
Open letter – Our concern about ad blocking - arturgrigor
http://blog.adcontrolapp.com/post/128643445264/open-letter
======
avian
> no one wants to give away money from their own pockets in order to sustain
> their website.

Interestingly, some of the best content on the web (in my opinion) can be
found on websites that do not have ads. They are maintained by people
genuinely interested in a topic and have a passion for sharing knowledge.

I'm not saying that gift economy works for everyone, but there certainly are
people that are willing to pay from their own pockets. It's not like the web
wouldn't exist without ads.

~~~
jbob2000
This has been my thought on the matter too. If there's no money in journalism
anymore, then the only people left doing it are the ones who love doing it.
The leeches all slither off to other industries they can make a buck off of.

~~~
hsod
the leeches and the people who need to make a living

------
aluhut
> We fear that in the near future many websites will start to disappear just
> because their maintenance will no longer be profitable, and no one wants to
> give away money from their own pockets in order to sustain their website.

I hear that since Webwasher. And today, with better AdBlocking tools,
additional costs for hosts, the Internet is still there.

From time to time even I get weak and think about the way I block ads. Then I
just launch my IE at work and there is no doubt about it: this is not the
Internet I want to see.

~~~
a3n
At work I only use IE for internal sites and apps. Everything external I use
Firefox with uBO, Disconnect and Ghostery.

I don't want to be responsible for bringing something heinous into my
employer's network.

I don't know why adblockers aren't mandatory inside corporations.

~~~
aluhut
I would love to understand that too. Especially since it seems to be a kind of
UK problem. Colleagues in the US do have FF on their computers.

I'm not even allowed to run FF, Chrome, etc. We bypass this by using Waterfox
because it seems to be the .exe Files that are blocked.

It's a horrible risk since people are doing research on their IE going down to
private peoples pages and blogs (not all of them though since wordpress-hosted
blogs are blocked...).

------
belorn
Will that one advertisement per website be done without giving my computer
malware-like code that tracks me? Will they follow the regulation of
advertisements in my country rather than where ever the ad-networks server
happens to resides in? Will they respect the personal data protection laws
that my government has decided on? Will the publishing website be held liable
for the advertisement company complying with said laws?

Somehow I doubt all that. They want "everything to stay the same", and that
means keeping the wild west as it current is. I don't.

------
monochromatic
I will shed no tears when the shitty web advertising business model dies a
well-deserved death. They slow down my browser to a crawl, waste my battery
life, waste my data cap, invade my privacy, and assault my eyes, all for what?
An ad I'm never going to click on anyway.

We can do better.

~~~
andygates
Sounds like you could use an ad blocker, friend!

~~~
monochromatic
There's been no great solution on Apple mobile so far. Hoping iOS 9 changes
that.

------
axanoeychron
The answer is to make your adverts fast, lightweight and battery efficient.
This is competition at its finest - those with the fastest and most compact
adverts do not get blocked.

Claiming your business model will be harmed by progress in technology is
depressing and a cop out. I would like to see resource quotas enforced by
browsers. Like billboard space, you have a scarce resource to fill that is
prime. How about you fit your advert resource usage into a well defined slot
of time that my browser can manage for you? If you're fast and respectful, I
see you. Otherwise you get torn down for vandalism like illegal posters.

~~~
Klathmon
I'd agree with you if the users were choosing what to block, but they aren't.

Some developer somewhere is choosing what to block and when their app lets
through 2 ads and the competition doesn't let though any people will consider
the latter better and use that.

IMO Adblockers make running "nice" safe and efficient ads pointless as you'll
just get lumped in with the rest of 'em.

------
fredleblanc
I'm OK with sites blocking content for those using ad blockers. That seems
like a fair balance, and if the content being blocked truly is that important
to me, it's a one click disable to give in, or I can probably find a similar
story elsewhere. (Though most of the time I don't really care that much to do
either.)

I've found that using uBlock origin I don't only block ads, I virtually
redesign pages. I remove share buttons, I remove elements I never use on sites
I visit frequently. Maybe I'm addicted to simplifying the web in my own image.

~~~
bildung
_> I've found that using uBlock origin I don't only block ads, I virtually
redesign pages. I remove share buttons, I remove elements I never use on sites
I visit frequently. Maybe I'm addicted to simplifying the web in my own
image._

Yeah, I find sites like ebay or amazon barely usable without blocking away the
fluff.

But I wonder whether that information (blocked non-ad content) is of use for
these companies? I could even imagine some companies would pay for access to
the (anonymized) data. Granted, that ad blocker usage pattern is probably too
obscure (i.e. too few non-geeks do it) to draw reliable conclusions about the
general population.

------
aDevilInMe
If you produce content, no one is willing to pay for it and your only source
of income for it is adverts then I say your business model is flawed and good
riddance to you.

~~~
a3n
It's not flawed, it's just not simple. Or, it's a happy accident that people
figured out how to be middlemen between advertisers and news consumers (the
classic example).

In the paper newspaper days I didn't mind ads at all. And I probably wouldn't
have paid the full cost of subscription if the advertisers weren't the real
source of income.

Now, as someone in another said, advertisers are stalkers. I mind that.

~~~
douche
In the newspaper, the ads stayed in their boxes, and you could easily ignore
them - honestly, I don't ever actually _seeing_ newspaper ads, they faded into
the background so much. They weren't playing music, flashing gifs, launching
fullscreen popup windows and click-through modals.

~~~
a3n
Exactly. The online ads are objectionable by design.

------
onion2k
The obvious solution as far as the ad networks are concerned is to proxy their
adverts through the website that's displaying them. A website owner signs up
to adnetwork.com, installs a node/PHP/whatever app on their server, and
adverts are sent to that app and relayed on to the user's browser. As the ads
come from the same domain as all the other content for the website they'll be
virtually impossible to block. The reason this hasn't happened in the past is
because shared web hosting would have made it difficult; as more and more
sites move to virtual servers it'll get easier. Eventually it'll be a one-
click install from a browser when you set up Wordpress or Ghost.

This means they'll load more slowly, they'll be harder to get around, and we
will have absolutely no way to see who is actually tracking us any more.

Much as I dislike adverts on websites, the alternative to the way they're sent
now is _far_ worse.

~~~
scarmig
I'm pretty sure I've already seen this in the wild, but there are plenty of
workarounds.

1) Easiest is DOM-structure. Ads will often have a signature tell-tale
placement and structure on a page, and this is enough to identify them. A
naive ad implementation is trivial to detect, and even smarter ones can be
worked around using crowdsourcing.

2) As a general matter, the facet of advertising we call ads are obvious to
humans, and should in principle be detectable to machines. Rely on layout
cues, other pages on the website, differences in content. This will ultimately
push more and more advertising into the "sponsored content" category, which
seems a genuinely harder problem.

~~~
sangnoir
The sponsored content/"native advertising" is the next logical step. It can
range from "product placement" in otherwise regular articles, to full-blown
advertorials disguised as regular articles. No DOM-structure to block, no
layout clues and very non-obvious to humans. I consider these to be more
insidious than current ads that most are eager to block

~~~
dorgo
What we see here is evolution of advertisement. From low quality spam-like ads
to higher quality advertorials, which must provide some usefullness to the
reader in order to carmouflage as normal content and to attract attention. I
work in a marketing agency and there is a big shift from Adwords + SEO to
"content marketing". Big money is put into creating interesting or funny stuff
to attract attention (and backlinks).

~~~
teddyh
If the content is sponsored, this fact must still be disclosed according to
FCC regulations. These disclosures could be detected. In fact, there is
already a Firefox extension to do this: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/addetector/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/addetector/)

------
oneJob
Suggesting that a site agree to have either one or no ads seems a bit to
comand-and-control for the Internet.

I agree with the other commenter that it seems reasonable for asightto a sight
to block content if their ads are blocked, but do not see this as a
sustainable solution. How can one know abead of time whether a site will or
will not behave this way. The only time you'd know is if re-visiting. In that
case, you're not likely to revisit. Seems like a lose-lose.

To me, the obvious answer is the option to opt out and either immediately
paying a metered amount cash exchange, paying an end of month pro-rata
subscription amount, or paying via a block exchange.

I think the end of month subscription, divied pro-rata, is the best option
(anonymized of course). Its transaction cost is the middle of the two. It
requires no direct relationship with the site prior to your visit. But most
importantly, it allows for Spotify style consumer pricing. The consumer pays a
flat fee for opting out of adverts. Then the content creators are encouraged
to produce content that you will actually spend time with, not click-bait.
This leaves the option on the table for each site to sell other content and
material behind pay walls.

One last comment. Advertising is designed to influence and change behavior and
opinions. In my opinion it is disingenuous to insist that a site visitor
agrees to third party influence brokering to keep your lights on. It is my
screen, my hardware, and my mind. I have every right to run adblocker.
Similarly you have every right to decide bow to keep the lights on at your
business. But I think there as been enough of this argument that consumers
have unwittingly entered into some sort of relationship /agreement and should
somehow wake-up and see that it's our proper responsibility to be good advert
targets so the servers stay on.

------
alkonaut
Instead of "one ad" I'd like to see unlimited well behaved ads. Static images
served from the same domain. In fact - static images served from the same
domain are probably nearly impossible to separate from content.

In a perfect world, web adverts will be back to the print media style - non-
clickable non-targeted images.

------
JustSomeNobody
Why do you want everything to stay the same?

Websites will figure out how to monetize or they will go away. This is a good
thing.

~~~
sarreph
I think the most worrisome, and presently most likely, outcome is an arms-race
style battle of iterative workarounds that will end up producing less revenue
for producers, and provide consumers with a worse experience with higher
friction.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
I don't necessarily disagree with that especially given that there is a
current arms-race to try and maximize the number of ads on a page.

However, I also, think that once the ad bubble bursts people will start to be
creative in how they monetize. Most will get it completely wrong. The few who
figure it out will eventually lead the rest.

Something has to give. It cannot keep going the way it is. It's neither
producer or consumer friendly.

------
djrconcepts
Display ads are not the problem. The problem is with ads used to track,
follow, and target users while surfing the web. Ads are becoming web stalkers
that follow us around the internet. How will showing 1 ad per page prevent
tracking, following, and targeting?

------
awjr
I was quite happy with ads, then our local paper www.bathchronicle.co.uk
became impossible to use and I "chose" to install adblock specifically because
of their 45+ ads on one page.

I noticed a similar issue with other www.localworld.co.uk paper sites. I get
they need to make money but to make articles unreadable is not the way to go.

One option I'm guessing is to have a blacklist adblock approach that only
kicks in when a particular site becomes abusive and is reported back to the
site owners to enable them to "fix" their ad delivery.

~~~
a3n
My local paper's site, the Denver Post, started to look like a whore with all
the ads, and auto-replicated stories on the same page, years ago. I stopped
visiting before I ever installed my first ad blocker.

~~~
awjr
I think the problem is that there is local buy-in. People want to engage
locally and the paper sites offer them a medium to do it. So people struggle
with the site even though it's a horrendous experience.

------
moron4hire
People using ad blockers are a small proportion of the market. Shitty click-
through rates are just inevitable as consumers learn new ad behavior and grow
a blindness to it. Do a focus group study and I bet most people won't even be
able to recall that they even saw an ad, let alone what it was for.

In other words, if you choose a business model that requires placement ads,
you're doomed. You made a bad decision. Sorry.

~~~
AndrewDucker
Up to 25% of the population in some countries:
[http://blog.pagefair.com/2014/adblocking-
report/](http://blog.pagefair.com/2014/adblocking-report/)

~~~
a3n
Their 2015 report is up: [http://blog.pagefair.com/2015/ad-blocking-
report/](http://blog.pagefair.com/2015/ad-blocking-report/)

------
mmf
IMO once all barriers (psychological and not) to quick and easy small online
payments are gone, ads will not be useful anymore to content providers. A
click through rate of 1/1000 will be easily compensated by a rate of donation
of 1/10000.

------
a3n
> Last week Washington Post decided to block the content of the article if
> you’re using an ad blocking software.

I just went there and clicked around as much as I could, at least 20 articles.
I saw no complaints or roadblocks. uBO, Disconnect and Ghostery all reported
blocking lots of ads and trackers.

------
sarreph
Aside from many other content producer-side arguments others have presented,
surely it's most obvious that so long as the consumer choice exists to block
ALL adds, it's far more optimal to a user than opting into a system that
presents (tracking) advertising...

------
sreenadh
Ads that track users are bad. But when I think back, the first time I wanted
to control ads was when ads just keep popping up or it decides to open
tab/windows on its own and forward it to various sites. As long as, they are
not doing that. It should be fine.

------
GreaterFool
One benefit of ad blocking is that ads do not need to be downloaded.

Once websites start blocking ad blockers the other option is to download the
ads but not display them.

That of course will lead to ads getting "smarter" (well, more annoying; they
will have to figure out whether they're being watched).

Fast forward into the future and we'll have eye tracking software that will
make sure you see the ad :)

It's going to be an arms race.

------
neya
Back in the early internet era, the best content was available for free of
charge. If anything, that's still the case even today. Try to google on some
technical topics like Ohm's law or something and you'll find very old websites
built with good ole' HTML tables providing the information you need crisp and
clear.

Actually, I disagree. This is 2015. If I want to start a website on a certain
topic, say about cars or electronics, I can find some really good free hosts
who will support me without any sneazy catches. As a real example, I go to
blogger.com, setup a new blog with my own custom theme, (with all the
attribution to blogger removed if I want to) and start producing content. Not
cool with blogspot? Then, how about Github pages? Not so technical? How about
using a free shared web host (there are plenty, Google them)?

If your objective is to spread information and knowledge, you will do that no
matter what. It is when your objective is guised as spreading information when
you really want to make money and scale up doing so, then you run into a
problem. The problem with this kind of appeal against ad-blocking is the same
old argument of "How much is too much?"

"We need money to support our website to keep it up and running". But, never
do these authors disclose how much they really need as long as they're making
a killer profit.

The problem with mixing ads with content is that introduces a conflict of
interest - Are you writing that content because you like writing, or are you
writing that content to get more eyeballs to serve your advertisers? And it's
very hard to convince your readers that you don't intend to make money from
them although you have ads on your site.

For your reference, I do own a blog myself without any ads whatsoever and I
think this is the future we're heading towards. I am a proud user of adblock
software and I refused to be shamed for that. As would any user, I am
concerned about the content first, which is the logical reason why I go to a
site. But, if the site tries hard to ruin my experience to make it difficult
for me to consume that content, then of course, I'll find a way to circumvent
it. But, that doesn't mean I don't support the authors of the site, just that
as everyone else, I have my own way of supporting them. Just like how I've
been donating to Wikipedia all these years.

There have been too many sites abusing the slogan of "We need to place ads so
we can support ads" to buy back our lost trust. Sure, there will be a lot of
content weeded out because they can't support themselves, but I am confident
that the ones whose objectives are to spread information will do so no matter
what.

We built the internet ourselves when no one gave us ads to support our efforts
back then. And we'll find a way to do it again. Just takes time and patience.

