Slashdot Mirror
One Day After iOS 9's Launch, Ad Blockers Top Apple's App Store
HughPickens.com writes: Sarah Perez reports at TechCrunch that only one day after the release of Apple's newly released version of Apple's mobile operating system, iOS 9, ad blockers are topping the charts in the App Store and it seems that new iOS 9 users are thrilled to have access to this added functionality. The Top Paid iOS app is the new ad-blocker Peace, a $2.99 download from Instapaper founder Marco Arment. Peace currently supports a number of exclusive features that aren't found in other blockers yet. Most notably, it uses Ghostery's more robust blocklist, which Arment licensed from the larger company by offering them a percentage of the app's revenue. "I can't believe how many trackers are on popular sites," says Arment. "I can't believe how fast the web is without them." Other ad blockers are also topping the paid app chart as of today, including the Purify Blocker (#3), Crystal (#6), Blockr (#12). (Ranks as of the time of writing.) With the arrival of these apps, publishers and advertisers are fretting about the immediate impact to their bottom lines and business, which means they'll likely soon try to find ways to sneak around the blockers. In that case, it should be interesting to see which of the apps will be able to maintain their high degree of ad blocking over time.
It's no surprise that advertisers and publishers who make their money from advertising aren't exactly fans of blockers. What is surprising is that no one seemed to disagree with the argument that online ads have gotten out of control. "I think if we don't acknowledge that, we'd be fools," says Scott Cunningham, "So does that mean ad blockers are good or right? Absolutely not. Do we have an accountability and responsibility to address these things? Absolutely — and there's a lot that we're doing now." Harry Kargman agrees that in many cases, online ads have created "a bad consumer experience — from an annoyance perspective, a privacy perspective, a usability perspective." At the same time, Kargman says that as the industry works to solve these problems, it also needs to convince people that when you use an ad blocker, "That's stealing. It's no different than ripping music. It's no different than pirating movies."
It's no surprise that advertisers and publishers who make their money from advertising aren't exactly fans of blockers. What is surprising is that no one seemed to disagree with the argument that online ads have gotten out of control. "I think if we don't acknowledge that, we'd be fools," says Scott Cunningham, "So does that mean ad blockers are good or right? Absolutely not. Do we have an accountability and responsibility to address these things? Absolutely — and there's a lot that we're doing now." Harry Kargman agrees that in many cases, online ads have created "a bad consumer experience — from an annoyance perspective, a privacy perspective, a usability perspective." At the same time, Kargman says that as the industry works to solve these problems, it also needs to convince people that when you use an ad blocker, "That's stealing. It's no different than ripping music. It's no different than pirating movies."
If they want to claim that as stealing then they should pay us for the bandwidth THEY are stealing.
The last three sentences. Good grief.
I'm NOT buying your product because you advertised it. I'm buying it because a friend told me it was good.
By blocking your ads, I'm freeing myself from the annoyance of advertisements that I'm going to completely ignore anyway, and I'm recovering both bandwidth and electricity that YOU are stealing from me, because the application developer whose app I am using decided their app wasn't good enough to be a pay app, and decided instead to steal from me to get money from you (the advertiser).
You have to realize that you are spending your advertising dollars on very ineffective advertising. Worse, you are directly harming your brand by advertising in such a negative, intrusive, and annoying way.
If ad blocking is considered "stealing" then most of these "ads" should be considered "hacking" and ad companies and executives, especially the ones that end up serving exploits, should be prosecuted just as aggressively as Aaron Swartz and others.
I'm still not sure how they convinced sharing music where no one loses is stealing, but some people think it is stealing even though the distribution costs are basically 0. Anyway, if they can pull another fast one and convince people that not watching ads is stealing, they'll want to go the extra mile,"If you watch your content without buying stuff our sponsors promote, you're basically stealing free content.". Don't buy into their mind poison.
God spoke to me
The problem is that publishers don't see the cost of delivery of their advertising. Like email spam there is little to no cost to throw in a few more lines of JavaScript to pull another ad from another ad delivery service.
But the consumers do see the cost. Download costs (especially for mobile) for the extra data. Longer time to load. Harder to read with ad's cluttering the page. Etc etc.
At the very least if this pushes publishers to convert 2nd and 3rd party ads to first party by (minimally proxying or caching) the delivery through their own site it will provide them with a better idea of the cost.
Moving more content to first party delivery allows protocols like SPDY to shine and optimize delivery. Faster and less bits (through compression.)
The message to publishers is take control of the data you want people to look at. Deliver it yourself.
The message to advertisers is to develop alternate mechanisms to ensure your ads are being delivered through first party sites. Ad blocking of crappy delivery mechanisms means that your choice is no ads or delivery as a first party ad.
1) They advertise to me. ....with the intention that after they've forced me to see something I definitely said that I didn't want to see - that somehow I'll want to buy their product?
2) I dislike their adverts sufficiently that I'm prepared to spend actual money to stop seeing them.
3) So they try very hard to force me to see their adverts anyway.
4)
Did I get that right?
They send me crap that I've very explicitly opted out of by installing an ad blocker...and they think that'll make me want to buy their stuff?
OK - I don't get it. I really don't.
-- Steve
www.sjbaker.org
It isn't fucking stealing at all. The content provider is putting up the content without a paywall. That I choose not to load all the elements of that page is not stealing, so I utterly reject the underlying assertion.
Quite frankly, if there is a Hell, then every marketer who has ever lived is either already getting Satan's trident up the ass, or should be preparing for an eternity of "sponsored rectal content".
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Ad blockers are pretty much a necessity on mobile networks.
Don't feel guilty about using them either. Ads cost real money on mobile networks because they eat into your quota. They also degrade your device's performance and track your behaviour. Don't dismiss that last point as the cost of free services. While the network is public, your device is private. You should have the right to control which network requests your device does and does not make, as well as control which code executes on it. All of this talk about ads funding websites and behaviour tracking being used to improve the relevance of ads is pure nonsense. If it was about funding websites with relevant ads, they would simply display ads based upon the content of the website.
Hey advertisers! Yeah we're "taking" website content for free, without paying for it, because that is precisely the nature of our contract and covenant with said website. Meanwhile your covenant with them is to pay them money and in return they'll place your ads. We have no covenant with you. We are not obligated to look at your ads.
But what if every ad-supported site fails? If web content were not totally optional and inessential in every way you might have a point there. But since it's plentiful, mostly stupid, and hardly costs anything to deliver(*) we're actually paying close to market value for it. And a web made up of enthusiasts and community-supported sites might actually be a hell of a lot better than the corporate-dominated one we have now that's so full of bloodsuckers who want something for nothing.
(*) Sure, starting from no web server or site, and going all the way to reaching user #1, takes a lot of effort. But users #2 through (thousands) take zero effort beyond that. (You webmasters are STEALING! SHRIEK!!! SHRIEK!!!)
So when will Apple let us block in app ads?
Oh I see. This isn't about blocking ads for user's. It's about Apple trying to get more devs to make apps and use iAds which are not blocked so Apple can make more $$$
... it also needs to convince people that when you use an ad blocker, "That's stealing. It's no different than ripping music. It's no different than pirating movies."
So you're saying that you cannot show any actual loss from the use of ad-blockers?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Add bandwidth, attention, and enjoyment to that list too.
And what their analogy fails to capture is that when it comes to CDs, movies, fruit, toys, or anything else they want to compare it against, there's a simple, well-established relationship between consumers and producers: stuff gets produced -> a price is agreed on -> price gets paid -> stuff gets consumed. Not so with web pages, since the reader pays for the goods (e.g. allows cookies to be set, allows tracking scripts to run, sends information about themselves, has their information sold to third-parties, etc.) before they've had a chance to find out what the price is or see what the goods are.
Marco Arment suggested that the practice was akin to a restaurant charging its patrons for food they looked over in the menu, before they had even ordered, and I'm inclined to agree. What ability do I have to say, "no, your product is not worth the price you're asking" if the tracking cookies and scripts are immediately placed and executed upon my arrival? Where are sites spelling out the price that visitors pay in a place that visitors can see before they pay (and no, burying it in fine print on page 26 of a privacy policy does not count)? Where do they get off thinking that a contract of adhesion has any sort of enforceability when they never even offered me a chance to take it or leave it? Moreover, where even in those contracts do they state that I'm required to make my information available to them or to consume everything that they're making freely available? I eat around inedible food that restaurants serve me (e.g. burnt edges), so why wouldn't I
"eat around" non-content data that's served up, such as tracking scripts?
I don't tear the ads out of the local newspapers I read that are given away for free (I also don't have to worry about them tracking me or compiling data on me that they'll sell to the highest bidders), but should I choose to do so, I would be well within my legal rights, since the item was made freely available for me to read as I want. So it is with sites published online. And because they are engaging in tracking and other practices with which I do not agree, and because they are not forthcoming with the details regarding how my data will be used, and because they've provided me with no means for working it out with them, and because I am within my legal rights to refuse to accept or provide data to them, I have absolutely no problem stripping tracking content and ads from those pages.
All of which is to say, publishers engaging in these practices: stop treating the people you need like your enemy and find a business model that aligns our interests. Otherwise you'll go the way of every other dinosaur company that failed to adapt.