
What we break when we fix ad blocking - arctictony
http://www.tonyhaile.com/2015/09/18/what-we-break-when-we-fix-for-ad-blocking/
======
jordigh
I'm going to keep repeating this because everyone seems to frame the debate in
the wrong terms. Ad blocking for me is not about speed or security. Those are
just nice side effects. It is also not because I do not want to pay. I don't
mind paying.

It is because when I'm in the middle of something I do not want to be told to
pay someone else for goods I do not need. I don't care how unobtrusive it is
(well, if it's only in the HTML comments it may be ok). There has to be a
better way to finance the web, because I refuse to accept websites trying to
convince me to give my money to irrelevant third parties.

More extremely, I flat out refuse consumerist society whenever possible. None
of us needs to be manipulated into buying most of the things ads try to
manipulate us to buy.

~~~
bradleyjg
If you had a plugin that simply blanked the entire page if it contained
advertising you'd be acting in a principled fashion aligned with your
preferences. As it is you want to have your cake and eat it too. It may be
legal and technically possible, but isn't ethical.

I'm reminded of the debates that raged on the internet when Napster was
around. All the people downloading music strenuously claimed that the industry
model was broken and they should come up with a new one. Well, if that's what
they thought why weren't they out there patronizing artists using a new model?

~~~
PhasmaFelis
> _If you had a plugin that simply blanked the entire page if it contained
> advertising you 'd be acting in a principled fashion aligned with your
> preferences. As it is you want to have your cake and eat it too. It may be
> legal and technically possible, but isn't ethical._

What you're saying here is that, if you don't like advertising, your only
ethical option is to _never use the Web again._ (Well, I suppose I can read
the comments on Hacker News. None of the articles, though.) That is not
reasonable. I have actually gone out of my way to configure my adblocker to
un-block as many inoffensive ad providers as possible, because I want to
support the sites I use, but when those sites are knowingly degrading not just
my browsing experience but _the functioning of my computer,_ measures need to
be taken.

> _I 'm reminded of the debates that raged on the internet when Napster was
> around. All the people downloading music strenuously claimed that the
> industry model was broken and they should come up with a new one. Well, if
> that's what they thought why weren't they out there patronizing artists
> using a new model?_

Because there weren't any new models yet. Which is why the downloaders wanted
people to come up with one.

~~~
bradleyjg
There were options. You could go to concerts, you could listen to the radio.
You could go to free concerts in the park. What you couldn't do was listen to
the latest Britney album when and wherever you wanted without going and buying
the CD or unethically downloading it off of Napster.

You could tell yourself that you were perfectly justified in doing so. In fact
it was Britney's fault for not coming up with easy way for you to pay her and
get 128mbit mp3s from your pajamas in your room. But I didn't buy it then, and
I don't buy it now.

~~~
emp_zealoth
But now there is Spotify, and it's getting more money than I'd spend on buying
CD's I haven't downloaded any music in years

------
bambax
This article, like all the ones before it complaining about AdBlock, seem to
conflate all kinds of contents like they're all the same.

Yet, they aren't. People gladly pay for content: books, mp3 (streamed or
downloaded), going to the theater, subscribing to Netflix and/or cable, etc.
etc.

The article argues that with the advent of adblocking all content will hide
behind a paywall; but that will not happen... or not for long.

Paywalls work for high quality content (eg, The Economist); but not for low
quality content.

Low quality content cannot survive behind a paywall, because nobody will pay
for it; what will happen is that low quality content made for profit will
die/disappear, and we'll all be better for it.

What will survive is high quality content made for profit or for free, and low
quality content made for free (which we can ignore).

This whole debate exists only because current producers of low quality content
have somehow convinced everyone that their content is in fact worthwhile, and
that it's an accident and a crime that they'd be robbed of revenue, and that
users are fools not wanting to pay for it.

This is rubbish. Users are not fools, and they are always right. What they
will not pay for is _worthless_ , literally.

~~~
briHass
Well said.

Maybe some of these individuals forget that many of us were on the Internet
well before it became as "commercial" as it is now. The bulk of the content
came from users that didn't expect or receive any payment for their
writing...much like many of the biggest sites today: Reddit, etc. What wasn't
around was shitty, click-bait junk written for no reason other than to drive
ad impressions.

If 70% of what's on the web died due to lack of ad revenue, I don't think
society would suffer some huge loss. Stating that ads are required to support
content is begging the question; if people don't want to pay for it, the
content isn't worth anything to begin with.

~~~
stevesearer
> if people don't want to pay for it, the content isn't worth anything to
> begin with

That isn't entirely true as the content is technically worth whatever the
sponsors are willing to pay to make it happen. The university in my town puts
on a summer series of movies in the park and Lynda.com has sponsored a number
of the seasons. There is even a short ad played on the screen before the
movie.

I wouldn't pay to go to the event, but am 100% happy letting Lynda.com pay for
me.

------
forgottenpass
Just like if 95% of my cable channels disappeared overnight, I'm actually
pretty OK with a bunch of websites going out of business, and I end up paying
for the few services I'm not already paying for but would wish to keep. It's
sad that people lose their jobs, especially those that can no longer make a
living doing what they love, but from a product standpoint: whatever.

I was around before the commercialization of the web exploded, and I might
miss all the light entertainment that it provides, but going back wouldn't be
the worst. The parts of the internet that are most special to me are some
combination of not funded by ads in the first place, a labor of love, open
source, or I already pay for anyway.

The increasingly desperate, increasingly gross business models that pop up as
publishers go down with the ship is going to suck though.

~~~
Snhr
I kinda get the feeling a lot of the content on semi-large websites is curated
to bring in more views, playing on their main demographic's idea of what they
find interesting instead of what the author is actually interested in. I'd
rather listen to someone talk about something that they love than something
they think I should love. I feel like that all got lost in the rush to bring
in a profit and websites that haven't updated to that style get pushed back
because they don't artificially raise interest in what they have to say.

------
giancarlostoro
My issue is with advertisements that break web pages, or slow them down
dramatically. Or even worse, take up real estate on my phone, and just plain
break my mobile experience further. Sometimes I forget to install an adblocker
whenever I do a fresh OS install and forget just how bad things can be without
an adblocker (well really my biggest peeve is pop ups, just why are they still
around?) and they get worse when someone buys ads to distribute an exploit to
Java or something (was once in my lifetime a victim to a Java 0-day through
advertisements - never again will I enable Java as a browser plugin).

~~~
briffle
There is a sports related web site I often read (friends link to it from
facebook, and other sites I visit).. When reading it on mobile, almost the
entire page will load, then my whole phone (LG G4) freezes up completely for
about 8 seconds, then a full page add appears over the screen. Sometimes the
"X" is in the upper right, sometimes below, etc, and if you are off even the
slightest amount, you get a new chrome tab opened, to a site that also freezes
up your whole phone again for a few seconds..

If it wasn't for adds the cover the whole text, I would probably not run an ad
blocker (and really need to find one for android that doesn't suck)

~~~
AJ007
One thing is for certain, publishers aren't using cohorts for how browser-
breaking advertising is influencing their user retention and overall revenue.
Fuck, some of the JS just for news site UI makes it clear no one is even
testing their mobile sites on an actual mobile device.

If the ad block rate gets high enough, and if the CPMs do not increase in the
face of dwindling supply, publishers will just make content available only in
their own apps. Fake crises averted, things change, markets and businesses
adapt.

~~~
goldfeld
I think they're ok with the clicks it brings from naive/confused smartphone
users, which is exactly how wicked it is.

~~~
AJ007
It depends if the visitor is both interested and prepared to purchase whatever
is being advertised. Someone who doesn't own a vehicle can click on auto
insurance ads all day. Now matter how optimized the ads and insurance product
is they will never buy. Because of the way ad buys & targeting works you
really do not want unrelated users clicking through.

Do the publishers want more clicks to ads? If they look at a short period of
revenue, yes, they will see a boost in their CPMs. Over the long term, as more
and more advertisers block the publishers domain due to receiving worthless
clicks the publisher's advertising auction prices will begin to collapse. If
all of their outgoing clicks are bad eventually they will be left with
advertisers who measure nothing (or measure the wrong thing, like if a video
ad plays to completion) and advertisers pushing junk like adware/spyware.

Like I said before, we are talking about publishers who are not even testing
out their own site on a real mobile device. Why not? May be they are still
drunk on the typhoon of free traffic they've been getting from Facebook for
the past couple of years.

------
JulianMorrison
There is an alternative to adverts. Its real, it's here, it works. That
alternative is Patreon.

In the Patreon model, you can support the creator directly, and their ability
to produce content scales with that support. It's like a subscription, except
you allow anyone else to free ride.

A Patreon supported site could run _no ads at all_ and still make a stable
income. It would no longer be fighting its readers to force them to view
manipulative nonsense. It would no longer be answerable to pushy, content-
controlling advertisers. It would have more editorial freedom, bounded only by
the willingness of people to pay.

IMO the Patreon model answers all the problems of the advertising model and
I'd like to see it becoming the norm.

~~~
amelius
It seems that in the Patreon model, the creator is the central element, and
not the content itself. This seems a bit weird, because it is the content I'm
after, not the artist. It may be nice for fans who will buy anything from a
particular artist, even if it is worthless when considering just the content.

Also, this seems a lot like "branding & marketing" version 2.0. I don't like
branding. And I don't want to like what people write just because of what they
have written before. I want to read or listen to work, and _then_ decide if I
pay for it.

Do you have a better way of viewing this?

~~~
GhotiFish
I'm paying for creation, that is what is valuable, _not_ content, content is
worthless. Content has infinite supply. Creation is what is limited.

This dissonance has been, and (it seems) will always be, the primary stumbling
block in the discussion of the information economy.

Why are pirates immoral? Why are they not immoral? Why is DRM immoral? Why is
DRM not immoral? Who owns the copyright? what is fair use?

All to do with information. All fighting this central dissonance.

This is why the Patreon model should be advocated when it comes to
information. Because as a tool, the market is utterly unfit to operate in this
arena.

~~~
JulianMorrison
Now that's an interesting point.

And it's one reason why I support Basic Income as an idea. I feel like the
potential prevalence of creation is _huge_. But everybody is wasting away
their life in "day jobs".

It's interesting to consider in fact, that Patreon is kind of like a one-
person basic income.

~~~
GhotiFish
Well, day jobs create new content as well, right?

Really I'm not sure basic income enters into this. Patreon is a pretty
aggressive arena, only the people that generate public interest get funded,
that's not everyone.

------
JulianMorrison
This article assumes that advertisers can get more sophisticated than blockers
- I don't agree. With good enough technology, any logo can be snipped out or
scribbled over. Any inline, self hosted image can be recognized and removed.
Perhaps in future, adblockers will comb through the text of pages and the
frames of video and your hero will be drinking "soda" instead of <brand name>.

Heck, one of these days, I want ad blocking glasses. So I can walk down the
street and NO LOGOS.

It would almost be like humans owned the public space, then.

~~~
sbov
Ads tend to be in private spaces though. You can just see it from public
space.

Another way to achieve your goal is for the glasses to render giant walls
around all private spaces. All cities would look like Manhattan then.

~~~
JulianMorrison
I was thinking more like: detect an advert, draw a grey box over it. Or
kittens.

------
InclinedPlane
Sorry content makers, you don't have the rights to resell my eyeballs. I truly
am sorry that for many of you this represents a loss of what would otherwise
be an easy income stream, but I will apologize for blocking ads no more than I
would for unsubscribing from spam/newsletters or for not clicking ads or
buying advertised goods, which is to say, not at all.

Much like newspapers, you've hitched your wagons to problematic revenue
streams. I wish it were easier, but as content creators you are also
businesses, and you need to work on better ways to support yourselves. That's
your responsibility, not mine. I do support content creators directly quite
often and quite a lot in many different ways (merch, crowdfunding, direct
support such as patreon, volunteer labour, etc). If you can't survive in a
world full of "me"s, well I suspect you weren't trying very hard.

------
jdp23
The condescending attitude of "users don't understand the consequences of
their actions" \-- which I've also seen from several other people raising red
flags about the consequences of ad-blocking -- really bugs me a lot.

A different way of looking at it is that many users _do_ understand the
consequences and either disagree with the author about the likely outcomes or
have a different set of priorities than the author.

------
georgebarnett
There's a great short book called 'Who moved my Cheese?' which tackles the
impermanence of any particular means of income stream.

Putting aside the morality/ethics discussion for a moment, it seems to me that
the 'cheese' is moving for content publishers and so they are left with a
choice, change and find new cheese - or stay and starve. Either way, the
current gnashing of teeth will have little effect.

------
hiou
Ad blocking is interesting in that it shows what happens when something that
probably should be regulated has not. And because of this the public trust has
eroded and then the answer has become an arms race of ad blockers vs ads.
Resulting in a downward spiral resulting in less quality content.

The world of online advertising is a fantastic way to study the possible
downsides of no regulations.

~~~
zzalpha
Well, or it's a powerful illustration of a market finding a solution to a new,
novel problem.

After all, what solution would the government put in place? Ban ads? Regulate
their content? How would that be more optimal than allowing people in the
market to find the right solutions?

The reality is, ad supported content with lots and lots and lots of content
providers may simply not be tenable, due to the fragmentation in both content
and ad delivery vectors.

That requires the market to find new solutions, like paywalls, micropayments,
different styles of ads, mixed pay/free models, good ol' fashioned
consolidation, etc.

Now, to be clear, I'm about as far from a free market dogmatist as you can
get... I'm no communist, but I'm Canadian, so...

But I honestly don't believe this is a case where regulation is appropriate.
Where the market is likely to settle on a highly non-optimal solution (like,
say, healthcare, due to information asymmetries, or broadband, due to enormous
barriers of entry, or manufacturing pollution, thanks to negative
externalities), absolutely I think the government has to get involved.

But in this case, I don't see any reason for that kind of heavy-handed
intervention.

~~~
skuhn
I don't think that the government should be involved in regulating advertising
beyond things like banning ads for jumping off of bridges and other
legitimately harmful things.

Where I think regulations do make sense is for advertising by-product: the
enormous treasure trove of data about users that is collected and stored who-
knows-where and has who-knows-what done to it.

------
anotherevan
They are not ad-blockers so much as HTML firewalls.

I use a firewall to protect my home network from the wilds of the internet. I
use an HTML firewall to protect my browser (and in turn, my home network) from
the wilds of the web.

Incredibly slow loading, large assets that are inconsequential to the
functionality I need, malware, unwanted visual clutter that creates a negative
cognitive load I want to protect myself from.

The reality that advertisements are the main targets is indicative that they
have perhaps been the worst offenders. I'm sure there are many good
advertisers out there. I'm sure it is only the 99% that make the rest of them
look bad.

------
ISL
I've been trying out Google Contributor of late. It's not perfect, but it's
the first practical micropayment service I've been able to use.

If we want good content, we have to be willing to pay for it.

~~~
bittercynic
I don't think good content necessarily needs to be paid for. Much of the best
content on the web is created as a hobby, with no attempt to monetize, like
dr-iguana.com (and countless others.) Other awesome ad-free content is created
to promote retail within the same company, like sparkfun.com. It seems to me
the ease of monetization with ad-networks drive ultra-low quality content like
about.com, though even I must admit that there are also good sites out there
that are supported by ads.

edit: I just discovered that dr-iguana.com does have ads. I stick by my
assertion that there is a lot of great content out there made strictly as a
hobby, though.

~~~
munificent
> I don't think good content necessarily needs to be paid for. Much of the
> best content on the web is created as a hobby, with no attempt to monetize,
> like dr-iguana.com (and countless others.)

I felt that way for a long time. I am basically living that philosophy. My
blog[1] has always been free to read and free from ads. I wrote a book[2], and
you can read the entire thing online for free, again with no ads. Almost all
the code I write is open source.

I imagined a utopia where all kinds of creative people would have enough free
time to pursue their hobbies and share the fruits of their labor. I am lucky
enough to basically live that utopia now—I happen to love programming, which
is a very lucrative field.

It's fine to dream of a world where my personal utopia is more widely
available, but that world isn't here today. You can think of a culture or
society as the aggregate sum of all of its shared creative works.

When creative works can only be done by those who can afford the leisure, it
skews society towards the perspective of the rich. Think back to 19th century
English literature and how _few_ novels there are that show how regular
working-class people lived. That's because regular working-class people back
then were too busy working in the mines to write a book.

There are some counterexamples, sure, but even most of those were created by
rich people _observing the poor from a distance_. As sympathetic as Dickens
was towards the poor, the stories he tells are still different from what an
actual poor person would tell.

You can see this happening in the US now. Over the past thirty years, the
middle class has gradually gotten sucked dry. Here's a fun game: try to find a
wide release Hollywood movie where the main characters are "middle class" and
where the sets actually resemble a real middle-class life.

The most striking example I've seen was "This is 40". There, every single
dramatic point of the film was about money problems, and yet the characters
lived in a giant mansion, drove two late model high end cars, and threw an
enormous outdoor catered birthday party, all without, apparently, any irony or
self-awareness.

This is because many of the people producing creative works today are out of
touch with how the increasingly large number of poor people live. And the poor
people are too worked to the bone to contribute their own story.

The end result is increased ignorance about how the bottom half (hell, 90%) of
the world lives, and that ignorance is what leads to many of the structural
problems _causing_ increased economic disparity.

If we're going to help the poor and increase equality, _we need to hear their
stories_. And we won't do that if they can't afford the time to share them.

[1]: [http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/](http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/)
[2]:
[http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/](http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/)

~~~
bittercynic
Wow, I hadn't considered it that way. Thank you for broadening my perspective
on the matter. This puts services like Facebook in a much more positive light
than the way I'd considered before.

I haven't seen "This is 40", but I personally know many poor people who drive
very fancy new cars and spend on extravagant things, while simultaneously
being overwhelmed by stress from lack of money. I haven't figured out how to
understand that yet, but these are intelligent, rational people, who make
monetary decisions that are impossible (so far) for me to understand.

------
PhasmaFelis
> _A more accurate phrasing would be to say that the original sin of the web
> was to disconnect the value of ads from the users experience on the page.
> The data is clear: the better the user experience = > the more attention you
> can capture while an ad may be in view => the greater impact on recall and
> recognition. Ad-supported pages that prioritise user experience are more
> effective, but we set up our systems to care about page loads not
> performance._

I'm curious why, in all the outrage and handwringing about ad blockers and the
future of the Web, _nobody_ ever seriously suggests making ads less annoying.

We don't need a new monetization model. We need content providers, and by
extension advertising providers, to refuse to carry ads that are wildly
intrusive, CPU-intensive, or outright fraudulent ("one weird trick").
Seriously, why are major national news outlets carrying advertisements that
are as sketchy as those X-Ray Specs ads from old Boy's Life magazines?

------
larrik
Ad blocking is really a war between regular users and criminals, with ad
networks as the battlefield (and sometimes the criminals themselves) and
content producers/publishers as the civilians caught in the crossfire.

It's not the users' fault that not running ad-blocking is outright dangerous
and stupid, and it's not always the website operators fault that their
"trusted" ad networks let terrible things through constantly.

~~~
lmm
Oh but it is. The publishers went to the networks because they paid better,
and never wondered where they were getting their advantages from.

~~~
click170
Couldn't agree more. The fault for the state of web advertising these days
lies squarely on advertising networks that do not vet their content.

For a long time I used but did not recommend adblock to my trogladite friends
and family. Sadly its gotten so bad that I've begun installing it on their
machines on their behalf when they ask me for help with their computer because
ad blockers are today what antivirus was 10 years ago. They're how you keep
yourself safe online.

Adblock usage won't change until the networks do.

------
mrsaint
The irony is that the biggest player here, Google, was also the most
aggressive in placing ads. I had the pleasure of working with various AdSense
and DFP Specialists. Basically it was all about how and where to place ads in
the most eye-catching ways, and as many as possible, without breaking AdSense
rules. Bigger ads = usually better (in particular those large rectangles,
yuck). Higher up the fold = better (funny enough the Google Search team later
penalitzed you when you replaced your up-the-fold content with non-content ad
stuff - which shows that there are Chinese walls separating various Google
teams).

------
randcraw
If ad blocking is a matter of right and wrong, then so is the invisible hand
of _any_ demand/supply driven system.

Blocking web-based ads is no different from TV viewers who walk out of the
room, or record shows then skip over ads on playback, or mute the TV during
ads. AFAIK, no TV advertisers have bemoaned that venerable practice.

If web ad purveyors want folks to browse differently then they must 1) improve
their spam so people choose not to block it, or 2) change the physical way
it's distributed.

To volubly complain is to sleight the invisible hand, which as you know, in
the Land of the Free, is akin to giving olde Mr Smith the finger.

~~~
sambrand
The adblocking : DVR analogy is broken. TV ads are interstitial. Online ads
are, for the most part, native. You can consume the content and the ad
simultaneously. So online ads really are already, in some sense, product
placements. Are you're arguing in favor of blocking out all product
placements?

~~~
randcraw
Yes, block all product placement. All advertising is a curse not a blessing.
Look at the state of its progeny: TV and radio. Hopeless.

The little bit of good content on TV is... only from sources without ads (HBO,
PBS, Netflix).

The advertising model of content underwriting should be dead. Let ad blockers
be the stake through its vampire heart.

------
akshayB
I use Adblock and I don't mind disabling it for sites that provide quality
content or reading materials. There has to be a balance which is sometimes
abused by the sites.

For example if you go to nfl.com to watch a 30 second play most likely you
will end up watching a commercial right before that like as if they don't make
enough money with Superbowl commercials. On other hand I don't mind watching a
small commercial if it was 5-10 minutes highlight of a game. If the balance
was reasonable I am sure Adblock would not have been this popular.

~~~
edgyswingset
nfl.com was actually the site that turned me into a "default to blocking"
person. The severity of ads on their site is pretty ridiculous.

------
grey-area
This flood of articles about blocking ads are all predicated on the assumption
that making money with ads supports quality content, and that the internet as
we know it would not exist without ads. Both of these assumptions are false -
the internet didn't begin by being driven by ads, and it won't end that way,
and ad-driven content is degraded by the ads when it starts to exist because
of them.

The intrusive ads which are being blocked do not lead to quality content, on
the contrary they intrude on it both in an immediate sense by distracting
readers from the content, and in editorial terms, by driving a constant demand
for more clicks, more views, and more unique visits, whatever the cost. The
result of an ad-driven web is newspapers which have deteriorated into machines
for generating a constant stream of listicles, written mostly for free or a
pittance by an army of writers. The result is media sites which see the
success of Buzzfeed not as a warning but as inspiration, which use services
like outbrain to try to keep users clicking in a circle of despair through
endless shocking headlines which promise much but offer nothing of substance.

I won't mourn that web as it passes, and I won't be starting to read the
Facebook News app or other corporate feeds instead - native apps are subject
to the same pressures and the same inexorable creep of advertising around and
into the content. This will be a blow for Google though, and I'm quite sure
behind Apple's rhetoric about user choice lies a calculation that this will
limit Google's bottom line.

The Mona Lisa is an interesting example to use, as it was neither produced in
order to display with advertising, nor with advertising within the picture
(the two choices offered in the article). It and pictures like it were
commissioned privately by a patron who valued the services of that painter but
thereafter was displayed for free to the world - maybe there's a model there
for online content - commissioned via something like kickstarter for its value
but thereafter displayed for free to the public. It also wasn't valued as much
at the time as it is now.

 _We should reject false dichotomies which offer the choice between one sort
of advertising or another._ The best places for discussion, content and news
on the web are often advertising free, or have advertising which is
unobtrusive and targeted and therefore not likely to be blocked by users,
given the choice (as with HN for example). I honestly wouldn't mourn the loss
of most of the so-called news services we currently have, and the rise of
other services which request payment from a patron, subscription payments from
loyal users, or find other ways of making ends meet (selling related services,
bundled content, making money on related transactions like bookings etc).
There are lots more ways to make money in the world than advertising, and most
of them less degrading.

~~~
stock_toaster
Wholeheartedly agree.

~~~
bambax
Me too! Just said much of the same thing in another comment.

All content is not created equal; content supported by ads is the worst kind,
and there's a good chance it'll simply be killed by adblocking.

This is all very good news.

------
harryf
> If the content that best informs our thinking is increasingly only available
> to those willing to pay then it has troubling impacts for those living in
> poverty or countries for whom a $9.95 monthly subscription is out of reach.

...including children and teenagers, who are unlikely to want to get approval
from their parents for everything they read

~~~
Boxbot
You prefer targeted advertising to and data collection from children and
teenagers to having them get parental approval for what they do online?

------
jmadsen
Magazines & newspapers shot themselves in the foot when they ran out to
produce free content to "stay in the game" like everyone else.

Their original product was never free, but they didn't think that through.
They made most money through ads & classified, but they still charged for the
product.

Now they need to figure out how to make each visitor be worth 50 cents or
whatever, and they are trying to do it in a way that people were already
growing sick of when they started.

\---

They should create a system of micropayments where people can have a instantly
accessible purse & a page can charge a few cents to few, ranked by content,
author, whatever.

they need to start selling their content again.

------
ss64
I think a lot of the recent pushback against adverts is driven by video and
specifically autoplaying video ads.

As an advertiser I might well be tempted to stop displaying video ads if I was
convinced that a big proportion of users were blocking video but not text ads.

Sadly most blockers are all or nothing. Most users are not going to go to the
trouble of whitelisting individual sites so a better middle ground would be
global AD blocker settings:

Off - Block nothing Low - Block popups Medium - Block popups and video High -
Block everything

If that was a common model it would encourage some reasonable behaviour on
both sides.

------
michaelwww
Kudos to Apple for drawing the line like they did with Flash. Advertisers were
degrading their product and irritating their users by going too far, so Apple
did the right thing.

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chejazi
In the future everyone will be producing content - not just the people that
currently do it for a living. Brand-name publishers simply will not be able to
compete against the masses. It began with TypePad blogging, and now platforms
like Medium are taking social publishing even more mainstream.

Which raises more interesting questions: how will this next generation of
content producers monetize content, and will they be doing it for a living
like the publishers of today?

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sparkzilla
Web publishers should get together to make a "Reader's Charter" that pledges
to stop annoying ads. It's not that complicated. Here's mine:
[http://newslines.org/blog/how-i-improved-this-website-
with-o...](http://newslines.org/blog/how-i-improved-this-website-with-one-
weird-trick/)

------
markyc
_in trying to be more private we may be more transparent_

I think that's one thing people don't account for. once most content is behind
paywalls you leave much more of a trace than on the ad-ridden web now

~~~
click170
I don't disagree but I think an important distinction is that when you provide
your credit card there is an expectation that they will be able to track you
based on that.

A big problem with ad tracking these days is that its entirely out-of-site-
out-of-mind, nontechy people don't expect to be tracked across the internet as
much as when they buy something online with a credit card.

~~~
XorNot
No it's also just that once the user is the customer, there's a requirement to
actually pay them some respect. An annoyed paying customer is directly lost
revenue.

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summerdown2
My understanding is that adblockers work by removing known third party app
sites from loading items on a page.

If that's true, what would stop a website from proxying ads, so they appear to
come from the website rather than the third party?

I guess that would involve more bandwidth and so less money for the site, but
high-bandwidth items are the ones people complain about anyway. I don't see
why text based ads would be impossible under that scheme, for example.

------
gpsx
Just to throw an idea out, surely not original...Http has a
payment/advertising system added to the headers. Users decide if they will
make a micropayment, view advertising or do a subscription to view a page/site
if the site requests payment. The user can have a default setting and also
settings for specific sites. Along with this there is some management that
limits information the site can get about the user.

------
burger_moon
I'm curious now after reading the mobile gaming post that's also on the front
page. If everyone paid for the content on the big news sites, would it even be
more profitable than selling ads and mining user data?

How much would sites have to charge to make up for the loss of ads and user
data?

Also what are the chances publishers to ever get rid of tracking and mining
data?

------
wodenokoto
This reminds me of a concert experience back in the days. The venue had
curtain in front of the stage where they shot a projector and somebody had
forgot to full-screen the slide show and the entire audience could see napster
running in the task bar.

------
mkhpalm
I almost don't understand why people are still paying the prices they pay to
put ads out on the internet. There are some exceptions but name the last "ad"
you clicked on? It probably resembles the last spam you followed.

------
neya
I'm just going to re-quote one of my comments from a previous topic that was
flagged to death:

>Back in the early internet era, the best content was available for free of
charge. If anything, that's still the case even today. Try to google on some
technical topics like Ohm's law or something and you'll find very old websites
built with good ole' HTML tables providing the information you need crisp and
clear.

>Actually, I disagree. This is 2015. If I want to start a website on a certain
topic, say about cars or electronics, I can find some really good free hosts
who will support me without any sneazy catches. As a real example, I go to
blogger.com, setup a new blog with my own custom theme, (with all the
attribution to blogger removed if I want to) and start producing content. Not
cool with blogspot? Then, how about Github pages? Not so technical? How about
using a free shared web host (there are plenty, Google them)?

>If your objective is to spread information and knowledge, you will do that no
matter what. It is when your objective is guised as spreading information when
you really want to make money and scale up doing so, then you run into a
problem. The problem with this kind of appeal against ad-blocking is the same
old argument of "How much is too much?" "We need money to support our website
to keep it up and running". But, never do these authors disclose how much they
really need as long as they're making a killer profit. The problem with mixing
ads with content is that introduces a conflict of interest - Are you writing
that content because you like writing, or are you writing that content to get
more eyeballs to serve your advertisers? And it's very hard to convince your
readers that you don't intend to make money from them although you have ads on
your site.

>For your reference, I do own a blog myself without any ads whatsoever and I
think this is the future we're heading towards. I am a proud user of adblock
software and I refused to be shamed for that. As would any user, I am
concerned about the content first, which is the logical reason why I go to a
site. But, if the site tries hard to ruin my experience to make it difficult
for me to consume that content, then of course, I'll find a way to circumvent
it. But, that doesn't mean I don't support the authors of the site, just that
as everyone else, I have my own way of supporting them. Just like how I've
been donating to Wikipedia all these years. There have been too many sites
abusing the slogan of "We need to place ads so we can support ads" to buy back
our lost trust. Sure, there will be a lot of content weeded out because they
can't support themselves, but I am confident that the ones whose objectives
are to spread information will do so no matter what.

>We built the internet ourselves when no one gave us ads to support our
efforts back then. And we'll find a way to do it again. Just takes time and
patience.

------
dynomight
Maybe scaling native advertising might hire more people than robotizing the
whole affair the way it is now.

~~~
thescriptkiddie
Are you implying that native advertisements aren't ads, or are more acceptable
kind of ad, or are impossible to block? Because none of those things are true.

Native advertising is probably the worst kind of advertising. If I see a
website or magazine publish an "advertorial", I'm never going to trust
anything they publish from then on. It completely undermines credibility and
only makes sense as a last-ditch moneygrab. It's not even worth blocking
because it's a useful red flag.

~~~
dynomight
There doesn't have to be a single way of doing things for every situation. For
some things I'm interested in a native ad is just fine. For other things not.

You make interesting points even though you are unnecessarily aggressive.

------
look_lookatme
If you use an ad blocker and consume content supported by ads, you are a
thief. It may be the best case scenario for your security, time, etc and there
are cases where thievery is justified, but you are a thief nonetheless.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
That's foolishness. There's nothing in the world that compels me to use your
content the way you intended. I can read it or not, store it on my backup
drive, print it out and use it for the bottom of my birdcage.

I understand that content providers are frustrated. But lashing out and
calling names is pointless and silly.

~~~
look_lookatme
I'm not calling names. I'm classifying the act of deliberately circumventing
the method of revenue generation baked into the presentation of content by
publishers.

It boggles my mind that people cannot understand this. Of course time is your
to do with as you see fit. If you want to download the ads and bypass them
after the content is presented, in the spirit of TiVo, by all means do, but
don't selectively choose to download what you want. Instead you should just
not visit the site.

Alternatively if you'd like to install an extension (if one were to exist)
that warns you that ads are attempting to load before you are given a chance
to consume the content and then gives you an option to return to where you
came from, that is fine too.

But to deliberately reject the advertising adjacent to content is an act of
thievery.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
On my machine, in my home, with my electricity and bandwidth, I'll do anything
I like with the bytes that are delivered to me. Don't pretend to tell me what
I must do or not do. That's like the salesman with his foot in the door as I
try to close it. I have a shotgun at home for that particular problem. I have
ad-blockers for the other one.

I buy the sunday paper at the local mart, I dump the ads in the trash before I
go out the door. Nobody jumps out and tries to arrest me for that - its my
paper, I'll do as I please.

And yes its simple name-calling to say 'thievery' without proving the case, or
even attempting to justify it. That word has meaning, and it isn't what's
happening. Not going to just take anybody's word for that.

------
nl
It's pretty clear to me that the endgame for this is ad-blocking-blockers: You
run an ad blocker, then you either pay to visit my site or you disable your ad
blocker for my site.

That's going to slow down sites even more, but that's the tragedy of the
commons: some sites will be obnoxious in the ads they show it forces people to
use ad-blockers. That destroys the livelihood of so many people that
countermeasures will be developed.

~~~
eli
Unless the way the web works fundamentally changes, it will always be easier
to block ads than to detect and block adblockers.

~~~
nl
Yes, but arguably there is more financial motivation for the publishers. You
end up in an arms race.

~~~
eli
More like cat and mouse. The publishers are at an extreme technical
disadvantage.

~~~
anonred
How so? It's extremely trivial to make an inline script that detects if the
client is blocking ad network requests, then act accordingly. Possible actions
range from blowing up the page to redirecting the user away.

------
sambrand
Advertising is paying for goods with attention. It's a novel type of currency.
It's a wealth generator. And it's contributed to a more diverse Internet.

If you don't want to pay with attention that's fine. If you believe the
Internet should be an ad-free Utopia, that's fine too. But rather than take
content without paying attention, practice some civil disobedience: embargo
publishers who piss you off.

~~~
toothbrush
I'm really curious whenever people say such things though: what about (thought
experiment) the situation where i let my computer run whatever code websites
throw at me, but that come hell or high water, i'm 100% sure i would never
click on any ad or be swayed in my opinions regarding what to purchase? Is
that 'attention' still worth any nonzero value? Or what about the situation
where some technical gizmo forces me to look and listen to the advert (see
Black Mirror S01E02) before receiving the article text. Say i do all that, but
still am 100% uninterested in what's being offered—wouldn't it be in
everyone's best interests to _not_ show that ad?

On a lighter note, this is how i feel about ads:
[https://youtu.be/JiHjzGKc8tA?t=0m58s](https://youtu.be/JiHjzGKc8tA?t=0m58s)
(Black Books – "just browsing")

~~~
sambrand
At least today even fraudulent impressions are valuable because ad buyers are
willing to pay for them. They're smartening up though, as Tony Haile (author
of the linked article & Chartbeat CEO) is aware. Viewability & attention
metrics are the future of ad performance tracking. (and that link gave me a
good laugh)

