4 ms·

Building ad support into the browser sounds like a great idea, except it's not strategically a good idea for any of the browser vendors. There's a constant stru

by exelius 11y ago

Building ad support into the browser sounds like a great idea, except it's not strategically a good idea for any of the browser vendors. There's a constant struggle between advertisers, publishers and browser/platform developers for data -- not to mention a huge conflict of interest with Google (and to a lesser extent Apple). The reason ad networks are so bloated is because web advertising as it currently stands has a measurement problem: if I display an ad, I have no way of knowing if a reader even saw it. This is why you rarely see ads displayed below the fold; and when they are, they're wrapped in a bunch of JavaScript or Flash to ensure they're not tracking displays for ads that were never seen. Advertisers literally want pixel-level tracking of page scroll, mouse movement, etc. and they use all this bulky JavaScript to collect it. Do you think it's a good idea to let the browsers report this information? Because if not, the advertisers are going to inject as much JavaScript as they can to use every workaround to collect as much data as possible. This also ignores the fact that Google is the head honcho of online advertising. Google can (and probably does) collect much of this information from inside Chrome. They would be violently opposed to sharing this data with their competition, because proprietary data like this enables them to charge a premium for ads they place. Advertising is all about proprietary data sources, and the moment something becomes commoditized it loses most of its value. Considering Google makes something like 95% of its revenue from its network of proprietary user data, they would never engage in any sort of browser ad placement unless it funneled money through them (which their competitors would never go for).

rogerbinns 11y ago
There is a great chart showing the categories of players involved, as well as the companies: http://www.lumapartners.com/lumascapes/mobile-lumascape/ http://www.lumapartners.com/lumascapes/mobile-lumascape/ At the left are the advertisers, and the right is the end user. In between you can see so many boxes with lots of logos. The sheer number of companies is what contributes to so much of the ad "weight". Even if the browser had some sort of overview, the players before wouldn't just hand over control. For example Verizon would want to control what happens to users on their network (and already do so).
- exelius 11y ago
  This chart is the gold standard for describing the ad tech market, but I actually think it is a bit myopic with regards to the "full-stack" view. You're thinking of a strategic control point, and the networks aren't in as good of a position as you would think. Things like SSL limit their ability to perform segmentation via DPI -- but since browsers are the SSL termination point, it's not nearly as much of an issue. With security becoming more and more important and "SSL everywhere", the networks' ability to collect data from ad networks through DPI is disappearing. Typically, strategic control points should be thought about in terms of their physical proximity to the user. That is, if it is a device that the user touches, that device and its software stack represents a potential control point. Currently, the devices aren't the control point (thanks to Google's Android strategy), but the OS and by extension the browser is much more promising. If I had to describe a value chain, it would look like this (you can replace "browser" with "app", though with a much more limited scope): User > Device > OS > Browser > Network > Publisher > Ad tech (most of what is shown in the chart above) > Advertiser Basically, every company on this chart is trying to disintermediate every other company to the right and left of them. What we're left with is a reasonably efficient advertising marketplace that serves the needs of advertisers and publishers, but the tricks and methods used by advertisers are frustrating to users. The browser vendors have enormous control over what techniques can and can't be used to implement ad tech -- the reason Flash hasn't been removed entirely is because Flash-based tracking cookies offer far more information than the browser, especially with regards to video ads. Google hung on to Flash for a long time because of YouTube, but I think they've recently realized that if they can get Flash off of the web, it would hurt their competition more than it would hurt them.

by exelius 11y ago

rogerbinns 11y ago

There is a great chart showing the categories of players involved, as well as the companies: http://www.lumapartners.com/lumascapes/mobile-lumascape/ http://www.lumapartners.com/lumascapes/mobile-lumascape/ At the left are the advertisers, and the right is the end user. In between you can see so many boxes with lots of logos. The sheer number of companies is what contributes to so much of the ad "weight". Even if the browser had some sort of overview, the players before wouldn't just hand over control. For example Verizon would want to control what happens to users on their network (and already do so).

exelius 11y ago
This chart is the gold standard for describing the ad tech market, but I actually think it is a bit myopic with regards to the "full-stack" view. You're thinking of a strategic control point, and the networks aren't in as good of a position as you would think. Things like SSL limit their ability to perform segmentation via DPI -- but since browsers are the SSL termination point, it's not nearly as much of an issue. With security becoming more and more important and "SSL everywhere", the networks' ability to collect data from ad networks through DPI is disappearing. Typically, strategic control points should be thought about in terms of their physical proximity to the user. That is, if it is a device that the user touches, that device and its software stack represents a potential control point. Currently, the devices aren't the control point (thanks to Google's Android strategy), but the OS and by extension the browser is much more promising. If I had to describe a value chain, it would look like this (you can replace "browser" with "app", though with a much more limited scope): User > Device > OS > Browser > Network > Publisher > Ad tech (most of what is shown in the chart above) > Advertiser Basically, every company on this chart is trying to disintermediate every other company to the right and left of them. What we're left with is a reasonably efficient advertising marketplace that serves the needs of advertisers and publishers, but the tricks and methods used by advertisers are frustrating to users. The browser vendors have enormous control over what techniques can and can't be used to implement ad tech -- the reason Flash hasn't been removed entirely is because Flash-based tracking cookies offer far more information than the browser, especially with regards to video ads. Google hung on to Flash for a long time because of YouTube, but I think they've recently realized that if they can get Flash off of the web, it would hurt their competition more than it would hurt them.