
Killing the messenger: ad-blockers - fridek
https://espresso.economist.com/8c53d30ad023ce50140181f713059ddf
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Sylos
Well, yeah, ad-blockers are among the best antivirus-software, speed up page-
load times, reduce data usage, improve privacy and require roundabout 0 effort
on the user's part. And except for ignorance of their existence or extreme
benevolence, there's not a whole lot of reasons for users to not install ad-
blockers.

That the ad-industry has been flourishing for so long is actually more
surprising to me...

~~~
Shivetya
so why aren't they built in to all browsers by now? many have pop up blockers
and that was for the same reason, the ruin of the browsing experience

~~~
TeMPOraL
Because the first browser to introduce ad block would get banned by major
publishers and people would stop using it. This would have to be a
simultaneous deployment by all major browser vendors. The best they can do on
their own is things like Reader Mode in Firefox - obviously there to cut down
on the amount of shit on-line, but not strong enough to make the "important
people" angry.

Also keep in mind that the Internet That Matters now is the commercial, ad-
backed one. Even standardization bodies have serious conflicts of interest
now, and the changes are about enabling businesses to make money, not about
making the Internet a better / more useful thing for humanity in general.

~~~
rplnt
Opera has built-in adblocker (with filters).

~~~
danielbln
Opera has a market share of <2%.

~~~
rplnt
Depends on the market. 7% in Poland (and that's not their top market).

Still quite a lot considering the "Opera" doesn't exist anymore (since 2012?)
and what is now Opera is actually a branded Chromium with some extra features.

------
rdslw
Greetings from Poland :)

Even while inconvenient for me, I've switched on my android from chrome (which
I also use on desktopt) to firefox because of one reason: you can install
plugins (read ublock, adblock etc) on firefox for android. Since that day,
mobile browsing is a BLISS !!!

You can see here (and elsewhere) why:
[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/01/business/cost-...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/01/business/cost-
of-mobile-ads.html)

~~~
Fiahil
I'm also considering doing the same. Every single time I open a webpage on my
phone it takes forever to load (even on a fast and reliable wi-fi) and I often
cannot read anything until I have closed the cookie consent panel, the
"install our app" modal, the full page autoplaying video ad, and the
"subscribe to our newsletter" pop-up. It's like yelling insults to someone
else while in an elevator.

~~~
phatfish
A good choice, it has become more stable over the last few months. A while ago
i had so many crashes it was unusable.

I get less crashes now and the speed up from running uBlock Origin on my old
S3 is very noticeable.

------
kalleboo
> But the survey also found that very few people pay anything for online
> news—just 9% of people in English-speaking countries

That's WAY higher than I expected

~~~
erelde
9% of 500M would be 45.000.000 paying customers... I think that might be
wrong...

------
netcan
To me, ad blockers are a sign the web is working.

Ethics comes up a bit when it comes to ad blockers. Sites make money from ads.
Dont' they have a right to?.. I think if we're going to think about it in that
sort of way, we need to sort out rights. The web means that servers can serve
whatever they want. They have a "right" to send you pictures of clowns when
you request their page, even if that page was a news site yesterday. They can
also send you ads. The client has the "right" to do whatever they want with
that page. They can use whichever browser they want. Display the content
however they want using whatever software they want. They can read the code,
execute the JS, selectively display the content....

That's the _deal_. Servers can send what they want. Clients can do whatever
they want with whatever servers send them. Users are exercising their rights
with adblockers.

On the more practical side, it's interesting how the economics of this has
evolved. In the beginning, online ads were pretty useless and worthless. The
economic model around online ads collapsed with the 99 crash.

Then Google (or really omniture) figured out how online ads could work. They
cleverly used it to serve ads with a tiny, unobtrusive footprint and still
make way more money than the dancing monkey ads from the 90s. We've been in
rapid growth mode since, and the value of advertising stock is now through the
roof.

Now that online ads are valuable again, the incentives to go overboard are
overwhelming. Even Google who made small and unobtrusive ads a core idea have
crossed some big lines. They look at valuable search queries like "best
divorce lawyer in Toronto" where every _click_ is worth $50, all the clicks
going to those worthless (free) organic results and aggressively trying to
increase the share of clicks going to ads.

Now, even if you search for a divorce lawyer by name, you will first scroll
throught a page and a half (on mobile) of his competitors ads. This is
unequivocally "obtrusive" in the sense that it puts less relevant content in
more prominence than the relevant stuff.

This time it's being driven by ads being valuable rather than worthless.

Back to the rights thing... Ad blockers and the active right of users to
reject certain content is a balancing force here. When a respectable news
site, forces you through an ad before they load a page, autoplay a video and
then pop up (or under) an affiliate link to aliexpress and dating for gold
digger pages...

~~~
zelos
Is there any way sites could force you to view their adverts? Short of forcing
you to use some kind of custom browser, I can't think of anything. I guess you
could say something like "enter the code shown somewhere in the middle of this
video advert to read this content" or something? Even then you'd probably get
browser extensions to scan the video and read the code.

------
LeonM
I am amazed the numbers are that low actually. Most sites become unusable
without an adblocker as many mobile browsers simply crash when trying to load
that many content.

Also, the amount of data used by ads is overwhelming, and (at least in my
country) mobile data limits are still from 1999. Since setting up a squid
proxy with adblocker for my mobile devices, my mobile data usage dropped
significantly, allowing me to switch to a cheaper data plan.

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sleepychu
Keep pushing. I've said this many times before, there will inevitably be some
casualties in the war on intrusive ads but these might be necessary to
convince advertisers to come back to us with a fair deal. Don't accept guilt-
tripping, don't be pressured into allowing unlimited surveillance by private
entities, traditional circulation based advertising which isn't a bare in
terms of bandwidth or surveillance can and will work when users demand it.

------
zerr
But it is good for actual companies/people who pay for ads, right? I mean, in
the first place I wouldn't want to pay for showing my ad to someone who is not
genuinely interested, thus is not a potential client. And it is in my interest
that such people use ad-blockers.

~~~
lgieron
Everyone is a potential client for Coca-Cola or other generic brands. And (the
theory is that) even if you hate the ad, it will make you more likely to buy
their brand vs competition.

~~~
welterde
If I come across an particularly annoying ad I will try my best to remember
that brand and buy the competitor out of spite (if there is no cheap generic
store brand available anyway). Surely I am not the only one that does this.

~~~
rplnt
> If I come across an particularly annoying ad I will try my best to remember
> that brand

This is enough for them in the long run.

~~~
tremon
Yes, came here to say the same thing. The (unconscious) brand recognition
usually outlasts the (conscious) aversion against it.

That said, I'm still not buying anything Sony -- almost fifteen years after
their rootkit scandal.

~~~
distances
I'd say there are exceptions, like Nestlé _still_ having a bad name from the
scandal that started the boycott in 1977 [1]. I don't think they are overly
suffering from that, but it's still common for people to refuse buying
anything from Nestlé.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9_boycott](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9_boycott)

Edit: I found this part even a bit amusing: "As of 2013, the Nestlé boycott is
coordinated by the International Nestlé Boycott Committee"

------
akerro
Just open any Polish major website without adblock to understand why. +10
trackers, +20 ads per page, +6 social buttons per post.

~~~
mamon
I agree, Polish websites are so cluttered with advertisments, some of them
being pop-ups hiding the whole main page of initial load. Completly unusable
without ad-blocker. BTW. The best ad-blocker I found so far is just
uninstalling Flash plugin from your browser. HTML 5 is not so popular yet, so
that helps a lot.

~~~
klibertp
In Chrome you can make it so that Flash is not loaded by default, but you can
right-click on the unloaded Flash applet and make it load and run. I think
it's somewhere in the settings.

~~~
majewsky
On Firefox, Flashblock does the same IIRC.

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nodepackagemgr
It's a dead end. People in Poland won't really pay subscription fees, so the
only way to monetize is through ads. Ads don't pay that much though, so they
are packed in amounts that are beyond annoying for users. So they block.

On the other hand, most people gather their daily news digest from one of the
top news outlets, which in turn serve heaviest ads. So the most valuable
customer is the average Joe who doesn't know ads can be blocked and doesn't
really care.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _So the most valuable customer is the average Joe who doesn 't know ads can
> be blocked and doesn't really care._

Which outlines a great mission for us - to reach every average Joe and Jane
and educate them that yes, ads can be blocked, and yes, their computer will be
running much better and faster when they do it.

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jkot
This industry is ripe for disruption by micro-payment system. I want to be
able to surf, and make a small payment on every website I visit ($0.001). If
system detects I actually used something (copy&paste, longer visit, scroll
down, print bookmark), payment should be increased significantly.

But it has to preserve privacy, be scam proof...

~~~
iand
That will simply move the incentives towards publishers spreading their
content over as many pages as possible to get more micropayments from you.

~~~
NTripleOne
You mean like they already do?

Like those 'slideshow' style articles that load a new set of ads with every
'slide'?

------
q5
I have been seeing more and more discussion of fundamental issues occurring in
the online advertising industry which are acknowledged to cause backlash which
harms the bottom line (ad-blockers, decreased viewership, etc).

The fact that these patterns are being spoken about to such a large audience -
I have no link to the advertising industry and have seen loud messages from
large publications outlining some issues:

\- Relevance: showing an ad of something you just searched on eBay on your
news site was novel at first but over time people have learned to tune out
because seeing your search for soccer ball while reading about terrorism just
taught people to blank out the irrelevant ads.

\- Performance: tracking scripts, social sharing, multimedia ads. Refer to the
series of VPAID Google+ posts outlining the detrimental effects of a single ad
loaded into the user's view.

Companies targeting contextualisation and performance, and accepting that
users are no longer willing to accept the poor quality of current popular
methods may be in the minority at the moment but the niche will most likely
expand. They will be economically rewarded for investing their time into
newer, more effective methods, and current popular methods will slowly be
overtaken by those methods that obtain a better ROI.

A good question is how long will the industry ignore the rising walls of ad-
blocking? Walls seem a lot hard to take down than build in these types of
situations. It would be wrong to expect people to turn off their ad-blockers
because the industry pinky-swears not to overstep the boundaries again.

~~~
JulianMorrison
> They will be economically rewarded for investing their time into newer, more
> effective methods

The risk is, they won't. The overwhelming majority of awful, amoral
advertisers may be closing the window of opportunity for the rare-as-unicorns
respectful ones, because adblocking software doesn't distinguish.

~~~
q5
> adblocking software doesn't distinguish

I think the "walls" of ad-blocking will be dismantled slowly and those who can
prove their respectfulness will be whitelisted through the blockade.

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aphextron
Ad blocking will be a standard feature in every major browser within 5 years,
and we will laugh at these days they way we did with pop-ups.

~~~
kalleboo
In Chrome, which run by Google, who make most of their money from ads?

I can see Firefox doing it as standard.

I think Apple are happy just allowing the ad-blocker extensions (and they got
some publicity when they did that).

------
_Codemonkeyism
For some months I try to not use ad blockers on one laptop (Dell XPS13 2016)
after years of ad blocker usage.

1\. I still hate how sometimes ads pop up where I click, often above videos.
Might be intentional or might be download times of the ads (or might
intentionally use the slower download of ads by placing them there).

2\. While traveling with a limited mobile data plan, data was sucked up by
video ads, reloading ads, ... the largest strain on my data plan was ads.

3\. Many ads get larger and have sounds, which is painfully annoying.

4\. Not yet been infected by an ad, but the anxiety is there.

5\. Not scientific, but my feeling is power is significantly drained faster
(checking some days with ad blocker on)

~~~
davidgerard
Every time I set up on a new box I try browsing without an ad blocker. I
lasted 23 hours last time.

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spraak
Is the title trying to say that ads are somehow messengers..?

~~~
creshal
Probably trying to aim for a "shooting the messenger" pun, as in: Adblockers
are killing content, not the shitty ad networks responsible for their rise.

~~~
fwn
... or the people using it. The message would be "your ads are bad", the ad
blocking stats are the messenger and the shooting consists of media trying to
tackle adblockers instead of bad ads.

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mbrock
I'll just keep reading public service news sites.

The online presence of commercial news feels mostly stressful, incendiary, and
yucky to me. That publishers don't understand or ignore the way their
advertisements ruin the user experience and sell out our news reading habits
is just another reason to consider commercial news as basically hostile.

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yoodenvranx
More and more of the large German news pages are adding auto-playing videos to
their websites and you find them even on their mobile websites. Think about
that for a second... auto playing videos on mobile websites in a country with
very expensive mobile contracts... Who thought that this might be a good idea?

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douche
It's not the easiest to setup, but the best way to block ads is with a block
list in your hosts file. Even works across browsers.

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mtgx
I think even browsers such as Firefox should begin to offer an easily
accessible adblock button. But instead of being enabled by default, it should
be off by default for all websites. If the users are annoyed with a site's
ads, then they can click to block them, and the preference is saved
permanently until the user unblocks that site again. I believe this is exactly
what Opera does now.

Third-party tracking protection should be enabled by default.

~~~
Kliment
This sounds like an excellent idea, except switch it on by default. You're
describing ublock origin.

