
I've removed all ad network code from my blog - GordonS
https://www.troyhunt.com/i-just-permanently-removed-all-ad-network-code-from-my-blog
======
fiatjaf
Ok, you have a sponsorship model that works because you're probably very
famous. That doesn't solve anyone's problem, because almost no one is famous.

How can we replace ad networks with something better and saner?

~~~
bazillion
I built what I believe to be the most sane way to "advertise" something: Let
people buy directly from an image. This solves the problem of people not
interested in the content, because of its unobtrusive nature -- if they don't
hover over an item within the image, it's as if the "advertisement" isn't
there.

Check out my demo (desktop only) at
[http://www.worldlifestyle.com/testpost](http://www.worldlifestyle.com/testpost)

My website which you can sign up for the (free) beta at:
[http://pleenq.com](http://pleenq.com)

~~~
bazillion
Oops guys! It looks like the publisher temporarily removed the PLEENQ script
tag from that page. Go to
[https://www.theskinnyconfidential.com/2016/10/28/thehangover...](https://www.theskinnyconfidential.com/2016/10/28/thehangoverkit/)
for a better example. This is actually a real client's page, and shows how
some websites use PLEENQ.

~~~
russell_h
Neat.

One suggestion: intuitively I felt like I needed to click on the popovers
instead of on the underlying image. Permitting the user to move the mouse over
the popover and click that as well might increase effectiveness for those who
haven't seen this before.

~~~
bazillion
Great idea! I've been incorporating different styles of UI features that the
website owner can enable/disable at will, so I'll add this one to them.

------
AndrewStephens
I went a step further and designed my blog
([https://sheep.horse/](https://sheep.horse/)) not to use any third-party
resources at all. This was easy for me because I am never going to make money
from my ramblings about Rogue One or the last book I read.

I am actually not against advertising in principle, or even tracking if that
is what you want, but the current trend to pull in lots of resources (ads,
tracking scripts, web fonts, CDN javascript libraries) from third parties
scares me.

When you serve a page to a user, you are responsible (morally and legally) for
what happens on the user's computer. Ad network serves up malicious code? Your
fault. Tracker places cookie on user's machine even if your privacy policy
says you won't? Your fault. New version of that CDN'ed Javascript library does
something you don't expect? Your fault.

I wish more sites would arrange their own advertising like this guy, but I
imagine it is a pain in the neck.

[edit] I wrote a post expanding on this idea:
[https://sheep.horse/2016/6/a_website_manifesto_-
_introducing...](https://sheep.horse/2016/6/a_website_manifesto_-
_introducing_sheep.horse.html)

~~~
jff
I have the same philosophy. I have, over the last couple of years, stripped
Javascript and other external assets from my site. First I removed Disqus from
my blog, because Internet comments are a cesspit anyway. Then I removed Google
Analytics because the tracking outweighs the benefits. Then I removed an
externally-loaded font. I finally figured out the last thing, a little bit of
JS that Cloudflare was injecting to obfuscate my email address. I contemplated
just getting rid of Cloudflare because fucking with my webpage content is
pretty bad, but instead opted to disable the functionality.

~~~
AndrewStephens
I kind of miss analytics but I don't want to force my readers to run
Javascript just to satisfy my curiosity. I can go through my logs if I want to
see how many people read a page.

My old wordpress blog got so few legitimate comments that I never bother to
add a commenting system into my new software. Even when a post got hundreds of
reads due to being linked on slashdot or whatever, very few people left
comments directly. Perhaps I just have nothing interesting to say.

If you add Disqus then you are just effectively letting other people make
money off your content and if anyone makes money off my writing it should be
me. I figure if anyone wants to tell me something about my posts they can
contact me in many other ways.

Plus, even if I loved Disqus (and it is pretty sweet if you want that
functionality), who knows if they are going to be operating in 5 years time?
They could go under or get bought out by someone who plasters ads everywhere.
Then it is bye-bye to years worth of content in the comments.

Much better, I think, to be responsible for hosting everything your users will
see, even if it means forgoing some of the nice functionality third-parties
can provide.The cost-benefit ratio just isn't favorable.

I considered obfuscating my email address but I couldn't remember the last
time spam actually hit my gmail inbox.

~~~
pmlnr
> I kind of miss analytics

If you have access to your webserver's access log:

[http://www.awstats.org/](http://www.awstats.org/)

[http://www.webalizer.org/](http://www.webalizer.org/)

------
yuvadam
Kudos for removing all 3rd party scripts, not only ad networks.

As builders of web systems, we need to be conscious of which 3rd parties are
gaining access to private user data. There's no reason in hell any Google or
Facebook widget should be embedded in my health care providers website, yet
somehow that's a thing. Any other website is usually even worse.

I personally use NoScript with whitelisted scripts when I know I need them,
else I am protected by default. This shouldn't be required, especially for
users who have no idea about these scripts and what they actually do.

Fuck that.

~~~
Normal_gaussian
He hasn't removed all third party scripts.

A quick check shows Google Analytics and Disqus (which uses an iframe), there
is also some webfont stuff going on.

~~~
thejosh
facebook as well...

~~~
d2p
Facebook is actually coming via Disqus! See:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13338841](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13338841)

[https://blog.dantup.com/2017/01/visiting-a-site-that-uses-
di...](https://blog.dantup.com/2017/01/visiting-a-site-that-uses-disqus-
comments-when-not-logged-in-sends-the-url-to-facebook/)

------
sgustard
This is great, and now let's say I want to productize this "sponsored by X"
feature so other sites can use it. I can't assume every site owner wants to
deal with figuring out who's the sponsor each week, so we'll automate that
with some backend that serves the correct sponsor. We'll want to know how many
people see the link and how many click on it, because we (and our sponsors)
want to know how well these links work.

Haven't I just re-implemented an ad network at this point? Is what I've
implemented objectionable now, or only later as other bloatware features are
added?

~~~
gkya
> We'll want to know how many people see the link and how many click on it,
> because we (and our sponsors) want to know how well these links work.

That's an assumption not a fact. Presumably if I sponsor a blog I have an idea
for the value of it. Ad networks on the other hand detach the publisher from
the sponsor so that all the latter has to know the effect of their campaign is
bulk data from surveillance. Direct sponsoring or good networks like the Deck
on the other hand don't require that.

~~~
codazoda
This is commonly what advertisers want to see but it probably shouldn't matter
how many people see it or click on it. All that should matter is how many of
the people who clicked on it took action on your website (email signups,
orders, etc).

If all advertisers looked at those metrics instead of tracking everyone on
other sites they would probably have more effective advertising.

------
r1ch
You'll be surprised how much faster pages feel without ad scripts - I noticed
significant improvements after implementing a no-ads premium option on our
website. Even with an ad blocker, things just feel snappier if the scripts
simply aren't there in the first place.

I decided to go one step further with my personal site and eliminate all JS
completely. I don't get enough traffic to make any kind of analytics or ad
code worthwhile.

~~~
StavrosK
> I don't get enough traffic to make any kind of analytics or ad code
> worthwhile.

On a related note, does anyone else see GA being wildly inaccurate? My blog
was on the HN front page a while ago, and CloudFront got ~600k hits, which
should translate to about ~100k uniques (I cache), yet GA only showed 8k
uniques.

I'm guessing the HN crowd runs uBlock or some other blocker in its vast
majority, so JS-based analytics are completely untrustworthy.

~~~
pmlnr
> I'm guessing the HN crowd runs uBlock or some other blocker in its vast
> majority, so JS-based analytics are completely untrustworthy.

Actually, the server based access logs would be more accurate. The "only"
things the JS based are giving you are tracking options and user interface
data, such as resolution. And yes, due to blocking, JS based will never be the
as accurate as the server logs.

A long time ago I used awstats[^1] and webalizer[^2]; those will show the
traffic that your server(s) actually served. However, you'll need to log it,
and if you have multiple machines, you'll need to centrally log it, and store
it, which is not always simple and trivial to set up, compared inserting a JS
in the HTML.

[^1]: [http://www.awstats.org/](http://www.awstats.org/) [^2]:
[http://www.webalizer.org/](http://www.webalizer.org/)

~~~
StavrosK
What I would like is an analytics service that allows me to give them a CNAME
on my own domain, and that uses a tracking pixel, rather than JS (less
intrusive and more reliable, plus easier to install than centralized log
management).

~~~
Spivak
Ad blockers have started blocking known tracking pixels on major sites,
something to be aware of.

------
kaybe
Here is another argument for curated ads or ads that are matching the page
content, not the viewer:

Seeing ads that are for something very different than the page content give me
a high mental overhead, such as ads for games when I search for programming,
or ads for food when I look for games. They are highjacking my though
processes and I have to extend effort to manage all these things in my head.

On the other hand, if the ads match what I'm trying to do, such as programming
ressources for programming, games for games etc, I even find them helpful
sometimes, and there is very little mental overhead.

Not all ads are the same level of annoying. I wish we could go back to
tracking-free advertisement, not just because tracking is bad in itself.

~~~
tenpoundhammer
With the current ad networks, it's easy to have well-tailored ad's, but most
publishers choose not to do so in order to increase the revenue on their
inventory.

------
ambirex
Except that he is still using Disqus, which is free to use because they have
moved to ad supported model (for the most part).

Even if he isn't running the ads, they are using the script to track users
across sites and then feeding that into ad networks.

~~~
dbg31415
An alternative to Disqus.

* Discourse || [https://www.discourse.org/](https://www.discourse.org/)

* Embedding Discourse Comments via Javascript - howto - Discourse Meta || [https://meta.discourse.org/t/embedding-discourse-comments-vi...](https://meta.discourse.org/t/embedding-discourse-comments-via-javascript/31963)

EDIT: Love the instant downvotes without any comments on why. Downvotes are
totally helpful and not the least bit petty and stupid. I have 2 client using
Discourse on their production sites and it works great.

~~~
newscracker
"Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and
it makes boring reading." [1]

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
dbg31415
It's incredibly toxic behavior and should be mandated that people reply to a
post before downvoting it.

"Hey, let's penalize that person for participating!"

~~~
newscracker
It depends on how things have shaped up over time. I have read before that pg
is ok with the use of downvotes to indicate disagreement or annoyance without
follow up comments. Here's that comment from nearly nine years ago: [1]

> pg 3246 days ago | on: PG on trolls

> I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement.
> Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems
> reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness.

> It only becomes abuse when people resort to karma bombing: downvoting a lot
> of comments by one user without reading them in order to subtract maximum
> karma. Fortunately we now have several levels of software to protect against
> that.

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171)

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
seems like there needs to be one down arrow for simply disagreeing with the
comment, and another clickable entity for flagging that comment as
inapproproriate/impolite/notconstructive/toxic, etc.

~~~
DanBC
HN does have flags. You click the timestamp and the flag link shows up.

------
pcora
Yes! 100 times yes! Great move.

I am not against ads. But I am against trackers. Wanna show an ad on your
mysite.com ? then host the freaking file on
mysite.com/assets/banner.{png,jpg,gif,whatever). but don't host it on ad
networks. Those are blocked by my browser and I will not unblock.

Its for the ad networks to figure out a way to fix the way they see the
numbers.

specially since the numbers are all wrong anyway. lets face it. you have no
idea who visits your website nowadays. g analytics is a mess.

~~~
pcora
This is a very honest and upfront article about analytics:
[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160915/18183535533/traff...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160915/18183535533/traffic-
is-fake-audience-numbers-are-garbage-nobody-knows-how-many-people-see-
anything.shtml)

------
overcast
So as long as you've got a huge enough following, that is willing to pay for
anything you give them, it should be no problem. Not realistic for majority of
sites.

Reminds me of big musicians, giving their new album away for free. After
thirty years of making millions. Very poetic.

~~~
jasonlotito
If you don't have a huge following, if you don't have a huge audience already,
what kind of money are you really making with an advertising network?

~~~
overcast
A living.

~~~
jasonlotito
I'll bite: what does that mean exactly? "A living" implies something different
to me than you.

~~~
overcast
It means enough to pay bills, like everyone else's definition of a living.

------
qwertyuiop924
The sponsorship model is once again becoming popular on the web, something I'm
not sure if I'm happy about. On the one hand, it's a lot nicer than ads, but
OTOH, it makes me more suspicious any recommendations from people who have
been sponsored. Did you recommend that we use that product because you
genuinely like it, and thus accepted sponsorship from them, or are you only
pretending to like it because you're getting paid? It's hard to tell.

The "sponsored by viewers like you" approach (aka Patreon, the NPR pledge
drive, etc) solves this problem, but it's rare that anything has an audience
big enough to support it.

But hey, one of the benefits of sponsored content is that at least the ads (if
that's how the sponsorship works: it usually is in podcasts and video, which
are where this is really taking off, moreso than blogs) are entertaining. I
skip ads as quickly as possible for the most part. OTOH, I have repeatedly
watched an hour-long compilation of ads for SquareSpace taken from the Co-
Optional podcast. Which were compiled by popular demand.

So that's a benefit to sponsorship for companies: if you can get me to
willingly watch your ads, because they're that good, you've effectively won.

------
pweissbrod
The advertisement he refers to was a plain text bar at the top of the page
with no tracking nor any distracting visuals. And when you scroll down into
the article it disappears.

I dont see any problem with this kind of innocent unobtrusive level of
advertising and frankly wish he kept it for his own financial gain and others
used it as a model.

~~~
GordonS
He still has this sponsorship message (which I am also totally fine with), but
it seems to be blocked by uBlock Origin, if you are using that?

~~~
jmgordon
With uBlock Origin I was able to see the sponsorship message by clicking the
"Toggle cosmetic filtering for this site" button.

------
intrasight
One thing I've always admired about Apple is that they use no third-party
scripts. And I thus always think "If that works for Apple, which is arguable
the most successful company, why don't other companies follow their successful
model?" I still have no good answer to that question.

Also, I followed this troyhunt.com post to the "Ad blockers are part of the
problem" post - which I found to be an even more interesting read,
particularly:

"When ad blockers are stooping to the same low level as advertisers themselves
are in order to force their own agendas, something is very, very wrong.
Deliberately modifying sites like mine which are making a conscious effort to
get us away from the very things about ads that led to ad blockers in the
first place makes them part of the problem. Ad blockers like this need to
clean up their act."

And because he is "famous", the ad blocker did clean up its act - for his
site. Sucks all around in my opinion.

~~~
doodpants
Arguably, his sponsored links are ads, and ad blockers block ads. Sure, there
is a case to be made that only problematic ads should be blocked, but I don't
think it's so cut and dry.

~~~
intrasight
I personally do discriminate between ads and sponsorship but certainly it is
not so cut and dry.

Would you call all these sponsored sports stadiums ads?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sponsored_sports_stadi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sponsored_sports_stadiums)

~~~
doodpants
The sponsorship itself is not an ad, nor is the stadium. But signs posted at
the stadiums indicating the sponsorship could be considered ads. Likewise in
the case of the website, the text indicating that the site is sponsored, which
will take the user to the sponsor's site when clicked, is an ad. Thus, it is
not unreasonable that an ad blocker would block it, even if it isn't
"intrusive" advertising.

------
gpvos
It's worth clicking through to the article linked near the bottom, "Ad
blockers are part of the problem".[0] What he explains there is why I don't
use any of the curated lists such as EasyList, but instead maintain my own
personal whitelist. It's more hassle,[1] but fairer.

[0] [https://www.troyhunt.com/ad-blockers-are-part-of-the-
problem...](https://www.troyhunt.com/ad-blockers-are-part-of-the-problem/)

[1] Although unfortunately, it defeats the privacy-protecting aspect of using
a generic whitelist to the extent that if the FBI finds the whitelist on my
computer, they will have some extra info on my browsing habits. But I also
don't delete my browsing history, so that doesn't really matter.

------
finid
_I don 't like the total irrelevancy of much of the ad content. It could be
tailored to my browsing habits, but then I'm not overly fond of the tracking._

Not "overly fond of the tracking", but you're using Disqus for commenting.

I've got news for you. Disqus tracks you everywhere you go.

And those ads are not particularly irrelevant, because most are contextual,
which means they are generated based on the page content.

What I've done for my site is stopped running AdSense (Google) ads.

------
_joel
I'd still classify Google Analytics as an ad network, personally. Here's what
I just captured from uMatrix -
[http://imgur.com/uNLC5RO](http://imgur.com/uNLC5RO)

------
superkuh
This is about equivalent to saying, "I've stopped beating my wife." only
almost everyone beats their wife in the scenario. It's not that you've done
good. You've just stopped being bad.

Why does your personal website need sponsorship at all? Why should people pay
you for it? This commercial mindset is very weird to me.

~~~
coldtea
> _Why does your personal website need sponsorship at all? Why should people
> pay you for it? This commercial mindset is very weird to me._

Because personal blogging can also be a business for some?

It's not like every personal blog does it -- the huge majority are their for
free, with no ads or anything. But if you devote the time and effort, and have
an audience, why not?

It's like saying pro dancers shouldn't exist, because tons of people also
dance for free.

~~~
ryandrake
I don't know--GP post has a valid point of view even if people disagree. I
also feel it takes a bit of nerve to think that you should be financially
compensated for writing your personal blog, no matter how big your audience is
or how much time or effort you devote to it. Just because you CAN monetize
something doesn't mean you should.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>I also feel it takes a bit of nerve to think that you should be financially
compensated for writing your personal blog //

Surely it depends on whether you're writing for your own benefit or the
benefit of others. If you write to benefit - by the action, catharsis, etc.,
of writing - yourself then of course not but if you write to entertain,
inform, etc. others then it seems reasonable that those who consume that
writing to that end should get their costs covered in some way.

I guess we could have arms length government managed blogging platforms, that
would enable people to blog, others to consume the beneficial ones and avoid
commercial entities being involved in the system (I think if you look current
free blogging platforms probably can be traced back to advertised commercial
entities?).

It probably all depends on what sort of profit a blog is making. If they're
actually paying themselves a living wage from their personal blog then
arguably that shows it has value and that they should be socially allowed the
opportunity to be paid (through the proxy of advertising) for that blog. I'd
warrant from my experience that _most_ blogs don't cover costs with the
advertising they carry if you considered the act of writing them a commercial
undertaking (eg UK min wage is ~£8 ph, so a blog writer would need to receive
enough to cover ~£12ph to be covering wage cost alone; how many of the
millions of blogs ever made do that?)?

------
jeena
I never told you that, but now I feel that I have too, I never had any ads on
my website and I removed the google fonts thing to make my page load faster.
That was around 5 years ago.

------
maglavaitss
Google Analytics code is still there, so I guess, no ad networks were harmed
during the making of this blog post.

------
Normal_gaussian
Presumably an ad network helps get you to the position where you can negotiate
sponsorship. I am most aware of the sponsorship journey that Grey and Brady
discuss on their podcast Hello Internet [0] (I can't remember which episode),
where they discuss the difficulty of using an ad network for a podcast and
their eventual preference of sponsors. Notably they came to the negotiating
table with successful youtube channels and their established audiences.

The typical sponsorship model requires a track record, for one-off sites and
gambles (whattimeisitinflorida.com ?) it doesn't really work. Maybe there is
room for the equivalent of a recruiter but for sponsors?

[0] - [http://www.hellointernet.fm/](http://www.hellointernet.fm/)

------
Romajashi
And I myself bought a bottle of juice today and drank it all. Do I need to
write an article about that?

------
billpg
I completely missed that the sponsor's message was even there until I scrolled
back to look at it.

------
vintageseltzer
I often wonder why an open-source advertising system (like a self-hosted
AdWords) hasn't caught on.

When it comes to ads on my site, I'd love to cut out the middle man and be
able to manage my own clients, content, tracking and payments, all served from
my own domain.

I've seen a few sites managing this on their own, and the result has been
great: well-targeted, nicely-designed ads that the site owners and advertisers
stand behind. It definitely takes more work, but I don't see anything wrong
with that.

------
a3_nm
Misleading headline. According to uMatrix, the page still loads at least:
cloudflare.com, disqus.com, fonts.googleapis.com, gravatar.com, gstatic.com,
google-analytics.com.

------
alkonaut
This is a perfect example of how online advertising should work. Get a
sponsor, show their unobtrusive message. Done.

Can't find a sponsor? Can't have them trust you, or accept advertising that
doesn't track user or show targeted ads? Can't afford the time to chase
sponsors and manage the advertising?

Then try a paywall. What, no one subscribes? Then take the content off the
internet. You have an unsustainable business model.

~~~
andybak
> You have an unsustainable business model.

You have an unsustainable business model given current available technical
solutions that meet your ethical criteria. That's quite different.

~~~
alkonaut
Well, yes, it's unsustainable in the current about-to-die system of online
advertising. I'm pretty sure that the death of online advertising as we know
it will take a _ton_ of small time sites down with it. That's sad in many
cases, but unavoidable. Once advertising is back to a sustainable model, e.g.
one where advertisers will pay reasonable money for displaying non-targeted
non-tracking image ads - the possibility to have ad-sponsored content will
return. Another future possibiliyt is some kind of successful micropayment
network.

But until we have that, there is just no saving a small ad-network funded
site.

~~~
andybak
I think that the minute it looks like online advertising is dying somebody
will spot a gap in the market and create a less odious network. There probably
already is a few. We just need to keep up the pressure and awareness. For me -
serving malware is unforgivable - and something we can all get behind no
matter where we stand on the more nuanced issues around tracking and
personalization.

------
bootload
_" What I'm trying to do with sponsors is what I strongly believe is the most
responsible middle ground that keeps the greatest number of people happy,
myself included."_

The like the fact Troy has his ^own^ blog and can make his own call. There are
alternatives ways to think about ^how^ a blog makes money. [0]

[0] Dave Winer, "How I made over $2 million with this blog" ~
[http://scripting.com/stories/2009/02/11/howIMadeOver2Million...](http://scripting.com/stories/2009/02/11/howIMadeOver2MillionWithTh.html)

------
joekrill
Wasn't this basically Google's model when the first started serving ads? 2 or
3 line text-ads only? I guess it's too bad that devolved into what we have
today. Or maybe they still offer that? I have no idea.

~~~
my123
That is Google AdWords mostly, used by themselves.

------
protomikron
> I don't mind ads on websites as a concept, [...]

I already disagree with the first sentence. Now I do not have an idea how we
should compensate content creators, but ads are inherently a terrible model.

------
manigandham
Idea: we previously built an ad-blocker that would remove all ads/tracking and
was paid by a monthly subscription, that was then divided by time spent per
domain.

Similar to the Youtube Red model but for the rest of the internet. Wanted to
get it to the ISPs so it would just be a bundled add-on (internet + premium
content sub) and would also give access to premium sites like NYT, WSJ, FT,
etc. Nobody wanted to work with us.

Failure in cooperation is causing failure across the rest of the media
landscape. I wonder if we should try again...

------
zenpaul
I love the direct sponsorship model just because it seems more authentic,
which is important for content creators.

Is there a platform for that kind of direct sponsorship? It would be helpful
to discover, schedule, manage content, track and handle payments for
sponsorships. The platform would be helpful whether the platform serves the
ads directly via JS or indirectly via manual or API based content integration.

------
smsm42
BTW, my ad blockers do not remove sponsorship message, despite what is claimed
in a linked article. Neither Ghostery nor uBlock Origin nor Privacy Badger do
anything to it.

------
hartator
Without actual numbers of the revenue being giving up, I feel making this sort
of claims aren't worth a lot.

------
johansch
How about removing that giant self-advertisement at the top of the blog? :)

~~~
johansch
(Potential down-voters: It was actually removed within 8 minutes of me posting
that. I was impressed. :) )

------
facepalm
What are efficient ways to find sponsors?

~~~
amorphid
Have decent traffic, and they'll probably find you.

------
nickbauman
Welcome to the future of advertising.

------
devinp
Good for you but i don't think this will work for small publishers

------
muninn_
I think instead of lambasting somebody for removing ads from their site
because they have an alternative way of funding it, and thus forgoing ad
revenue, we should commend them.

------
phkahler
He says ad blockers are part of the problem, and yet he's effectively doing
ad-blocking on his end too. Ad blockers prevent the kind of stuff he doesn't
like from getting in on the client side, he's manually rejected them on the
server side. Notice that his "sponsorship" banners are not going to be blocked
by ad blockers.

There are two fundamental problems that gave rise to the ad networks: 1) Scale
- nobody wants to have humans involved in bringing in ads. and 2) Fraud -
Nobody wants to pay for ads that aren't actually seen by a human, this has
even escalated to "clicked by a human".

I worked briefly for a company that did auditing of print and television ads.
The agents (I'm not sure the correct term) would arrange for an ad to run in
the paper, on TV, or whatever. Money would be set aside in an escrow for that
ad and one of this companies people would verify that the ad ran before the
money could go through. The whole business seems to be base on a lack of
trust. The ad-man might try to divert funds from his ad budget to somewhere
else, the paper or TV station might collect money and never run the ad. You
could say it was all just "verification" but it's based on distrust.

One step toward relieving ad fraud on the internet is to eliminate anonymity
by default so you'd know where clicks are coming from for example (I'm still
in favor of anonymization in many cases, but you'd know it's in effect).

~~~
busterarm
If I had to pick between relative anonymity and ads, I would pick anonymity
every time.

I'd love for the internet to go full São Paulo. Don't care what services I
have to lose or pay for in the process either.

~~~
phkahler
I would pick anonymity many times, and it can be achieved as a feature. But
once you start out anonymous it's really hard to add verifiable identity to
that. In other words is easy to strip identity but hard to establish it.

~~~
busterarm
The US military has done a pretty good job of this via the Common Access Card.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Access_Card](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Access_Card)

The great part about a system like that is that it's up to the user whether
they want to participate in something like that or not. Anonymity truly would
be by default. If you're using your card, you can assume everything you're
doing is tracked.

I'm sure some service providers would make it an access requirement, but then
it's up to the market to decide.

