
What We Talk About When We Talk About Ad Blocking - bakztfuture
http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/12/raymond-carver-loved-ads/
======
yabatopia
"Wen you use an ad blocker, that’s stealing. It’s no different than ripping
music. It’s no different than pirating movies.” Adverisers and publishers
still don't get it. They see adblockers as some Napster-like problem: people
use it to get free content. Block the adblockers and the problem will go away.

Never mind the issues visitors have with intrusive adds, bandwidth hogging ads
and excessive tracking and invasion of privacy. Their solution is some magical
self-regulation. Yeah, like that gonna work.

They turn a blind eye to eye the real problem: people don't trust online
advertising anymore. And why should they? Everywhere they go, they get
bombarded with useless, "targeted" ads that stalks them from site to site,
questionable calls to action to trick them into clicking and a user experience
only sadomasochistic vusitors would enjoy.

There's no shame in using adblockers. It's a matter of staying sane.

~~~
oska
Shame? I use one with pride. I want to help destroy sites that rely on an
intrusive advertising business model. And I want to put people like the source
of your quote (founder and CEO of a mobile ad company) out of a job.

~~~
toxican
Can you share you whitelist of sites with unintrusive ads? I assume you have
one since your primary concern is the intrusive ones.

~~~
narrowrail
Given the fact that these adblocking discussions on HN have increased to 2 or
3 times per week, I imagine there will soon be an ad network that concentrates
on serving unintrusive/ non- dark pattern ads. However, I currently do not
know of one, perhaps you could list some of these?

FYI, your tone sounds accusatory, as if you already know oska has no such
whitelist, and you are just proving the point that oska is just some
freeloader that wants free stuff.

------
userbinator
_That’s stealing. It’s no different than ripping music. It’s no different than
pirating movies_

What a ridiculous and disturbing analogy. I'd say it's no different than
looking away from things I don't want to see or closing my eyes, or covering
my ears, and an adblocker is simply technology to assist me in doing so. Do
advertisers really think they have the rights to force people to consume
content? One question I'd really like to ask him is if he carefully views and
absorbs the content of _every single ad he encounters_ , because it would be
terribly hypocritical of him not to!

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
"if he carefully views and absorbs the content of every single ad he
encounters"

And if he then makes an objective decision on whether or not to purchase the
product, based purely on his need and the product's ability to fulfil that
need. Because if he dismisses it 'unfairly', that's just as bad as blocking it
in the first place.

------
Mithaldu
I don't use Ad-Blockers and find the naming itself is wrong. I use an URL-
Blocker with a list of patterns i define to block data from URLs that i found
in the past to degrade my online experience inacceptably. Those may include
ads, but those may also be completely unrelated things.

The point here is, i'm not blocking ads, i'm customizing my web experience
completely.

------
DanielBMarkham
_he’s already looking at potential workarounds, whether that involves hiding
content until people turn off their ad blockers (“But we’ll say it nicer than
that”)_

This does not sound like the type of thing a partner in a voluntary business
arrangement does. It sounds like somebody participating in a mutually-
antagonistic relationship.

We live in a world where tens of thousands of app developers work hundreds or
thousands of hours to create apps for various app stores. Most of these will
never make enough to break even. It's a world where the average teenager can
click a button and get a game to play for dozens of hours -- for free. If they
don't like the ads, they can pay a couple of bucks and continue playing for
dozens of hours.

So, in this system where people trade this involvement of time for this small
amount of money, what would the 5-minute experience of reading a news article
be worth? A penny? Less? I'm thinking we're talking a tenth or a hundredth of
a penny. Of course, for the _publisher_ , it's a different equation, but we
don't price things based on how much it costs to make them, we price them
based on what the market will bear.

The ad model was a great stop-gap for a couple of decades. It's time has come
to a close, as it should. As hardware prices continue to drop, perhaps the
next step will be advertiser-funded hardware -- with full ad-blocking enabled.
Instead of "owning" the web property, advertisers will own the hardware that
gets you to the web property.

------
hollerith
Don't let anyone tell you that if online advertising disappeared, there would
be nothing interesting to read online.

There was an abundance of interesting things to read on the web (produced by
amateur writers and by students and professionals who make their living as
professors, scientists, engineers, technologists, etc) before advertising
appeared on the internet (around 1994). Even if we ignore the web, there was
an abundance of interesting things to read on the internet and its predecessor
(the ARPAnet): specifically, there was plenty to read in newsgroups (starting
in 1979) on mailing lists (starting in 1975) and on "anonymous" FTP servers.

Before 1991, commercial activity was not even allowed on the US internet
backbone. (Since the backbone was used by most internet users -- even users in
other countries -- that amounted to a _de facto_ internet-wide ban on
commercial activity.) For example, although employers and employees (that is,
W2 workers) were allowed to use the backbone to make help-wanted and work-
wanted posts, contractors (1099 workers) and organizations seeking contractors
were not because that was considered too much like commerce. Even with that
ban on almost all commercial activity, the internet was a very lively and
engaging place.

------
oneeyedpigeon
Dear all publishers,

Stop using shitty third-party injection scripts to deliver advertising. Find
another way.

Dear advertisers,

Please start trusting publishers to accurately report page views to you, like
you used to for print media. There are laws to prevent them from lying to you.

If those two happen, and ads are unobtrusive (ideally, static content), I'll
disable my adblocker for your site. Until then, sorry, you don't get to force
me to put up with your crap. By all means detect my ad-blocker and hold back
all your content, that's totally acceptable by me.

------
noadsever
Ad blockers are great! There are no acceptable ads, or good ad networks.

I will never, ever disable them, ever, for any reason. There's no upside to
it. If your site dies for lack of ad revenue, well, the market has spoken.

~~~
user_0001
I agree. I don't want to see any of your ads. Ever.

Obtrusive / unobtrusive / tracking / no tracking. I don't care. I don't want
to see them.

If I can block them I will.

Call it stealing? I don't care

------
ominous
> "The ethics of ad blocking"

I will never willingly click an ad, period. If I even as much as look at an
ad, and if I decide the product merits a bit of my time, I will google for
information on the product. Over the years I have learned to ignore ads. My
brain must have, by now, a carefully arranged neural (eh) network that blocks
out ads already. An ad blocker would only spare my devices the same problem. I
can't remember the last time I saw an ad outside.

That said, ads are worthless of my time, bandwidth and screen space. I don't
want to download your tracking gizmos, stock images, crafted keywords,
animations, whatever.

Replace all ads with donate buttons, and I will accept them. And donate, if I
enjoy your content.

~~~
gambiter
I 99% agree.

The 1% is for sites that advertise other things on the same site, which means
they aren't using an ad service, but instead building their own advertising.
The BBC is particularly good at this. When I'm reading an article, they have
ads for other articles that I might be interested in. I've spent more time
reading/watching articles and videos there than anywhere else. Of course, they
could just be trying to keep me there so that I click their ads, but uBlock
and Ghostery ensure that third-party ads don't display and I'm not tracked,
so...

------
xefer
Ad Blocking is technologically straightforward because of the ease with which
3rd-party ads are incorporated into webpages: typically it involves a
relatively simple change to the page template to include some scripts and a
new page element or two. It's this very simplicity that make it so tempting
for content providers to so easily add more, but again, makes it equally easy
to remove. Since it's just templates and scripts all the actual fetching of
ads is done by the client, so very few resources are expended by the content
provider.

Ad providers need to move to integrate on the server-side where the content is
more intricately woven into the actual content of the page. All images and
perhaps URLs that provide interaction would be from the origination domain.
There wouldn't be 3rd party URLs exposed and it could be more difficult to
distinguish ad content from story content, at least algorithmicly.

The costs of this sort of integration would be significantly higher and
content providers would need to be more judicious with who they work with to
provide the ads.

I imagine in this sort of environment most ads would revert to the sort of
passive, informational form of print advertising.

They would also be directly responsible for what data they share with third
parties as all interaction would be going directly through their servers.

~~~
antsar
This sounds a lot like Facebook's ad mechanism.

------
junto
That most people claim that the invasion of privacy as the worst part of
online advertising rings true to me too.

I don't mind ads. I detest the idea that people are profiling me.

Retargeted ads, where I've just been searching for a flight on one site and
then I visit a completely different site that has an ad for flights to and
from my chosen destination, drive me to deliberately avoid that company in the
future if I can help it. I find it completely disturbing.

Profiling is what makes me primarily use an ad blocker.

~~~
Matheus28
What if you end up finding the cheapest price from one of these ads? Was there
a downside for anyone in this?

~~~
junto
The profiling vastly outweighs the cheaper price (like 99 to 1). I'll find
that myself thanks.

------
thebaer
This guy (and his employer) is upset because, like in the music industry,
consumer-driven countermeasures to questionable business practices are
prompting new business models. And like the failed attempts at DRMing all the
things, these "workarounds" are going to end up hurting publishers more if
they pursue it. Give me an alternative to this "piracy" (HA!) and if it's good
enough, I'll pay.

Or say I turn off my ad blocker. Will TechCrunch et al. stop creating
pointless articles with titles optimized to get clicks, i.e. page views for
their now-unblocked ads? [1] Bloggers are in the same business as advertisers
of swindling users into viewing their content, and under the more dangerous
guise of "useful information" and sometimes "reliable fact-based reporting."

Ads aren't the entire problem. It's the systematic use of psychological tricks
and behavioral analytics to direct and hold our attention in an increasingly
noisy internet. So I'm not going to listen to producers with vested interests
when they question my "ethics" for exerting control over my information
consumption. Good try, though. [2]

[1] Obviously TC isn't the worst perpetrator, but I did scroll to the bottom
of this article and instantly get a title to pique my reactionary interest:
"Are We At The End Of The Android Heyday?"
([http://techcrunch.com/gallery/are-we-at-the-end-of-the-
andro...](http://techcrunch.com/gallery/are-we-at-the-end-of-the-android-
heyday/)).

[2] Anyone else notice the previous title from the permalink? "Raymond Carver
Loved Ads." This one was much better.

------
dsr_
"The report also estimates that ad blocking will cost publishers $22 billion
in revenue this year."

Ad blocking will save advertisers $22 billion in wasted spending this year.

------
gorhill
> publishers saying that there’s an implicit agreement that they’ll give you
> lots of content for free

Except that it's not free, the costs are obfuscated. There are people/entities
earning revenues as a result of the ads/trackers/miners running on pages, and
the money for these revenues surely is not created out of thin air, it comes
from _somewhere_.

If people were able to completely assess the (currently obfuscated) cost to
them, they could make an informed decision about whether they rather skip the
middle persons and pay themselves directly the content providers.

> asking users to pay if they don’t want to see ads

I am very skeptical of any claim that paywall = no ads/trackers/miners. Ad
brokers will _always_ push for their ads to be shown -- that's their job, and
content providers will always be open to increase their sources of revenue
regardless of whether they have a paywall or not.

Edit: of course there are also the less obfuscated costs, like extra
bandwidth, shorter battery-life, and other such inconveniences.

------
reitanqild
I don't know for sure but personally I have gotten so few relevant ads over
the last few years that I start to question all those bright engineers at
Google Adwords/Adsense.

This time it is dating sites. I mean: a company that has access to most of my
search history since, IDK, 2005 and still serves me ads for Russian,
Ukrainian, Thai, Chinese and whatnot dating. This being despite the fact that
I never clicked one single of them, the fact that I explicitely clicked on the
feedback button and told them I was not interested and the fact that I
volunteered to tell them what my interests really are.

Before that it was one weird trick. Before that it was "Is your PC slow". Why
o why are all ads either not targeted or targeted at everyone but me?

~~~
tomjen3
It is not just google. Facebook showed me an add for the exact major I have,
from the university that I went to --- even though Facebook knew I went there
because I told them so.

I am single so it tried offering me ads for dating sites, but it was of course
for crappy sites (because the good ones don't need ads) not good ones. Friends
in the same age group as me who stopped being single have told me that they
get ads for child-related crap (or Ashley Maddison, but I guess thats over).

It is only my hunch, but I think what has happened is that the we have
incredibly complex systems that knows more about me than I do, but the people
who buy the ads still go "hmm, this product is target towards males ages 20-30
who are single in $AREA" and just put those things into Facebook.

------
ajnin
I can still use my computer, my bandwidth and my time as I see fit. I refuse
to waste time waiting for ads to load, closing popups, stopping videos (with
sound!), and sieveing through a visual mess to find the actual content on a
webpage. I'm not particularly keen on the manipulative techniques used in ads
either.

If you do the right thing and make your content accessible through a
subscription, so that you can do your job without relying on ads, and I find
that you produce quality content then I will gladly subscribe, as I do for a
few sites which do actual journalism.

I suspect part of the problem lies here, with ads you can scrap revenue with
click-baity, devoid of content articles, but people aren't going to give you
money directly for that.

------
staunch
In a world with zero advertising (but good alternative business models) no one
will wish for ads return. They're not good for the world and don't need to be
part of the future.

------
imgabe
The way I view it, I have every right to determine what gets downloaded to my
computer and what does not. Ads have proven themselves time and again to be at
best worthless and at worst outright harmful, so I block them. I have no
ethical dilemma about this.

There's already more content available than it is possible for anyone to
consume. For the most part, none if it is content that anyone really _needs_
to consume. If one interesting-sounding article is hidden behind a paywall or
obnoxious ad, oh well, there's another one a click away that isn't.

------
pdkl95
So what is everybody who uses an ad-blocker planning to do when browsers start
to support WebAssembly? When it becomes easy to compile C libraries like
freetype - or a proprietary replacement, designed for obfuscation - I expect
any website paranoid about "controlling the user experience' will simply use
the browser for the <canvas> tag.

Blocking elements with CSS (or whatever) will no longer be possible, and the
Halting Problem says you're going to have a hard time trying to do similar
blocking of the WebAssembly bytecode. You might be able to block a few image
URLs for a while, but the ad industry will quickly migrate to any technique
that has has a real effect of bypassing ad-blockers.

This is the problem with having a Turing complete language as a dependency for
rendering documents; the only reason it hasn't become a big problem _yet_ is
that the technologies involved are fairly new and can be awkward to use for
some use cases. With a framebuffer and a way to generically use any language,
those speed bumps no longer apply.

~~~
jasode
_> Blocking elements with CSS (or whatever) will no longer be possible, and
the Halting Problem says you're going to have a hard time trying to do similar
blocking of the WebAssembly bytecode. You might be able to block a few image
URLs for a while, but the ad industry will quickly migrate to any technique
that has has a real effect of bypassing ad-blockers._

I don't think the opaque nature of WebAssembly will defeat ad blockers because
advertisers depend on the _distributed infrastructure_ of the internet and
that aspect stays the same whether browsers execute plain-text Javascript, or
obfuscated minified Javascript, or obfuscated WebAssembly. Many (most?)
obnoxious ads depend on _ad networks_ to constantly generate realtime
contextual ads for a particular web surfer. They also require the ad network
for behavior tracking and monetizing. Therefore, fetching these external
resources (urls) to "build the ad" will always be transparent to browsers
engines and if they continue to provide "hooks" for ad blockers to detect
these GETs, the filters will continue to be effective.

Another way to put it... there are 3 separate entities collaborating to
deliver realtime ads: (1) content provider (2) the ad distrib network (3) the
advertisers ... and following Conway's Law[1], the code snippets executed and
fetched by the browser engine will mimic those business boundaries. That
structure can always be detected by ad blockers.

On the other hand, if the ad is deeply "embedded" inside of content such as
Fox Studios embedding a Pepsi ad for a XMen movie such that it's a contiguous
chunk of WebAssembly, or continuous stream of "frames" for <canvas>, then yes,
it will be harder to detect such "native advertising"[2]. In my mind, this
scenario is closer to the "halting problem". This type of advertising doesn't
appear to be the majority because the content providers don't like to burn
their servers' CPU and network bandwidth "pre-assembling" the embedded ad
before delivery. They'd rather take advantage of ad networks to make the
cpu+network on users' desktops/iPhones assemble the ads on-the-fly.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law)

[2][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_advertising](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_advertising)

~~~
pdkl95
You're describing how ads work _today_. I'm speculating about the future,
where we can assume ad networks have responded to the current trend of ad
blockers.

Those networks will go away, a least as seen from the UserAgent, the moment
advertisers figure out how to stuff it all behind a proxy. This will happen
regardless of future technologies simply to make URL blocking harder. Conway's
law is free to dictate the structure behind the proxy.

As for the halting problem, while it might be possible to detect some ads (it
would obviously be an arms race), it will be hard to detect when the ads are
sent in the same "binary" as the page content. This can be automated
trivially, in a similar manner to how Javascript and CSS are assembled from
multiple source files today.

~~~
jasode
_> I'm speculating about the future, where we can assume ad networks have
responded to the current trend of ad blockers._

Yes, and you have also said in another comment:

 _> when advertisers finally figure out that embedding into the actual
document (like a data: URL today) is much harder to block. _

Ad networks and advertisers have already been well aware of this for years.[1]
However, they value personalized ad generation more than embedded ads. The
content owners and ad networks value the realtime bidding of ad slots. The
advertisers value delivering targeted ads to the most relevant eyeballs.

The part I think you're underestimating is the inherent value proposition of
_realtime_ ads that _must_ be generated _dynamically_. The economics really
favor the construction of those ads _on the users ' browsers_ instead of the
server. The inherent boundaries in that make it easy for ad blockers to work
effectively.

To merge all 3 entities' interests behind a monolithic "proxy" requires
different economics because they now have pay for cpu & network bandwidth
upfront to construct millions of ads. Now "Joe's Music Blog" has to send his
blog post to the proxy for ad merging. That's a friction that's totally
different from Joe just copy&pasting some ad javascript into his Wordpress
template.

Your first post was about WebAssembly and that's a separate issue from ad
proxies creating seamless ads.

[1][https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35rfhe/e...](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35rfhe/eli5_how_do_websites_put_up_special_hello_adblock/)

~~~
pdkl95
It's not a separate issue at all: the entire point is that making all request
come from the same source - which can happen in more opaque way with
obfuscated WebAssembly. "Joe's Music Blog" would just hit the "insert ad"
button on a future website authoring tool, and the automation can build
everything.

Remember, I'm just speculating and suggesting caution. Nothing would make me
happier than to be completely wrong about technologies like WebAssembly. I
just think that it's a bad idea to underestimate the ingenuity of people that
see dollar signs when they look at a new tool. If it I'm wrong and ad-blockers
continue to work in a WebAssembly world, then there's no problem.

~~~
jasode
> _the entire point is that making all request come from the same source -
> which can happen in more opaque way with obfuscated WebAssembly._

No matter how convoluted the WebAssembly bytecode, the browser engine still
has to execute it and therefore it will ultimately _know_ to go fetch
"something" from AdsClearinghouseProxy.Com. If the browser engine knows that
fact, the ad blockers know that fact as well. In that aspect, it doesn't
matter whether the string "AdsClearinghouseProxy.Com" is obvious in plain-text
Javascript or hidden in WebAssembly bytecode.

 _> technologies like WebAssembly. I just think that it's a bad idea to
underestimate the ingenuity of people that see dollar signs when they look at
a new tool._

It's not a technology problem and WebAssembly won't help the advertisers as
much as you think. Check out the questions asked in that reddit thread. The
advertisers _already have the technical tools and know-how_ to do something
about "empty ad boxes" when ad block is active. Nevertheless, they don't
pursue the solutions. The issue is that they want to have their cake and eat
it too. WebAssembly will not remove the immense friction of coordinating all
entities to deliver merged ads that are undetectable by ad blockers.

------
yomism
I can provide the view from an indie mobile programmer that lives from
advertising revenue.

The problem is simple: a lot of people don't want to pay for things (I include
myself here).

I live from the money I earn from the adversting in some chat/dating apps. The
reality is that if I removed the ads and put a price on them I would be
without job. To make it more relatable to you, I would be a failed entrepeneur
without job.

I don't even like to put some kind of pay-to-enable features in my apps
because I don't like them. I want my apps to be free 100%, for anyone can use
all their features equally.

And also I really dislike how freemium is applied to these kind of apps, e.g:
you receive some notification that someone has liked your profile but can only
know if you use some credits you pay for. I know that I could be earning a lot
more money using tactics like these, but I feel like they are shameful.

Ads are not perfect, maybe you dont like them, but remember that the
alternative would be to pay for the app. Do you think people would pay for
100% the apps they use?

~~~
mondoshawan
I would /gladly/ pay for an app rather than deal with ads. On my iPhone, every
sibgle third party app I installed wasfree without ads (a small number) or I
outright paid for it. Any app that had embedded advertising was immediately
removed because of the extreme security and privacy risks involved. I cannot
be the only one that would do this, either.

Try an A/B experiment: put up a version of your app that is pay for alongside
the free version. Then compare income values.

Also, being a software dev myself, I'm genuinely interested in the results.

------
elorant
If content sites want me to disable ad blocking they'll have to promise me a
few things first. a) they'll go out of their way to ensure that they will
never, ever serve me malware. b) they'll make sure that there is a balance
between content and ads. I don't want to see a dozen different ads on the same
page. While content costs so does my bandwidth. c) they'll stop tracking me
all over the web. Sure, tracking works for them pretty well but it's an
intrusion of privacy for which they never bothered to ask permission.

So as long as they don't play nice, I won't either. And I sincerely hope that
the adoption of ad blocking spreads even further especially in smartphones.

Oh and btw, while we're on the topic how about we discuss how publishers rip
off advertisers by buying traffic and/or clicks from botnets and other shady
tactics?

------
belorn
This is what happen when you have a industry that depend on deliberate
deception to generate revenue. Once people start to find out they construct
counter-measures to protect them self and the industry start to create
counter-counter-measures in order to sustain itself.

As a Internet user I expect and consent that a website can provide useful
content when I access it. I do not expect nor consent that the website give me
malware that tracks me, nor do I give the publishing website permission to
store and sell sensitive and private information about me, nor do I expect the
site to fill my screen with excessive and intrusive sound and images that has
the intention to deceive and distract me.

The historically solution to this problem has been for government to step in
and create regulation that prevent the deception. Advertisement in TV, movies
and radio is heavily regulated where the Internet space has so far not been
touched. Alternative the industry could try fix this themselves by applying
some self-restraints but so far the path of least resistance has been for
users to take control of their own computers and deny the industry by
technical means, ie ad blockers.

------
cesarb
"It’s no different than ripping music. It’s no different than pirating
movies."

When you rip music or pirate movies, you are doing something they don't want
you to do.

When you block an ad, you are _not_ doing something they want you to do
(loading the ad code and executing it).

So yeah, ad blocking looks very different to copyright infringement to me.

~~~
yomism
It's the same, it's money.

Ads -> money for the content provider/creator.

You don't view ads, you are not paying for the content you are consuming.

Really, it's that difficult to understand?

------
alkonaut
How are ad blocking "losses" ever estimated? If X% of visitors start using ad
blocking, how many fewer cluck throughs would be lost? How many sales? Isn't
it pretty likely that the same people who use ad-blockers actually do so
because they don't read or click on ads, which is the whole reason ads are
noise to them?

Personally in the rare occasion that I see an ad I actually consider clicking
I rather browse to the target site in a new window than click the link, to
avoid revealing to N different companies in the ad chain that I like shoes or
toyotas.

------
pepijndevos
I don't use an adblocker. IMO, the more people use adblockers, the more ads
will appear to keep sites profitable.

Do I hate ads? yes. Do I click on ads? no. Do I look at ads? hardly.

~~~
gpvos
I'd love to do the same, but there are so many obnoxious ads with animation
and other moving parts. They distract me and make me unable to focus on the
actual page content. The only solution that I've found is to block them.

Then there's the tracking across websites, which is just creepy and has
privacy issues.

 _Then_ there is the malware.

If ads on sites contain no moving parts and are served from the same domain as
the page itself, they would start making money from me again.

