
Study of Ad-Blocking Software Suggests Wide Use - mgav
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/10/study-of-ad-blocking-software-suggests-wide-use/?ref=technology
======
TeMPOraL
> _The numbers come as tech companies, publishers and advertisers grow anxious
> that their efforts to reach users through increasingly sophisticated online
> advertisements are having little effect._

Herein lies their problem. Had they stick to _simple_ ads, people wouldn't
rush to block them.

Per a HN comment I saved in my quotes file, "Any sufficiently advanced
business model is indistinguishable from a scam." \-- dsirijus,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8227941](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8227941)

> _“What’s causing grave concern for broadcasters and advertisers is video
> advertising, which is some of their most valuable content, is starting to be
> blocked,”_

Video advertising is a whole new class of shitting on your users, and they're
_surprised_ people are blocking it?

It's as if those people lived on another planet. I wonder how many executives
and ad-network people use ad blockers personally. I find it hard to believe
they can't see the manure they're dumping on the Internet.

~~~
Drakim
Sometimes it's like we live in a parody of the real world.

I feel that the online video ad situation is akin to advertisers blasting loud
commercial jingles in the middle of the night, while complaining that people
are getting sound isolated walls and how that's hurting their business, some
even going so far as to talk about how thick walls should be illegal.

When I navigate to an url I don't get a fully rendered webpage ready from the
server, but instead I get served a bunch of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It's
then up to my computer to compose those things into the interactive website,
using the rendering engine of my choice. How the website turns out being
rendered can depend on a number of factors, like what screen resolution I use,
what fonts I have on my system, etc. Maybe I'm using a text browser that can't
render pictures or video.

So, it's so darn crazy to me that some people would say that I'm stealing or
being dishonest by not rendering the ads in the website. Is it really my duty
to render those ads, even if I don't intend to click on them? Would I still be
stealing if I rendered them, but never moved my eyesight over to where the ad
is placed? How far do I have to pretend?

~~~
phantarch
I think the difficulty comes in when the two parties (us vs the site owners)
come into the situation with different views about what the website IS.

You're viewing it, quite correctly, as a technical request that's made and
some data that's passed back that you can use at your discretion.

They're viewing it as you entering a digital storefront where they need to
take every opportunity to convert you into a customer.

In your mind, you're staying right where you are and the data you're getting
back is just that: yours. In their mind, you're entering into their space and
so they have certain expectations of you and your experience. You telling them
what kind of advertising they are allowed to have is, in their minds,
tantamount to walking in to one of their stores and telling them to change the
displays they have out. Not saying that it justifies any claims about what
should be legal, illegal, etc. but it does make sense why each party would
have the opinions they do.

~~~
bunderbunder
On a subset of the devices I use, I pay by the byte for my Internet service.
In that case, blasting me with a bunch of video content that's much larger
than the article I intended to read. Advertisers do not respect this, even
though it has an impact on my finances. I reserve the right to choose whether
I consent to paying for something, and I don't consent to the terms they're
trying to offer me.

If they were to give me some opportunity to make a decision about this, in the
same way that a real storefront does implicitly by me being able to look into
the store before choosing to enter, that would be one thing. But such a
mechanism does not exist, so as far as I'm concerned the analogy is invalid.

~~~
phantarch
Valid point, I hadn't considered that the amount of data they're trying to
send you may end up costing you more money than you were willing to allot to
their site. However, I don't think that makes the entirety of the analogy
invalid. They still think about their website differently than you, regardless
of how you're being charged to view it.

It could also be argued that once you're in a store, there is a very real
disrespect of your personal finances placed on you by the burden of
advertising and product placement. An abuse of consumer psychology in a
physical space is just as bad as an abuse of your phone data. Both cost you
time and money. While it still stands that you couldn't have seen the video
advertising coming ahead of time, you also can't see the psychological tricks
that get you to purchase more coming ahead of time either. In both cases I
think it's up to us to not get fooled again.

~~~
bunderbunder
Another spot where the analogy breaks down is that I don't think of a non-
ecommerce website as a kind of store. I think of it as being more equivalent
to a magazine or newspaper. And in those cases advertising is certainly
present, but the overall experience is much less overtly invasive to me, the
consumer.

I also suspect that non-ecommerce website publishers really would rather think
about their websites as being akin to magazines. They aren't really in control
of what gets put on their page through the ad networks in the same way that
print publishers are, and I can't imagine many editors are terribly thrilled
about the things that ad networks place alongside the content they produce. I
really kind off feel bad for them; they're caught up in a pretty terrible
Faustian bargain.

~~~
phantarch
Very true! Non ecommerce sites suffer just as badly as their users when an
executive decision is made to increase the amount of advertising on their
pages.

I wonder if the increase in adverts is based on someone thinking that it will
pay for their site's cost or if they're doing it with the mindset that
advertising is their business model rather than providing interesting content.

~~~
bunderbunder
Nowadays, advertising _is_ their business model and producing quality content
is merely a means to an end.

The rule of thumb is pretty simple: If you're not paying them money then you
couldn't possibly be their customer. You're probably actually their product.

~~~
pdkl95
> You're probably actually their product.

In some cases - like GMail and other communications services where other
people are involved - you _and the people you communicate with_ are their
product.

The "second hand smoke"-style effect of these "free" services has been largely
ignored. Making a (bad) decision to trade your privacy for some service can be
morally justifiable. Making that decision for the friends/family you
communicate with is another thing entirely.

------
leni536
> Ad-blocking will lead to almost $22 billion of lost advertising revenue this
> year, according to the report, put together by Adobe and PageFair, a Dublin-
> based start-up that helps companies and advertisers recoup some of this lost
> revenue.

I guess assuming that the users of ad blocker users would visit the sites with
the same frequency as without ad blockers, and they click on ads with the same
probability if they see them as people who don't use ad blockers.

This is the same fallacy as counting the lost money on pirated content. Most
people who pirate wouldn't buy a product even if they couldn't pirate it. The
solution is much simpler for ad ridden websites: what about not serving the
main content for ad block users? If you don't like them then don't serve them,
it shouldn't be that hard. Maybe they don't do this because:

\- Ad blockers are still a minority on most websites

\- They don't eat up much bandwidth

\- It would be really bad advertising (ha!) for them doing more harm than good

~~~
aikah
> what about not serving the main content for ad block users?

Some porn sites have started to do that. Well it's not like there is only 1
porn site on the planet... There lies the issue with that method.

Unless every content provider does that it is not going to work. And it's also
a cat and mouse game just like piracy. The technology will always be ahead of
whatever scheme they use to block content.

As a musician, I get somehow a taste of revenge from all that crowd that is
freaking out, the same crowd told us to "adapt or die" 10 years ago. Well they
now need to adapt or die, because ad revenue will not be a viable business
model 3 years from now...

~~~
davidgerard
Publishers have the same problem musicians do: it's (a) ridiculously easy to
publish now (text or music), (b) you're literally competing with every other
publisher/musician in the entire world. There's a larger consumer pie, but a
_ridiculously_ larger producer pie. [http://rocknerd.co.uk/2013/09/13/culture-
is-not-about-aesthe...](http://rocknerd.co.uk/2013/09/13/culture-is-not-about-
aesthetics-punk-rock-is-now-enforced-by-law/)

~~~
aikah
> There's a larger consumer pie, but a ridiculously larger producer pie

No it's just that people don't want to pay for stuff on the internet, period.
This is valid for all digital goods, music,books,movies,news and co. Whether
there is competition or not it doesn't matter.

> it's (a) ridiculously easy to publish now (text or music),

producing =/= publishing

A published crap will still be crap. Producing something good takes effort and
it's valid for all digital goods including the press. And since nobody's
willing to pay for that work, more and more crap get published,which makes
people want to buy less and less.

~~~
davidgerard
> No it's just that people don't want to pay for stuff on the internet,
> period. This is valid for all digital goods, music,books,movies,news and co.
> Whether there is competition or not it doesn't matter.

Hence why iTunes was a failure, let alone Netflix? Make it easy and the
customers will come. (I was actually surprised that iTunes worked, and people
were willing to pay as long as it was sufficiently convenient.) Just not
enough for the massively greater creator pool, as talentless bozos like me can
put music out there too.

~~~
aikah
iTunes was a success for Apple sure, not for artists. And if Apple wants to
move to a Spotify buisness model there is a reason for that.

As for Netflix it's only really successful in the US.

> Make it easy and the customers will come.

So why aint you rich already ? smart guy.

~~~
redblacktree
> So why aint you rich already ? smart guy.

Downvote for facile argument and unnecessary insult.

------
SCdF
So I just started using ad blockers (uBlock Origin on Chrome, adblock +
ghostery on Safari) because I was finally sick of the amount of extra
bandwidth, CPU and just _noise_ they are creating with this crap.

I've intentionally not used ad blockers for years, because I get that's how
companies make money, but heaven's to betsy if they don't dig their own graves
with the intrusive over-intensive crap these days.

My old tactic was to just not visit sites with offensive, intrusive or band-
width heavy ads. These sites, bar some outliers, no longer exist. Every tech,
current events and editorial site pulls down half the fucking internet to show
me some words on a screen these days.

~~~
lostcolony
I started using adblocking software -years- ago, when an ad on a reputable,
syndicated comics page (gocomics.com I think) minimized my browser, and popped
up an ad to look like a system dialog telling me my computer was at risk. That
was it for me.

Since then, uBlock occasionally gets disabled on Chrome because I don't even
know, and it usually is just a few pageviews before an ad is so obnoxious that
I notice and re-enable it. I don't understand how people without adblockers
even use the web at this point.

------
applecore
This article makes an important point: ad-blocking is not just a means to
remove annoying (and often disgusting) advertisements; it's also to prevent
data being collected about you without any consent or oversight.

~~~
iwwr
I'm not sure how successful it is in that regard. Just browser fingerprinting
is enough to track most people; cookies and third party connections are not
essential.

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Fingerprinting](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Fingerprinting)

~~~
octo_t
It prevents ad companies from fingerprinting you, you never make the
connection to seedy-ad-company-X, you only make the connection to
facebook/nyt/WaPo etc

~~~
leni536
You should avoid tracking pixels too, or downloading any 3rd party content
(like CSS). You can use umatrix for this though.

~~~
talmand
Ok, this is new. Why exactly must we not download CSS?

~~~
throwaway7767
_3rd-party_ CSS. I.e., if the page includes CSS from an ad network, the
network gets the request and can track it. Basically using CSS instead of a
1px tracking bug.

One of the many shitty, underhanded methods these companies use to track
people without their knowledge or consent. I will shed no tears for these
companies when they go bankrupt as people push back against their methods.

~~~
talmand
I understand now, but the idea of CSS in this is what threw me off. This is
valid for any file that the computer makes a request for, if queries are
attached to it.

------
JohnTHaller
I've had more friends/family request ad-blockers. This has become an even
bigger issue with auto-playing video ads on mobile which both suck up
bandwidth and randomly begin playing loud audio on your phone when it's
otherwise silent. We're talking mainstream sites like Slate, Salon.com, Daily
Beast, Bust.com, etc, all of which automatically played loud video ads on my
girlfriend's phone. On Android, this necessitates switching to Firefox and
using something like AdBlock Plus or uBlock since Google Chrome on Android
doesn't even support plugins. I'm unsure if these ads are intentional auto-
playing video ads or AdSense's broken "hover to expand" ads which are always
triggered accidentally and are, for all intents and purposes, auto-playing
video ads.

------
billyhoffman
I was recently giving a screen-shared demo to a media company that makes the
vast majority of their revenue from online ads. One of the execs saw the
adblock extension button in the browser chrome, interrupted the demo, and
proceeded to tell me how terrible I was. Needless to say we did not make the
sale.

Lesson learned: When giving demos, open an incognito window since most plugins
are disabled by default.

~~~
talmand
Someone good at their job would have taken the opportunity to find out why you
were using the ad blocker and considered the impact on their industry based
off your response. It wasn't professional to have such a childish outburst
during a meeting, and to interrupt at that. I would think it's possible you
are better off in the long run not getting the business.

------
iwwr
I wonder if the audience for ad-blocking software is also not that "valuable"
to begin with (from an advertiser's perspective). These are more sophisticated
people that don't fall for blinking warnings, fake browser UI and who don't
tend to install stuff without meaning to.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Maybe they're losing the less tech-savvy folks too, as their "computer whiz"
friends and family members grow tired of fixing yet another drive-by toolbar
or ransomware install. Myself, when working on someone's computer, I now
download Adblock as a first thing after a clean browser installation.

~~~
benbristow
I now install this on other people's computers as well as ABP.
[http://unchecky.com/](http://unchecky.com/)

Automatically unchecks most 'related/sponsored offers' in installers for
software. Most of the adware that people install often tends to be a result of
not reading the installer properly.

------
lawl
Seeing how a lot of browser/flash/java drivebys seem to come from ads, I also
consider them good security practice these days. See for example the recent
firefox exploit.

[https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2015/08/06/firefox-
exploit...](https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2015/08/06/firefox-exploit-
found-in-the-wild/)

We need a better system than ads.

~~~
VLM
> We need a better system than ads.

Complimentary editorial copy, corporate press releases masquerading as news
stories, paid product placement, paid endorsements as part of the content ...
Eh I'd rather stick with the existing "block known ad hosts and any graphic of
X by Y pixel dimensions", easier to block.

~~~
davidgerard
It's ok! We have all that stuff too!

Seriously, the tech press went full-on "editorial wall? pfeh, so 20th century"
fifteen years ago, and the rest of the press has followed. You're describing
the present.

------
quonn
I started blocking ads about a year ago when some mainstream tech sites began
to show ads that I felt make me unhappy, such as "The 10 signs of getting a
heart attack/Alzheimer's/cancer", etc. Usually with a picture of someone in
their 60's looking quite sad or disoriented. I find this kind of advertising
very offensive and I'm sorry that I'm now also blocking all other kind of ads,
too.

------
geromek
The irony is that Ghostery is reporting 14 trackers on the page as I read the
article...

------
quinndupont
Ahh, the free market is great, until it totally isn't. I look forward to
seeing what new revenue strategies the truly innovative companies will come up
with. We've all been lulled into the complacency of cheap and easy ad dollars
-- let's innovate instead.

~~~
chii
true innovation isn't cheap, and sometimes it's cheaper to try warping the
market instead of innovating. After all, money is like water - it flows
through the path of least resistance.

------
xcombelle
Ad networks is also a pretty convenient to spread malware. see for example
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising)

------
Lancey
Maybe this study will prompt advertisers to consider why a third of the
internet is blocking their ads?

Just kidding. They'll just get mad at blockers and continue to make their
users' lives a living hell.

------
HSO
I use adblock, ghostery, several JS blacklists etc., uninstalled all Flash
from all computers years ago, and _still_ I regularly catch "funny calls" to
strange IPs I don't even visit in Little Snitch.

Highly recommend this little utility. The logs make for unexpectedly
interesting reading.

~~~
dhimes
Looks like it's Apple only?

~~~
eghad
Glasswire, [https://www.glasswire.com/](https://www.glasswire.com/) is a solid
Windows alternative.

------
a3n
To ad sellers: We may be technical here, but we all have friends and families.

I just helped my all-but computer-phobic ex-wife with a computer task last
night. She had ABP installed. I think my teenage son did it.

Reap it.

------
a3n
I actually wrote to the NYT about this some weeks back. In essence: feel free
to block me, charge enough subscription to cover your needs, or go out of
business. Or, display static ads that don't collect and forward information
about me.

It just occurred to me that if adblocking is made illegal, then the next
generation of adblocking software won't block ads, they'll block sites. "This
site is known to use intrusive ads, which are illegal to block. Whitelist or
Blacklist?"

------
lowpro
If I remember correctly, ad blocking software overlays the ad with blank HTML
right? So blocking ads doesn't actually reduce data usage, since the browser
still downloads everything, Adblock just has to parse it and get rid of the
junk.

I believe because of this download-then-parse model, webpages actually load
slower. I remember an HN article on the front page about it.

Nonetheless, I still use Adblock. The sites worth supporting I normally pay
money for in some way, such as premium on a forum.

~~~
ronjouch
> If I remember correctly, ad blocking software overlays the ad with blank
> HTML right?

Don't know why you're being downvoted, you're simply unsure about a (wrong)
assumption and asking about it, which to me simply calls for a correction /
explanation. Anyway, no, uBlock for example actually blocks http requests,
based on huge community-maintained blacklists. Just try loading theverge.com :

\- Without uBlock: 131 requests

\- With uBlock: 37 requests

~~~
lowpro
Thank you, I've been here for a long time, still a noob though. I figured if I
wasn't sure there had to be others thinking the same thing.

------
mikegerwitz
The article alludes to this, but doesn't state it: let's be clear that by
blocking ads, you're not just blocking annoying advertisements---you're
blocking _software_ , most of which spys on you. Some sites load megabytes of
JavaScript.

Another perspective: for free software advocates, these simply must be
blocked, because they're non-free.

------
sritrisna
I can’t actually remember when I began using ABP. I install it on all browser
by default and I believe about a year ago have begun using Ghostery to block
annoying beacons everywhere. Never had much success with it on my Google Nexus
Tablet and because of it simply stopped surfing the web on tablets and
smartphones altogether. However, since the release of Adblock Browser - big
big kudos to the team for creating such a fantastic piece of software - I can
resume browsing the web on my portable devices. I don’t mind relevant and
unobtrusive ads. However, some sites simply have gone overboard with 30 plus
beacons included and ads everywhere. I will never support such an aggressive
approach to monetising a resource. Especially by those large publishers which
believe they can do whatever they want on the web, simply because they're now
not limited by physical space anymore, as they are with their print magazines.

~~~
benbristow
If you're rooted download F-Droid (Open Source Play Store Alternative) and
download 'AdAway'.

[https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.adaway](https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.adaway)

Works a charm ;)

------
a3n
I've been using adblockers for a few years. Something happened at work, I had
to reinstall a browser, and I only install addons as the need arises, so it
takes awhile to get a new browser installation up to speed with the ten or so
addons I eventually end up with.

Ad blocker was first, and almost immediate. To paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke,
"My God, it's full of ads!"

Not to mention the risk to my employer by allowing ads across the firewall.

EDIT: And there's an opportunity for people who want to sell into the
enterprise. Businesses should be blocking ads at the firewall. My employer
blocks egregiously non-work related _sites_ , but they don't yet seem to care
about ads riding in on allowed sites. I expect that to change.

------
plg
Maybe ad blocking and the ensuing evisceration of the "free but agree to view
ads tailored to you via the deep profiling of your identity using information
you would ordinarily presume to be private" business model will be good for us
(good for privacy)

------
matwood
What is the best ad blocking plugin for Chrome nowadays?

~~~
falcolas
If you feel up to it, I still personally recommend a hosts file. Extremely low
overhead, and it blocks all forms of malicious content from ad endpoints.

I use: [http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/](http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/)

~~~
netmare
I've been using a different one
([http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.txt](http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.txt)),
which is roughly the same size. However, their entries seem quite different
(only 1921 common domains out of 11356+13586 total). Maybe they should be
merged.

~~~
falcolas
It would be very interesting to perform an analysis of the differences and
merge them, I agree.

------
davidgerard
With ad-network malware from major news sites, it is _actually dangerous_ for
your nontechnical friends and relatives not to run an ad-blocker.

"Ad blockers are safe sex for the Internet."

"You could sleep with lots of people and demand their test results every time
... or you could just use a condom. Same with ad blockers."

------
littletimmy
Of course there's widespread use. When you put in 2-4 video ads with sounds
per page and clog up my browser, you'd be out of your mind to think I'm not
going to take steps to stop this assault on my senses.

I don't see how advertisers don't get this. Surely they are not entitled to my
eyes and ears.

------
cheald
The ad companies have, IMO, brought it on themselves.

Flash ads, Java ads, ads with auto-playing sound, popups that interupt the UX,
insane analytics deliverables that can increase total page payload and runtime
by _multiples_ of the original page size - they are the problem.

I work for a company that makes much of its revenue off of advertising, so
this issue is near-and-dear to my heart. As ad blocking has increased in
popularity, the networks' response is to impose even more intrusive, resource-
intensive, user-hostile requirements on their ad deliverables, and it's only
been getting worse. Browsing ad-supported sites is so painful these days
_because_ the advertising networks are no longer a relatively minimal ride-
along with the parent page - they're practically their own webapp that gets
injected along with the host content. Instrumentation shows payload times 4-5x
larger than the host page, and total load times can be 10-20x greater than
just the host page.

The problem is that ad networks don't feel the pain of increased payload
sizes, user-hostile deliverables, degraded UX, and user frustration. There is
no feedback mechanism with which to economically punish the bad ads and reward
the good ads. The lifetime of an ad unit is so relatively short that there's
no incentive to develop a quality deliverable, or to fix problems unless a
publisher's development team notices a _specific_ unit and can call out
specific problems with it (which generally only happens when the ad is doing
something like, I dunno, crashing the entire tab).

I have exactly zero sympathy for the advertising industry's AdBlock problem -
it's a problem they've wrought of their own doing. If you want to fix it,
there has to be a hard focus on ads that don't actively make it harder for
users to get and ingest publishers' content. Reduce deliverable sizes, get rid
of long transitive dependency chains (scripts loading scripts loading scripts
loading scripts is _awful_ ), get rid of stuff that is constantly causing
network overhead (viewability trackers are easily the worst offenders here),
aggressively police against flash/java ads, police against ads that autoplay
audio, ban ads that pre-load video (I have instrumentation on ads which load
_thirty megabytes_ of video before the user ever interacts with them),
minimize reflows and DOM manipulation - tl;dr, stop being so incredibly user
hostile.

Ads are, as far as users are concerned, malware that is painful enough that
they'll seek out ways to avoid it rather than just tolerating it. That's the
ad networks' problem, and nobody else's.

------
ekianjo
Wow, only something like 10 to 20% in the US ? For the first Internet nation
of the world, I was expecting better.

~~~
lcswi
I expected much less, 10% is great!

------
owenwil
I don't want to get into arguing about adblocking too much, but it _is_
notable that all studies, including this one, about adblock reach are from
companies who have a vested interest in growing ad blocking's reach... yet the
press gobbles it up.

------
hsod
When accessing an ad-supported website, there is an implied agreement to not
automatically block ads. Using AdBlock is an immoral violation of this implied
agreement.

