
The End of the Ad-Supported Web - hunglee2
https://medium.com/unlock-protocol/the-end-of-the-ad-supported-web-d4d093fb462f
======
Animats
Re the reference to Vectuary. Here's the decision:[1]

They sell an add-on for apps which snoops on the user's location and sends it
to them for advertising purposes. The French data privacy regulator said that
required Vecturary to get explicit user consent. But Vectuary has no customer
interaction of their own. They claimed to rely on some chain of consent from
some other party, but couldn't prove they actually had consent from every
user.

This is the biggest effect of the GPDR. Ad companies which have no customer
contact of their own are on shaky legal ground. Some adtech companies have
shut down operations in Europe.[2] No loss there.

The big winners are Google and Facebook, which both have user signups and run
ads. They can ask for consent.

[1]
[https://translate.google.com/translate?depth=1&hl=en&prev=se...](https://translate.google.com/translate?depth=1&hl=en&prev=search&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=fr&sp=nmt4&u=https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCnil.do%3FoldAction%3DrechExpCnil%26id%3DCNILTEXT000037594451%26fastReqId%3D974682228%26fastPos%3D2&xid=17259,15700023,15700124,15700149,15700186,15700190,15700201)

[2] [https://digiday.com/media/ad-tech-firms-quitting-europe-
blam...](https://digiday.com/media/ad-tech-firms-quitting-europe-blaming-gdpr-
often-scapegoat/)

~~~
kodablah
Pardon my ignorance, I didn't read the ruling or look into it deeply. Why
would the tool, used by other apps, require consent itself? Why not punish the
apps using the tool without the required user consent? So if I have a tool
that helps with analytics, I can't sell in Europe? Because I can't prove that
my customers used it properly?

I wonder where the line is. My helper Android library that obtains an IP? What
determines proof of consent by your downstream customers? I'd say there is
loss when a company that is legitimately using data, with user's consent, has
to in-house all the work because the middleman software industry was chilled
(not saying that is the case here). Can't the same effect be gained by
enforcing the laws on the ones breaking them against their direct users?

Some may cheer this specific ruling because they don't like that company, and
again this is a knee-jerk comment before I've studied, but shouldn't we in
general be cautious of this type of upstream liability? I didn't give Android
explicit informed consent to send this data, can Samsung be liable? Obviously
a stretched analogy, but it's important to review general b2b implications of
such approaches. I know, I know, don't break the law (however defined) and you
don't have anything to worry about is the micro-level view. At a macro level,
stifling kinds of business and funding you never intended to does happen.

~~~
majewsky
> I wonder where the line is. My helper Android library that obtains an IP?

GDPR only applies to parties who _store_ and _process_ user data. If your
library doesn't talk to your own servers when embedded in someone else's app,
you've got nothing to worry about.

~~~
kodablah
My library processes it. Or does it have to both store and process? So my SaaS
analytics service that only stores and gives it back out unprocessed is ok?
It's less about specific hypotheticals and more about the general ambiguity
around the risks.

~~~
majewsky
When I say "process", I meant to say "process on your own infrastructure".

------
PlutoIsAPlanet
Ad companies got caught putting their hand in the cookie jar and people have
had enough.

There's nothing wrong with an ad supported web, but it got abused, with
tracking going too far and ad companies constantly trying to defeat privacy-
protecting features. They have no one to blame but themselves.

~~~
baal80spam
> There's nothing wrong with an ad supported web

I very much disagree with this statement. I simply can't stand ads in my
internet and uBlock Origin is the first thing I install in a fresh browser. I
can't fathom browsing the web without it anymore.

~~~
geocar
Who do you think should sponsor the creation of arts and the publication of
news?

I'd be okay with increasing taxes to cover it, or using a UK-style TV license
(Internet Publishing License anyone?) and requiring people seek "Internet
commissioners" like we have for Television[1], [2].

[1]: [http://www.pbs.org/about/producing-pbs/proposal-
process/](http://www.pbs.org/about/producing-pbs/proposal-process/)

[2]:
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning](https://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning)

Another option is micropayments, but I worry bugs and fraud would then steal
consumers' dollars instead of Advertisers'.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
Why do we need a funding model for arts or news publication? For example, most
of the artistic content I consume (aside from cinema) originates from people
who self-publish online (blogs, articles, podcasts) and _do not_ involve
advertising nor ask for donations in the delivery of the content.

Those people like creating and delivering content to others for free. They are
happy to lose their own money in exchange for the product they like (an
audience consuming their content). Just like I am happy to lose money to
reserve a spot in my recreational basketball league. I don’t also let tennis
shoe brands bid on the logo of the t-shirt I’ll wear.

I think the problem is that we have this idea that someone should be paid for
content. But I don’t agree.

If they want to be paid for it, that’s totally fine too and they can charge a
paywall, ask for donations, or attach ads, etc. However, plenty of other
people write better stories, give away better paintings, generate better games
or videos, share better poems or summaries of world news or published research
or opinion articles — _all without expecting any type of payment or earnings
to come from their efforts or costs to make and distribute it._

The lone aspect of this I think might not be fully sustained just as people’s
voluntary recreational pursuits is the upfront capital required to fund some
types of investigative journalism and provide legal protection to journalists.
That part makes sense to me as a subscription cost for consuming from
centralized news organizations, and if those orgs run out of money, it’s a
reflection that society doesn’t value the journalism compared with
recreational journalists happy to generate the content without compensation.

I personally want to pay so that journalism can be thoroughly investigative
and not captured by bad state actors or bad corporate actors. But that’s just
my opinion... one that most humans in my country don’t seem to share,
resulting in market conditions where for-pay journalism can only be sustained
by a very small number of groups.

~~~
bobajeff
This is my thought as well.

Content creation is a passion industry so creators should be prepared for
making less than people in other industries.

Maybe creators should be more valued by society. If that is the case giving up
our attention and privacy for free content is not the best way for a society
to support them.

------
hadsed
Well I'm not sure i believe that the web is truly moving away from ads in as
big a way as being claimed here. The trends in news groups are clear, but for
each of the other examples there are counterparts that do run ads, ie Netflix
and Hulu, and Spotify and Pandora.

Don't get me wrong, i would love to see a change just like anyone else here,
but I'm not sure I'm seeing it yet.

Additionally i enjoyed this other article more as it goes into their proposed
solution: [https://medium.com/unlock-protocol/its-time-to-unlock-the-
we...](https://medium.com/unlock-protocol/its-time-to-unlock-the-
web-b98e9b94add1)

------
Delameko
The problem with ads for me (other than the bloat and the privacy invasion) is
that the tracking is just shit.

Whenever I'm signed in on Youtube I get non-stop ads for Squarespace (due to
being a web dev I imagine). No matter how many times I mark the ads as
irrelevant, they keep showing them. I've seen Squarespace ads hundreds of
times, wasting my time, and Squarespace's ad spend.

When I open Youtube in a private browser and go to a gaming channel, I get ads
for games. The ads are actually interesting, and I discovered three games this
week that I hadn't heard of.

I would rather Youtube showed gaming ads on gaming channels, instead of all
this tracking nonsense.

------
_ph_
The problem aren't ads per se. Ads in newspapers and magazines were always
fine. There, the advertisers would directly (via their agencies) close
contracts with the publishers, based on the typical audience of the
publication. A lot of these ads even can be considered part of the content.
Most computer magazines of the past had sometimes as much value in the ads as
in the articles. Because after all, ads can (and should) be the way a
potential customer can find out about a product or service.

The problem with web ads was and is, that the nature of the ad business was
changed completely. Rather that a publisher made contracts with the
advertisers themselves, ad networks acted as a middleman. Publishers would no
longer run ads of their clients, but rent out part of their web space to the
ad networks, who would control the content posted on their sites. While this
produced a lot of easy income to the publishers (they just rented out the
space, had no further work to do), it had grave consequences:

\- it introduced tracking of the web users to target ads, as the ad targetting
was no longer done by linking it to the publication, with all the unacceptable
consequences to privacy

\- it far too often created anoying or even offensive ads, as there was little
or no curation

\- beyond annoying ads, far too often plain malware was distributed via the ad
channel

So I am glad to hear that web ads in these form are dying. I hope the web
publishing industry reacts in time and goes back to a more classic
advertisement model. I don't mind reasonably presented ads which don't
endanger my privacy or computer security. I even would be really interested in
ads that are informative again. There are some websites out still, which seem
to have direct ad contracts like print magazines and just integrate them in
their page layout. And of course, they are not blocked by ad blockers, so they
remain effective.

------
wazoox
I've been using adblockers since they existed. Previously I used filtering
proxies and other more complex solutions, ever since I've seen my first banner
ad sometimes around 1997. I hate ads, always did, always will. So good
riddance.

------
trothamel
Before the rise of ubiquitous ads, the web was publisher-pays. If you wanted a
blog, you would pay a host a few bucks a month to host it.

I wonder if that's the model that the web will move back to. There's the
argument to be made that the advertising model supports 'independent' news and
social media, but it sure doesn't look that way - we'd move from partisan
media supported through ads to partisan media supported by parties, which
seems more direct.

~~~
beagle3
Some micropayment / street-performer-payment solution will emerge if ads are
gone. It may take a few years, likely not have anything to do with
cryptocurrency (though it may).

There are quite a few people already supporting themselves through patreon;
people are willing to pay if the donation is reasonable, and friction low
enough.

In many ways iTunes/Netflix/prime beat “free” pirated content - but only once
friction was low enough. That can happen on the web, but right now ads are
incredibly low friction - they will have to go away first.

~~~
pdimitar
Good analysis and I agree.

In my country everybody was tooting that the creative industry is gonna die
due to piracy (torrents). Yet once the subscription services became very easy
to pay for, affordable and with high quality, people almost completely forgot
about movie torrents.

------
buboard
Tracking provides a way for advertisers reach their intended audience without
altering the message of the publisher. Advertising won't go away even if ad
blockers reach 100%. It will just transform every article to an affiliate-
supported promotion.

------
jancsika
What about adding a "max-cycles" attribute to iframe? Ad network fills the
frame with whatever it wants until it runs out of gas, after which no more
computation is allowed.

Content creators can choose some high limit. But users can set a global value,
or install an "ad diet" plugin to pick and choose.

Content creator can post a div to complain, "Aw c'mon, give my ad buddies more
than 100 measly cycles. I gotta eat!"

Better than being blocked outright.

------
spyckie2
Going away from ads is solely a business model question. Ads (and micro
payments) allow services to collect value much closer to the actual utility
curve of a user.

The issue with other models, (like charging a flat fee - ie, 1$ per article)
is that some people will not want to pay the full amount while others are
willing to pay a lot more than the listed price. You lose out on both ends -
you lose money you would have earned from the people who would pay $.50 or
$1000 to access it.

Ads allow the company to extract value out of the content closer to actual
value of the content at scale. The hard part is finding a different business
model that does that task better.

------
x0x0
This is close to an advertisement, written by the founder of [https://unlock-
protocol.com](https://unlock-protocol.com) , a distributed web payments scheme
using some bitcoin competitor.

~~~
lagadu
Yay, yet another decentralized (except not really because lolpayments) and
(semi)trustless implementation of something that has no need for
decentralization or trustlessness!

------
hliyan
An unorthodox chain of thought:

1\. In order to end the stronghold of advertising on the web, we need to first
address advertising in the wider world

2\. Advertising (amongst other things such as lobbying, flouting rules,
pollution, anti-competitive practices) is driven by companies' almost
desperate need for "growth"

3\. Growth is driven by investor pressure

4\. Investors are driven by need for ROI

5\. The need for ROI is driven by inflation and its erosive effects on saved
wealth

6\. Inflation is driven by government spending via printing money

Therefore, we should reduce inflation?

~~~
justapassenger
Growth is driven by people wanting to survive, for which they need to
accumulate more wealth. Maybe you already have enough wealth to support
yourself for the rest of your life but most of the people in the world don’t.

------
expertentipp
Internet browser is pretty well sandboxed with limited access to the IO of the
hosting device. Actually, extensive tracking is the worse that can happen and
luckily the awareness is high. Now, imagine what is happening in the native
mobile applications:)

------
jeromebaek
Ads have been around since literally the beginning of civilization, and it is
not so much a business model as it is a fundamental human need. The author
comes across as naive when he says Netflix makes 5 times as much money as
Facebook per user, therefore (clearly) ads don't work well. Why don't you say
that healthcare makes 50x that per "user", therefore clearly the Netflix model
isn't working? Point being that the ad supported model and the subscription
model are fundamentally different at a psychological level.

Tim Wu, the guy who coined the term "net neutrality", has written an excellent
history of ads: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-mania-to-
capture...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-mania-to-capture-our-
eyeballs/2016/10/27/9fbebeb0-8b41-11e6-bff0-d53f592f176e_story.html?noredirect=on&tid=kp_google&utm_term=.f09cfcf75f10)

------
Aloha
I think any pronouncements about the death of an ad supported web are probably
premature.

------
product50
No ad supported web means a paid web. I am not sure if that is what the users
want either. I have seen even in HN where people post alternate links of a
site blocked by paywall to let users access the content for free. And this
paid channel means every content site (such as Medium, NYT, WSJ, WaPo etc.)
will have to institute their own paid mechanism which will cost users a lot of
money. Pick your pill - you can't have it both ways.

~~~
beagle3
Some of us were on the web before it became an ad infested cesspool.

It wasn’t as slick, sure. But it was usable, and useful. Most of the useful
things on the web that arrived since, with the notable exception of modern
search engines, are independent of ads.

There needs to be a solution for commons like search engines if there is no ad
revenue to be made - I would gladly pay $50/year for a good search engine
(which is infinitely more than google and Facebook are making on me now, as I
use as blockers) and I am not alone.

~~~
damla
It has been a while since google launched such an engine, but doesn't seem to
have gained any traction
[https://contributor.google.com/v/marketing](https://contributor.google.com/v/marketing)

~~~
beagle3
Only a few sites support it;

And it doesn’t stop google’s tracking and profiling, just the display ads.
Likely also tags you “has spendable income” for ads on sites that don’t
participate (and post-shutdown future)

------
keithnz
The irony of the articles website asking to turn off adblocker :)

I'm not sure what a non ad supported web would look like.

I'm fairly sure my local newspapers would collapse. They are drastically
shrinking already. Seems hard to make a buck in journalism these days.

we also hate "paywalls", we expect everything available for free and, the more
tech savvy, are more than happy to block the ads with adblockers.

While I agree that the web is warped by ads, and it's getting absolutely nuts
what can be tracked about people.... What are viable models? Do we try and
regulate this and see what happens? Nothing sounds too promising, other than
trying to regulate advertising itself ( which also feels like a crappy tool
for the problem )

~~~
matt4077
It seems like most people are deeply cynical now, as in “all politicians are
corrupt, anyway”, “journalists are corrupt/incompetent”, etc.

Or, at least, that’s how they justify running every last publisher into the
ground for reasons as spacious as “they are intruding on my rights by loading
this unnesseray JS library”.

Once all medium-sized papers are gone (i. e. soon) it will probably get worse,
then downhill from there, and over the cliff beyond that.

But at least we won’t have to deal with those distracting ads. Or only in the
30 minutes per day that the power is on.

~~~
everdrive
Subscribe to a real, physical paper. Use the internet less. So many easy,
practical solutions here.

~~~
matt4077
I hate to break it to you, but physical magazines are somewhat linked to their
internet equivalent. If your local papers’ website is offline, “I’ll just by
buy the physical paper” might not actually be a workable strategy, for obvious
reasons.

In the best possible light, you may be saying that Peoples’ willingness to pay
for content will increase as that content b comes rarer and rarer. In this
scenario, you are already operating on the assumption that independent
publishers will further dwindle, and I’m not convinced that whereever the swee
spot will be, it will anywhere close to the vibrant media landscape a civil
society needs for survival.

~~~
everdrive
I suppose I'd better start writing, then.

