Ad blocking software works because there are telltale technical cues that a site isn’t paying the same level of attention to ad content as they are to editorial content (whereas print magazines pay more attention to ad content–that’s how they work). So I think there are solid business reasons for serious content sites to run their own ads, skipping DoubleClick/Google, Federated Media, and all of those remnant networks. The missing link here is the value that those networks provide to advertisers: auditing and other metrics.posted by scalefree at 7:36 AM on March 7, 2010 [5 favorites]
Find a way for advertisers to reliably audit site-served ads, and you’ve got yourself a business.
delmoi, the PDF thing is a well known problem in the security community; what is happening is that the hackers are hacking the webservers of the sites and altering the content to direct to their malware servers. This affects both ad servers and the servers of the content you wish to see. The safest thing is to disable automatic viewing of .pdf's and set Adobe Reader up to not display javascript (really, has anybody ever seen a legitimate .pdf that needs javascript?).Yes, I know, and I was a moron for not keeping Acrobat up to date (There was something wrong with the auto updater on my machine, and I have the full version acrobat, not just the viewer)
localroger: You, like many other people, grossly overestimate the effect ads have on you subliminally. It's like what's-it-called, that effect where you hear about something for the first time ever and then you see it everywhere. When you see an ad, your brain registers it, yes, but it doesn't instantly make you like the product. It just means when you're thinking of things, that's one of the names on your mind. "Oh! McDonald's! I think I heard about that recently!"Most of the time the most annoying ads don't even tell you what the product is. It's like a dancing silhouette with "lower your mortgage payments" and a list of states. The 'high end' ads that actually are just trying to get you to think about the product are usually the least annoying.
Invariably someone else will pop in and tell me that it's not their fault that our business model sucks. My response is simple: you either care about the site's well-being, or you don't. As for our business model sucking, we've been here for 12 years, online-only. Not many sites can say that.Blocking freeloaders from accessing articles is no more a move toward a better business model than suing filesharers. Yes, they acknowledge learning things from the experiment, but the only actual conclusion they draw vis-a-vis their own behavior is that they should communicate their point of view to their users more often.
The copying, reproduction, publication, display, rearrangement, redistribution, modification, revision, alteration, cropping, re-sizing, reverse engineering, movement, removal, deletion, or other use or change by you, directly or indirectly, of any such Website Content, including but not limited to the removal or alteration of advertising, is strictly prohibited.I'd be a little more impressed if they put the link to this user agreement a little more prominently, but I'll have to agree that it does exist. Took me two tries to find this language.
If you like a site, show the ads. If you can't stand the ads, stay off the site. If a substantial number of people follow that rule, things will work themselves out.So I guess things won't be working themselves out then, huh?
To my mind the adblocking zealots are a pretty lame lot and, I'm guessing here, they don't make their money of the Internet as much as they use it to entertain themselves into ad-free senselessness. -- mistersquidYeah, like the vast majority of people, I don't make money by serving content on the internet.
I'm not a fan of ads, but I do think if I'm too damned cheap (whether cheap means "I'm too poor to have a fast enough computer", "I'm a highly literate and relatively well paid Westerner who feels entitled to get what I want how I want it", or something in between) -- mistersquidFirst of all, why the hell should I need a fast computer to view ads? What If someone wants to use a netbook in my living room while watching TV or something? Are you seriously arguing that they should lets ads lock up or crash or waste all the bandwidth on their machines?
When you stumble across a new site the adverts are often the first thing that will clue you into knowing if it is a professional high quality, high traffic website or some random blog with a bunch of copied/stolen content. -- LanarkI've had search status, a plug in for firefox that tells you the alexa traffic rank and google page rank of the page you're currently looking at installed for years. So I don't need 'clues' about a site's popularity or traffic, the hard data is right in my status bar, on every page
There is an oft-stated misconception that if a user never clicks on ads, then blocking them won’t hurt a site financially. This is wrong. Most sites, at least sites the size of ours, are paid on a per view basis.Let me paraphrase, and I’m sure some of you will disagree with what I’m doing here, feel free to use the comment box.
[..]
Let me stop and clarify quickly that I am not saying that we are on the verge of vanishing from the Internet. But we, like many, many sites are greatly affected by ad blocking, and it is a very worrisome trend.
Indeed they don't, that's why I said "If you don't trust a website to not host malware (be it through their CMS, their adserver, or a third party advertiser's adserver) ...".So, given that we're talking about Google/Doubleclick, your advice is to just stay off the web entirely?
Web browsing is an inherently insecure activity.And taking action to make it more secure is dickish. Right.
I think we all understand how this works - and presumably you understand that all of my browser's calls to your webserver cost you money?I can rent a server from Amazon that can probably handle thousands of hits a second for three cents an hour 15 cents a gigabyte outbout for outbound traffic, zero cost for inbound. There's no way actual server/bandwidth cost is more then even 1% ad revenue unless you're streaming video or something.
Not at all. User-made content is almost 100% supported by advertising: blog sites and YouTube and such have massive bills to pay. Servers and bandwidth are expensive. Content creators who are ordinary users aren't going to be able to afford to foot the bill for that themselves, except those who are rich from some other source.Flickr costs $29 a year, and mostly that’s for their (increasingly out of date) software. S3 costs 10 cents a gigabyte. You can get a hosting plan for $5/mo. Anyone who can afford a digital camera can afford to host their videos as well. And on top of that, it would be really easy for people to host video content on their own PCs for their friends, given the 24/7 connections people have now. But the problem is if you wrote easy to use software for that, there's no real way to make a lot of money. Create an easy to use website like youtube, there is. Ads.
I. The Website also contains other graphics, text, photographs, images, video, audio, software, code, and other material that is provided by Service Provider or its licensors and is not clearly identified as, or intended, for your use, including without limitation the organization, design, compilation, and "look and feel" of the Website, and advertising thereon ("Website Content"). The Website Content is protected by state, national and international copyright, trademark and other intellectual property laws, and is the property of Service Provider or its licensors. The copying, reproduction, publication, display, rearrangement, redistribution, modification, revision, alteration, cropping, re-sizing, reverse engineering, movement, removal, deletion, or other use or change by you, directly or indirectly, of any such Website Content, including but not limited to the removal or alteration of advertising, is strictly prohibited.Absent a section which defines terms such as "display" and "alteration", both of which could easily mean "the transformation of a stream of bytes into an image on a monitor" (and have, I think, in some lawsuits), I think it's quite possible to read their User Agreement as prohibiting everyone from viewing their site in a web browser at all, with or without ad blockers. In fact, that prohibition on "other use or change by you" alone would probably cover it. That's just the section on the non-content part of the site. They have this to say about the actual content:
H. The Website may contain graphics, text, photographs, images, video, audio and other material that is clearly identified for your use ("Assets"). The Assets are protected by state, national and international copyright, trademark and other intellectual property laws. Nevertheless, we (and our licensors) grant to you the limited, non-exclusive, right and license to use the Assets solely as described on the Website, as limited by this Agreement, and provided further that you keep intact any and all copyright and other proprietary notices.If you can find where they have "described on the Website" how it is they allow me to use their Assets, I'd love to see it. Because I can't find it, and that means to me that I am prohibited from viewing their site, whether I use an adblocker or not.
The copying, reproduction, publication, display, rearrangement, redistribution, modification, revision, alteration, cropping, re-sizing, reverse engineering, movement, removal, deletion, or other use or change by you, directly or indirectly, of any such Website Content, including but not limited to the removal or alteration of advertising, is strictly prohibited.I'd be a little more impressed if they put the link to this user agreement a little more prominently, but I'll have to agree that it does exist. Took me two tries to find this language."
Nothing in any of that goes any distance towards establishing that there is a relevant difference between computers and television with regards to advertising.I think this has been explained. Ads can damage computers, either by temporarily degrading their performance, or semi-permanently by installing crapware. A computer with adblock is a computer that's less likely to be damaged by malignant advertising.
I have no easy answer, but I will point out that there’s no inherent reason why ads have to be something people are tempted to block. It’s not enough to ask readers not to block ads — you’ve got to work hard at providing ads that readers actually enjoy, or at least aren’t tempted to block.posted by rtha at 2:10 PM on March 8, 2010 [1 favorite]
Update: There’s a prisoners’ dilemma problem with ad blockers, where it doesn’t matter if one site shows reasonable ads if others show crap ads, because those crap ads will drive users to install ad-blocking software, and ad-blocking software casts a wide net and blocks as much as it can. It’s unlikely that most ad-blocker-using Ars readers installed their ad-blocker because of the ads on Ars Technica.
You affect the world by what you browse.If Mr Berners Lee is correct I feel I'm doing the planet a good turn by not browsing shite.
Tim Berners Lee
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posted by Malice at 6:56 AM on March 7, 2010 [36 favorites]