Posted on 01/13/2017 1:49:00 PM PST by qam1
Ad-blockers may seem like an answer to an internet user’s prayers. No annoying pop-ups, no promos before videos and no concerns about accidentally clicking on a virus. But for ad-driven websites, they’re a revenue leech that needs to be pried off.
This is becoming one of the internet's biggest debates. More countries are cracking down on ad-blockers—the EU’s European Commission even proposed a rule this week that would allow media companies to ban users who use ad-blockers. The debate is no longer on the fringes with tech’s biggest names, including Facebook, weighing in.
“Ads support our mission of giving people the power to share and making the world more open and connected,” Facebook Vice President of Ads & Business Platform Andrew Bosworth said in an August announcement last year.
As of 2015, 500 million devices worldwide had an ad-blocker installed, including 181 million desktop users with an active ad-blocking plug-in or used a browser that automatically blocked ads, according to PageFair, an industry leader among advertising recovery—i.e. anti ad-block— companies.
That led to an estimated loss of billions of dollars among websites and online services that rely on advertisements for their primary source of revenue. Nearly every corner of the internet relies on advertising to avoid charging consumers—everything from music streaming to video hosting to news outlets.
So how do anti-ad-blocking tools work? First, these companies run analytics to help websites understand how much revenue is being lost to ad-blockers. Then the companies offer their customers tools that can ask users to accept advertisements, give online users a choice about which ads are removed or allow website users an ad-free experience if they pay a fee—depending on which anti-ad-blocking service
It is “really an access control system,” said Dan Rua, CEO of Admiral, which builds software to strip away ad-blockers. By giving users options and explaining the need for ads, consumers don’t feel like they’re being blindsided.
Getting around ad-blockers could open the dam for a lot of money, especially for struggling industries like free training (think sites like Coursera) and gaming websites. Facebook’s decision last year to create tamper-proof ads that can’t be removed by ad-blockers is expected to yield an additional $720 million this year in advertisement revenue for the social media giant, according to the PageFair analysis.
To see the whole problem, you have to look at how the internet is affected by ad-blockers, Rua said. It’s a matter of whether the internet can continue to remain free and open to anyone. “There’s billions being lost across the industry,” he said. “Nine out of 10 sites that people visit are free, and that’s only because of advertisements working.”
Different sections of the internet are affected more than others—for example, about half of the traffic to technology and gaming websites come from users with ad-blocking tools installed—but the big picture is startling, said Matthew Courtland, spokesman for PageFair.
“Adblock threatens the sustainability of the open web and internet as we know it,” he said. “If revenue is not flowing back to publishers, then the quality, diversity, and interesting content that makes the internet so wonderful will gradually die, and all that will be left will be a smaller number of publishers creating provocative ‘viral’ content for walled gardens.”
At the same time, ad-blocking businesses say they’re protecting the spirit of the open web by keeping power in users’ hands. By allowing companies to force ads on consumers, they’re breaking the spirit of the free internet, said Adblock Plus spokesman Ben Williams.
“When you try to wrestle the control out of the users’ hands, it is something that is anti-web,” he said.
Some users don’t even realize ad-blockers are installed on their devices since browsers like UC Browser, which is popular in China, come installed with ad-blocking software, according to PageFair. And others install it right away as a protection against malware.
“In essence, ad-block has become the new firewall or anti-virus,” Cortland said. “Creating a sustainable solution for ad-block means listening to and addressing these very real and valid security concerns.” He said PageFair doesn’t allow untrusted JavaScript to get through their entryways since they often harbor viruses.
On the other hand, Williams said partial ad-blocking, which is Adblock Plus’s primary model, is a more defensible way for companies to recoup revenue without stripping power from internet users.
“I think there are better ways to help publishers get lost revenue back,” he said. “You can actually work with ad blocking companies to show ads that users have approved, and doing so you work directly with users, so I think that’s a much more healthy and sustainable approach.”
The advertisers and websites have done this to themselves. I’m not going to wait for a bunch of ads to load before I see what I’ve clicked on.
Either get faster ad servers, or weave the ad text into the page. I have fiber to the house, so the slow speeds aren’t at my end.
I started by just blocking the flash players that launched automatically (noScript), but have expanded to AdBlockPlus for Firefox, or just the standard install of Brave.
It’s like the Cable networks that have popup ads during the show. A few of those, and that channel is history for me.
It’s hard to believe how stupid the media giants are when it comes to advertising. It must be the drugs.
Wait. UTube has ads?
>> I do just the opposite and blacklist them as not worth the effort.
ditto
I was wondering if Chrome had a “private” window like Mozilla browsers do. Thanks for the insight.
All you Linux geeks. Brave will run stand alone. You just unpack it in a home directory.
I don't have much sympathy for probably 95% of the advertisers. Most of what they advertise is either generally crap or even downright harmful.
Opera browser: “If you block ads, webpages will load faster and look cleaner.” Thank you, computer geniuses.
if i can visit no sites because of my multiple ad blockers ... i can cancel the internet. if i cancel the internet i can just go back to watching tv.
As ad producers can’t be trusted either with internet security or with respecting reasonable limits, ad blockers are a necessary self-defense mechanism.
Breitbart is the worst. My advlocker counts 27 ads blocked on that site.
This reminds me, I need to get a Raspberry Pi and implement a Pi Hole. Basically a network appliance to kill ads on your entire network.
PI-HOLE: A BLACK HOLE FOR INTERNET ADVERTISEMENTS
https://pi-hole.net
Block Over 100,000 Ad-serving Domains
Known ad-serving domains are pulled from third party sources and compiled into one list.
Block Advertisements On Any Device
Network-level blocking allows any device to block ads, regardless of hardware or OS.
Improve Overall Network Performance
Since ads are blocked before they are downloaded, your network will perform better.
Reduce Cellular Data Usage
Pair your Pi-hole with a VPN for on-the-go ad-blocking and save on data costs.
Monitor Performance And Statistics
The Web interface shows how many ads were blocked, a query log, and more.
Bkmrk
Nor should they be allowed to waist the waiter's time deciding what to eat. Do away with all menus. The customer will eat whatever the cooks feel like cooking at the time.
AND, we need to take that LAND OF THE FREE, HOME OF THE BRAVE thing out of the National Anthem.
And there is a special place in hell for sites that spread articles out over 10-20 pages of ad polluted crapdom.
The statement in the article that ad-blocking is the new anti-virus/anti-malware rings very true. Since using Ghostery, Ad-Block Plus and blocking cookies I cannot recall the last time Malwarebytes popped up due to a website wanting to download malicious code onto my computer through some advertisement on a website.
If websites really gave a sh*t they'd find another way to monetize their website. That means they'd have to have excellent content that users would want to pay to access and consume / contribute.
Oh gee, like say .... FREEREPUBLIC.COM which has survived 20 years using this exact model.
Or perhaps websites that rely on advertising dollars to survive (and many of them make quite a bit of money..) would want to spend some of that revenue guaranteeing the safety and security of the advertisement on their website.
That's REALLY the problem at the core of the debate: These sites want all the revenue without having to spend a thin dime on securing their sites properly and checking to make sure the advertisements that appear on them are safe and don't install malicious code on their readers computers.
Then there's the advertisement sites, of which there are more than I can name. Unscrupulous, lax in their own security, wanting to serve up as much as possible using as few resources (secure) as possible. Subject to hacking themselves and they don't really give a crap.
All this gives me a business idea. Not going to state it here. Going to talk to a venture capitalist friend of mine and see what he thinks first. There's a way to do this all safely and securely by giving users the control over what they see. Why didn't I think of this before?!
That's certainly one way to do it. The person(s) who figure out how to dynamically insert user preference based, secured ads into a secure HTML-5 Content Stream where it cannot be tampered with may become the next Internet billionaire.
That would involve re-writing content delivery engines (I think .....) to accomplish, but it's doable.
I kinda like your idea, I may incorporate it into mine. :-)
I use Adblock Latitude with Palemoon and Adblock Plus with Chrome. I tried Ghostery and even NoScript in the past but they both caused problems when I tried to pay my bills online. The various websites just wouldn't work correctly. But I haven't had too much to worry about since I use a combination of Adblock and AVG.
I've never had a reason to use something like Malwarebytes, and if my system ever got infected to the point where that kind of programming was needed to be used, I'd just reprogram the entire computer.
They should quit making the ads so annoying. I’m not the problem here, talk to the advertisers.
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