
Ad blockers: A solution or a problem? - WestCoastJustin
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9245190/Ad_blockers_A_solution_or_a_problem_
======
betterunix
Ad blockers are the solution to an advertising industry that largely has zero
respect for users. Ad blockers are the logical extension of pop-up blockers
and spam filters.

If the Internet advertising industry could be trusted to behave itself nobody
would install ad blockers. The fact that people are installing such software
should be taken as an indication that today's ads are too intrusive and too
disrespectful.

~~~
pseudonym
Not to mention occasionally malicious. Of the people I've known who have
gotten viruses in the last 5 years, a majority of them were from compromised
ad hosts and/or malicious ads. In fact, there was one a week or two ago from
Yahoo[1], of all places.

[1][http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57616617-83/yahoo-users-
exp...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57616617-83/yahoo-users-exposed-to-
malware-attack/)

~~~
wcummings
Not necessarily compromised, even. There are plenty of poorly run trading
desks/DSPs that don't vet creatives well.

------
vonskippy
If the only value your website offers is to bring eyeballs to ad's, then it's
time for you to find a new vice.

If you want to serve up ads on you site, make sure they're relevant, they're
absolutely 110% malware free, and respect my privacy. And unless you're
willing to take responsible for when those conditions aren't met, then don't
whine when I do everything technical to block out the useless malware laden
offensive ads that you do serve.

The difference between net ads and tv ads are that tv ads cost enough money
that people who buy tv ads spend time and energy in being very selective about
their market demographics and the type of ads they run. Plus I've never had a
tv ad infect my tv and stop it from going to any other channel but CMT.

If me and my eyeballs are going to be your product, then I want a little
respect for my participation.

~~~
eli
But if you're using AdBlock, won't you likely be blocking my malware-free,
privacy-protecting ads too? You wouldn't even know they exist...

I agree with your larger point though. For all the (legitimate) hand-wringing
about ad networks tracking people and building profiles... they still suck at
targeting ads. A lot. I think we're still in the Stone Age of ad matching
algorithms.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Ads done 'the best way' are unlikely to fall foul of ad blockers, no script,
etc. Deliver your ads from the same domain, as static content, and you're
likely to be fine. Bonus points for not slowing down the browsing experience,
and altering the layout at random intervals for about a minute after page load
(see theguardian.com)

~~~
eli
You sure about that? EasyList, the most common block list, clearly intends to
block ALL ads, even self hosted ones. it blocks by css class name, directory
name, image dimension, etc. It's updated frequently as users report unblocked
ads.

(Not to mention how incredibly hard it would be to sell ads set up like that.)

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Doesn't that flag a lot of false positives (in fact, I have personal
experience of an ad blocker that did exactly that by blocking images with
numbers in the filename)? Conversely, there's no way that can block ALL ads,
unless it literally blocks all ... content.

~~~
eli
Yes, certainly. But it's still the most popular filter subscription. I think
this suggests that most people using AdBlock want to block all ads, not just
network ads.

------
alextgordon
99% of advertisers give the rest a bad name...

Why do we put age restrictions on explicit or violent movies? Because we don't
want to influence kids' brains for the worse.

This principle applies to adults as well. The purpose of ads is to influence
you. That "influence" goes to the highest bidder.

At their most benign, they just want you to buy _their_ brand of otherwise
identical detergent.

The worst ads are the ones for charities where some emaciated kid is filmed
(in HD) tearfully looking into the camera. Fuck. That. My emotions are not the
plaything of some advertiser.

What about the "one quick tip to lose weight" scams that don't-be-evil Google
insists on serving up. Is that fine?

The advertising industry is not your friend. Don't waste your life trying to
help them. Block everything.

~~~
JohnTHaller
Each AdSense advertiser can turn off specific channels for their sites
including 'health and wellness' (weight loss) and 'dating' (scam chat sites).
Unfortunately, there are baddies in nearly every category. The software
category, for instance, which is the majority of our income, is a hotbed of
spyware/adware vendors. And blocking them is nearly impossible since Google
doesn't really care to know. So you're left manually determining domains
yourself and blocking them. But it's just wack-a-mole as they create new
domains when enough sites block them.

This isn't too surprising considering that the top link for a Google search
for Firefox is a Google ad for an advertiser that will deliver Firefox via a
downloader along with 8 different spyware/adware apps. My mom made that
mistake last weekend. We would up reimaging her computer.

~~~
cabalamat
> the top link for a Google search for Firefox is a Google ad for an
> advertiser that will deliver Firefox via a downloader along with 8 different
> spyware/adware apps

Is it? I get [http://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/new/](http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/)

~~~
JohnTHaller
It is here:
[http://imgur.com/gallery/NeSbeBM](http://imgur.com/gallery/NeSbeBM)

------
bowlofpetunias
I don't "block" ads. I just opt not to download them.

I'm not being pedantic, we should really learn to stop adopting these
insidious Newspeak tricks. Because it's not merely annoying propaganda, it has
time and time again ended in criminalization. Some examples: equating
"hackers" with criminals, equating copying with theft, labeling the
recreational use of drugs as "abuse".

Time and time again we've seen repressive legislation after years of
propaganda by manipulating the language in which a subject was discussed.

I don't block adds. I am totally free not to download
yoursite/ad/bigassbanner.swf when all I want is to read yoursite/article.html.
I'm not doing anything wrong, and if you're trying to trick me into
downloading bigassbanner.swf anyway and I use tools to help me avoid that, you
are the one who is using ethically dubious tactics, and I'm just responding to
that.

You want me to pay for your content in any way, fucking _ask_ me first, or
don't put it on the open internet.

And it's not about whether or not the ads are "obnoxious", that's another red
herring. I don't like any advertising, I don't want it, I don't need it, and
I'm certainly not going to waste my time and bandwidth downloading it, nor am
I going to allow it to take up space on _my_ screen or have their tracking
tactics violate my privacy.

I don't need any excuse to _refuse_ to see ads. It's my time, my bandwidth, my
screen, my privacy, my eyeballs. Fuck ads. There is no such category as
"acceptable" ads.

The only "acceptable" ads are the ones I choose to accept _up front_. So far,
only very few sites have asked me that, and they all threw tracking shit at me
when I obliged, so fuck those as well.

After 15+ years of onesided unethical tactics I have no interest in being in
any way nuanced about it. The online advertising business fundamentally
rotten, and they can go screw themselves. And with them any publisher that
tries to leverage these tactics for profit.

~~~
waylandsmithers
Thank you. If you consider intrusive ads to be malicious code that websites
are attempting to run on your machine, you should be free stop them. It's your
machine.

We are essentially talking about the equivalent of tv advertisers being up in
arms about viewers getting up and going to the bathroom or changing the
channel during commercial breaks.

------
kbuck
> And some believe that today's ads aren't as obnoxious as yesterday's.

Today's ads are even worse than ads used to be (although the worse ads are
less common now). These days, you can expect to have to see a full-screen ad
or have to watch some sort of video before being allowed to view the content
you requested. Then, once you finally get to view the content, you're
assaulted with things like Vibrant IntelliTXT and JavaScript that injects
content into your clipboard when you copy text.

I don't mind text ads. I don't mind most non-moving image ads, as long as they
load fast and aren't too sizeable. Full-screen ads, video ads, flash ads, and
JavaScript junk that modify the page contents are the problem here, and
they're only getting worse as advertising companies figure out how to abuse
our browsers more effectively.

~~~
eli
Agree that IntelliTXT is obnoxious, but I honestly feel like things are
trending better and the online ad industry is growing up. (And IntelliTXT is
hardly new.) In the previous decade it seemed like auto-playing audio & video
were pretty common... now they are definitely the exception (such ads violate
a bunch of voluntary industry standards and are banned from many networks and
publishers).

(Disclosure: I am co-founder of an ad-supported startup.)

I recognize this may be an unpopular opinion, but as companies get better at
targeting ads and advertisers get better at measuring ROI, the result will be
_better ads_ that are more relevant to you.

~~~
kbuck
You're right in saying that annoying ads are getting less common and that a
minority of advertising networks have them now. I used to manually block such
advertisers myself, but I gave up and started using a filter list after
spending several hours trying (unsuccessfully) to block YouTube video ads.

I'd like to support the sites I visit, but the bottom line is that it's far
easier to use a filter list than manually comb through the "blockable items"
list in AdBlock when I discover yet another excessively annoying ad. I
sometimes manually whitelist entire sites when I specifically want to support
them, but frequently I don't even think about it (and when I do, I have to
consider whether the ad network they're using is responsible enough to stop
clients from posting ads containing Java exploits and whatnot). Using a filter
list with AdBlock is one of the biggest improvements that an end-user can
effect on their page load times and web browser responsiveness.

~~~
eli
If enough people start thinking like that, we'll probably see a lot more
"content marketing" like what BuzzFeed does. Ads that aren't really ads, but
content that somehow promotes a particular advertiser or message. That doesn't
work for everyone though and it has some obvious drawbacks.

(Also, I'd argue that making Flash click-to-enable would have a bigger
positive impact on load time. But unlike Adblock it might break some sites.)

~~~
blumkvist
So you're saying that real marketing (a.k.a. psychologists crafting subliminal
messages and injecting them into your brain without you knowing it) is better
than banner ads?

------
guelo
The open web is a miracle, it's amazing that it exists. Back when the open
nets were forming corporations like AOL and Compuserve tried to bottle it up
but failed. That's why the web doesn't work in the way that publishers would
like for their business models. If the web had worked the way they want it to
it would have never become the success that it has.

But, we have to be vigilant. From now until the end of time they will be
working to lock it down for their gain and society's loss. The sad part is
that they will probably win because there will be teams at many corporations
working full-time on locking things down and lobbying, they won't give up. The
main hope now is that so many people have tasted freedom that they will fight
to keep things open.

~~~
pirateking
Few have tasted this mythical freedom the web provides. What extremely tiny
percentage of people own their own web site, let alone own any of their
digital property (and these days even the hardware it lives on)?

I would say AOL and Compuserve won judging by the success of Facebook and
other feudalistic platforms. We have exchanged freedom and rights to our
property for the convenience and security of platforms ruled by feudal lords.

~~~
bowlofpetunias
Most people voluntarily exchange their freedom and rights in exchange for
someone else telling them what to do.

For most of our history they choose religion. These days corporations are
taking that place.

What matters is being able to opt out _without_ being effectively reduced to
second class citizens. We haven't lost that option yet, but it is true that
that is under threat.

Being able to consume content without advertising (which is corporate
propaganda, i.e. the new "religion") is one of those things. That content is
not just someone's private property (no matter what the manipulative copyright
laws say), it is the end product on generations of collective knowledge and
creativity.

If the minority ever gets excluded from it because they're not members of the
Church of our Corporate Overlords, then our freedom would truly suffer.

The fact that the majority so easily surrenders their freedom for convenience
and a false sense of security is not a measure of our freedom.

~~~
pirateking
Yes, I agree. It is a difficult topic to reason about, but I would say that
freedom can only be reasoned about relatively, and only by exercising it can
its limits be discussed. And then those limits themselves must be exercised
for the notion of freedom to exist in the first place.

I wonder if there is some kind of idealized equilibrium, as both freedom and
control try to fully realize themselves in society.

------
TrainedMonkey
I think there has to be a better way, but it is not here yet, or we are not
ready for it.

Right now using ad blocker significantly improves quality of browsing. I
cringe every time I fire up a browser without adblock by how disruptive and
annoying ads are.

~~~
millstone
It's not just ad blocker. There's tons of nonessential distractions on most
web pages.

For example, I read a story on cnn.com, and even though I have Ghostery
enabled, I am still swarmed by "Share This" (on Facebook or Twitter or Google+
or LinkedIn...) and "Print" and "Email" buttons and "Search Powered By Google"
(twice!) and "health resources by HealthGrades" and "CNN Trends Fueled by
zite" and for some reason, the weather in Atlanta, even though I live in
California.

And then I click the Safari Reader button, and all I see are the text and
photographs. Pure zen.

My theory is that websites iterate "what can I add to make people stay here
longer" and thereby accrete crap. If there is to be a better way, I hope it
removes the incentive to add this junk.

~~~
hershel
You're right. I wish there was a more automated way(without pushing that
button) to remove the clutter in sites that need this kind of filtering.

------
gordaco
We wouldn't see ad blockers as a solution if ads hadn't become a problem. As
obvious as it seems for the users, advertisers don't seem to grasp it.

Anything flashy and/or moving is BAD.

Anything with actual javascript code is BAD. Especially, anything that tracks
you is BAD.

Anything that temporarily prevents you from watching the content is BAD (I'm
thinking about splash screens you have to close and unskippable videos).

Anything that modifies the behaviour of the web page you're visiting is BAD.

Until (at least) those are solved, ad blockers are most definitely a solution.

~~~
LocalPCGuy
Yes, those things are BAD - for the USER. For the website, those things are
quite lucrative, because users click on exactly those kinds of things.

The ad industry's bad ADs are in response to 1 thing - clicks. If they didn't
work, the industry would not do it.

I run an AdBlocker myself, and do not like crazy ads, popups, etc. personally.
But don't mistake OUR dislike for those things with the reason they exist,
because they work.

~~~
gress
They only work until people block them.

------
malandrew

        "Viewing ads is part of the deal if users want content to 
        be free, says Freitas."
    

I would imagine that a log of ad-blocking users are fine with paying for
content if the price is reasonable (i.e. equivalent to the revenue a site
gains from it's advertising sources). Any site owners complaining about ad-
blockers is missing the opportunity to detect ad-blocking and try to sell that
person an ad-free version of their service. Ideally this service would be a
pay per view model, where I pay a fixed amount (like 5 cents to 10 cents per
article read) or where I pay a fixed subscription fee (like $1 to $2 a month
for unlimited articles).

I did the math a while back with NY Times online advertising revenue and I
remember the value gained from non-paying users to be around 70 cents per
month per user. I don't know about you, but I would happily pay 70 cents or
even a full dollar or two for access to the NY Times ad free. Unfortunately,
when a site does introduce an ad-free paid version they try to extract like 5x
or more of the revenue they gain from advertising. I don't know about others,
but when I encounter that type of gouging, I just look elsewhere for my news.

So Mssrs. Publisher, please offer a reasonable paid ad-free alternative or
quit your bitching. Every ad you serve is an annoying distraction that
distracts me, irritates me and slows down my browsing experience both in terms
of bytes download and lines of javascript executed.

I am completely within my right to block all outgoing requests to any host I
deem negative to my web browsing experience via my /etc/hosts/ file. If you
happen to serve ads from those sites and I can't view them because I block
them, that isn't my problem it is yours. Want me to pay, give me the ability
to do so and be fair with your prices.

So long as you don't offer a paid service that I can buy and you support
yourself via ads, you are not really considering me to be your customer, but
your product. You are not in a position to complain when your product doesn't
consent to being sold.

~~~
pseudonym
While that's true, that's only the case for sites you regularly visit. If you
get linked to a random site or blog post from HN, Reddit, Digg, Facebook, or
what have you, your first thought is not going to be "gosh, I really want to
pay for a subscription to this site". In fact, if you run into a paywall,
you'll probably just bounce back to the site that linked you to the article
and ask for the article text or a non-paywalled version of the same.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Maybe people would be happy (well, happier) with extreme micropayments. The
use case you describe should be a rounding error as far as my bank account is
concerned, but enough when multiplied by reasonable traffic to sustain online
publishing.

Does anyone know the actual value of a single ad impression?

~~~
_delirium
> Does anyone know the actual value of a single ad impression?

This is often summarized as RPM (revenue per mille) or eRPM (effective RPM),
i.e. how much income a site's ads bring in per 1000 page impressions,
regardless of how it's paid out (per-click, per-view, per affiliate purchase,
etc.). And that varies hugely between sites, anywhere from below $1 to above
$100. A typical case is around $5-10 for many publishers, I believe. So that's
about 0.5-1.0¢ per page view.

~~~
ansgri
so why don't they charge me 10..20¢ per article, with an option for $x (or $xx
if they publish a lot) unlimited monthly subscription, should I like them.
Seems like 10-20 times more profitable, yet a rounding error.

~~~
_delirium
Micropayments seem to have had trouble getting off the ground. It's not a lot
of money to pay a few pennies per article, but if you put up a paywall and
make people pay it, they seem to go elsewhere. Either people are too cheap to
pay it, or the interfaces are too clunky, or some mixture of both.

Subscriptions do work for some sites, but from what I can tell most have
trouble selling enough subscriptions to cover what advertising would pay for.

~~~
ansgri
I suspect the clunky interfaces are to blame: if the paywall was only 1 click
('confirm $0.1 purchase') instead of a long long form to fill most people
would just click.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Even that is too clunky, IMO. I really liked the model that Readability tried
to pioneer: pay a monthly subscription, view websites, at the end of the
month, all money paid is distributed amongst publishers in proportion to
views. Readability's purpose meant that 'view websites' was actually a more
complicated step involving explicit user choice, but I don't see why this same
model couldn't be used with a set of 'certified' publishers and a central
authority. The common link could be 'publishers who reject advertising'.

------
smtddr
Time to get downvoted into the earth's core... AdBlockers are a problem.

I know "Everyone hates ADs"(TM), but really... that's how everything has
worked up 'till now. ADs and/or paid. The advertisements around sports are a
significant reason why that whole thing works; why those athletes get the
money they get. They can get the attention of many eyes and all those eyes get
exposed to ads. Take away _all_ the advertising-dollars and we'll see how long
these huge pro-sports events last.

The internet became a big thing and people would like to show you content for
free but how will they support it? I don't want a paid-subscription for every
single quality website I visit. I rather they just show me ads. If I really
like the content of the website, I might even give them a few clicks on the
ads.

For better or for worse, advertisement-money is behind most forms of free
content, especially entertainment-related. If anyone has a better idea, I'm
all ears.

~~~
adsunecessary
You're right adblockers are a problem, they're not addressing the cause but
its expression.

But at the same time and like the article, you also failed to frame the
problem properly, see, it starts by telling us about a website serving 2
millions page views then goes about people wanting content for free.

Content doesn't cost anything once put online, so it's not about content but
rather that it is accessed 2 millions times a month which generates traffic,
which has a cost.

Now if it cost the same for the content to be accessed 10 or 10 millions
times, then the justification/needs for ads would go away (except for
newspapers' websites maybe). The problem is in fact dual, one is that the
internet is designed to work as dumb pipes connected intelligence located in
the network periphery not as centralized servers hosting content and the owner
of the inner tubes ask money based on how much traffic goes through them.

The obvious solution of distributing the content in a p2p model which would
move the bill of traffic from the content provider to the content receivers.

So yes adblockers are a problem because they're and additional layer of
attempting to fix another problem ads and associated surveillance which is
trying to fix the issue of relying on a centralized model on a network not
thought for this usage imposed by a few giant companies exploiting their
ownership of the architecture for profit, making a mess of layers attempting
to fix each other but really attempting more problems requiring more fixing.

~~~
rgbrgb
And how do you pay for the content to be created?

~~~
XorNot
Most ad-laden websites severely overvalue themselves. They're distractions -
highly replaceable ones.

It turns out when you have a simple and obvious business model, it's easy to
pay for content - iTunes enabled us to actually buy music (kind of, we're in
the middle of screwing the artists over with bulk streaming deals and what I
suspect is a lot of RIAA-contact lock ins preventing direct sales).

But really, how valuable do you think your blog post about someone else's blog
post is? Or a news site reporting on what happened from Twitter, or publishing
articles which are taken whole-sale from bullet pointed corporate and
political press releases?

~~~
blumkvist
The sites you describe are very small ones that don't make much money and
don't really have problems with adblocking.

Why not think about pando daily, the verge, 9to5mac?

~~~
strubleandecure
Sometimes just sometimes when a site has 100-1000 times the numbers of readers
compared to a mere anonymous blog, they're just far more successful at
generating clickbait and have more resources to waste on elaborate HTML5. Or
maybe they really generate actual useful content. If we're discussing
anecdotal data points everyone has a different view on a website's utility.

Personally I believe if the reader base of a site is genuine and not heavily
dependent on one-hit readers, they shouldn't rely on an ad-driven model. At
least, not solely. Call it guilt-tripping, donation driving, paywalling,
microtransactions, anything you will. As long as it's not the ad networks
actually asking for dosh. It's merely crowdfunding on a more diffuse and
intimate level, since the aim is for the site to exist down the line
indefinitely.

------
gathly
The internet was designed for free information exchange. If people struggle to
turn it into E-commerce, I couldn't care less.

~~~
dredmorbius
One bit I edited out of my longer post above referenced Tim Berner Lee's
original WWW proposal documents. And how eminently readably they are today.
Mostly because all they are is text and semantic markup.

------
pmiller2
I don't particularly like ads, but I don't mind if they're small, unobtrusive,
and clearly marked as ads. Also, all the usual caveats about respecting
privacy apply. I find there are very few of these types of ads around these
days. Google text ads used to be this way, but then they started injecting
them into SERPs in such a way that they looked more like results than ads.
Also, popunders and popups need not apply: they make my whole browser
unusable, and that's unacceptable.

In addition to individual ads needing to be unobtrusive, the totality of the
ads on the page needs to not make the page unusable. This is the thing that
annoys me about Youtube ads, for the most part. I visit youtube to watch
videos, and if I have to sit through an ad every time before I can do that, I
start to get annoyed.

This isn't the same as how TV ads work, either. Sure, each ad is 30 seconds,
and together they make an hour worth of programming equal to about 42 minutes
of content, but each commercial break is a few minutes long, which makes them
effectively skippable. Imagine if a commercial break were 1 minute long (so
there were 18 of them per hour). Wouldn't that get annoying fast?

~~~
malandrew
The "clearly marked as ads" is such an important point that it bears
repeating. My older brother is as luddite as they get and he has developed an
extreme mistrust of the internet and technology in general to the point that
he only visits 3-4 domains he knows he trusts and doesn't do anything else
without asking his wife if it is safe. One of the examples he shared with me
was the fact that he went for a long time without knowing the top results on
Google until he found out they were ads shown before the actual results. He
basically stopped using Google wholesale when that happened. He (I believe) is
an extreme example of what happens when you abuse the user's trust and try to
trick people.

Commerce functions best on trust and between shady advertising patterns like
this and dark patterns like opting into subscriptions, a lot of bad actors are
destroying trust on the web for luddite users.

There is probably a startup in here somewhere in making a Google Chrome or
Safari extension that looks out for dark patterns and highlights them on the
page for the user. i.e. spot ads and place a semi-transparent overlay stating
"possible ad, click to reveal and interact" or looking for check boxes with
whose default is being checkmarked and analyzing the text next to them to see
if they match the dark patterns of opting into services you probably don't
want.

------
fab13n
Regarding micro payments to fund websites: I wouldn't pay for most sites. Not
because their content is worth nothing, but because it is uncomfortable to
have a counter ticking, spending more cents for each of my mouse clicks. And
of course, I don't want to do through a billing UI for each new site I visit,
although this could be fixed.

However, I'm willing to pay an extra $10 a month to fund content providers, up
to them to share it effectively. $2e10 of advertising budget for 2e8 US
internet users is about $10 / person*month, and as large proportion of it
doesn't end up in the website owners' pockets, so it could even be cheaper
than that.

~~~
strubleandecure
There is a pot of gold waiting for someone who can make the idea of
microtransactions palatable and transparent to the web surfer. Because it has
to come, one way or the other.

In addition, all site expenditures are not equal. There are huge numbers of
clickbait sites that basically spend almost nothing in content creation, and
expenses are almost entirely incurred through hosting/bandwidth charges. On
the other extreme are smaller sites with highly loyal reader bases who create
highly useful content where the creation/research costs are substantial. It
would be almost impossible for the first group to go down the nickel-and-
dime/paywall route. So really, it's only when the site operators start asking
for the hard coin does the real test of what the content is worth in the
users' eyes start.

(Some readers actually demand a site details all their expenses exhaustively
before they agree to pay for content. This may or may not be possible, or
comfortable for site owners to accept as a neccessary part of the business.)

------
Too

       > When he presented an option for an ad-free experience, 
       > less than 1% of his 4 million unique monthly visitors 
       > signed up for the $2.99/month subscription. 
    

Congratulations! You now make almost $120000 per month. The article make that
claim sound like a bad thing.

~~~
waylandsmithers
Yes, that was my first thought too. Sounds pretty good to me.

I'm getting sick and tired of sites (and physical publications) crying "But
how are we supposed to make money?!?" Boo fucking hoo. Just because you are
running a business doesn't mean you are guaranteed riches and profits. Lots of
businesses fail, and lots of seemingly good ideas turn out to not be
economically viable (hence the persistent lack of jetpacks). Figure it out.

------
dredmorbius
I turned to this page after the following experience (I make aggressive use of
ad blockers and JS filtering generally).

This was in an incognito Chromium session where I don't run NoScript.

I was searching for some basic heat transfer references and found a page with
a nice write-up on Newton's law of heat transfer. I copied the URL into the
post I was composing as I was reading it. A "chat" dialog pops up asking if I
need tutoring assistance. Um. No. So I ignore it.

The site then navigates me away from the page and onto a registration page.

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

My immediate and predictable response: I fired up 'sudo -e /etc/hosts' and
added both hostnames to my blocklist. Though I took the courtesy of emailing
the site's contact address and asking them what the actual fuck they thought
they were doing.

Apparently Pearson Education have the educational market so fully sewn up they
can get away with this kind of bullshit.

But seriously? What the actual fuck?

Upshot: why do people block the hell out of this stuff? It's goddamned
annoying as hell.

I compiled a list some time ago on G+ that's worth repeating here:

Forbes asks: Why do programmers hate advertising so much?

First, I think it's hardly just programmers. I suspect most people find
advertising to be a negative.

But as to us techies? Why do we hate thee? Let me count the ways:

1\. It's intrusive. Many/most of us probably have some level of ADD/OCD. Or
just plain environmental sensitivity.

2\. It's distracting.

3\. It promotes a host of anti-usability features: content muting, multi-page
click-through articles, overly formatted pages, overlays, pop-ups, persistent
floating top/right/left/bottom elements, audio, video, multiple audio/video.

4\. It's creepy, and you're creeping me out. Tracking through various
deceptive means, even though I've made very clear that I don't wish to be
tracked. Incidentally, subscription content suffers a similar issue: I don't
want an audit trail of all things I've read, even on one site, let alone
across sites.

5\. The ads themselves frequently position themselves to price-discriminate --
though how and when I can never be certain (which undermines the efficacy of
all ads).

6\. The mechanisms of advertising networks pose security issues: cross-site
JS, iframes, Flash, and Java. Even just the proliferation of different JS
sources creates a serious management and cognitive overload for the security-
and privacy-conscious reader. A single article from a news site may contain
over 20 JS sources.

7\. The goods and services which are most highly advertised are those which
I'm least inclined to buy. Especially for (so-called) food and entertainment,
but also general consumer products, electronics, and various services,
especially financial services. To the point that when I see advertising my
first conscious reaction is "why do they have to try so hard to convince me
that that is something worth buying?"

8\. It's not relevant. There are a very limited number of times when I'm in a
purchase mode. The real value of the Internet would be to (correctly) identify
those times, and then find me the best deals on what I want, in the way that I
want to obtain it. Which, frankly, dear, isn't online most of the damned time.

On that last point, I've been shopping in recent times for a number of
moderately high-ticket items. Including spending a lot of time researching
options on-line. My biggest take-away is that online purchase researching
sucks massively. Contrast to the experience at a store with a well-trained,
skilled retail staff. "Is this what you like?" "No, I'm looking for something
that's more XXX". And as much as I disdain retail much of the time, the people
who are good at it figure out what you want, what you can afford, and what
they have that suits you, quickly, without wasting your time (and if you're
lucky, making the exercise enjoyable).

It's something I've also addressed recently, "Search quality vs. search
personalization". The upshot: there's a lot more information in the moment
that's relevant to purchase logic than in a person's profile or market
demographics. Advertisers/shoppers could avoid massive amounts of creep factor
by focusing on this, probably with vastly superior conversion factors.

The final thought: advertising is well and good, but where the rubber hits the
road is in making the sale. Which is where Amazon (and other sales-oriented
sites: eBay, Craigslist, Apple's iTunes) wins all over any advertising-based
site.

Update: oh, and the email I sent to Pearson? It bounced. I'm shocked, shocked
....

~~~
cliveowen
"Many/most of us probably have some level of ADD/OCD."

That's a rather debatable point, I don't know anyone with any of these,
frankly I think it's a U.S. thing. If it weren't for american movies I
wouldn't even know it was a thing.

~~~
jotm
It's because in the US, ADD/OCD-like behaviors are seen as a problem, while in
Europe they're considered "natural" up to a pretty high point.

I don't even know which is worse - making kids with slight ADHD take
stimulants (US) or ignoring the symptoms unless they're truly a problem (bad
grades and behavior aren't - you're just mentally stupid or a culturally
uneducated prick in Europe).

People with slight ADD/OCD can get by, but they'll always feel something is
wrong and that no one understands them (plus some may never reach their full
potential), while those on meds will suffer later on...

~~~
tunap
"in Europe they're considered "natural"

That is because when a majority of people exhibit certain traits, those traits
do not constitute aberrance. Marketing, Pharma influence & FUD peddling can
make a majority feel singled out. Fear & consumption 101.

~~~
acjohnson55
Assuming ADD is real (and I strongly believe it is), that doesn't imply that
the only alternative to medication is denial. In the US, besides Big Phrama, I
think another big reason we reach for the pillbox is because it's a simpler
and cheaper "solution" than trying to teach hyperactive children to better
manage themselves and having other contingencies in place for when a child is
not coping well.

~~~
tunap
I believe ADD is an umbrella diagnosis for a number of related/unrelated
symptoms we do not fully comprehend, or want to comprehend. I'm sure nobody's
brain reacts the same as any other, so 'imbalance' can easily be misconstrued
to include everyone, not just extreme cases. It is an easily marketable
diagnosis requiring little effort(patient's prerogative) and profitable
returns(healthcare provider's prerogative).

I strongly agree with 2nd point, personal accountability and good
stewardship/parenting are lost values in the western world. Our youth are
bored and brainwashed by the media...I was too. We're constantly reminded we
are 'special'(individually, just like everyone else), we can buy
happiness/solutions to our problems if we have the latest/greatest (*) and
'Not my kid' is almost a national anthem. Perception is everything & it too is
easily manipulated by selfish and external influences. I too am impressionable
and find much of marketing insulting, sometimes assaulting. That's why I do
not watch commercial television and browse the Tubez w/ AdBlock & NoScript...I
am startled sometimes when I browse without them, it's a completely different
experience.

edit: reworded last two sentences

------
d5ve
I think of online advertising in the same way as I now do smoking in a
workplace, pub or restaurant - I can't believe people used to live like this.
Using someone else's browser and seeing the distracting and intrusive ads
feels a bit like trying to eat a meal surrounded by the smell and eye
irritation of second-hand smoke.

------
jsmith0295
The solution is simple: websites just need to start detecting adblock and
refusing let someone use the site with it enabled. If you don't like it...go
pay for an ad free service. Nobody deserves to get something for nothing.

Edit: Additionally, using someones server resources that they pay for without
contributing anything to their revenue, if ads are in fact an important source
of their revenue, is effectively stealing. Just because the ads annoy you
doesn't justify screwing the people who pay to run the site you're using.

~~~
LocalPCGuy
I disagree that it is stealing. That is their form of monetizing, but as you
said, they can choose not to provide an AdBlock user with service if they
want.

It's my computer, and I choose (well, for the most part) what I download to my
computer. It's on the website owner to decide not to allow that behavior.

Completely different from downloading copyrighted material, for instance, or
from walking into a store and walking out with something. Closest analogy I
could make is maybe reading a magazine at the rack instead of buying it and
taking it home.

~~~
jsmith0295
Yeah stealing was a strong word. As for downloading copyrighted material, at
least that doesn't necessarily have a direct cost to the content
creators/providers, where as for example streaming a video from YouTube while
ignoring all of the ads is bad for both Google as well as the people who rely
on ad revenue to make YouTube videos full time as it actually costs Google
money in addition to not generating them any revenue.

In fact I would say the example of reading the magazine in the store is more
applicable to copyright violation, and that using AdBlock is more like going
into a Starbucks to use the WiFi without buying anything, except worse, as
with AdBlock one generally wouldn't turn it off, so every time someone with
AdBlock visits the site they're basically just sucking up resources.

~~~
XorNot
Mechanically, my browser is asking for index.html. At that point, your server
can decide what it's going to send, but I'm not obligated to ask for any other
data from you - nor am I obligated to execute arbitrary client-side code.

Web site operates make a calculated risk when they offer service the way they
do, in the same way that Starbucks does in offering free wi-fi. And a lot of
people don't do it that way - for instance a lot of coffee shops give you the
wi-fi password with a purchase and I suspect in the future we may see a move
to using enterprise WPA2 and "purchase enables x hours of access" policies.

Saying things should work differently gets absurd quickly: you don't earn
money just for showing ads, you need click-throughs. If no one clicks through,
are they still stealing? What if my browser renders the ads and I just tape up
my screen so I can't see them etc. etc.

------
josephlord
I don't block ads but I do largely block Javascript and Cookies (thank-you
Noscript). It does greatly reduce the number of ads but that is a side effect
(the fact that it blocks obnoxious moving content is intended). No if I could
just get Noscript for mobile Safari...

~~~
JohnTHaller
You can use mobile Firefox on Android and use Noscript.

------
lazyjones
Our website has ads too, but I fully support everyone who wants to block them.
They add no value to the website and I'm only interested in people using our
site, not in getting them distracted or annoyed. We even have an ad-free
version of our main website (but it's not indexed by search engines).

I've also learned that people working at ad agencies as well as those handling
ads on the publisher side tend to be extremely incompetent w.r.t. web
publishing. They do not understand how usability, reputation, visitor/customer
satisfaction work. They tend to believe that looking at ads is the most
important thing people visit websites for (and possibly that people make road
trips just in order to look at the billboards).

~~~
erikig
Just a side note - I do know a lot of people that love to go to Times Square
at night to be bathed in the bright but artificial light of the billboards.

------
jrabone
Ads on desktop browsers are no longer the problem - between ABP and Ghostery
one need never see another ad. The mobile device is the new battleground, but
the prevalence of "dual-funded" apps (free, ad-supported and pay-for, ad-free)
gives me some hope that a sane business model will emerge.

Meanwhile I reconfigured bind on my LAN to DNS-spoof roughly 3500 ad-serving
domains and redirect them to a logging but otherwise content-free HTTP server
(hey, it's OK when my ISP or my government do it to ME, right?). Very
interesting just how bad the problem is. I recommend you try it to get a real
feel for just how much crap the average page requests behind your back.

------
nathancahill
I used an ad blocker until I started showing ads on one of my websites.

Now, I click ads on blogs I read frequently and tools that I use and support.
Gittip and Flattr (and Bitcoin) could replace this behavior if they had wider
adoption.

~~~
__david__
Really? I didn't stop. In fact, it caused me 20 to 30 minutes of debugging
over a couple of times because I couldn't figure out why my ads weren't
showing up :-).

~~~
nathancahill
Yep. Did that too. Switched it off after that and never turned it back on.

------
strubleandecure
In this age of drive-by downloads, (100% legal) sorched-earth adblocking has
all the advantages and none of the disadvantages. If the web advertising would
police themselves better none of this would be neccessary. They are not held
responsible in any financial and/or legal sense for any damage they incur when
a malware incursion occurs, or the dire consequences for a end-user if they
get botnetted into doing something dire that would bring down the wrath of law
enforcement.

The longer they drag their feet on reforming the Wild Wild West that is web
advertising the more likely adblocking will turn into the status quo for an
increasing percentage of people and they're not going back to the old ways of
usage anytime soon. All the guilt-tripping advertisers are trying to pull is
wasted on adblockers because they're not the ones actually producing the
content people give a shit about, a subtle but important difference It's like
venture capitalists trying to harangue the customer base of a startup they're
involved with.

I don't expect things to improve with the ad networks anytime soon. Just the
mere thought of the DNT flag being default on Firefox was enough to send them
into a frenzy. Most of them explicitly ignore the flag anyway.

------
_cipher_
Definitely a solution. For many years web sucked. Still sucks (and much more).

I personally, do not care for any company that stores cookies on >my< system
without my permission.

~~~
eli
Understanding that other people's business models aren't your problem... what
would you prefer publishers do instead? Paid subscriptions? Micropayments?
"Sponsored Content"? Charity work?

~~~
betterunix
How about ads that don't do any of this:

* Require me to download megabytes of Javascript and Flash, particularly when I have to pay by the megabyte for my data plan.

* Consume excessive CPU time and reduce my battery life

* Use CSS to hover over the actual text I was trying to read

* Make noise

* Pop-ups

* Pop-unders

* Link to malware

* Link to scams

* Ignore me when I say "DO NOT TRACK"

In other words, show me a modicum of respect. Deliver ads that actually have
value for me, rather than treating me like the product you are selling to
someone else. Nobody complains about the ads they see on Amazon, largely
because Amazon is doing this.

The absolute worst thing you can do is try to defeat the ad blocker I
installed. That means you have become my adversary -- in which case I have
zero reason to care about your revenue stream.

~~~
eli
If you come up with an Ad Blocker that blocks all those things, but lets
"good" ads through, I'd pay for a license! :)

------
pasbesoin
Like Usenet, too many people have started talking about them.

Personally, I don't mind the idea of ad-supported content. But the
malware/exploitation risk, and the utter distraction many moving, "noisy" ads
cause me, continue to make it a non-starter for me, personally.

Back in the "early days", I actually encountered and clicked through on a fair
number of useful ads. But... as time went on, they did not remain useful, nor
benign.

------
fatman
I feel the same way about ad blockers as I do about skipping commercials with
the DVR - my purchasing decisions are almost never influenced by ads, so why
would I bother watching them? I'm just afraid that someday, even without DVR's
and Adblockers, companies will figure out that I'm not buying their crap and
stop offering me free TV shows and websites, ads or no.

------
ankitoberoi
Just Blocking Ads on all websites, is not a solution. You are only trying to
put publishers out of business who provide and share information.

I actually wrote a post on the subject sometime ago:
[http://www.adpushup.com/blog/ad-blocking-bad-news-
consumers/](http://www.adpushup.com/blog/ad-blocking-bad-news-consumers/)

Sorry about the plug, I'm a co-founder @ AdPushup and a near future product
goal is also to prevent publishers from Ad Blockers.

I know I'll get downvoted here (everyone just hates ads so much), but there
are networks which do serve malware-free ads.

Also, you don't want to punish all the publishers just because some (or even
if it's a majority) do bad.

~~~
msh
If you don't punish the publishers how would the problem ever be solved?

~~~
ankitoberoi
You should punish publishers who serve malware, popups, JS & other bad stuff
BUT you don't punish ALL the publishers - many of them don't do that and are
just fine.

In fact, instead of an AdBlocker, it is better off if there is a plugin which
blocks such sites completely. Why use their content if you don't like them
anyway.

~~~
msh
but there are no easy way to discern the good sites from the bad so I just
cant stop visiting bad sites when i get a link or search for something.

So the only way for it to get better is collective punishment. If web
publishers made decent websites such things would not be needed.

~~~
grkvlt
No. That doesn't work. There's a reason collective punishment is a war crime,
you know.

~~~
msh
Why doesn't it work? If people decide to boycott a company or industry for
unetical acts have worked in the past, not always but you cant say it dont
have the possibility of a positive effect.

By the way, collective punishment is not a war crime. It can be in certain
circumstances but so can a lot of other things.

~~~
ankitoberoi
We are not talking about boycotting a company or industry here. That's
boycotting the Internet because Publishers who provide free information here
make a large part of the Internet.

In the end, you won't find so much content freely available and would have to
pay for it directly - most likely.

------
jotm
Heh, ad blockers are both a solution for the users and a problem for the
advertisers and publishers.

But they were created to deal with the insanity of the latter - with an ad
blocker (and that probably includes JS blockers nowadays), you don't get all
the wonderful pop-ups, pop-unders, sliding ads, floating survey invites, half
a dozen text and image ads advertising often unrelated stuff, the super
annoying audio coming from who knows where, unexpected redirects, the lost
seconds while you wait for the page to load, and more.

If advertisers used better ad targeting, fewer and less intrusive ads, that
would definitely reduce the number of people who install ad blockers.

~~~
strubleandecure
I also see in the wild much higher occurences of ad networks serving up survey
content recently. This is really an implicit acknowledgement that widespread
adblocking is taking toll on the bottom line and their proposed solution is
for DEEPER mining, not less of it. They're fishing for data on a level that's
impossible with a standard ad+tracker.

------
rwl
I have a hard time sympathizing at all with "publishers" who are hurt by ad-
blockers.

The vast majority of web sites, I would guess, fall into one of two
categories. The first category are sites which are a labor of love: they are
written and maintained because someone just wants to have a voice, or to get
their information out there. These sites can often be run on nearly-free
hardware from a home Internet connection that you would be paying for anyway.
Hardware and bandwidth costs are near zero, or low enough that the operator is
willing to cover them at a loss. The operator is not expecting to make money,
so advertising is not necessary.

The second category are sites operated by businesses that are expecting to
make money by selling a genuine product or service. These sites have non-
trivial costs to develop, operate, and maintain, but the sites lives on the
cost side, not the revenue side, of the balance sheet. That's OK, because the
business sells something else which (presumably) covers that cost and then
some.

The "publishers" expecting to make money from advertising fall into neither of
these categories. They are operating sites with the expectation of making
money, but they have nothing generating revenue except advertising placed in
their "content".

Hoping to make money by running a web site that does nothing but serve pages
for free is an unsustainable business model. If you want to make money, sell
something less ephemeral than a web page.

I'm not saying that _publishing_ (without the scare quotes) is an
unsustainable business. If your product is your "content", put it in a form
that someone will actually want to buy, like a book or a magazine. Something
that your customers can hang on to, that they can reference when they're away
from their browsers, that they can lend to their friends, that doesn't simply
disappear at your whim. People do pay for those things, and they even tolerate
ads there. If you're not willing to provide something of real and tangible
value, don't expect your audience to be willing to provide you with a revenue
stream. And don't complain when they evade your attempts to force that on
them.

------
Derbasti
I block ads. I'd rather not read a website than read it with ads. If your
business needs me to see your ads, I'd rather not be your customer. If these
practices will bring down the ad industry, all the better.

~~~
johnchristopher
> I block ads. I'd rather not read a website than read it with ads. _If your
> business needs me to see your ads_ , I'd rather not be your customer.

Are you referring to the ad business in general , the advertised business or
the website business ? Because blocking ads and reading the website still
makes you the website's consumer, right ?

~~~
Derbasti
As noted in the preceding sentence: _I 'd rather not read a website than read
it with ads_

They can choose to not show me the website since I run an ad blocker. I am
completely fine with that.

I don't read magazines, because they usually contain enormous amounts of ads.
I don't watch television because of ads.

I pay for websites if I value their content and there is an option to pay for
them to remove ads.

------
Bartweiss
The site owners discussing how no one took them up on their subscription
services seem to miss a significant point: their sites aren't worth anything
like what they're charging to most users. $25 for an annual site subscription
is something I'd only pay for a handful of sites - most sites simply don't
have enough unique, quality content to make me care.

Replacing adblock with ad-free subscriptions isn't the way of the future. The
"beauty" of advertising is that it can create revenue for a site owner in
excess of the value they provide to their viewers.

------
tinalumfoil
When you get content for free, you do it under the agreement you're going to
look at their ads. Decide sifting through ads isn't worth it? Close the tab.

Ad blockers allow people to break this "agreement". If less people are viewing
ads, the quality of the content has to drop or the advertising (what funds all
that "free" content) has to increase.

Just like all those "why I pirate" things, its just a long way of saying "I'm
too lazy/cheap to compensate people for the content they produce"

------
linuxhansl
People can say and do what they want... If there is a moving or worse a
sounding ad, I will block it.

I do not mind text or (still) image ads.

Show some respect for the viewers and ad blocker will not be needed.

------
yetanotherphd
People have a right to use ad-blockers. It's their computer after all.

However, a lot of things that people like to use, and might even have been
willing to watch ads in order to use, will not be viable if everyone used
adblockers.

It's really that simple. However, most people don't like to acknowledge that
given the opportunity, the will freeload of others, or that in some contexts
freeloading is natural and not immoral

~~~
radmuzom
I don't think the original article or people who despise Ad blocking software
(like me) question the right of people to use ad-blockers. All we are saying
is that economics and free markets will eventually take care of the problem,
and will result in much lesser useful content being created for people to
consume. If one thinks that lesser content is better and the only ones allowed
to publish content are big budget companies like Google who can afford to pay
Adblock developers to be in the whitelist, then so be it.

------
nitrogen
Some of the less free ITU member states recently designed a bunch of nasty,
restrictive protocols for turning the Internet into a complex web of pay-per-
hop-per-packet price gouging. Maybe some of those concepts can be turned on
their head and used to create a reliable, opt-in micropayment network using
bitcoin, sort of how copyleft exploits copyright for the benefit of the many
over the few.

------
erikig
Ad blockers are going to gradually become irrelevant (like pop-up blockers)
primarily because of the mobile web.

I believe the adoption of the mobile web is forcing advertisers to reconsider
their strategies. With the limited screen real-estate and cut-throat
competition for those pixels it becomes difficult for the marketers to go
overboard.

------
vezzy-fnord
A superfluous solution. They're easily fingerprintable, unlike blocking ad
trackers from the hosts file.

[http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/](http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/)

~~~
eli
Purely a guess, but I think the majority of AdBlock users simply don't want
ads on their screen and don't feel strongly about the privacy implications or
the bandwidth savings or any other potential benefits.

~~~
tbirdz
In that case, why not have the ad blocker download the content, and execute
the tracking js, but simply not display the resulting ad to the user. It would
register as an impression to the ad company, so the content publisher would
get paid, and at the same time the user would not have to look at the ad.

If you raise the issue of the ad company paying for people who don't watch the
ad, just consider the situation of the ad industry in any other media. TV ads?
The viewer can easily turn off the TV during the ads, like I do, or change the
channel to a channel not showing an ad. The same is true for radio ads. For
ads at the start of a movie, you can come to the movie 10-15 minutes late,
thus getting there right when the movie starts and skipping the ads, or just
wait in the lobby until the ads are over. Magazine ads you can easily skip to
the articles and never look at the ads.

Even in web ads, you can take my old father's "low-tech" add blocker, a paper
cutout he hangs on his monitor that physically block ads in the margin on the
side of the screen.

~~~
eli
All you've done is moved the problem up the value chain. Now instead of
publishers losing revenue to AdBlock, it's advertisers. That's not a good
solution. Advertisers will very quickly see that their conversion rates are
falling and will adjust how much they pay for an impression accordingly. (Not
to mention that many ads are sold per click and not per impression.)

Changing the channel during an ad is already priced in to the cost of the TV
ad. The TV people do studies on how many people change the channel or hit
mute. But mostly they don't care because they can _see_ that the TV ads work
by how many people call the 800 number or how in-store sales jump after an ad
runs in a region.

This is especially true of online ads. If you have an online store, you
probably don't really care how many impressions your ads have or even how many
people click -- your main metric is how much did it cost to get you a paying
customer. Ad Block drives that number up whether it loads the ad or not.

~~~
lowmagnet
> Now instead of publishers losing revenue to AdBlock, it's advertisers.

But if one simple trick thinks that I'm going to click on their ad, they're
simply making a bad bet on me.

The problem is striking a balance between ads that are appropriate to a _site_
(based more on site demographics) versus ads that _spy_ on your browsing
habits whilst within their ad network fence.

I don't mind an ad for adafruit on a diy electronic site. I do mind a dvor
knife ad following me around to every. goddamned. site. I. visit.

------
kybernetyk
Without ad blockers I would be back to using gopher and usenet.

------
D9u
[https://opensource.conformal.com/wiki/adsuck](https://opensource.conformal.com/wiki/adsuck)

All that crap doesn't reach my browser.

------
Kiro
I turned off AdBlock when I realized how many sites break with it enabled, for
example all sites with GTM. I used to think the sites were just broken in
general but now I know better.

------
tbarbugli
A solution, assholes :)

