signed up, I had to reconfigure uBlock to allow ads from these Google networks so I could then see the contributor block instead of ads.

beloch 11y ago

It's an arms race with a very easy to predict winner. Any scheme to force users to see ads is likely going to conform very closely to the precedent set by DRM. e.g. MPAA and RIAA vs fair-use and content sharing. A few 9-to-5 corps don't have a hope in hell of building something that will thwart everyone who hates advertising.

chimeracoder 11y ago
> It's an arms race with a very easy to predict winner. Any scheme to force users to see ads is likely going to conform very closely to the precedent set by DRM. e.g. MPAA and RIAA vs fair-use and content sharing. A few 9-to-5 corps don't have a hope in hell of building something that will thwart everyone who hates advertising. That doesn't bode well for adblockers, then. DRM has been incredibly successful at (a) acclimating consumers to the idea that they can't own digital goods[0], even the ones that they have purchased; and (b) stifling innovation in the music industry for the last 15 years[1]. The status quo is that users have both the right and the ability to block ads. (The only missing piece is the knowledge or awareness of how to do so). In a DMCA-like situation, I can't see how things would realistically change for consumers for the better. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9414211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9414211 [1] Spotify doesn't count, since it's partially owned by the record labels. So the last major leap forward was.... iTunes? That was 2001.
- WalterGR 11y ago
  Spotify doesn't count, since it's partially owned by the record labels. So the last major leap forward was.... iTunes? That was 2001. Also in 2001, http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsody_(online_music_service) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsody_(online_music_servic... : "Rhapsody was the first streaming on-demand music subscription service to offer unlimited access to a large library of digital music for a flat monthly fee..."
rtpg 11y ago
the major difference is that with ads, there is a solution to hide the ads in the content (native advertising). Native advertising is what's going to get us.
- gnoway 11y ago
  I usually see this in the context of movies and TV, not web stuff. How would you do native advertising in a web article? As for native advertising in tv/movies, we've had that already for years if not decades; if that were going to be 'the answer' it would already be the answer.
  - quotemstr 11y ago
    > How would you do native advertising in a web article? With the whole article. http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/243797/forbes-puts-native-ad-on-cover.html http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/243797/forbes-... http://www.experiencetheblog.com/2014/08/new-york-times-native-advertising-FTC.html http://www.experiencetheblog.com/2014/08/new-york-times-nati...

oh_sigh 11y ago

Didn't google invest in AdBlock? Or some how give them money?

healsdata 11y ago
AdBlock allows companies to pay to have their ads reviewed as "non-intrusive" and then those ads are allowed to be displayed by default. Users can still opt to block those as well.
Buge 11y ago
From the article: >Eyeo GmbH [...] collects millions or[sic] euros from large players such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Taboola, who all gave in to Eyeo blackmail to have their ads whitelisted.

bzz01 11y ago

Google/Facebook/Apple may not be as concerned by this as you may think; strategically, they would probably be happy if slow decline of advertising income on desktop would eventually make every publisher to move to walled gardens of mobile platforms, completely controlled by them. You may end up with a world with nearly unblockable, more creepy ads, and no more open web as we know it today.

pen2l 11y ago
> [...] would eventually make every publisher to move to walled gardens of mobile platforms, completely controlled by them. Ad-blocking is ad-blocking, you'll always be able to do it another way if one current way no longer works. It might be inconvenient (as it is on an iPhone, for example), but we'll get there.

healsdata 11y ago

Google is trying Contributor, which allows you (the user) to spend a few dollars per month to remove ads while still benefiting the sites you visit. They're trying to get buy in by showing the amount of money you're giving to each site. For example, my local newspaper got 4 cents from me today because I read an article about a bridge closing. But besides getting people to pay, Contributor is facing a problem with sites using multiple ad networks. The Onion, for example, is both participating in Contributor and continuing to run ads from other sources. So if I turn uBlock off for their site, I see the "Thanks for being a contributor!" message (instead of one ad) right under two giant ads.

pen2l 11y ago
I'm not a 'contributor' yet (but I like the idea... and I DESPISE ads, so I will look this 'contributor' thing), but I have to say, the "Thank for being a contributor" message seems too redundant (and corny). I want as little distractions as possible, I wouldn't want to be seeing the gratuitous thank you messages filling up the space that ads used to -- please just use it for content, or just leave it blank.
- healsdata 11y ago
  You do get an option of what to display as the contributor. The message is the default, but there's a transparent option, as well as an option to show cat pictures instead of ads. But it is very muted and I very rarely note it is there. Here's an example: http://imgur.com/28jjUjr http://imgur.com/28jjUjr
lewisl9029 11y ago
Thank you for bringing this up. I haven't heard of Contributor until now, but I'm curious as to how the technology works. Would privacy extensions like Ghostery interfere with the collection of visit statistics that would determine the distribution of your contributions?
- healsdata 11y ago
  It is served just like any other ad from Google, it just shows a "Thank You" message in place of the ad. If Ghostery prevents Google ads from working, it would also disable tracking for Contributor. When I first signed up, I had to reconfigure uBlock to allow ads from these Google networks so I could then see the contributor block instead of ads.