
Ad Blocking: The Unnecessary Internet Apocalypse - cpeterso
http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/ad-blocking-unnecessary-internet-apocalypse/300470/
======
sveme
One reason I'm using Adblockers and Ghostery is the immense number of trackers
found on any website that are supposed to help in delivering personalized ads
to any future website visit. Seriously, ad companies: Stop trying to show me
personalized ads! Please, serve ads that have something to do with the stuff
I'm looking at. When looking at a coding site, why do I have to see an
advertisement for the jeans that I did not want to buy four days ago? Why not
show me books/websites/hosters/whatever that are related to the coding problem
I'm currently trying to solve? It used to be somwhat like that, years ago. We
should all go back to that and stop tracking users with dozens of trackers,
all connecting to their servers when loading a site, crumpling the speed with
which I'm seeing the content.

~~~
bad_user
As a full disclosure, I used to work on a platform for serving ads.

For one, while certain websites or apps show a clear signal that can be used
(e.g. coding, hence the user can be shown ads on coding tools), many other
websites or apps are not giving a signal on preferences or intent, this
besides the ads inventory being an issue.

For example when you're reading political news, or when you're playing chess,
what ad could you be shown that could be related to politics or chess? I can
answer this - without a user profile, best case scenario is that you're shown
something at random, with a disastrous conversion rate. And worst case
scenario is ads being used for spreading pieces of propaganda on controversial
issues and I remember for example how a certain gold mining company was
attempting to manipulate with downright lies the viewers of certain YouTube
videos that were criticizing their open-pit project. And because such ad spots
are basically worthless, they can be bought for cheap.

I'm personally all about privacy and the security of my data, being downright
paranoid. But privacy is one thing, blocking ads is another. If you don't like
ads, then don't use those services or websites. That's how you end up
rewarding alternatives and personally I rewarded many alternatives that way.
Even if you want to _punish_ bad actors, you still give them the eyeballs, you
still distribute those links to your friends, etc. The concept of voting with
your wallet is basically broken.

And contrary to the music and film industry that has pushed for DRM, this time
people that block ads don't have the proper moral ground to stand on and also
the industry is not going to go down without a fight. Consider that you can't
block ads in mobile apps without having root privileges. This will turn out to
be a whack-a-mole game and it won't last for long. Just wait until these
websites will start to serve ads from their own domain, with ads being
indistinguishable from the surrounding content ... oh wait, this is already
happening ;-)

Worst of all is that you end up hurting other people - from publishers, many
of whom are already on the verge of bankruptcy, to people that will suffer the
consequences even if they don't use ad-blockers, as the history of video
gaming can teach us. Do you enjoy the DRM laden pay-to-win gaming industry
that others have created for you? As personally I'm thankful that I've
outgrown video games.

~~~
manicdee
Here is the moral ground that I stand on: I pay for the data coming down my
link, you don't. Your ads and trackers cost me money, and there is every
chance that your ads cost me more money than the site owner gets from that "ad
impression."

You can not claim any moral ground at all. Claiming that web sites will fold
if you don't exist is like a drug dealer claiming that taking them off the
street will make life worse for the drug addicts.

Sites funded by invasive ads need to adapt or die.

I would like to see a micropayment system where I can load up a few dozen
dollars a month and pay shares through +1 or liking pages. Sure, 1/1000 of my
$50/month isn't going to make much of a difference, but if you are getting
paid through ad impressions you will get a similar monthly return.

Even better, you will make more money by producing content people like, with
reduced incentive to split a five word article over six pages of ads.

These days the ads are to the point that if I see a site start janking around
as the stylesheets load and ads start pushing content around, I just force
quit Safari right there on the spot. I don't have the time or money to support
a web fuelled by the advertising dollar.

~~~
bad_user
If you don't want that data consuming your bandwidth, then don't load those
websites. It's as simple as that. Oh, and if you try to make the argument that
you are justified in using ad blockers because that bandwidth costs you money
and other people agree with you, then you can say goodbye to net neutrality.

> _Sites funded by invasive ads need to adapt or die._

But that's the point - they won't adapt in the direction that you want and
they won't die. Why? Because you're not punishing the bad actors. Expect ad-
blockers to stop working in the coming months. They only worked until now
because they weren't considered to be mainstream ;-)

> _I would like to see a micropayment system ..._

Right, because that would solve the privacy thing. Micropayment systems for
rewarding websites and projects with donations have already been tried and
it's not working. For one because people claiming this never put their money
where their mouth is. And also because the pool of people that can afford to
spend $50 a month on reading websites is not that big, as we're speaking about
the middle-class living in first-world countries, many of whom as I said don't
give a shit.

#firstWorldSolutions

~~~
manicdee
> Oh, and if you try to make the argument that you are justified in using ad
> blockers because that bandwidth costs you money and other people agree with
> you, then you can say goodbye to net neutrality.

Except that I'm the one paying for the traffic, through my ISP. If carriers
complain that there's too much traffic for the money they're paid, that's an
issue of not charging the user enough for the service being provided.

I can always pay more money for more quota.

I still can not understand the mentality of US mobile service providers who
just give you one-price-fits-all service. They're selling a limited resource
(i.e.: consumption of broadcast bandwidth), but don't charge the heavy users
more than the light users.

It's foolishness like that that makes ISPs start thinking about charging high
volume content originators for use of their network.

If I choose to not download certain parts of your web site (e.g.: the
JavaScript and third party resources), that's my way of controlling costs.
It's not up to my ISP to make that decision for me (much less start charging
content providers for the privilege of transit).

------
soneca
I stopped reading at the half of it, but this author is treating so many
assumptions that I don't agree as universal truth that I find it intelectually
dishonest and offending.

What bothered me most: that to threat advertising industry on the internet is
to threat democratic capitalism; that advertising is the only possible
imaginable way to support good content creating and that consumer paying
themselves for content is necessarily a bad thing.

There are a lot of examples where the ad industry went too far and changes
came for better(in form of new business models in general or government
regulations). I think now of HBO, Netflix, Wikipedia, the bilboard
proihibition in my city, São Paulo.

Ultimately, the democratic capitalism is working and the "apocalypse" will
only happen if people do not consider it a apocalypse at all. If people
consider that adblocking is too much (the author opinion) then nothing much
relevant will happen. The reason? Democratic capitalism helps us defend
ourselves from guys with self-serving interests not shared by most people. He
is writing this because he is being threatened by capitalism, not because
something else is threating it.

~~~
mbubb
Yes, "if you block ads the terrorists win"... but I am not so sure that
Netflix / HBO and Wikipedia are models for the internet as a whole. Google
runs the biggest ad exchange on the internet and Appnexus is a distant 2nd. I
think the article might be right that advertising is the main revenue
generator on the internet and keeps the internet free (as in 'tracked', not
beer).

An interesting issue would come up with the adopocalyse - internet content
would be for those who could pay for it. What % of Brazil (or US for that
matter) would lose access to free/adtracked services like gmail, twitter, etc.

~~~
soneca
I think the point is that is a false argument to say that advertising on the
internet will end abruptly with nothing else to do unless regret our
decisions. This is not nuclear weapons under the control of dellusional men.
This is a complex, descentralized industry with lot of incentives to change
and adapt if it starts to crumble.

And it won't be necessarily copying Netflix model, that is just a past
example. It will be by inovating in ways I can't predict.

If the people start loosing access to beneficial things because of their
behavior, they will change behavior.

There is a term for this fallacy I guess - when you threat with an absurd
proposition "imagine what happens if _all_ advertising is sunddenly
_completely banned_ from internet, bad things will happen", only to push
forward your proposition of "hey, let's just keep everything as it is right
now, it's all fine, we don't want to risk imploding capitalismo do we?"

That is what this guy is doing.

~~~
mbubb
Yes agreed - a pernicious example is the "if we do/ don't do X the terrorists
will win".

I also agree just because I cannot imagine it that there is not a better model
out there.

It is not trivial though if we explode the current DoubleClick / Amazon
paradigm of advertising/ recommending by tracking. Walled gardens -
subscription or ad driven - are not the answer either.

"we don't want to risk imploding capitalismo do we?"

No I really don't. The stock market crashes and poor people disproportionately
suffer. If the EFF were running this adpocalypse maybe but it won't be. It
will be whoever can keep the lights on.

But in this narrow case here is what I worry about. The Doubleclick model
emerged in a very similar climate of a scourge killing the internet. In that
case SPAM in the late 90's.

Targeted ads were among other things the spam killer. So the spammeisters went
to work in adtech (I've worked for a few)...plus c'est la même chose .

------
imgabe
I see this kind of moralizing as the last gasp of a dying business model. If a
business can't convince people to pay for its product based on the merits,
they try to shame customers into doing so by appealing to some supposed moral
responsibility.

Let's be real. Most people won't pay for content on the Internet because most
content on the Internet is worthless. Its primary purpose is to waste time
while procrastinating on doing something more important.

Content that has an actual use - market research data, a well-written book
explaining how to use a new technology, etc. - has no trouble finding
customers who will pay for it. The rest has to rely on advertising. Since most
ads have negative value to readers by actively obstructing the content they're
trying to view or in extreme cases loading malicious software onto users'
computers, they get blocked.

If publishers want readers to view ads, the ads have to provide some sort of
value. It's not like a billboard where you can put it somewhere that people
can't help but see it.

------
amelius
> Advertising (as everyone reading these words knows well) pays for the
> ability for nearly anyone around the world to type in any URL and have
> content of unimaginable variety appear on a screen. Advertising also
> subsidizes the cost of apps, which can take hundreds of thousands of dollars
> to produce, but are often free or low-priced.

I find this a bit of a weird premise. Advertising can pay only for so much (at
most a few cents per view). What if content owners want to be paid a little
more? Should they suddenly change their complete income model? The answer
should be: of course not! But currently the answer is: yes. In my view we
should get rid of this strange incontinuity and get rid of ads altogether.
Yes, it may mean we will pay for content, but at least it will give us
privacy, a healthy market, no annoying ads, customer rights, and most of all,
it may improve the quality of content. Also, don't forget that free content
will also happily coexist with this model.

~~~
markyc
why would paywalls give us privacy? if anything they can track us even more

~~~
untothebreach
This is very true. I think the distinction is consent, and choosing who you
give up privacy for. When I visit a web page, I don't know whether the page is
going to track me or not. By the time I find out, it is too late, my visit has
already been recorded. When I give a publisher/content-creator/whatever money,
I am agreeing to enter into a transaction with them, and I expect that they
will have a record of that transaction.

~~~
markyc
makes sense

I wonder if this whole "front-end" blocking will just push things to the back-
end.

How long until websites start sharing back-end tracking data between
themselves?

~~~
untothebreach
I have heard anecdotal stories about companies being asked to put reverse
proxies on their networks in order to make the ads "first-party." Seems like
that will be the next step in the arms race.

------
cm2187
The article doesn't even mention the word "tracking" a single time. To me ad
blocking is primarily tracking blocking. And while advertising is a legitimate
activity on a free website, tracking users across websites is certainly not.
You only need a jpeg to serve an ad, not tons of javascript and supercookies.

~~~
mbubb
Yes true. There is no way to have targeted advertising w/out tracking.

~~~
cm2187
You can. I can arrive on website with an http referrer that says I searched
for "holidays in greece" on google. The website can do targetted ads and show
me something about greece. What is not OK is that one hour earlier I was
looking for details on a camera on a different website and to serve me an ad
related to cameras. I don't mind the website I visit tracking me on their
website and serving ads to me on thst basis. What I reject is cross-website
tracking.

In other words "first party tracking" is OK, "third party tracking" is not.

~~~
mbubb
Sorry for the delayed response... I like the idea you present - just don't see
how it would be implemented. Jotted some ideas. Need ot read and think more.

I am sure this has been on HN - no tsure where I first saw it. But this is a
very interesting critique:

[http://idlewords.com/talks/what_happens_next_will_amaze_you....](http://idlewords.com/talks/what_happens_next_will_amaze_you.htm)

my thoughts on your point:

[https://gist.github.com/mbubb/dedfbf427848a8d8fd3b](https://gist.github.com/mbubb/dedfbf427848a8d8fd3b)

------
arpa
Boo-hoo. I tell you what - I remember when internet was ad free, and, boy, was
it better by orders of magnitude. I say let the damn apocalypse happen. We'll
all be better off not being the lucky 100,000th visitors.

~~~
coldpie
Yeah, that's the thing. These sky-is-falling articles always complain that
content on the Internet will end if advertising fails. Well, it won't. I put
out content on my blog for free. I pay for a handful of sites that I use. I
pay for products from websites that I enjoy. There are ways to put content on
the web without harming your users. Maybe we'll have less content, or lower
quality content, but frankly I would prefer that over the god-awful user
experience that we have today.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
> Maybe we'll have less content, or lower quality content...

If anything, the lowest-common-denominator low quality content seems to be the
biggest earner as far as advertising is concerned. Whole industries are built
around churning out pages full of nothing just to generate clicks!

I'm not familiar with your blog, but if it's anything like the millions of
other passionate personal blogs out there the content is probably orders of
magnitude more useful and interesting than the output of the likes of Gawker
or Buzzfeed...

------
empressplay
Most people who don't have ad blockers don't read / process the majority of
the junk ads that get displayed these days anyway. The only beneficiary of the
current scheme are ad networks, charging for impressions -- advertisers may as
well flush the money they spend on junk ads down the drain.

If websites were forced to embed their own advertising, obtained directly from
their own sponsors, those ads would reflect the amount of effort and cost
involved, and more people would pay attention to them. Far from an apocalypse,
there would be an enlightenment.

Give me ads like I see in a national glossy magazine, give me ads like I see
on network television, and I won't block them, maybe I'll even watch / read
them. Give me junk ads and I will block them. It's really not a hard concept
to understand.

------
kuschku
Yes, exactly. I argued about this before:

𝗪𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗮𝗰𝘆

There are trackers on every site, dozens of them. And they are all totally
useless for advertising. If I watch a let's play on some game, ads for the
game or similar games will half of the time lead to me buying it. Current
tracking ads will show me an ad for something I bought a week ago next to the
video, and one week later, after I have the game, I'll see ads for the game
everywhere.

𝗪𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗻𝗼𝗻-𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗮𝗱𝘀

If I load a website, I don't want to get a metaphorical – or for some people,
quite realistic – epileptic shock. I want to be able to enjoy the content. The
ads should be visible (not just plain text), but they should not be annoying
or misleading. Don't put 20 ads looking like download buttons on a download
page, or I'll stop recommending your page – or, worse, recommend people to
install an AdBlock extension.

𝗘𝘅𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝘄𝗲 𝗱𝗼𝗻'𝘁

Obviously, this all only helps for affiliate-type ads, not for Brand
Awareness. But for those, there is a far better solution, that is far more
successful: Viral Marketing. Often, Brand Awareness works best through
marketing that is fun to watch, fun to interact with. In that case, a minigame
as ad in your Facebook stream, or a fun video on YouTube can be far more
effective.

Disclaimer: This is just my personal opinion.

~~~
coldpie
Who is "we"? I certainly don't want ads, intrusive or not. Ads are harmful and
manipulative. They cause people to spend money they shouldn't be spending, or
buy products they shouldn't be consuming.

~~~
kuschku
But, the perfect ad is one that sells the user a product in the very moment
where he already decided he wants it.

So, for example, when I dead reviews about a product, the reviewer could use
an affiliate link. Because at that time I'll probably buy it anyway.

Today's ads just hurt everyone.

~~~
LeoNatan25
A review with an affiliate link is a review I will most likely not trust. When
you profit from a user's purchases, any product will get a 8-10 score out of
10, because why not? The users will just buy it. No thanks.

A much better model that I would agree with, would be a well-annotated
"Promotional Post" with an ending that says "Here is what we thought about it:
<Link to Review>."

------
JackC
Glad to see I'm not the only one whose primary concern is tracking.

I do not want you to build a dossier of everywhere I go on the web. I don't
want to be tracked by dozens of shady javascript includes on each page, the
way it is now. I don't want to be tracked by a nice efficient consortium
either. Do not want.

If the ad industry isn't ready to give up pervasive tracking, they're not
facing up to the hard choices yet. And if they think the only way to support
the modern web is with a massive database of everything everyone reads, then
yeah, their apocalypse is coming.

~~~
mbubb
Yes, succinctly put. The 'hard choice' though is between suffering though bad
or irrelevant ads or being tracked. I do not think there is another way of
targeting ads. We haven't evolved past the DoubleClick/ Google way of doing
things.

So no - I don't think the ad industry is capable of going away from pervasive
tracking. I do not know how else they would do it.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
I think it's pretty easy to determine what someone is interested in at any
given moment - base the ads on the actual content of the page! If I'm reading
about some exotic location, show me ads for holidays to that destination. If
I'm looking at web development stuff, show me ads for programming courses or
hosting. I don't understand why the advertising industry fail to grasp this.

~~~
mbubb
Yes - I get your point. Actually targeting adverts based upon search came out
of a similar crusade against spam in the late 90's.

If you went to a website about exotic locations and asked for information -
you would then get an avalanche of spam. Targetting started out as an
(initially) less intrusive method.

------
ifdefdebug
> As abetted by for-profit technology companies, ad blocking is robbery, plain
> and simple

My stand on this:

1) I have an ad blocker in place 2) Sites can detect my ad blocker and ask me
to disable it before they show me content - I know it's feasible because I
already saw that happening several times. 3) Then I can decide if I want to
disable the blocker and see the content, or not.

So if a site does not block it's content in response to me blocking their ads,
I will assume they are fine with it. For sure I am not steeling the content
because they basically provide it for free - as in free beer.

~~~
eli
I think this is a little disingenuous.

It's actually pretty difficult to detect ad blocking. The ad blockers actively
try to evade detection and have special filters to interfere with detection
code.

It's true that some sites detect ad blocking with some success and there are
commercial solutions being pitched to publishers for blocking the ad blockers,
but it's a constant arms race where the publishers are at a technical
disadvantage. (Consider that there's only so much they can do if they want
their pages to be accessible on the web and crawled by google.)

There should be an ad blocker that is as easy to detect on the server as it is
to install for the user.

------
speeder
I am from Brazil, internet bandwidth here is expensive, installed a blocker
because ads, and the tracking requests, made navigation unbearably slow, some
sites would have a 500KB page but need 10MB to track and load ads

------
liotier
I can't wait for this apocalypse to happen ! To me, ad blocking is holy work -
for twenty years I have been expending efforts above & beyond what would be
strictly necessary for sufficient comfort... Ads invade my display real estate
and the only reasonable response against that is of course jihad !

------
dmolony
What a load of bollocks.

------
crocal
"The Ad Industry Needs to Disrupt the Disruptors". So, preventing pollution
from unwanted and inappropriate ads is considered disruption? Wow. I call it
housekeeping.

------
meeper16
The Ad industry is the new Record and Music industry. Figure out a new model,
adapt or die.

~~~
mbubb
Yes except that ad revenues are the lion's share of revenue for the companies
that dominate the current internet.

~~~
meeper16
You're forgetting that the largest content companies are also the largest
advertsising companies. For example, Google spends billions every quarter
advertising. This is also why they maintained a $1Bil partnership with AOL
believe it or not. Yahoo, Microsoft/Bing and the list goes on. All of their ad
spending is part of what they consider TAC or Traffic Acquisition Costs.

~~~
mbubb
Yes, I agree - it is an ouroboros (or whatever you call that snake eating its
own tail). Ad tech has a byzantine complexity that is as complex on the
business side as it is on the tech side:
[http://www.lumapartners.com/resource-
center/lumascapes-2/](http://www.lumapartners.com/resource-
center/lumascapes-2/)

------
AndrewKemendo
_Randall Rothenberg is president and CEO of the Interactive Advertising
Bureau_

...which from wikipedia says is: "an advertising business organization that
develops industry standards, conducts research, and provides legal support for
the online advertising industry."

His fear mongering at the end is a powerless cry into the wind.

------
bsder
> Our own IAB research found at least 34% of U.S. adults use ad blockers.

Wow. That's really much higher than I would have expected.

~~~
cpeterso
According to addons.mozilla.org, the number of Firefox users with ad blockers
is much smaller:

    
    
      7.93% Adblock Plus
      0.84% NoScript
      0.55% Ghostery
      0.20% uBlock or uBlock Origin
    

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/compatibility/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/compatibility/)

~~~
tired_man
likewise the number of firefox users.

