
First Victory of the Mobile Ad-Blocking War: A “L.E.A.N.” Digital-Ad Standard - ForHackernews
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/10/are-the-ad-blocking-wars-already-over/412327/?single_page=true
======
interpol_p
I was interested in this standard until I read the following:

> _These ads will still track users across the web, though. Cunningham notes
> that the IAB will alter its general industry standards so that ads appear
> “before, but never AFTER” someone makes a purchase (emphasis his)._

Just don't track users. Don't mine data about your readers. It's impersonal,
it's ugly, and it's wrong. What I want on the web is for you to create the
content you want to share, and I want you to pick the advertisements you think
I'll like. I don't want you to delegate that responsibility to a tracking
third-party.

A few years ago I pulled all the analytics services out of my apps. All
unnecessary server contact was removed (i.e., anything not initiated by the
user). I was just emailed by a group wanting the "backend usage data" from one
of my apps which has been very popular with kids; the group specifically
wanted it for that reason. I was very proud to be able to tell them that the
app makes no contact with any servers whatsoever.

~~~
gglitch
>Just don't track users. Don't mine data about your readers.

I'd expand this to: "Don't ask your users to trust you or anyone you have a
business relationship with. Be absolutely transparent about what they're
giving up for the content you're providing." \--Edited for clarity

------
chris_wot
I went to the Sydney Morning Herald on my OS X box the other day, and found
that after about 30 seconds I could no longer scroll up and down the article.
Turns out they had some big interstitial ad that was blocking the down and up
buttons. I had a look at the JavaScript running in the background and counted
at least five trackers all running at once.

This has honestly now changed my behaviour. I've decided that the SMH is too
slow for too little value for the already paucity of quality news and analysis
it provides. Heck, I can't even post comments to their site any more - it all
gets rejected after waiting in a moderation queue for ages. I cancelled my
subscription and now I read my news from The Guardian Australia which has more
content and better analysis, and certainly very few ads!

Goodbye SMH, you were an institution for so long, but your golden days are
behind you and you are becoming increasingly irrelevant.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
This experience has always been why I've been against ad blockers: in some
sense it 'rewards' bad publishers who choke their site with ads.

~~~
chris_wot
I've often wondered whether a similar policy should be given where you get the
ability to whitelist certain third party domains and prevent any AJAX requests
from triggering (and blocking) to domains outside of the website you are
browsing.

------
nhebb
The only reason ad blockers work is because they serve external resources.
When media sites really wise up, they will figure out a way to serve ads from
their own domains. Building a system for ad bidding, rotation, tracking,
advertiser monitoring, and external auditing is too big of a task for many
sites, so I think there's a startup opportunity to develop and sell a platform
that can easily be installed on a server.

~~~
JohannesH
They already have... My employer are running multiple native advertising techs
to alleviate the problem of ad blocking. We are also running anti-ad-blocker
techs to measure and take action on users with active ad-blocking
technologies.

Personally, I'm thoroughly against this arms race where both we and our users
are loosing. But the financial side of our company sees it a different way.

~~~
igravious
You're talking about 3rd-party tech? Could you name one (or some?). Given that
Linux is big server-side the tech would have to fit into that stack so I'd
like to see how that's done for curiosity sake.

I think having it native is actually better because then companies will see
the impact on their bandwidth and compute resources so that'll force ad-tech
to be less bloaty. In theory.

