
Insane state of today's advertising part 3 - archon810
https://plus.google.com/+ArtemRussakovskii/posts/53n5LdCYTbF
======
jdangu
Awesome to see that subject #1 on HN.

At my startup Confiant [1], we block bad ads in stream on behalf of
publishers. Cedato aka Algovid aka TLVMedia is one of our prime targets, we
block millions of their ad impressions daily.

They are essentially buying cheap display ad placements to resell them as fake
video preroll ad placements. They sell on video exchanges like AOL's AdapTV
and others. To maximize their yield, they resend ad requests in a loop to
multiple parties every few seconds until an ad clears, leading to this massive
network load.

We're on a mission to drive them out of business (and we're hiring ;) )

[1] [https://www.confiant.com](https://www.confiant.com) (edit forgot link)

~~~
oasfboasbfos
The only good ad is a dead one.

With very few exceptions, especially in the consumer space, you won't need
advertising if you actually need something. You'll search it out or your
friends will tell you what to buy.

Advertising serves as a way for the capitalist class to exert veto power over
other aspects of society by yanking funding at opportune moments (see the
current Google snafu or Bill O'Reilly's departure from FOX (which was an
example of this power being used for good indirectly via public pressure)). It
also allows for shows of dominance, strength, and to move fucking product by
creating an awareness moat vs your competitors. This means that people often
already know they want to buy something, but they'll pick you instead of the
other one which is fundamentally different from advertising performing a
public service.

~~~
recursive
Everyone thinks advertising doesn't work on them. And everyone is wrong.

~~~
oiboabfljasbfo
My claim is that it does work. Astoundingly well. My further claim is that it
is not in the public interest.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
I think people will always try to influence others, and I don't think
advertising is the worst form of doing it. If you say that it's not in the
public interest you'd have to compare it to alternatives that are.

That said, I think there should be restrictions put on the methods that
advertisers are allowed to use. What currently happens in online advertising
hurts everybody, including those who rely on ad funded business models.

Another issue is aonymity. In a world without advertising, you'd have to pay
for everything directly. Making anonymous payments is extremely difficult and
easily outlawed entirely.

~~~
thecrazyone
I'm a libertarian. And putting/enforcing rules on someone who's not aggressing
you because you don't like it seems like needing coercion.

You're voluntarily consuming ad-based content, no one's forcing you. If you
don't like their ad-supported content, shouldn't you use only content which
paid for in different ways? Why should anyone be restricted in their actions
because of your opinions?

~~~
fauigerzigerk
_> Why should anyone be restricted in their actions because of your opinions?_

Because the rights and protections under the law that advertisers rely on only
exist because of my opinion and the opinion of other citizens.

Without the law, the concept of private property would be largely undefined.
Corporations would not exist. There would be no limited liability, no chapter
11, no enforceable contracts, no trademarks, no patents, no copyrights, no
courts, no police, nothing of the sort.

If we want to enjoy the protection that the rule of law affords us, we will
have to accept that there needs to be some sort of social process that
determines what our laws should be. It's a negotiation.

And no, using ad-supported services is not voluntary in any realistic sense of
the word. There are many essential necessities of modern life that are ad-
supported and have no real alternatives.

Also, voluntary is a rather ill defined term when it comes to things that most
people cannot even know or understand.

~~~
ancap
> If we want to enjoy the protection that the rule of law affords us, we will
> have to accept that there needs to be some sort of social process that
> determines what our laws should be. It's a negotiation.

I have seen this sentiment a lot on HN as a counter to libertarian arguments,
but really it's a straw man. The argument you are making is essentially: as a
society we make rules, therefore we can enact rule x. Whereas the libertarian
argument is (phrased in the vernacular of your counter-argument): society
should only have rules which protect private property and prevent aggression.

> And no, using ad-supported services is not voluntary in any realistic sense
> of the word. There are many essential necessities of modern life that are
> ad-supported and have no real alternatives.

So? Just because person A depends upon the services of person B doesn't mean
that person A can make outlandish demands on the way person B provides said
services. Let A and B negotiate and determine the most agreeable terms for
their cooperative exchange, sure. Alternatively, A can choose to deal with
person C instead.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
_> The argument you are making is essentially: as a society we make rules,
therefore we can enact rule x._

No, I was responding to this very general question by thecrazyone: "Why should
anyone be restricted in their actions because of your opinions?".

I was interpreting this question in the sense in which libertarians are often
framing it: "What gives society the right to get involved in voluntary
agreements between individuals?"

So I was merely explaining my reasoning on why society has a legitimate role
to play and why my opinion as a citizen counts for something.

Once that is out of the way, we can go on arguing about what specific rules
are good or bad.

And on that point I have one key disagreement with some libertarians. I do not
accept the absolute priority of private property over all other interests and
freedoms that people value.

I find this primacy extremely contradictory given that there can never be a
level playing field and libertarians keep arguing against levelling the
playing field where that would be possible to some degree (inheritance tax)

I also question whether private property is sufficiently well defined or
definable without taking into account other considerations of what it means to
be human.

 _> Just because person A depends upon the services of person B doesn't mean
that person A can make outlandish demands on the way person B provides said
services._

I don't know what outlandish demands you are talking about.

~~~
ancap
> I find this primacy extremely contradictory given that there can never be a
> level playing field and libertarians keep arguing against levelling the
> playing field where that would be possible to some degree (inheritance tax)

> I also question whether private property is sufficiently well defined or
> definable without taking into account other considerations of what it means
> to be human.

I'm sure we could have a very interesting discussion on these objections but
I'd hate to go completely off topic. But I'll easily bite :)

> I don't know what outlandish demands you are talking about.

In the context of the thread, clearly the outlandish demand would be
regulating the advertising that B uses in providing A a service.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
_> I'm sure we could have a very interesting discussion on these objections
but I'd hate to go completely off topic. But I'll easily bite :)_

OK :-)

 _> In the context of the thread, clearly the outlandish demand would be
regulating the advertising that B uses in providing A a service._

I don't want to regulate against annoying ads either. That's not what I'm
talking about at all because this is something consumers can see with their
own eyes, install an ad-blocker or stop using the service where there are
alternatives.

But some of the things that ad networks are doing behind the scenes are so
unexpected, complex or even malicious that consumers cannot be expected to
understand them or to have voluntarily agreed to them. That's an area where I
think something should be done.

We already have a lot of rules on the legality of contracts, on transparency,
on duty of care, on liability for damage, etc. Not all of these rules have
caught up to digital services yet.

------
aorth
In related news, uBlock Origin has finally (today) been converted to a
WebExtension and is now fully compatible with Firefox 57 and beyond.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-
origin](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin)

~~~
SimeVidas
I’ve switched to Ghostery, and it seems to work fine. Should I go back to
uBlock Origin?

~~~
KingMachiavelli
Ghostery has or has had some controversial analytics called GhostRank that it
collects(it may be opt-in I'm not sure). But uBlock Origin is definiently the
best content filtering extension I've ever used.

~~~
Vinnl
It's opt-in, and has also been acquired by a company building a privacy-
focused browser (I think?).

~~~
SimeVidas
From what I see, it’s a small German startup that puts emphasis on user
privacy. Sounds fine to me.

------
doctorless
I'm actually rather surprised that companies like Google aren't offering
solutions to integrate ads into the delivery of the page content itself rather
than JavaScript at this point, as it's pretty easy to block the specific
domains serving ads. It seems relatively straightforward; the ads would be
pre-rendered on the server providing the response and could send the same info
a script would for the most part, especially if there was an auxiliary script
you could load from your own domain. Not that I'm endorsing the idea, it's
just that it seems like an obvious solution to the usage of ad blockers.

~~~
allanbreyes
I never quite understood why domain-blocking works so well for ad-blockers.
I'm surprised why sites don't just use a reverse proxy or something to serve
from those ad domains. What am I missing?

~~~
rahimnathwani
If the ads were static (e.g. advertiser A bought a specific place on one of
publisher B's pages, for a month), and advertiser A didn't want independent
verification that the ads were seen, then your proposal could be simply
implemented.

"What am I missing?"

Many ads are served after real-time auction: whilst your browser is loading
and rendering the page, an auction is going between advertisers for the ad
spot(s) on the page. The auction happens quickly, but it adds latency. Adding
a reverse proxy would add further latency, and would remove the ability for ad
networks to properly target ads (e.g. using cookies) and account for
impressions.

~~~
kakarot
Would you mind expanding a bit on this real-time auction thing, like how
common it is and what the process looks like, or could you point me in the
direction of the sources you used to make that claim?

Thanks!

~~~
mangoceylon
If you poke around AppNexus, you will find what you are looking for. The
process is basically: a visitor comes to the site, each connected ad
network/buyer has 100ms to provide a bid, the top bidder wins.

~~~
alkonaut
What happens with ad blocking visitors? They never become a visitor to bid
for?

I'd actually like for my ad blocker to download all ads and pretend to
download the ad, and give the impression of an impression. That way someone
would have made a bid for that impression.

Otherwise what will happen is that as ad blocking use becomes more and more
widespread, the ad viewers become fewer but more profitable (Ironically
perhaps more profitable on average than the original set of viewers, because
adblock users weren't likely to click in the first place).

If ad blocking is to be a way of killing online advertising in its current
form, and not just improving the browser experience (and this is what I think
should be the goal) then it needs to cheat the ad networks, they can't just
pretend the request never happened.

~~~
therealidiot
> I'd actually like for my ad blocker to download all ads and pretend to
> download the ad, and give the impression of an impression. That way someone
> would have made a bid for that impression.

[https://adnauseam.io/](https://adnauseam.io/)

~~~
alkonaut
Yeah I don't really think the idea of cheating any further (i.e. fake-clicking
the ad) is necessary. I just want to appear like a regular ad-viewing browser
that doesn't click ads.

------
konradzikusek
<iframe max-transfer-size="300KB" src="...">

Proposed Transfer Size Policy will allow site owners and ad networks to block
abusive ads - [https://github.com/WICG/transfer-
size](https://github.com/WICG/transfer-size)

~~~
konradzikusek
Ability to pause iframes, which Transfer Size Policy depends on, is already on
Chrome's radar:
[https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5141555102875648](https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5141555102875648)

------
Qub3d
If anyone is curious (like I was) what exactly is being shown here, the author
initially wrote a post in 2016 describing VPAID ad interfaces[0].

It appears this whole thing got started when the Author (who founded
AndroidPolice) got a bug request about an AP site ad[1].

[0]:
[https://plus.google.com/+ArtemRussakovskii/posts/VgrLdYcoifr](https://plus.google.com/+ArtemRussakovskii/posts/VgrLdYcoifr)

[1]: [https://github.com/archon810/androidpolice-
public/issues/67](https://github.com/archon810/androidpolice-public/issues/67)

~~~
erikb
This may actually explain why watching videos in the browser sometimes causes
the computer to heat up comparably to a new AAA gaming title.

~~~
etherealG
That's more likely a lack of hardware acceleration I recently learned, if
you're talking about youtube. They use VP9 by default, which isn't hardware
accelerated in most cases.

I installed this recently and the difference in heat and battery life on my
Macbook Pro is astounding.
[https://github.com/erkserkserks/h264ify](https://github.com/erkserkserks/h264ify)

------
JeremyHerrman
I didn't see any ad blocker recommendations in the comments, so I searched and
came across a list on Tom's Hardware of the best ad blockers of 2017. The
funny part is that Tom's Hardware was FILLED with these exact kind of ads from
algovid and adaptv. Even worse, the list is in a carousel / slideshow format
so you have to keep clicking if you didn't GTFO like I did.

~~~
aeleos
If you are still looking for an ad blocker, I have had great experiences with
ublock origin.

~~~
aryamaan
Any advantages over adBlock?

~~~
Macha
Their acceptable ads policy turned into "pay to whitelist" which basically
pissed people off on all sides. The advertiser's weren't happy about being
held to ransom, the users weren't happy with ad blockers that didn't.

------
wheaties
Looks like they are calling other ads or reselling fake inventory. This is
against every single supply source and publisher's rules. They're not only
screwing the browser, they're screwing the advertiser too.

------
exikyut
IMO the way to solve this is a single-click "pay this tiny amount to keep
reading" UI.

Now that Amazon's one-click checkout patent has expired this is actually
legally viable.

But it won't happen until Chrome is overturned by a new browser because Google
will never let such a model succeed :(

It's possible Firefox may successfully do the "phoenix re-viral" thing, in
spite of the fact that it would be a literal miracle.

~~~
bonqis
I co-founded Flattr and one of the things we learned is that even a one-click
is to much effort. So we now have a zero-click solution that measures
attention and visits in your browser locally (as Archon810 wrote.) and then
your monthly subscription is distributed based on that. Happy to answer
anything and or give an invite.

~~~
DamonHD
Would like to chat further. As CTO in a previous "fintech" start-up I tried to
make something like that work: a tiny-pay-per-view is indeed something like
the right goal for funding content.

~~~
bonqis
Sure, drop me an mail at linus at flattr

~~~
DamonHD
Done.

------
HuginnMuninn
Has anyone attempted to quantify a rough cost for me to just pay for the http
request I'm making and get rid of the middlemen?

I look at some of my spur of the moment purchases in shame, yet paying say
$0.001 to browse a page somehow is the unthinkable?

Most don't like ads, as others have said they add latency and are easily
subject to fraudulent clicks for the advertiser.

I get the feeling that content-creators and end-users are on the same side
here and those in the middle are in the wrong. Not saying get rid of all ads,
but it's amazing in 2017 there's no easy pay-to-play on the internet.

~~~
brad0
I quite like this idea. I run a basic http server with a nodejs backend. It
gets ~3000 hits a month. It costs around $6 on AWS. It costs around 0.2c per
request.

It would be simple to build a system that charges per use - most SaaS
companies do this.

The problem is that someone is willing to pay for that content and repost it
on the "free web". 99% of people will read the free version (see freemium
mobile games).

While content creators agree that they would prefer to charge directly for
their content, we live in the attention economy. This means if you don't make
yourself hyper accessible then people will go to other places to get their
dopamine hit.

~~~
nextlevelwizard
I would never be willing to pay per page view. I could pay some specified
price on yearly basis, but per page is way out of the question.

I'm fine with web sites that use adblocker-blockers. I just don't read their
content. Imo that is the way of the future. Obviously these "publications"
will lose readers, but maybe we also get rid of most of the junk that's
floating around.

~~~
HuginnMuninn
My problem is advertently blocking the small sites just to get at the big
sites. It's not fair, and some really good content gets screwed over
inadvertently by it. I am certainly guilty of this.

Adblocking is the hammer that thinks everything is a nail

------
mastazi
Google Ads, interstitials, multiple Tag Manager accounts, Analytics' tracking
cookies, Facebook and Twitter buttons + embedded feeds, Video pre roll ads,
Nielsen Tags...

At every new request from marketing you die a little bit inside, because you
know you'll never win if you try to make a case against this stuff.

Then one day a manager finally emails you and goes "the website is a bit
slow". And you smile while you start preparing your technical report.

------
jack9
Holding up AOL One (Adap.tv rebranded) to represent modern digital advertising
is like holding up IBM to represent modern Database design. It's bad context
bordering on negligence. Adap developed their ad manager before the IAB
produced video standards. Utilizing a team in India, which made it compatible
with strange workarounds and primitive browsers from decades past, it has been
monkey patched to the current clusterfuck it is today...it will take you
awhile to detangle it but you can watch the IFrames in IFrames making async
requests all along the way.

Adserving platforms are more primitive, the older the company is. The reasons
are the same as any other mega-system. Entrenched process and existing revenue
stream (fear of change). That being said, look at an actual modern adserver
and they don't have the massive multi-call overhead.

------
baron816
A bit off topic, but something I'm interested in: would it be possible for a
website to generate revenue by using client machines to mine crypto
currencies? I would rather go to a website that uses up my CPU and network
resources doing that than use up my CPU and network resources AND spam me with
intrusive ads.

Edit: solid answers to my question. Thanks everyone.

~~~
mej10
More efficient to separate the mining aspect and just send a micropayment in a
web request.

Brave (the browser) implements of version of this.

~~~
darawk
While true, using a browser for mining doesn't require the user to have any
cryptocurrency, or even know what cryptocurrency is. It also has a similarly
opaque cost to them (in the form of electricity).

~~~
mej10
Brave is getting around that with built-in support for their "Basic Attention
Token" which will be rewarded to users just for using their browser.

It will be interesting to see how it works out.

Personally I am just sad that it takes so much energy to maintain the current
cryptocurrency networks and they are already too slow for really interesting
stuff -- which is why I wouldn't want to add more waste by mining in a browser
:).

~~~
sdenton4
That sounds like a great target for automation abuse? Rev up a bunch of
virtual machines, each with a bit of attention to distribute.

~~~
mej10
I am sure they've thought of that, but I am not familiar enough with their
product to know how they deal with it.

------
richdougherty
I wish ads were sandboxed and given resource limits. I'd like - network limits
(rate limited, bandwith capped), animation limits (low fps), sound limits (no
sound), CPU usage limits (not much CPU - maybe a burst at page load), etc.
Maybe a sandbox option for an iframe?

~~~
amelius
If it was in Google's interests, we'd probably have that already.

~~~
iUsedToCode
Why isn't it? I'm sure Google can make well behaved ads that bring them lots
of money. Implementing this would make it even harder for any competition to
get a foothold into the market.

Now a google ad is treated (by customers with adblock) the same way as the
most shitty ads = gets blocked. Maybe if chrome blocked the worst kinds on its
own, less people would use adblockers in general.

Ad blocking is not a hobby. It's a must nowadays. Google needs to step in or
face the possibility of 80% of users adblocking. And when you install Ublock
you don't pick and choose only "light" filters. You go all the way, to zero
ads. Mozilla should have bundled an adblock with firefox ages ago. They could
start with blocking only the worst ads. That would be some pressure on the
market.

~~~
a_imho
You can see Google and co stand on ads here [1]. Enforcing Coalition for
Better Ads standards were marketed as adblocking is coming to Chrome for
example [2] recently.

[1]
[https://www.betterads.org/standards/](https://www.betterads.org/standards/)
[2] [https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/01/google-confirms-ad-
blocker-c...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/01/google-confirms-ad-blocker-
coming-to-chrome-in-2018.html)

------
pavel_lishin
Once again I bring out my trusty analogy of ad tech consistently shitting in a
well.

Except this time, that's basically where it stops. These guys are shitting in
a well, for no good reason, full stop.

------
tomlor
I've seen some other pretty abhorrent behavior as well. The specific instance
that comes to mind is an ad that would load all the resources and content of
its click-through landing page into a hidden part of its own iframe. Then in
the off chance you click the ad, your browser cache is already warmed and the
resulting landing page loads fast. All of that for the 0.1% of us that click
ads. It boggles the mind.

~~~
jdangu
That's not the reason, it's ad fraud. They are most likely paid on CPC (cost
per click) and forcing clicks in a hidden iframe. Or they are "stuffing
cookies" for an affiliation link, betting that you might buy on that store
later on - and getting a commission out of it.

------
jasonkostempski
Standards should never have allowed third-party scripts to load without
insuppressible user prompts. This cluster-fuck could have been avoided.

~~~
bzbarsky
Third-party script loading is as old as the <script> tag and predates any
applicable standards. That is, browsers added <script> before standards did,
and allowed cross-site loading of scripts, just like cross-site loading of
everything was allowed at that point.

Simpler days, 25 years ago...

~~~
ccozan
Now I have in mind the Terminator scenario, except we need to send it for the
guy who though on this <script> tag.

------
dhab
Might be off-topic. It seems a majority of people are against ads. What are
the top few reasons why people dislike ads, excluding reasons such as them
just being a nuisance?

My own guesses are:

* People don't like the idea that the platform serving the ads is making money through ads which is not directly tied to the main value they derive from that platform

* Maybe people feel that they are also indirectly contributing to the platform and that they also should have some stake in the revenue

Personally, I have found ads to sometimes remind me of certain things that I
could do, or given me new information altogether which I wouldn't have
otherwise been aware about normally. And for the most part, my mind mostly
tunes them out even when they are there.

Are there other good alternatives to get a product known besides ads that can
cover the same breadth?

~~~
CapsAdmin
I think for me it's mostly about not being in control over the content I
choose to view.

I'm the kind of person who want involuntary ads to disappear entirely (so
basically all ads on the internet). But at the same time I don't mind reading
about new products, services, cheap offers etc as long as I can control when.

I look at ads in real life in grocery stores. Here in Norway (and I would
assume elsewhere but I don't know what it's called) we have a wall at the
entrance where people can put up things. It's usually missing cats, piano
lessons, local cleaning services, etc. It's there at the entrance but you have
to get close to read anything.

Maybe instead of ads disappearing entirely I just wish they were put in one
place.

~~~
self_awareness
My thoughts exactly. If put in one place, maybe they would start competing for
attention by increasing their quality. Because today's ads are at their lowest
quality possible.

------
andy_ppp
I would love to be able to block JS files individually based on energy usage.

~~~
exikyut
That would be fine until

    
    
      jquery-1.9.1-min.js: 3,389 hours of battery usage
    

would refuse to budge from the absolute top of the "probably the best to
block" list.

The heuristics would be tricky to implement here...

~~~
andy_ppp
That it’s only a heuristic would be rather the point; users would be able to
select urls they wished to disable.

In fact you could probably crowd source training data for a deep learning
model so that it could eventually be automated.

------
TekMol
I wonder how much junk like this gets through Adsense.

I would have thought Google keeps the ads on their network under tight
control. But I see tons of requests to other domains even on pages with just
one Adsense ad and no other external content.

Example:

    
    
        googlesyndication.com
        google.com
        voicefive.com
        gwallet.com
        doubleclick.net
        doubleverify.com
        mediaplex.com
        scorecardresearch.com
        t4ft.de
        r1-cdn.net
        afy11.net
        dotomi.com
    

All contacted multiple times on a single pageview with a single adsense ad and
no other external content.

What is all that?

~~~
Freak_NL
Trackers, beacons, telemetry; stuff to follow you around the internet and
compile a profile on you.

------
btown
[EDIT: As other commenters have mentioned, the simpler answer is that OP's ad
is probably an instance of click fraud. Setting that aside, though, the
phenomenon I describe below is likely still in effect, even with players
playing by the rules.]

I imagine that every stakeholder wants verifiable information that the ad was
viewed. It would seem to be a problem of both trust (if some centralized ad
server was to stream the analytics server-to-server to the stakeholders,
there's no guarantee that that central entity is telling the truth, no way to
verify unique IPs, and every economic reason for it to lie) and scale (why pay
for bandwidth/CPU for a centralized server to make server-to-server
connections when the end user can foot the cost).

The problem is that the number of stakeholders has ballooned significantly,
the same way that any sizable financial market will attract intermediaries
like flies. And now we have an untenable situation.

AppNexus is possibly the only player I can think of who's built both trust and
infrastructure to address this, and indeed they are rolling out products like
this: [http://productblog.appnexus.com/get-your-logs-
streaming/](http://productblog.appnexus.com/get-your-logs-streaming/) ... but
it's very possible that the ecosystem becomes fragmented faster than it
becomes consolidated.

~~~
mej10
There are other ad server as API companies that provide raw logs of event
data. Even DFP has that.

------
teolandon
It seems so bad that uMatrix is not even allowing me to access the website. I
opened up Chrome Dev Tools, and I really wish I hadn't. Holy hell.

------
jimjimjim
whenever there is a problem with ads: assume malice until incompetence is
proved.

~~~
FridgeSeal
Yep, especially with the advertising industry: if you give them an inch, they
will take a mile.

Unfortunately we're in the annoying position where they view themselves as
top-shit and "gods gift to the internet" (and admittedly they do provide
monetary support to a lot of things) but I don't think that excuses them from
behaving as poorly as they have and do and it's long overdue that they're
brought into line.

------
SomeStupidPoint
I had to install an ad-blocker today because I got an ad trying to scam me
served by Microsoft's news website.

If they're not going to take _any_ responsibility for what they're attaching
to their pages, then I'm not going to load their random bag of crap.

~~~
uuoc
I'm actually surprised it took you this long.

I have had an ad blocker in one form or another continuously installed since
the first ad blockers appeared on the scene. And I'll always have an ad
blocker installed.

~~~
shpx
The first ad blocker (that I know of) was Interenet Fast Forward which was a
Netscape Navigator plugin made around 1996 by PrivNet.

[https://youtu.be/pvzR_bON9qM?t=3m46s](https://youtu.be/pvzR_bON9qM?t=3m46s)

------
donkeyd
I recently tried to browse Groupon to see whether they had any interesting
deals. After opening a couple of deals in new tabs, the site became completely
unresponsive and every page that I opened to ages to load. I noticed that
uBlock was blocking hundreds of things and only after the counter stopped
increasing, the page would become responsive.

Solution was to open a browser that doesn't have an ad blocker and the site
became pretty responsive.

I understand that it's probably a bunch of tracking to predict what I want to
see. But why would they need to much stuff if I'm probably there to buy stuff
anyway?

------
perfunctory
There is a trivial solution to this problem. If you don't like ads, just start
paying for the content. Don't support publishers that use advertisement as
their business model. Alternatives exist.

~~~
azag0
Yes, but then the whole ecosystem is missing micropayments. I subscribe to
some sources, but sometimes I just want to read a single article. Would gladly
pay 20 cents, if it was a matter of a click.

------
Kiro
I don't understand. How can a big company like Cedato aka Algovid aka TLVMedia
get away with this apparent abuse? I'm thinking that they would be shut down
by the ad company immediately.

------
smsm42
The reason number 2567 why I am using and will keep using adblockers.

------
intrasight
And let's not forget about the "Ad Blocking DMCA Debacle" A good summary here:
[https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2017/08/15/explaining-ad-
blo...](https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2017/08/15/explaining-ad-blocking-
dmca-debacle/)

My takeaway is that DCMA is a powerful weapon to use against ad blocking.
It'll be interesting to see how this aspect of the industry plays out.

------
Abishek_Muthian
It would be interesting to see how advertising works when Google blocks
competitor's ads as "bad ads" in chrome & Apple blocks most ads in safari (iOS
11).

------
paradite
Not sure if the requests are faking clicks or sending tracking information.

We had similar incidents before where the requests are for analytics firms to
track you:

[http://donw.io/post/github-comments/](http://donw.io/post/github-comments/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14170041](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14170041)

~~~
archon810
What's actually happening is they're loading ads in iframes, destroying them,
then rinsing and repeating over and over, thus causing all those insane
requests.

------
secabeen
Why are they doing it?

~~~
heartbreak
Money. They’re faking ad delivery.

~~~
nomel
Do the ad suppliers have some sort of analytics in place to catch fraud like
this? "This ip viewed 200 adds within 10 seconds!"

~~~
tomlor
Not really, all these shenanigans occur in a nested series of iframes. The
original webpage that served up the initial ad iframe can't see down into
these. Whatever supply partner the webpage is using doesn't want to shed light
of this to the publisher or else that supply partner may be replaced.

This issue is illuminated to some degree by 3rd party ad analytics companies
that monitor this via crawlers and user panels. This problem is also attacked
from the advertiser side that will use 'viewability' providers to ensure their
ad is, well, viewed.

~~~
firebones
Advertisers should have a centralized reporting service that pays bounties for
submitting violators. Is fraud worth enough to support a whitehat community
exposing the ad equivalent of "vulnerabilities?"

------
orang55
Possibly best represented by this ridiculous infographic:
[https://martechtoday.com/infographic-marketing-technology-
la...](https://martechtoday.com/infographic-marketing-technology-
landscape-113956)

------
smegel
Javascript is the new Flash.

------
bluetwo
If we can't fix this problem, no one is going to be able to do it.

------
squarefoot
"uBlock Origin has prevented the following page from loading:
[http://adap.tv/"](http://adap.tv/")

------
the6threplicant
Is this what is bricking Safari on the occasional YouTube video? Sometimes a
reload works, other times I need to copy the URL and paste in a new tab.

------
BerLord
Hope ads like this will drop form internet soon. You are right, they are
annoying and useless.

------
Toast_
Looks like cookie stuffing.

------
draw_down
I can't make it work, what does the ad do?

------
whatever9089
Brave browser?

~~~
nextlevelwizard
How has it been hardened? It's not just about blocking ads, it's also about
preventing malicious content. I'm not willing to risk a beta browser for ads.

