
Acceptable Ads explained: monetization - kawera
https://adblockplus.org/blog/acceptable-ads-explained-monetization
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dingo_bat
Already moved to ublock origin. Goodwill is a funny thing, once you lose it,
it's impossible to gain back.

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vmorgulis
Me too. ublock is far better.

I play sometimes with tag selector (the "pipette" icon) to remove ads. I
wonder if it's possible to share that easily.

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amelius
Can't they just offer paid subscriptions, that remove all ads by paying the
publishers?

Framed differently: AdBlock as a micropayment service.

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joelhaus
Probably possible, but this creates an environment where independent small
publishers would rely on donations to sustain. Only cash-rich corporations
would be able to foot this bill... reminds me of the net neutrality issue.

I prefer this solution:
[https://contributor.google.com](https://contributor.google.com)

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Elhana
It is really easy to bypass any kind of adblock filtering by just hosting your
ads locally on your own domain, but for some reason all the 'content creators'
are to lazy to go back to the old ways. When you buy a newspaper, you can't
magically cut images out of it, especially if layout changes from time to time
and same can be applied to web pages.

Blame those hassle-free, privacy violating personalized ad networks that
infected everything.

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JohnTHaller
Most companies won't pay for advertising online without the ability to monitor
performance independent of the publisher (who could easily lie to make more
money) and without the ability to more accurately detect fake clicks (which
the publisher could help fake). Part of the way the big ad networks work is to
detect fake visitors/clicks - on behalf of the publisher and the advertiser's
competitors - and exclude them. We can argue the success/failure of how well
they do it, but we can't really argue that companies want it.

One way you can do self-hosted ads is pay for purchase instead of pay per view
or pay per click. In this, the website would participate in an affiliate
program or company, promote their product on the site, and then get a cut of
revenue (sales/subscriptions/etc). Unfortunately, this is a very small portion
of advertising revenue and is very hit or miss.

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DanBlake
My guess as to what will take down ABP will be their 'antiadblock' filter
list.

Essentially they are writing and maintaining a anti-anti-circumvention tool. I
know it might sound crazy, but think about this example-

Bob writes a computer game. He wants it to be free for registered users, but
guests can either pay a monthly subscription or be ad supported to use it as
well.

Joe writes a crack for said game, so everyone gets the paid experience.

I think anyone would agree the above scenario is a prime case for a DMCA
lawsuit as it is the definition of a circumvention of access control.

I do not see how it would be different for doing the same thing on a website.
In the eyes of the law, they are both software getting circumvented. Adblock
plus is developing and maintaining ways to circumvent access controls
developed by other companies.

Personally I dont have a issue with adblock and the generic filters. I have a
issue with the site specific filters as I think they are likely illegal
depending on each sites tos

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twwhoevenknows
I don't get how its illegal -- I don't see any EULA I have to agree to when I
load a web page.

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DanBlake
The lack of a EULA does not mean you can do whatever you want. The DMCA still
applies.

Also, many sites have a tos that governs what you can and cannot do.
Regardless, its not illegal for you the user, but for ABP the company. They
are profiting from circumventing software.

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zelcon5
Why doesn't Google et al provide a shim for web servers to proxy ads off their
own domains, with the same URI routes as the actual content? That way, an
adblocker would also prevent the content from being served. (Why waste your
networking load on non-paying customers?)

The main obstacle is that this introduces a middleman---so Google et al should
only offer this service to the BIG money-makers (like nytimes.com) until they
can ship something secure. Adblocking "problem" solved.

WHY don't Ad companies do this? I can see this as an Apache/nginx module or
middleware libraries for whatever web server is used, without having to change
anything else. How long would this take for the army of 140 IQ Google
codemonkeys…like 1 day lol?

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Nullabillity
Ad blockers don't just look at the domain name.

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zelcon5
Adblockers may use more than the URI, but it starts with the URI and if it
does not match, then it does not block.

If a video file is served from cdn.example.com/video/?file=3w0rjwo, then have
a DoubleClick ad serve from cdn.example.com/video/?file=0239fjad with phony
HTTP headers including mime type.

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x0x0
They carefully elide one of the most important criteria: pay eyeo.

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LeeHarveysGrave
No kidding, nor do they explain that ad agencies have little to no interest in
selling their clients this 'acceptable experience'.

Nor do large brands have any interest in promoting expensively created brands
with sub-par adverts.

Truth be told they're after a slice of the remnant and low rent market so
they're effectively extorting the small and medium businesses, "mom and pop"
outfits, folks that use adwords and similar to build their brands.

Extorting publishers and telling them to pay to advertise on their own content
is pretty cheeky.

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thecolorblue
I would second this.

Is there any data out there on ad placement effectiveness? It sounds like they
are removing the ads that are actually effective and leaving the ads nobody
notices, in other words, the ads that nobody would pay for.

As someone who used to work for a SaaS company, it always amazed me how many
people expect to get things for free.

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tomjen3
I can't remember the last time a promoted tweet was relevant for me. I am not
going to buy Samsungs new super expensive phone, I am not going to be using
mail-chimp.

So why do I keep seeing ads for crap I don't need and products I already know
about, instead of new products that are useful that I can actually use? Maybe
if ads were useful people would want to see them and so they wouldn't have to
be annoying.

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thecolorblue
That is a good point, relevant ads are less annoying. Are you fine with ad
companies collecting information about you to give you better targeted ads?

