Advertisers Escalate Banner Ad War

AnonymousComrade writes: "In today's Newsbytes, there is an article about MediaBEAM GmbH, a German company that say they have developed Web server software that can detect whether a home browser is blocking banner ads or pop-ups. If the Web server detects blocking software, a message appears on the screen advising the 'free-loading' surfer that he has two choices if he wants access to the Web site's content: pay for it or be exposed to the ads. This sounds strange to me. Can they really include something in the download (Java or JS, I assume) that detects whether an ad picture has been downloaded or not? What if you have blocking S/W that not just blocks the download of the ad picture, but also modifies the HTML on-the-fly (a la the Proxomitron). Can they really distinguish this from a remote ad server that just isn't responding? And how long will it take before ad blocking S/W is updated to block this blocking-detection mechanism?"

Comments

Eventually, the DMCA would apply.

[Elwood P Dowd]

If pop up ads started using techniques like this AnonymousComrade suggests, eventually the DMCA would apply. They could encrypt their content, their ActiveX control could decrypt it, and hacking IE to kill the popups would be illegal. They wouldn't even have to use real encryption. They could use ROT13, and the legislation would still work. Then they can use the revenue generated by the ads to purchase more congresspeople. It'll be great!

Re:Eventually, the DMCA would apply.

[tlk nnr]

They could encrypt their content, their ActiveX control could decrypt it, and hacking IE to kill the popups would be illegal.

I'm not sure if removing adds from a page is legal, even without the DCMA.
The author wrote a page with an add, and a filter app modifies the page and removes the add picture, without a permission from the author.
But modification is one of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner.

Selling an app that's only purpose is to remove adverts from web pages could infringe the authors rights.

Detecting

[tcr]

Can they really include something in the download (Java or JS, I assume) that detects whether an ad picture has been downloaded or not?

Hmm...
I guess they could cycle through document.images[..] in Javascript/JScript to check the existence/properties of each image element, and pop up a window if something was amiss...

Not sure what they could do if client-side scripting was disabled though. Other than perhaps checking the weblogs through a server script to see if an HTTP GET was made from your IP address to a particular ad object... sounds onerous.

From the article, sounds like the former?

And what about text/speaking browsers?

[Masem]

Some browsers don't support JS, and cannot download images (eg: lynx, or browsers for sight-impared people). At least in the latter case, there's a legit reason for them to not have images.

In addition, in today's age of worms upon virus upon other nasty things, there is a sufficiently significant (probably around 10%) of users that have turned off Active Scripting in IE or the equivalent in NS to avoid such problems. I very much believe that these users have more of a right to keep this off than an advertizer has to force you to look at an ad.

Sure it can be done

[j7953]

The server can detect if your browser, after requesting an HTML page, also requests the contained images. I guess it works only if the pages are served from the sames server as the images.

Of course, you'll always see at least one web page, as the server doesn't know yet if you'll request the ads as well. If you don't, it can deny to handle further requests from your IP. They also cannot make sure (at least not by tracking requests) the ad is actually displayed, they can only make sure it's downloaded.

Still, I don't see a wide success for this technology. What about multiple people using the same IP -- the first one blocked ads, now the site is blocked for the other users as well? Even worse, dynamic IPs -- the guy who previously had my dial-up connection's IP blocked ads, now I cannot view the sites? Of course, they could require cookies, but those users that understand cookies will be really pissed off if they have to accept cookies they don't want to have to see ads they don't want to see.

Re:Sure it can be done

[morgus morphus]

From discussions I read on a german newssite from people who've tried this system it depends on a cookie to keep state.

So you needn't worry about other people in your flat being affected, however disabling cookies might defeat the system at the moment.

It would be theoretically possible to delay the download of the last 2/3 of the page until the banner has downloaded, however this would probably cause too many problems in real life.

As with any such systems it's not meant to discourage someone really determined but only make shure that 99% of pages get served with their banner.

Re:Most web sites need an income

[Basalisk]

By selling things that people wish to buy.

That's how most companies make an income, by exchanging goods or services for money.

Not by selling advertising space, and providing freebies or sausage sizzles or other methods to attract eyeballs.

These people are targeting the wrong customers. Instead of targeting the people visiting the site to buy stuff, they are targeting the people with ads to sell.

etc/hosts is your friend

[DrSkwid]

here's what I do :

I maintain DNS entries of the sites I wish not to receive ads from and map them onto a local machine.

I then configure Apache to respond to the requests using mod_perl to strip the paths from the URI and leave me with just the filename.

I then return an image OF MY CHOOSING to be displayed in my browser. I have set of images to choose from with pictures made in various banner sizes from anime / pr0n / abstract / auto-texture generating scripts / mandlebrots / swf files I have made.

It makes online life more interesting and colourful.

By logging your outgoing requests you can even change the graphics for programs like icq & other banner toting stuff.

Some places defeat my plan by using their own hostname (images.slashdot.com is one example) or by using IP addresses. I plan to build an Apache proxy module for these but haven't got round to it yet.

Most of the websites I visit are return visits anyway so you soon get a feel for the ways the ad system works.

By using a DNS & Proxy I can configure not just my workstation but my whoel LAN so it becomes OS/Browser agnostic.

M

Re:Umm, seems simple enought to me...

[decesare]

This of course won't stop anti-ad software from simply downloading the ad and not putting it on screen, but most blocking mechanisms just don't download the ad anyways

FWIW, I think that the iCab browser for Macintosh is one of the few that I've seen that can be configured to not display images of a certain size on the page, just leaving a blank where the ad would have been. And, it comes pre-configured with a list of typical ad/banner sizes to screen out. I believe that it's a "download but don't display mechanism". Is there anything like this in Konqueror (I haven't been able to find it).

Now seriously, how much trouble is it to read around a huge ad in the middle of your page?

Depends on how annoying the ad is. There are two issues here: one is that the ad itself can takes up computing resources to display. Maybe those with 2GHz P4 machines don't mind this, but for those of us working with older processors, it unacceptably slows down the page display.

The second is just how distracting the ad itself is. I'm still trying to train that "mental filtering" of which you speak to screen out images of fast-moving monkeys or flashing blue and white images that I've seen that distract from what I'm trying to read. Some of these ads have gotten so ridiculous that I can't read the page on which the ad is placed. And a concept that web marketers don't seem to grasp is that maybe people will remember a product backed by an annoying ad, but how many people will really buy that product if they negatively remember the ads for that product?

Re:Doesn't require Javascript or ActiveX

[dasunt]

Under windows, I have a modified hosts file that blocks out the more common ad servers. Since images are rather ugly, I use eDexter to display a blank image for me.

So, imagine the simple version of this (assuming I have javascript turned on, which is wrong, and assuming I use IE instead of Opera as my browser).

The IE script (which probably breaks other browsers, but...) checks to see if the ad image has arrived. It finds one. Maybe it goes further and checks to see if the image came from the ad server. It asks windows what's the ip addy is, and windows tells it 127.0.0.1, so everything checks out.

As long as it relies on simple ad banners, it fails. More complicated scripts could present a challenge, but a challenge that will be quickly solved if the ad checker becomes widespread.

On the other hand, thanks. Forgot that I haven't installed eDexter on the laptop yet. Need to conserve my 33.6k PCMIA modem's bandwidth, y'know.

It's a war of escalation

[GordoSlasher]

I've been blocking ads for years. Not that I don't like to see ads - sometimes I really am interested in the products being offered. But such a large fraction of ads are now so visually annoying that I can't take them anymore. I don't want to punch the fscking monkey. I don't want bouncing pong balls drawing my eyes away from a software review. When I'm at work reading financial sites I don't want a huge pair of hooters trying to sell me an X10 cam - it's unprofessional in an office environment.

I prefer magazine-style ads: occasional full-page ads I can easily skip or read, smaller ads in the margins that are not intrusive. When I look at them, there they are, and when I look away, they don't pull my eyes back. The web was like this in the early days of advertising. Then the monkey-punching games and Vegas-style animations started to take over, and now we have big honking animated ads with an inch of content wrapped around them, too distracting to read the actual web page content.

On TV the commercials are clustered together, then go away so you can view a few minutes of uninterrupted program content. If TV worked like the web, you would have a commercial running in the middle 60% of the sitcom stage with the actors squeezed into the margins around it, speaking lines between the commerical's music, and ducking under other smaller commericals, all competing for your attention. How long do you think people would watch such a program?

Bring back the days of less intrusive ads and I will turn off my ad blocker.

A lot of bunk

[Fnkmaster]

I see a lot of posts defending the brave upstanding advertisers who have to pay the bills.
Let's get something straight - I think everyone agrees with that sentiment. Some people seem to feel for moral reasons that the web should not subsist on advertising alone because it is an inherently offensive mix, the freedom of the information frontier and the crassest sort of commercialization ever.

Part of the problem is that those upholding the advertiser's point of view keep saying things like "they have a right to do it" and "if you didn't block it, we wouldn't have this problem. Stop blocking ads now!". The reality is that the only reason blocking has become even slightly common is because the ads have gotten SO much more incredibly intrusive and offensive with the obnoxious javascript toys at the disposal of the advertisers.

And why have the advertisers gotten so obnoxious? Why the move to pop-under, pop-over, run-around-my-fucking-page-chasing-my-cursor sorts of annoying ads? Because there is some sort of myth that people are supposed to click-through on ads and if we annoy the living shit out of them, they will click through. I'm sorry, clicking on ads just is terribly unlikely to ever happen and is not a meaningful metric of anything. People don't WANT to interrupt their precious time relaxing and browsing the web for information, news, pr0n or whatever to read your ad shit. Now if you were nice, showed me a banner ad and let me click to queue something up in my bookmarks or some client side info-base, I might want to come back to it later, maybe. But you should be fucking happy that I even saw your ad, glimpsed your logo and have cognizance that you exist.

As soon as your ad association in my mind goes from "oh that looks neat" to "fucking assholes make me click all over the place" I guarantee you I'm gonna go looking for blocking software and I'm sure as hell not going to have positive associations with your product (apparently these advertisers don't care and they just want any association at all). But I guarantee I will never buy anything from X10 or anybody who gives me a pop-under. Furthermore I consider it outside of my contract of usage for a site that they can force me to waste my time chasing click-unders. Give me banner ads, fine, if they are too big and take up more of my screen than the content I won't read your site, IN THE SAME WAY I'D TOSS A PAPER PUBLICATION THAT DID THE SAME. But don't abuse javascript to wreak havoc on my browser or browsing experience or I will be forced to take defensive technological measures against your hostile advertising. I'd rather not have access to your site than feel like nothing other than a click-through prostitute.

There's a reason TV has something like 4 minutes of advertising every 30 minutes - if they had any more people would shut off their fucking TVs and cancel their cable subscriptions.

Idea (all sides win)..

[nightfire-unique]

How about an ad blocker, that still downloads all images or files marked as ad related (according to the ads database or logic code) .. so that the site still gets the money, but instead of displaying the ad and annoying the user, it simply pushes it to /dev/zero.

Sure, it still uses bandwidth, but other than that - no harm done. Anyone who feels this strongly is *not* going to buy the product of aggresive advertisement in either case (so the advertiser loses nothing), the website gets some cash, and you save screen space.

Thoughts?

Warez sites already do this ...

[AftanGustur]

When you make a request do download blabla.html, the web server makes a conneciton to the server that serves the ads to see if your IP address has downloaded /gci/ads?ad12345&UniqueID. If it doesn't receive a response in 30 secs, it assumes that you didn't download the ad and you don't get to download blabla.html.

This is already beeing done ...

Arms race prediction

[DickBreath]

You can do this purely on the server side. No cookies. No by IP address. No javascript. No Java. Possibly without even using frames.

First, with frames. Send them a tiny page with frames. A frame for the ad(s) and a frame for the content. The tiny frame containing html contains custom url's for both the content and the ads. That is, the "session id" is embedded in the url's, without using cookies.

When the browser requests the url for content, the content stream is stalled until the ads are downloaded, or at least started. Since ads and content are tied to the same "session", you can tell which content goes with which ads. But you don't penalize others behind a NAT. The server can still be load balanced because a database keeps track of the sessions -- which can be very short lived. So even multiple servers can be used, as long as they share a common database -- or some rpc mechanism to ensure evil ads have been served before "unstalling" the stream for the content.

I said do it without frames. Simply send the html stream of the main page. Ads appear in the stream before content, which almost means necessarily "above" the content. When the stream gets right up to the point where it is to start delivering content, you stall the stream until the ad image(s) are at least requested.

Possible problem: are there any browsers that cannot request the ad image while the main content page is stalled? i.e. non multi-threaded?

Possible countermeasure: when your junkbusting proxy detects ads, it must deliver fake ads to the browser (or better, rewrite the content stream so that there aren't even ad spaces in the content), and it must make a pretense of requesting ads from the server. The proxy would continue to suck down the ad images until the content is delivered -- then abruptly close the ad stream connections. This way, if the server isn't willing to unstall the content until the ads are fully delivered, all you wasted is the bandwitdh to get the ads, but you don't see them. If the server is willing to unstall the content as soon as ads are requested, then you drop the connection on the ads asap. Using such a proxy, the server is unable to detect that you didn't actually see the ads. You at least went through the pretense of downloading the ads.

I don't see any counter-counter-measure that the evil advertisers could employ. From their point of view, you are a normal browser, downloaded both the ads and content. How can they further tell that you can't see the ads without going to more invasive techniques like Javascript?

I've often wondered about using javascript to deliver the content. You send down a javascript program that writes new content into an <ilayer>. But the javascript can be obfuscated. Even the "content" can be compressed with the javascript effectively unzipping it as it writes content into the layer. This almost certianly requires real javascript running in the browser to render the content part. The javascript could attempt to detect that the ads have been rendered first.

Now the counter-counter-counter-measure. Let the javascript and rendering happen in the ad busting proxy. The proxy is designed so that its rendering engine renders a data structure in memory. You then run filters on this data structure. Pattern matching. (Lisp anyone?) It's like a regular expression, but without the same kind of syntax. You do the recognition on the final page, which is expected to be structured a certian way. The ad, which falls in a familiar place is removed, and then new html is written from the in-memory data structure rendering of the original html. The new html is sent from the proxy to the end user.

Then what about a counter-counter-counter-counter-measure? Well, the evil advertisers could start sending you the content as a java applet. The applet contacts the server via. a non http stream and gets the content through a secret non-standard means. But only if the ads were delivered.

But then the counter-counter-counter-counter-counter-measure is to run the applet in a faked environment that fools it into connecting to the server and think that the ads were deliverd on the local page.

But then the counter counter counter counter counter counter measure is to serve both the ads and content together in a single big applet which uses a proprietary non-standard means obtain both the ads and content over a special stream from the server. Any attempts to circumvent this is a violation of the DMCA. They automatically record your IP address, look up your location, and to an XMLRPC call to the local FBI office's server to send goons to your door.

Then the counter counter counter counter counter counter counter measure is to stop visiting such sites. (And to bitch and complain on slashdot.)

Then the counter*8 measure is to lobby for custom legislation that requires you to browse to their web site if you were a regular visitor before, and to watch their ads. Alternately they can send party comrads to your home to force feed you the ads.

Finally, you must download and install their TeleScreen(tm) applet which uses your computer's usb camera and microphone to give them two-way telescreen access to your home to ensure that you are watching your dialy minimum recommended allowance of ads, as determined by federal standards.

What is the counter*9 measure?

In defense of "the freeloaders"

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

I'd like to address the "just view the damned ads, you freeloading hippies" crowd.

Personally, the reason I started blocking banner ads (a little over a year ago) was because of one very specific ad--that stupid "punch the monkey ad".

It managed to crap more web no-nos into an ad than I ever though possible:

1. I froze my browser, as my browser had to load the Java runtime to display it. This is nontrivial time under Netscape, and used to be a lengthy wait under IE, as well.
2. It moved. Quickly. Very distracting when you're trying to use Altavista to look up a particular bit of LaTeX wizardry.
3. If my mouse cursor hovered over the ad, the ad captured mouse focus, and caused my mouse cursor to not always move as it normally would (largely due to the overhead by the Java runtime, I'm sure--I was using a SPARC LX at the time).
4. It would frequently cause Netscape to dump core, and would occasionally cause IE to just freeze-up completely.

At the time, it was a very popular ad. I don't know what I was typing to into Altavista to make it trigger (LaTeX->latex? Monkeys? WTF?), but I seemed to get it every five pages, and Netscape dumping core every five pages was not conducive to my finding out this LaTeX technique, which I needed right then to finish a CS paper (I'd have used Fondren Library, but this was before the Rice campus library stayed open 24 hours daily).

So, as a temporary fix, I disabled Java (I didn't need it at the time), used a different search engine (Google), got what I needed, and then installed Squid+Cameron Simpson's Ad Zapper (once I'd turned-in my paper), and the problem went away. I could have Java as I needed it (Rice's CS departmnet loves Java. Turning it off in a web browser meant not being able to do certain coursework), and my browser didn't crash because of stupid monkeys.

The clear message I'd like to deliver is I don't mind non-intrusive advertising. In fact, most banner ads are very interesting, so long as they don't flash or titter about annoyingly, and don't stupidly try (and fail) to look like dialog boxes (looks really stupid under OpenWin). Occasionally, I click one. However, if it pops up in a separate window, if it spawns things in other windows, if it creates offscreen windows, if it crashed my browser, if it litters my hard drives with cookies, if it prevents me from clicking on your page, or if it dances around like a stupid monkey, I will disable it, and I will go elsewhere.

There are probably a lot of technically-minded users that feel the same way. I don't want to steal content--I don't have this need to remove all adverts from the pages I'm viewing (although, I will strip them out, if need to print the page). But, my computer is my computer, and if your website can't sit in its window and behave itself, you've just lost a viewer.

Current web advertising unacceptable

[Chris Johnson]

The current state of web advertising is comparable to TV advertisements that come out of the TV, walk over to you or follow you into the kitchen or bathroom and tug on your sleeve whining 'buy me!'.

That's bad advertising, plain and simple. It's been _proven_ through marketing research that if you get too annoying you unsell your product, most notably that's been proven through market research of particular sorts of TV advertising.

We're not talking about 'just let these poor people make money, will you?', we're talking about enabling them to hose themselves through severely stupid and bad advertising. The people using ad blockers are doing advertisers a FAVOR- that is valuable data, that information. They often accompany this with other valuable data- announcements that "if it was all quiet well-behaved banner ads that didn't blink or flash or move a lot, we wouldn't feel compelled to be doing this". That's valuable information. Since when is a random consumer's browsing history more valuable than an outright, impassioned statement of that consumer's preferences on how they want to be courted, advertising-wise?

Intrusive web advertising can be compared to billboards: the people attempting to use it can make a big fuss about how it's a moral imperative that they should be allowed to do this, but it's not only a lie, it's not even a healthy or useful thing to be doing. They are wrong in wishing to do it. If they are allowed to do it they will actually harm advertising in general- though this does create a window of opportunity for well-behaved advertisers, as well as substantially driving down the costs for well-behaved advertisers. Still... if you don't actively hate the entire field of advertising, it's hard to justify these abusive, useless practices, which harm advertising in general.

David Ogilvy considered advertising the art of 'speaking well about' things. Abusing people to the point that they are blindly, acutely hostile to anything resembling advertising makes it that much harder to do it properly and sensibly.

Just as restrictions are placed on the use of roadside billboards, I would like to see this abusive web advertising restricted by regulation and government oversight. It's plain that these people cannot and will not behave or police themselves.

Re:Revenue is made by selling product, not banners

[Telek]

what product does a news site offer?
what product does /. offer?
what product does google offer?

they're all services. you do to use their sites. the only money that they can get back in return from the money that they spend such that you can use their site is by banner ads. I'm not saying that's their product, but I am saying that that is the only way that they are going to make any sort of money. readership on the net doesn't pay bills. popup ads and clickthrus do. If a site is sufficiently big enough and their normal ads scheme isn't working because of either insufficient readership or too much readership or people blocking ads then the powers that be will do what they must do in order to increase revenue.

Don't forget that it's not only rising costs but lower ad revenue simply because the advertisers are paying less now than they were before and the advertisers are demanding more intrusive advertisements. Some websites simply have no choice but to increase the obtrusiveness of their advertisements because otherwise they'd be out of business due to changing prices in either hosting or ad based revenue.

I wonder how you'll feel when /. announces that they've been told that they must increase their ads revenue.

And lastly don't forget that things are dominated by one thing : money. If you can make more money by doing this, they you'll do it. Very simple concept.

So I'm curious then. How do you justify the bandwidth that you use off the sites which ads you block? They're paying so that you can get free content and you don't even have the curtosey to view the ads so that they can pay their bills?

Sounds a lot like the MP3 "I buy more after I try!" talk that I hear a lot of. There is absolutely no evidence to proove that most people who listen to MP3s buy more CDs than before, and a lot of evidence that prooves the contrary... Increasing overall CD sales doesn't proove that at all. Someone posted a good comment on one of the other threads that said something along the lines of either :

a) pay for the CDs and give the artists what they're due
-or-
b) don't listen to their music.

This is the same thing. You are incurring them a cost by viewing their content that they are providing to you free of charge with the only request that you view advertisements so that they can pay their bills. How do you justify blocking those ads? If you don't like their advertising scheme then perhaps you should not be visiting their site.

Sorry if I seem a little bitter here, but I'm getting tired of the hypocrisy in general (not aimed at you).