Google, Facebook Upset By Ad-Injecting Apps

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Google, Facebook Upset By Ad-Injecting Apps

Posted by Soulskill on Friday December 9, 2011 @05:21AM from the turnabout-is-highly-irritating dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Emily Steel at the Wall Street Journal writes about an unexpected twist for Google and Facebook, two companies that make their money selling ads next to content created by others. New companies like Sambreel Holdings are writing slick browser interfaces for popular sites like Facebook or Google and supporting themselves by injecting their own ads into the mix. Naturally, the original ad sellers aren't so happy about other ad sellers inserting themselves farther down the chain. Are we in the middle of an ad war where every company tries to inject their ads over the others? Will only the last 'ad supported' software in the chain win?"

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Said it before and I'll say it again ... by amalek · 2011-12-09 05:22 · Score: 5, Informative

Adblock, como te amo.
1. Re:Said it before and I'll say it again ... by InsightIn140Bytes · 2011-12-09 05:29 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Adblock only works because it's not widely used. If everyone would use it, then advertising networks would have to come up with better ways to deliver ads without possibility to block them. It's already done on sites that are for geeks, like Slashdot. /. has ads, yes, but they also sell advertising spots on Ask Slashdot section and polls. By advertising Adblock (ironic, isn't it?) you're only giving webmasters and sites more reason to come up with hidden advertisements and things that really integrate into site. Google is already doing it on YouTube - they put some required components behind ad servers, so if you block video ads then the videos will stop working completely.
2. Re:Said it before and I'll say it again ... by Toe,+The · 2011-12-09 05:37 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Why would you want to remove ads? Genuine Rolex watches for only $99! They are what support the development of (Refinance today!) new applications for your benefit. Just like you can benefit from a bigger penis! I don't find it (THIS IS NOT ANNOYING!) annoying at all.
3. Re:Said it before and I'll say it again ... by bonch · 2011-12-09 05:38 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Google doesn't like AdBlock either. Chrome doesn't support the blocking of ads before they're downloaded, even though WebKit supports that functionality (and it's used in the Safari version of ABP). The author of ABP has implemented workarounds for some ad types, but it's still an arbitrary limitation in Chrome--a browser from a multi-billion dollar web advertising company with a vested interest in having you download their ads so that they count as "views."
4. Re:Said it before and I'll say it again ... by InsightIn140Bytes · 2011-12-09 05:41 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  And don't forget Google Analytics. Since you can't actually block the request, it will hit it and Google gains more and more data about everyone. In other browsers you can actually deny the whole request so it doesn't work.
5. Re:Said it before and I'll say it again ... by H3lldr0p · 2011-12-09 05:42 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  It's not that I want to hide the ads. What I want is to hide the annoyance of the ads. Keep the ads subtle and out of the flow of what I'm on a site for, and I won't want to block them.
  What the marketers don't understand is that the more annoying they get, the less eyeballs they receive because of more and more people use ad-ons like Adblock to avoid the annoyance. All they seem to understand is the lazy approach. Be loud! Be garish! Be anything but smart and honest!
6. Re:Said it before and I'll say it again ... by ByOhTek · 2011-12-09 05:44 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  My favorite is still one email I got
  "Don't you deserve an Authentic Replica Rolex?"
  No, sir. I deserve better.
  
  --
  Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
7. Re:Said it before and I'll say it again ... by masternerdguy · 2011-12-09 05:45 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I have this cool idea for a plugin that lets 8086 assembly be embedded directly into web pages, maybe the advertisers could use that?
  
  --
  To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
8. Re:Said it before and I'll say it again ... by DJRumpy · 2011-12-09 05:51 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Ghostery works well for that sort of thing.
  It should achieve the effect you are looking for in preemptively blocking the content before it hits your browser.
  Supports most major browsers too.
9. Re:Said it before and I'll say it again ... by rel4x · 2011-12-09 05:58 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  It's not that I want to hide the ads. What I want is to hide the annoyance of the ads. Keep the ads subtle and out of the flow of what I'm on a site for, and I won't want to block them.
  What the marketers don't understand is that the more annoying they get, the less eyeballs they receive because of more and more people use ad-ons like Adblock to avoid the annoyance. All they seem to understand is the lazy approach. Be loud! Be garish! Be anything but smart and honest!
  What users don't get is that the more people use adblock, the more marketers will have to extract every last penny they can out of the users they can. That means dirtier, high ROI ads, pop-ups, etc. Most users aren't going to install adblock no matter what they do.
  The other end of it is that marketers in general are confident that they can overcome adblock if it ever becomes popular to the point where it's a problem. Adblock only works by recognizing the domain hosting the image/scripts or common path names.
  Toss that banner add on the cloud, or have it hosted locally by the site owners(in a non-"banners" or "ads" subdirectory) and for the most part you've got it beat. Advertisers haven't adapted because there's not a big enough incentive to. But if push ever comes to shove, they'll win.
  Imagining that AdBlock provides(or could provide) enough incentive to make anyone even think about cleaning up advertising is nothing but wishful thinking.
  
  --
  
  Before you mod me funny, think, perhaps I was insightfully funny?
10. Re:Said it before and I'll say it again ... by InsightIn140Bytes · 2011-12-09 06:08 · Score: 2
  
  And not only will it move banners to the site and same domain, there will be large increase in normal links used for advertising, hidden inside text or the content you want to read. It will only make advertisements more sneakier and you can't block those unless you want to block all normal links, up to a point where the actual content will be made with those ads in mind. Users with Adblock still have it good, but the more people they try to get to use it will just mean that the faster they will be unable to block any ads.
11. Re:Said it before and I'll say it again ... by petermgreen · 2011-12-09 06:16 · Score: 2
  
  pop-ups, etc
  Well pop-up windows are pretty much out because all the major browsers now block them by default. I've seen a few in-page pop-ups but those are probablly pretty easy for an ad-blocker to detect.
  
  The other end of it is that marketers in general are confident that they can overcome adblock if it ever becomes popular to the point where it's a problem. Adblock only works by recognizing the domain hosting the image/scripts or common path names.
  That is CURRENTLY how they work. but if the advertisers change their tactics then the ad-blockers likely will as well.
  
  --
  note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
12. Re:Said it before and I'll say it again ... by allo · 2011-12-09 06:29 · Score: 2
  
  you cannot win this war. Its like the virus scanners. no virus scanner really knows the most recent virus. so no website will be able to provide ads in a way that cannot be blocked.
  with adblock you can block articles marked as sponsored on slashdot, if you want to.
  and forcing ads like the advertisers want them (colorful and blinking) to the users against adblockers needs javascript, which can easily be blocked with noscript (which should be a builtin for firefox).
  of course, the site can choose to provide the content only via javascript. but i would bet then we get plugins to selectivly run parts of the javascript and other parts not.
13. Re:Said it before and I'll say it again ... by CodeHxr · 2011-12-09 06:34 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  That is CURRENTLY how they work. but if the advertisers change their tactics then the ad-blockers likely will as well.
  This seems like the same paradigm that piracy/anti-piracy follows. The pirates will, by definition, always be one step ahead because anti-piracy is reactionary. Translating this to the current discussion, advertisers will always be one step ahead because anti-ad software is reactionary. Just $0.02.
14. Re:Said it before and I'll say it again ... by dcollins · 2011-12-09 06:37 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  "What the marketers don't understand is that the more annoying they get, the less eyeballs they receive"
  Skeptical: Citation needed.
  
  --
  We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
15. Re:Said it before and I'll say it again ... by misexistentialist · 2011-12-09 06:47 · Score: 2
  
  Element Hiding Helper for Adblock can clean up pretty much anything.
16. Re:Said it before and I'll say it again ... by InsightIn140Bytes · 2011-12-09 06:51 · Score: 2
  
  And in both cases they only care about majority of users. In neither case is the purpose to make some unbeatable system but make it hard enough for casual users and majority to overcome it. As long as that stays they really don't have any incentive to make their systems better.
17. Re:Said it before and I'll say it again ... by Lucky75 · 2011-12-09 07:05 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Actually, adblock blocks youtube ads embedded in videos. I didn't even realize that youtube HAD started putting ads in videos until I used a browser without adblock.
  
  --
  DNA -- National Dyslexic Association
18. Re:Said it before and I'll say it again ... by vadim_t · 2011-12-09 07:08 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I suspect things don't escalate further because ad blocking has the nuclear option: doing everything as if the ad was showing, but without showing it.
  There's nothing that makes it impossible to move ad blocking to the browser itself, where the blocking mechanism sets a "don't render" property on the element. Then it doesn't matter much what the advertiser does, the DOM is the same, as far as JS can tell it's all there, the server logs are identical.
  Now how do you think advertisers will react when the advertising network can tell them "this ad was delivered on 10000 pages, but we have no clue how many of those people actually saw it"?
19. Re:Said it before and I'll say it again ... by ksd1337 · 2011-12-09 07:09 · Score: 2
  
  Too late.
20. Re:Said it before and I'll say it again ... by InsightIn140Bytes · 2011-12-09 07:22 · Score: 2
  
  There's already PPC and CPA models and they don't care about impressions. Advertisers only pay when someone clicks, or better yet, when someone does certain action like buys product. Such schemes will only make sure that more and more advertisers move to such models.
21. Re:Said it before and I'll say it again ... by Qzukk · 2011-12-09 07:42 · Score: 2
  
  "One weird trick" seems to have become some sort of meme. I'm even seeing it in news articles online.
  
  --
  If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
22. Re:Said it before and I'll say it again ... by StikyPad · 2011-12-09 08:15 · Score: 2
  
  What users don't get is that the more people use adblock, the more marketers will have to extract every last penny they can out of the users they can. That means dirtier, high ROI ads, pop-ups, etc. Most users aren't going to install adblock no matter what they do.
  First of all, ad views don't make money; clickthroughs make money. And I may be in a minority (though probably not), but I'm usually not interested in any of the products or services advertised and don't trust the sales pitch of an online ad regardless.
  Second, if advertisers create more intrusive ads (which didn't work so well when they did), that's just too bad. I will either avoid the ad, or else avoid the site promoting the ad. The only thing that forcing an ad on my display would accomplish is to make me not want to look at your site, and therefore be extremely unlikely to recommend your site to someone else who might actually click on an ad. If I want to learn about a product or service, I'll do the research on my own, and ads will never be a factor. I am not an early adopter, I do not make impulse purchases, and I am not your target demographic.
  People who either don't know how or choose not to block ads will have to decide for themselves whether they want to patronize a site that tolerates or facilitates intrusive advertisements.
  
  --
  https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
23. Re:Said it before and I'll say it again ... by vadim_t · 2011-12-09 08:24 · Score: 2
  
  You can't click something you can't see.
  If one were to feel really evil, it's also quite possible to make a browser that simulates clicks and opens the result in an invisible tab. That of course goes counter to the general motivation of removing tracking and lowering bandwidth and CPU usage. But it could be done.
  My point here is that if the war escalates, the users hold the nuclear option: they can break both the pay per view and the pay per click models completely, if they feel motivated enough, and mostly break CPA indirectly.
  If done well, the advertiser can't retaliate, as both seen and unseen ads look the same server-side. That breaks PPV. The only measurable result is changing the click ratio. PPC can then be easily broken by submitting fake clicks, so that the one paying for the ad can never be sure if their money really results in anybody seeing the ad or not. CPA can be partly broken because it's the only remaining workable model, not fit for all products. And with fewer views there will be fewer purchases, so any ad will have to be kept in rotation longer.
Live by the sword, die by the sword by cornicefire · 2011-12-09 05:28 · Score: 4, Insightful

The irony is killing me. Google is so happy to frame other people's content with their own ads. It's going to be funny to see them spin up some kind of tortuous distinction between their advertisements and the ones that the Sambreel uses.
1. Re:Live by the sword, die by the sword by sexconker · 2011-12-09 06:01 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  As a webmaster I am not happy that Google sometimes shows its users my pages before they visit. So get the info they want and don't visit my site for real and get the ad I serve.
  As a webmaster, I would never subject visitors to my site to advertisements of any sort.
2. Re:Live by the sword, die by the sword by tomhudson · 2011-12-09 06:06 · Score: 2
  
  Anyone who calls themselves a webmaster deserves to die die die! You're a big part of the problem.
3. Re:Live by the sword, die by the sword by aix+tom · 2011-12-09 06:14 · Score: 2
  
  So change your robots.txt so that Google doesn't index your site. Problem solved.
Ah, capitalism by kqs · 2011-12-09 05:30 · Score: 2, Interesting

It's a triumph of capitalism. Insert yourself as a parasite, move revenue from those doing the actual work towards yourself. And the obligatory "well, it's okay since the marks^Wusers agreed to it in an unreadable EULA."
Best of all, the complaints go to the web sites you're stealing from, not to yourself. Brilliant!
"Will only the last ad in the chain win?" by green1 · 2011-12-09 05:31 · Score: 4, Interesting

The summary asks "Will only the last 'ad supported' software in the chain win?"
We could only wish! Unfortunately what usually happens is that each step simply adds more ads. Rarely do they remove existing ones to do that. As a result, you simply end up with more and more ads.
I'm at a point now where I am so fed up with ads in general, that I am ruthless in my ad blocking. I run adblock, and flashblock, and I run adfree on both my cell phone and my tablet. Additionally I run my own DNS server that is used by my computers, as well as my cell phone and tablet, and any time I see an ad on any device I do my best to track down where it came from and block the domain.
And it's not just the web either, I don't have commercial TV service because I can't stand the ads. Many of the networks have their shows available right on their websites, for free and without the long commercial breaks either!
Had advertisers kept things reasonable, I might have never resorted to such measures, but as it is, I'm fed up enough to just block everything.
1. Re:"Will only the last ad in the chain win?" by subreality · 2011-12-09 06:32 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Unfortunately, we may get a bad result of all this: if ads beside the content become entirely useless, the upstream providers will start putting the ads IN the content. Witness what happened to the bottom third of your screen after Tivo came out. When Adblock learns to block those, they'll just make it more subtle.
  Product placements pioneered in-band advertising, but the first generation was pretty awkward. Diamonds are a notable exception. Those guys were brilliant. Instead of making a big deal of the rocks, they wrote a subtle preconception into the plots: that offering a girl a diamond is the universal standard when getting engaged. The girl is thrilled by the surprise proposal, but never surprised that he's offering a diamond. And thus the audience learns: she might be overjoyed by an unusually expensive one, but no diamond at all is NOT ACCEPTABLE. A hundred years ago, that wasn't even fiction; now it's reality.
  Realize that this is still going on, and try to spot it. Don't just look for blatant logos smeared everywhere, and cumbersome shoehorning of brands into dialog... Those exist too, but that's just because not everyone can afford the genius advertising guys, even if there were enough of them to go around. But the subtle tricks of old are well known, and still in use. Look for the subtle stuff the cast takes completely for granted that you thought was just something the trendy conformist crowd was into... they are just the first to fall for it. Especially look for it in the news.
  Now tell me how the hell you're going to slice that out of the content. Adblock isn't going to cut it.
It's not (so much) the ads... by Peter+Simpson · 2011-12-09 05:38 · Score: 5, Insightful

...but the absolute *crap* they advertise. Honestly, I do *not* want to look up my former high school classmates, I do *not* need a credit card with a lower rate and I do *not* want to see [random actress] nude! Perhaps if they were to advertise something I actually wanted...but then, they wouldn't ned to advertise as much, would they?
1. Re:It's not (so much) the ads... by CastrTroy · 2011-12-09 05:50 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  THIS!
  
  Facebook is terrible for for. The have have hundreds of millions of people browsing their site everyday, and it's filled to ads for scammers, porn, dubious websites and other junk. They could make a serious amount of money if they would just only take serious advertisers. You don't see ads for fake Rolex watches on NBC, but you do on Facebook, even though Facebook has a much bigger audience. They need a real advertising department that goes after big companies getting real advertisements for legitimate products. If the ads were for real products, people would be much more likely to click on them, and advertisers would pay much more for the ads. Right now, no serious company will advertise on Facebook because they don't want their product showing up next to ads for Russian Brides and get rich quick schemes.
  
  --
  
  Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Interstitials by TheSpoom · 2011-12-09 05:41 · Score: 3, Insightful

If Adblock becomes common, interstitials are going to win. They are the only form of ad that could be coded such that they cannot be blocked (e.g. make the interstitial send a message to the site at the beginning and end of the ad, and/or require the user to enter some content from the ad before the site sends the actual content of the website to the user).
If they win, adding more ads will only make the user not want to use your interface since it means a further delay until the website's content can be viewed.

--
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Cable Operators by geekboybt · 2011-12-09 05:43 · Score: 5, Interesting

Is this not what the cable operators already do? If they sell a local ad, they simply dub over the national ad of their choice and call it a day. How is this any different?
1. Re:Cable Operators by MobileTatsu-NJG · 2011-12-09 06:07 · Score: 2
  
  Is this not what the cable operators already do?
  
  Yes.
  
  If they sell a local ad, they simply dub over the national ad of their choice and call it a day. How is this any different?
  The spot where they dubbed it in was put there so the local ad could be inserted in. In other words: it's designed that way.
  
  --
  
  "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
2. Re:Cable Operators by MobileTatsu-NJG · 2011-12-09 06:35 · Score: 2
  
  Well, I'll put it this way: The express purpose of purchasing this content is to distribute it with ads so a profit can be generated. If the local carrier can't show local ads, there is zero reason for them to air any of the content.
  
  --
  
  "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A new browser interface for a website? by maxdread · 2011-12-09 05:46 · Score: 2

Well it isn't necessary.
Essentially this company created several adware-like plugins that allow users to do trivial things such as add a background image on facebook, in return the plugin injects ad's onto the site. It isn't a new browser, it's more akin to a greasemonkey script.
Enough is enough! by slumberheart · 2011-12-09 05:50 · Score: 3, Insightful

This whole business about making money just by slipping an ad in front of an eyeball is stupid, and I wish it would stop altogether.
Brought to you by Carl's Jr
What goes around comes around: 1998 by jtara · 2011-12-09 05:54 · Score: 4, Interesting

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1998/04/13/240866/index.htm
I designed the client software architecture for the above. It was an "interesting" experience. My favorite "death march" project ever! ;) I got to meet David Bois...
The client was a wrapper around IE or Firefox, and attached a "PowerBar" to the top of the browser window. Due to the legal issues with EDS, they never got to dealing with any potential legal issues involving consumer privacy or publisher rights.
While I had some misgivings initially about working on this project, I found Dale very receptive about protecting consumer privacy. There were safeguards to insure that advertisers could only gain access to aggregate data, and this was a stated goal. And he went along 100% with my ideas about insuring that uploaded data was as transparent as possible - passed in the clear so that users could examine it and see just what was being sent, with only a small opaque digital signature. (Which still worried me. *I* knew there was nothing hidden in the signature, but how could the user prove it?)
1. Re:What goes around comes around: 1998 by jtara · 2011-12-09 06:15 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  A brief summary of PowerAgent:
  http://www.thefreelibrary.com/PowerAgent+Introduces+First+Internet+'Infomediary'+to+Empower+and...-a019639599
  What I called PowerBar above actually was called PowerFrames. I'd forgotten about the interstitials.... (PowerPages).
  This was around the same time that Google first incorporated.
  The client software worked reasonably well, given the state of embeddable browser controls at the time. Allegedly, there were serious issues with the back-end, and EDS insisted on taking that over.
  I haven't really followed this area since. Has the question ever been settled as to whether software that inserts ads into content retrieved from the web violating the publisher's rights, or just acting as an agent of the user? I mean, it's legal to cut-apart a newspaper page, and paste it back together into a collage any way you want, right? (Assuming it is just for your own enjoyment...)
  http://www.thefreelibrary.com/EDS+Provides+PowerAgent+With+Internet+Services+to+Support+One-To-One...-a019656177
Re:This is funny by PCM2 · 2011-12-09 05:55 · Score: 2

If you try to download Adobe Acrobat Reader, Google toolbar is injected into the download with no way to stop it. It installs before acrobat - I guess so you can't cancel it. If you download the Adobe Flash Player, Google Chrome is injected into the download and you cannot stop it.
Ummm... are you being serious? Because:
A.) I've never seen any of the behaviors you describe;
B.) Chrome doesn't use the standalone Flash Player, it has its own, internal Flash Player, so the two downloads are totally incongruous;
C.) Google Toolbar for Firefox has been discontinued, so the utility of that plugin seems limited.

--
Breakfast served all day!
Ad decluttering through selective ad blocking by Animats · 2011-12-09 06:19 · Score: 3, Interesting

I'm approaching this from the other end. I'm working on a browser-add on which limits the number of ads that appear on a page. The user sets the limit, and we trim out ads accordingly. The ads with lower SiteTruth ratings are deleted first.
This puts the user in control of the ad experience. The problem with on-line advertising today is that there are too many ads per page. This isn't good for advertisers or users.
I am amazed at how ads are funding the internet by Pausanias · 2011-12-09 06:23 · Score: 5, Interesting

I am perpetually amazed at the amount of money companies spend on advertising. It's staggering---enough to support all of Google, Facebook, you name it.
Did companies always spend this much money? Does it work? Why don't more people block it? AdBlock has been around for almost a decade now and it didn't cut into this pie at all. It's just still geeks like us using it.
I don't know what's more amazing, this, or the resistance of most computer users to tweak or modify their browser setup in any way shape or form unless they absolutely have to.
1. Re:I am amazed at how ads are funding the internet by dcollins · 2011-12-09 06:52 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  "Did companies always spend this much money? Does it work? Why don't more people block it?"
  To my understanding -- Yes. No. Because most people only get what mass-media tell them to, and AdBlock is not itself pushed in advertising.
  Added notes -- I remember reading an article during the first contraction of online banner advertising, wherein companies were shocked to learn what a small turnover rate they had (online being the first time anyone could actually track turnover rates or other attention metrics). Personally, I take any ads I see as a mental marker to avoid doing business with those companies -- the more ads, the worse the company. Organizations with really great products/service are kept semi-secret and don't need advertising.
  
  --
  We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
2. Re:I am amazed at how ads are funding the internet by subreality · 2011-12-09 09:11 · Score: 2
  
  Does it work?
  Sometimes. Brand recognition is clearly a big factor for people's selection process. When someone's buying a TV in their local Best Buy and they have a choice of a Sony, a Panasonic, and a Nikisawa, all with identical specs and prices, I can't tell you which one they'll buy, but I CAN tell you with 98% certainty which one they won't. BTW, did you notice that they were IN a Best Buy instead of the independent store that has a better discount? Guess why. And there are a lot of places that sell a better hamburger than McDonalds, but when you're short on time and you go to search on your smartphone for something nearby, same thing... you go with the one you know. Advertising isn't the only way to build recognition, but it does work.
  It's also pretty successful when you have a novel product that people will want if they knew it existed. All the hype in the world isn't going to sell very many more chrome-plated toasters than if you just put the thing on the shelf next to the old white model. On the other hand when Apple came up with the iPod their ad guys put in some serious overtime, and it worked.
  Somewhere in the gray area you have the things like IBM ads where they're selling... Well, you have a business problem, and IBM has "solutions", as if they have a product that's just the cure to your abstract business problem that everyone has. Of course they're really selling expensive consulting services to try to find a way to band-aid your problem. Consciously everyone knows that. Do people subconsciously start to think of IBM as a simple solution to complex problems because of the ads? Who the fuck knows. IBM certainly thinks so.
  And that last bit is the really important part: The most successful thing advertisers have sold is advertising itself. They have some high-visibility cases where they've made multiple orders of magnitude difference: diamonds; Marlboro; Volkswagen; Nike. So they milk the hell out of those as if all products require advertising if you want to make it big, and regardless of the ambiguous general case, when it comes to advertising there are enough CEOs who are buying it.
Advertisers will NEVER win. by oGMo · 2011-12-09 07:18 · Score: 5, Insightful

Adblock only works by recognizing the domain hosting the image/scripts or common path names. Toss that banner add on the cloud, or have it hosted locally by the site owners(in a non-"banners" or "ads" subdirectory) and for the most part you've got it beat. Advertisers haven't adapted because there's not a big enough incentive to. But if push ever comes to shove, they'll win.

They will never win. Look at it this way. You've essentially said that advertising gets dirtier the less people respond, and if everyone used Adblock, advertising would get so dirty we couldn't win.
Yet, spam is probably the dirtiest advertising there is. There is likely no trick the spammers have not tried. Send from any host, embed stuff in reasonble-looking text, etc. Yet spam detection is very, very good, to the extent that spam is on the decline.
Advertisers will never win, because you can write better software that detects ads. Adblock's simple host and XPATH detection is all that's there because it's all that's necessary right now. It would however probably not be that hard to write image detection software that can process images and assign a AD-PROBABILITY value to them. Use the cloud against the advertisers ... just set up software that learns by user submission on a cluster and click on an ad to submit it. Consult the "cloud" for any new images.
But, until most people care about ads the way they care about spam, it's not going to be necessary. Unfortunately we're so culturally inundated with advertisement that it's just not a thing. Though while this may look like a win for advertisers, it does make ad removal trivial for those of us who care.

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Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
1. Re:Advertisers will NEVER win. by InsightIn140Bytes · 2011-12-09 07:26 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  No, even email advertisers have moved to new models after laws and spam detection became better. Now spam is disguised as opt-in lists, or offering user something in return for it. GroupOn is probably the best example of this. And it's highly profitable too. Spam evolved into that.
2. Re:Advertisers will NEVER win. by adonoman · 2011-12-09 08:43 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  When it becomes opt-in, then it's no longer spam. When I sign up to get weekly grocery store flyers, it's not junk-mail, since it's something I want. If groupon and other opt-in mediums become the next generation of advertising, then I'm fine with that.