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The Real Cost of Mobile Ads
New submitter cvdwl writes: A New York Times (mildly paywalled) article and associated analysis discuss the consumer cost of mobile ads, assuming a US$0.01/MB data plan. The article provides one of the only estimates I've seen of the the real cost in time and money (and time is money) of mobile advertising. Ethics of ad-blockers aside, this highlights the hidden costs of data-heavy (often lazy and poorly developed) web-design. In a nutshell, the worst sites took 10-30s load 10-20MB, costing $0.15-0.40, over 4G due to a blizzard of video, heavy images, and occasionally just massive scripts. The best sites had high content to ad ratios, typically loading 1-3MB of content and >500kB of advertising.
I consider that to be a good thing. It tells me the back button is necessary.
At a minimum allowing every site to run arbitrary code is moronic. Which means I need to know if I care enough about your content and have any trust in you before I allow you to run scripts. And I use plugins to severely limit those.
All those 3rd parties embedded in a web page? Sorry, but I trust them not at all. I don't have a trust relationship with them, I don't have a business relationship with them. They're just the parasites lurking in your website ... they're the shit on the shoes of the internet.
So, here on Slashdot? As I type this, gstatic.com, amazonws.com, google-analytics.com, googleadservices.com, googletagservices.com, ntv.io, ooyala.com, rpxnow.com, scorecardresearch.com, taboola.com, doubleclick, janrain ... absolutely NONE of these are entities I care to allow to monitor where I go. They're ruthlessly blocked pretty much everywhere.
They don't get to set cookies, or run script, or server images, or style sheets ... because they are not entities I have a relationship with, other than the fact I want nothing at all to do with them.
So, I'm sorry that companies partner with entities we don't trust as part of their revenue model. But it doesn't mean that I have any obligation at all to allow it.
And, likewise, they're allowed to block me because I won't enable this shit.
But I'll just click the back button and move on. After, of course, adding their crap and any embedded 3rd party crap to my blocked lists.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.