
Ad Tech Founder Says It's Time to Stop Blaming Ad Blockers - zebeast
https://medium.com/buysellads-restoring-the-balance/stop-blaming-adblockers-adab2642c571#.4e8q0qguh
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eevilspock
While it is heartening that an ad tech guy is coming out critical of the
damage ads and ad tech are doing to the web, what he won't say but nonetheless
implies is far more important: The free market isn't working in this context.
Its invisible hand has been handcuffed.

He says users are the real customers and their interests are not being served.
Of course not! The invisible hand works because buyers directly pay for the
things they choose to use. They vote with their wallets. But when things
appear to be free and the true cost are hidden and indirect[1], the voting
becomes rigged. When there is a intermediary (advertising) that distributes
consumer dollars to publishers, that intermediary's vote has far more weight,
and its interests will be served at the expense of the client (consumers).
What makes it more perverse is this intermediary also has the goal of
manipulating our consumption decisions, using information asymmetries and our
own psychological weaknesses against us, and we fund them!

When he says "ads make the world go round", that should scare the shit out of
invisible hand believers.

-

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773)

~~~
krrrh
I don't disagree with the finer points in your argument, and I'm a big
advocate for paying for services directly as a personal choice. It's perhaps a
semantic issue, but the invisible hand seems to be working as expected in this
case. From the article:

> Consumers, today more than at any time in the past, are starting to question
> the value of content online and whether or not it’s worth the trade offs. In
> their eyes, it’s increasingly difficult to justify their interaction with
> ads.

In the last couple of years adblocking has gone from a fringe thing to do, to
mainstream adoption [1]. This is absolutely the sort of consumer action that
the 'invisible hand' serves as a metaphor for, and it is disciplining the
market. Apple touting adblocking as a feature of iOS 9 is another example of
market forces working to chasten advertisers and publishers for asking too
much from consumers. So is AMP and Blendle, so is the rise of HBO, Hulu Plus
and Netflix, so was the commercial skip button on TiVo. All of these have
emerged because a sizable enough number of consumers demanded an alternative
and the 'invisible hand' guided businesses to answer these demands.

The author is not capitulating for any reason other than that current adtech
approaches on the web are losing their market viability, and the number of
consumers that are reaching their limit is steadily increasing.

[1] 41% increase in 2015 alone. [https://pagefair.com/blog/2015/ad-blocking-
report/](https://pagefair.com/blog/2015/ad-blocking-report/)

~~~
eevilspock
Saying the rise of ad blocking is a manifestation of the invisible hand doing
its thing is like saying the rise of socialism or even looting is a
manifestation of the invisible hand in response to rising inequality.

See what I mean?

So yes, if you define "invisible hand" in the broad way that you do, then as
long as we have democracy, all social and political developments are invisible
hand actions. I'm fine with that definition but libertarians and free-market
worshipers would categorically reject that definition. They specifically mean
the invisible hand _of the market_ , i.e. of buying and selling decisions[1].
Not end-runs around the market such as voting for wealth redistribution,
looting, ad blocking, or charging consumers for product A by "taxing" product
B (which is what funding product A via advertising for product B is).

¡Viva la Revolución! (I'm serious.)

-

[1] [http://www.factmonster.com/cig/economics/equilibrium-mr-
dema...](http://www.factmonster.com/cig/economics/equilibrium-mr-demand-meet-
mr-supply.html)

~~~
krrrh
I'm only am amateur in economics, but I've read my share of Friedman, Rand,
and Hayek, and I am pretty sure that pro-market thinkers, and economists in
general, have a broader conception of the phrase 'invisible hand' than you
think. They would understand the rise of ad-blocking as a rejection of a
business model by large numbers of individuals. Thus, an 'invisible hand' is
guiding businessmen like the author to look for opportunities that will lead
to the survival or success of his own business (the same goes for the other
examples I referenced) and in the end provide marginally less of what
consumers don't want, and more of what they do.

Consumers are signalling a preference to publications by choosing to not
download some javascript, images, or video to their computers. It's really not
that different from putting a 'no junk mail' sticker on your postbox or
binning flyers without looking at them, but still enjoying cheaper postage so
long as the postal service is subsidized by ad-mail. Hardly an end run around
the market or an illegal act.

The concept merely states that people like the author have a motivation to pay
attention to what consumers want and try to deliver products that satisfy
consumer desires (which are always changing). When Apple sees an opportunity
to make their products more attractive to consumers by introducing an ad-
blocking API they are absolutely led by the _invisible hand_ of the market in
this direction. Smith's point was that providing this option to consumers
doesn't require Apple to be moral, or to be coerced, merely to respond to what
consumers want and exploit the opportunity to their own profit.

------
yetihehe
> We need to recognize that integrated and contextual ad placement can provide
> tremendous value to consumers.

Integrated - non-blockable, because our ads will be so embedded in content, it
will be (buy Kleenex) indistinguishable.

Contextual - even more tracking.

> It’s time we call it like it is, and if we do that “standard” advertisements
> may become a thing of the past in the near future.

Which means adblockers won't have any patterns to recognize ads.

~~~
jmiserez
Someone versed in natural language processing could make an ad-blocker that
filters these things out of the articles. I think that could be a pretty cool
little project.

