10 ms·

Sourcepoint: Former Googler Will Sell Tech to Punch Through Ad Blockers

35 points by cpeterso 11y ago

rendx 11y ago
The next logical step is an ad 'blocker' that simulates ordinary user behavior by still downloading the ads, in the background without displaying them, and added random walks by simulated 'clicks' on advertisement. This allows all the creepy tracking that comes with loading the spyware, but if done right has the potential of disrupting the already disgusting mind-manipulation while silently giving back to the content publishers. Happy arms race.
- nostrademons 11y ago
  The step after that is to create artificial humans that surf the web just like real ones, build up marketing profiles just like real ones, "view" ads just like real ones - but aren't actually people. And then computers can market things to other computers. We might even get a shadow economy where it's computers all the way down, sorta like how 75% of Twitter traffic is (used to be?) bots. Skynet, here we come.
  - rokhayakebe 11y ago
    And then computers can market things to other computers. +2
    - MaysonL 11y ago
      Charlie Stross already wrote that: Accelerando.
      - greenyoda 11y ago
        I looked up the summary on Wikipedia[1]. It sounds like an interesting read. It was released under a Creative Commons license, so it can be read online for free. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando_%28novel%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando_%28novel%29
        toomuchtodo 11y ago
        Read it recently, excellent book. Take the time if you have it.
  - partiallypro 11y ago
    Who says that's not already happening, in the fraudulent sense? I would be a huge swath of traffic that gets reported is fake, same for ad clicks.
- beznogim 11y ago
  Definitely a way to go. Some browsers already have the "reading mode" feature which accurately distills useful content for display while the page is rendered in background. But it would be really nice if advertisers considered making ads more tolerable.
  - ccvannorman 11y ago
    Obligatory SMBC reference to the future of advertising. Not quite what you're hoping for. http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2490 http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2490
- Canada 11y ago
  I see the next logical step is simply extracting the content and distributing it through ad free means.
- est 11y ago
  Disable all thirdparty javascript unless whitelisted ones would solve 99% of the CPU hog and ads problems.
  - marssaxman 11y ago
    That's how I browse, using NoScript. I enable JS for specific sites when they do something I care about, but it's easy to leave all the background analytics crap disabled.
droopyEyelids 11y ago
I wonder if this is the dying gasp of javascriptless web browsing
- AceJohnny2 11y ago
  javascriptless web browsing died in 2004, and its killer is called Ajax.
  - wwweston 11y ago
    Nah. For a long time after AJAX was birthed as a concept, people actually believed in progressive enhancement. It's only somewhere in the last 5 years the SPA trend seems to have reached critical mass and instead of starting from the idea of meeting user needs by serving reasonable media types from resource endpoints (and then building up interactivity on top of that), people want to treat browsers as just another cross-platform runtime (an inferior one, naturally) that happened to win out instead of Java or Flash or Silverlight.
    - jacques_chester 11y ago
      Users don't care why Site A is swooshy and clicky and shiny, while Site B isn't.
      - uxcn 11y ago
        Wikipedia works just fine in w3m.
    - kstrauser 11y ago
      That's because industry analytics showed that approximately 1% of visitors lack JavaScript. AJAX and things like jQuery are ubiquitous and powerful, and it can be ludicrously expensive to build a site that looks nice and works well for that extra 1% of visitors who've deliberately crippled their browsers. Pros for expecting JavaScript to be enabled: - Cheaper development because you can assume a common, featureful baseline. That leads to less code complexity on both the client and the server because you don't have to implement parallel code paths. - Freedom to add features that would be difficult or impossible to emulate with traditional static pages Cons for expecting JavaScript to be enabled: - The site won't look and act right for the 1% of visitors who are used to every other site also not looking and acting right There are lots of reasons to use JavaScript in the browser and almost no reasons not to, so everyone collectively decided to stop hamstringing themselves to cater to a teensy portion of users.
logn 11y ago
"The publisher can also choose to circumvent the ad-blocking program and still present the ad." "'if users opt-in to having advertising subsidizing the experience, we can serve that ad, [and if an ad blocker continues to block the ads] then that would be illegal'" Wouldn't unauthorized use of my browser to download content over my ISP, against my wishes and for the benefit of someone else, be a federal crime?
- wutbrodo 11y ago
  In the scenario you just described (ie opting in to seeing ads)? I don't see how it would be. You could make the same argument in the following scenario: I buy a product with my credit (or debit) card and then ask my card issuer to not let the transaction go through (while not claiming fraud or anything). If the resolution was that the transaction was legitimate and is fulfilled, isn't that "unauthorized use of your account against your wishes for the benefit of another party"? Do you think that would be a crime (theft)? When you're a grownup, when you agree to pay for a product (again, this scenario is opt in, by contrast to a lot of current content delivery), it's not a crime or unauthorized to enforce your end of the transaction that you agreed to. I never thought I'd have to explain that to someone over the age of ten.
  - Nadya 11y ago
    >"The publisher can also choose to circumvent the ad-blocking program and still present the ad." That is not opting-in. That's the publisher forcing ads on the user without their permission.
  - logn 11y ago
    That's not the scenario I was referring to. The second quote was just to show the hypocrisy (of the scenario in the first quote). What you're describing is covered by contract law I guess. Contracts can also be trumped by law. E.g., if you reply to this comment and don't click this link for a free iPad, http://www.vanderbilt.edu/innervu/news/win-a-free-ipad http://www.vanderbilt.edu/innervu/news/win-a-free-ipad , then you owe me $100. If a site wants to detect an ad blocker and block their own page too, fine. But if they want to circumvent it and silently download whatever resources they want and thwart all countermeasures they encounter, then that's cyber crime IMO.
SchizoDuckie 11y ago
And I will be blocking you in my hosts file in 0.02 seconds. And then never do business with the company that uses your tech ever again. Bring it.
- nostrademons 11y ago
  I'm just guessing about how they work, but my guess is that they track the HTTP requests that should come from an article, if all the ads load correctly. If a critical percentage of requests never come through, they report back to the customer, who changes the article's text to encourage you to remove the AdBlock software. Your HOSTS file would look exactly like an ad-blocker to this software, and would get similar treatment. Ultimately I think the problem is that most publications aren't worth reading anymore, and so "never do business with the company that uses your tech ever again" may be an appropriate solution.
  - ikeboy 11y ago
    So just change your IP or use a VPN.
    - delinka 11y ago
      How does that change the request pattern for a web page? You still have to request the page and the page's resources regardless of your IP or whether you use a VPN.
      - ikeboy 11y ago
        The scheme described is presumably blacklisting by IP. (It could also be cookies, but that's even easier to get around). Unless the server actually doesn't send the content until the ads are loaded; but that would slow down page loading for everyone (and still easily bypassed by sending requests and dropping the incoming packets).
        delinka 11y ago
jessaustin 11y ago
This seems like DRM, a "solution" that doesn't have to work IRL because it works in the boardroom.
enterprize4 11y ago
The whole fight about adblocking won't be solved in the court, but with a technical arms race. In the end startups like this one will probably win, just because there is a real, monetary gain for them. And then visitors of the sites using technology like this will have to choose: Either don't see ads, but also no (or not as much) content or content, but with ads or a payment. In my opinion this will lead to a better "contract" between users and the site, where everyones cards are on the table.
- rhizome 11y ago
  The counter for this of course is snake-oil. Look at the history of facial recognition, which has never worked in any environment outside of tiny-sampleset applications and yet is an almost-$3B/year industry. http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/facial-recognition.asp http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/facial-recogn... "Monetary gain" can be realized in more forms than those implied by the perfect accomplishment of a goal, of "winning," which adblock-blocking most surely will not, just as adblocking will never be perfect.
- zem 11y ago
  it might also lead to people skipping those sites altogether, which is what triggered the whole ad-supported-web madness in the first place.
  - bashinator 11y ago
    I do this on principle, especially with mobile where ad-blocking is less available. If a page is especially egregious (full page ads, poor loading, etc), I will just close the entire tab ASAP. There's very little I need to read that badly, and hopefully it will show up in some tracking metrics.
rokhayakebe 11y ago
People block ads not because they do not like them, but because ads are just lazy. I am being currently "re-advertised to" by Converse. They and a few ecommerce keep showing the products I browsed, and I find that to be not annoying at all. In fact there is a small chance I would drop them a quarter to keep reminding me for some time.
teaneedz 11y ago
Sounds like snake oil - anyone have examples of their tech in action? BI gave an example of The Guardian in it's article, but that is visible for me. Instead of addressing the root cause, ad tech will further hurt publishers by chasing more traffic away. How difficult is it for the ad world to get the UX issues that are at stake? Publishers need to invest in UX - not tracking, malvert, bandwidth consuming tech that has forced users to go out of their way to install ad blockers in the first place. No, it's not theft. It's common sense and basic security. Sorry for the rant ... Just looking for customer examples for what Sourcepoint is doing.

35 points by cpeterso 11y ago

rendx 11y ago

The next logical step is an ad 'blocker' that simulates ordinary user behavior by still downloading the ads, in the background without displaying them, and added random walks by simulated 'clicks' on advertisement. This allows all the creepy tracking that comes with loading the spyware, but if done right has the potential of disrupting the already disgusting mind-manipulation while silently giving back to the content publishers. Happy arms race.

nostrademons 11y ago
The step after that is to create artificial humans that surf the web just like real ones, build up marketing profiles just like real ones, "view" ads just like real ones - but aren't actually people. And then computers can market things to other computers. We might even get a shadow economy where it's computers all the way down, sorta like how 75% of Twitter traffic is (used to be?) bots. Skynet, here we come.
- rokhayakebe 11y ago
  And then computers can market things to other computers. +2
  - MaysonL 11y ago
    Charlie Stross already wrote that: Accelerando.
    - greenyoda 11y ago
      I looked up the summary on Wikipedia[1]. It sounds like an interesting read. It was released under a Creative Commons license, so it can be read online for free. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando_%28novel%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando_%28novel%29
      - toomuchtodo 11y ago
        Read it recently, excellent book. Take the time if you have it.
- partiallypro 11y ago
  Who says that's not already happening, in the fraudulent sense? I would be a huge swath of traffic that gets reported is fake, same for ad clicks.
beznogim 11y ago
Definitely a way to go. Some browsers already have the "reading mode" feature which accurately distills useful content for display while the page is rendered in background. But it would be really nice if advertisers considered making ads more tolerable.
- ccvannorman 11y ago
  Obligatory SMBC reference to the future of advertising. Not quite what you're hoping for. http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2490 http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2490
Canada 11y ago
I see the next logical step is simply extracting the content and distributing it through ad free means.
est 11y ago
Disable all thirdparty javascript unless whitelisted ones would solve 99% of the CPU hog and ads problems.
- marssaxman 11y ago
  That's how I browse, using NoScript. I enable JS for specific sites when they do something I care about, but it's easy to leave all the background analytics crap disabled.

droopyEyelids 11y ago

I wonder if this is the dying gasp of javascriptless web browsing

AceJohnny2 11y ago
javascriptless web browsing died in 2004, and its killer is called Ajax.
- wwweston 11y ago
  Nah. For a long time after AJAX was birthed as a concept, people actually believed in progressive enhancement. It's only somewhere in the last 5 years the SPA trend seems to have reached critical mass and instead of starting from the idea of meeting user needs by serving reasonable media types from resource endpoints (and then building up interactivity on top of that), people want to treat browsers as just another cross-platform runtime (an inferior one, naturally) that happened to win out instead of Java or Flash or Silverlight.
  - jacques_chester 11y ago
    Users don't care why Site A is swooshy and clicky and shiny, while Site B isn't.
    - uxcn 11y ago
      Wikipedia works just fine in w3m.
  - kstrauser 11y ago
    That's because industry analytics showed that approximately 1% of visitors lack JavaScript. AJAX and things like jQuery are ubiquitous and powerful, and it can be ludicrously expensive to build a site that looks nice and works well for that extra 1% of visitors who've deliberately crippled their browsers. Pros for expecting JavaScript to be enabled: - Cheaper development because you can assume a common, featureful baseline. That leads to less code complexity on both the client and the server because you don't have to implement parallel code paths. - Freedom to add features that would be difficult or impossible to emulate with traditional static pages Cons for expecting JavaScript to be enabled: - The site won't look and act right for the 1% of visitors who are used to every other site also not looking and acting right There are lots of reasons to use JavaScript in the browser and almost no reasons not to, so everyone collectively decided to stop hamstringing themselves to cater to a teensy portion of users.

logn 11y ago

"The publisher can also choose to circumvent the ad-blocking program and still present the ad." "'if users opt-in to having advertising subsidizing the experience, we can serve that ad, [and if an ad blocker continues to block the ads] then that would be illegal'" Wouldn't unauthorized use of my browser to download content over my ISP, against my wishes and for the benefit of someone else, be a federal crime?

wutbrodo 11y ago
In the scenario you just described (ie opting in to seeing ads)? I don't see how it would be. You could make the same argument in the following scenario: I buy a product with my credit (or debit) card and then ask my card issuer to not let the transaction go through (while not claiming fraud or anything). If the resolution was that the transaction was legitimate and is fulfilled, isn't that "unauthorized use of your account against your wishes for the benefit of another party"? Do you think that would be a crime (theft)? When you're a grownup, when you agree to pay for a product (again, this scenario is opt in, by contrast to a lot of current content delivery), it's not a crime or unauthorized to enforce your end of the transaction that you agreed to. I never thought I'd have to explain that to someone over the age of ten.
- Nadya 11y ago
  >"The publisher can also choose to circumvent the ad-blocking program and still present the ad." That is not opting-in. That's the publisher forcing ads on the user without their permission.
- logn 11y ago
  That's not the scenario I was referring to. The second quote was just to show the hypocrisy (of the scenario in the first quote). What you're describing is covered by contract law I guess. Contracts can also be trumped by law. E.g., if you reply to this comment and don't click this link for a free iPad, http://www.vanderbilt.edu/innervu/news/win-a-free-ipad http://www.vanderbilt.edu/innervu/news/win-a-free-ipad , then you owe me $100. If a site wants to detect an ad blocker and block their own page too, fine. But if they want to circumvent it and silently download whatever resources they want and thwart all countermeasures they encounter, then that's cyber crime IMO.

SchizoDuckie 11y ago

And I will be blocking you in my hosts file in 0.02 seconds. And then never do business with the company that uses your tech ever again. Bring it.

nostrademons 11y ago
I'm just guessing about how they work, but my guess is that they track the HTTP requests that should come from an article, if all the ads load correctly. If a critical percentage of requests never come through, they report back to the customer, who changes the article's text to encourage you to remove the AdBlock software. Your HOSTS file would look exactly like an ad-blocker to this software, and would get similar treatment. Ultimately I think the problem is that most publications aren't worth reading anymore, and so "never do business with the company that uses your tech ever again" may be an appropriate solution.
- ikeboy 11y ago
  So just change your IP or use a VPN.
  - delinka 11y ago
    How does that change the request pattern for a web page? You still have to request the page and the page's resources regardless of your IP or whether you use a VPN.
    - ikeboy 11y ago
      The scheme described is presumably blacklisting by IP. (It could also be cookies, but that's even easier to get around). Unless the server actually doesn't send the content until the ads are loaded; but that would slow down page loading for everyone (and still easily bypassed by sending requests and dropping the incoming packets).
      - delinka 11y ago

jessaustin 11y ago

This seems like DRM, a "solution" that doesn't have to work IRL because it works in the boardroom.

enterprize4 11y ago

The whole fight about adblocking won't be solved in the court, but with a technical arms race. In the end startups like this one will probably win, just because there is a real, monetary gain for them. And then visitors of the sites using technology like this will have to choose: Either don't see ads, but also no (or not as much) content or content, but with ads or a payment. In my opinion this will lead to a better "contract" between users and the site, where everyones cards are on the table.

rhizome 11y ago
The counter for this of course is snake-oil. Look at the history of facial recognition, which has never worked in any environment outside of tiny-sampleset applications and yet is an almost-$3B/year industry. http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/facial-recognition.asp http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/facial-recogn... "Monetary gain" can be realized in more forms than those implied by the perfect accomplishment of a goal, of "winning," which adblock-blocking most surely will not, just as adblocking will never be perfect.
zem 11y ago
it might also lead to people skipping those sites altogether, which is what triggered the whole ad-supported-web madness in the first place.
- bashinator 11y ago
  I do this on principle, especially with mobile where ad-blocking is less available. If a page is especially egregious (full page ads, poor loading, etc), I will just close the entire tab ASAP. There's very little I need to read that badly, and hopefully it will show up in some tracking metrics.

rokhayakebe 11y ago

People block ads not because they do not like them, but because ads are just lazy. I am being currently "re-advertised to" by Converse. They and a few ecommerce keep showing the products I browsed, and I find that to be not annoying at all. In fact there is a small chance I would drop them a quarter to keep reminding me for some time.

teaneedz 11y ago

Sounds like snake oil - anyone have examples of their tech in action? BI gave an example of The Guardian in it's article, but that is visible for me. Instead of addressing the root cause, ad tech will further hurt publishers by chasing more traffic away. How difficult is it for the ad world to get the UX issues that are at stake? Publishers need to invest in UX - not tracking, malvert, bandwidth consuming tech that has forced users to go out of their way to install ad blockers in the first place. No, it's not theft. It's common sense and basic security. Sorry for the rant ... Just looking for customer examples for what Sourcepoint is doing.