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Hulu used to be able to circumvent ad-blockers (not sure if they still do) by making their ad content indistinguishable from normal content. For example, a nor

by diafygi 11y ago

Hulu used to be able to circumvent ad-blockers (not sure if they still do) by making their ad content indistinguishable from normal content. For example, a normal TV show segment would be served from: http://hulu.com/v/1tgmeiwe http://hulu.com/v/1tgmeiwe And a commercial would be served from: http://hulu.com/v/m3fsn3i6 http://hulu.com/v/m3fsn3i6 I'm guessing some reverse-proxy stuff was going on behind the scenes, but it was really effective at forcing people to watch ads. Of course, the downside to this method is that you need to implement something on your backend and pay for the bandwidth. But it's there as a nuclear option if needed. EDIT: I'm guessing that the next wave of ad-configuration is going to ask content owners to proxy their content through the ad network, so that ad networks act like a CDN and inject ads as a wrapper around content.

vitd 11y ago
I'm not sure what to make of that. Hulu is still alive, though I know for a while there, they almost weren't. Everyone I know who ever used Hulu mentions nothing about the service except how bad the ads were. And there's never been anything that I could only get through Hulu that I couldn't just buy on iTunes/Amazon or watch on Netflix. And on top of it, you're paying to watch ads. I'll never go with that model if I can help it. If ads do start becoming native content, the blockers will find other ways around them, possibly even resorting to crowdsourcing. Worst case, they can figure out what content is the same on different users machines and block anything that's not the same (at least for textual stuff). I just don't see ads winning this arms race in the long run.
fatratchet 11y ago
> But it's there as a nuclear option if needed. But only for bigger sites I would assume. Everthing going through the servers of the site seems to have a huge potential for ad fraud by smaller sites. I can't imagine any ad networks beeing happy about having to (at least somewhat) trust smaller sites. Alternatively everything/something going through the ad networks seems like a huge problem (cost, flexibilty etc.) for small sites as well, especially for any bandwith heavy content.
Zancarius 11y ago
> EDIT: I'm guessing that the next wave of ad-configuration is going to ask content owners to proxy their content through the ad network, so that ad networks act like a CDN and inject ads as a wrapper around content. Funny. I was thinking about this when I read the article since it seems like the next obvious step to make. Contrary to what seems to be the consensus here, advertising isn't going to go away (for better or worse), but the means of distributing those ads will likely change. And, realistically, I think pushing the advertising to the content providers themselves might not be so bad after all--they'd have to take a bit more responsibility for the advertisements they push. On the other hand, dishonest content providers could circumvent ad impressions/clicks, and it becomes a different classification of problems to resolve since you now have (by nature) a MITM-type problem to resolve between your ad network and the end user to keep both honest. (Although I like your idea of proxying; you could pass the appropriate cookies and data back and forth to the ad network.) Of course, such content would still be blockable with a little bit more work (content heuristics in the worst case, dumb HTML parsing in the best case in the event the content provider names the container something obvious) on a per-site basis and the problem comes full circle. I agree with the other sentiments here that there's too much money wrapped up in all this nonsense and too much on the line for many of these companies. Simply hating something and wishing it to go away isn't going to make that happen. However, a reasonable compromise wouldn't be all that bad, and we might be in a good position to influence the decisions that will inevitably lead to future incantations of advertising technology.

by diafygi 11y ago

vitd 11y ago

I'm not sure what to make of that. Hulu is still alive, though I know for a while there, they almost weren't. Everyone I know who ever used Hulu mentions nothing about the service except how bad the ads were. And there's never been anything that I could only get through Hulu that I couldn't just buy on iTunes/Amazon or watch on Netflix. And on top of it, you're paying to watch ads. I'll never go with that model if I can help it. If ads do start becoming native content, the blockers will find other ways around them, possibly even resorting to crowdsourcing. Worst case, they can figure out what content is the same on different users machines and block anything that's not the same (at least for textual stuff). I just don't see ads winning this arms race in the long run.

fatratchet 11y ago

> But it's there as a nuclear option if needed. But only for bigger sites I would assume. Everthing going through the servers of the site seems to have a huge potential for ad fraud by smaller sites. I can't imagine any ad networks beeing happy about having to (at least somewhat) trust smaller sites. Alternatively everything/something going through the ad networks seems like a huge problem (cost, flexibilty etc.) for small sites as well, especially for any bandwith heavy content.

Zancarius 11y ago

> EDIT: I'm guessing that the next wave of ad-configuration is going to ask content owners to proxy their content through the ad network, so that ad networks act like a CDN and inject ads as a wrapper around content. Funny. I was thinking about this when I read the article since it seems like the next obvious step to make. Contrary to what seems to be the consensus here, advertising isn't going to go away (for better or worse), but the means of distributing those ads will likely change. And, realistically, I think pushing the advertising to the content providers themselves might not be so bad after all--they'd have to take a bit more responsibility for the advertisements they push. On the other hand, dishonest content providers could circumvent ad impressions/clicks, and it becomes a different classification of problems to resolve since you now have (by nature) a MITM-type problem to resolve between your ad network and the end user to keep both honest. (Although I like your idea of proxying; you could pass the appropriate cookies and data back and forth to the ad network.) Of course, such content would still be blockable with a little bit more work (content heuristics in the worst case, dumb HTML parsing in the best case in the event the content provider names the container something obvious) on a per-site basis and the problem comes full circle. I agree with the other sentiments here that there's too much money wrapped up in all this nonsense and too much on the line for many of these companies. Simply hating something and wishing it to go away isn't going to make that happen. However, a reasonable compromise wouldn't be all that bad, and we might be in a good position to influence the decisions that will inevitably lead to future incantations of advertising technology.