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In Battle With Ad Blockers, Ad Industry Fesses Up To Alienating Users (iab.com)
itwbennett writes: In a post on the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) website Thursday, Scott Cunningham, senior vice president of technology of IAB and general manager of its Tech Lab, issued what amounts to an apology for "[losing] track of the user experience" and called on advertisers "to do better." But it may be a case of too little, too late as "a report (PDF) released in August forecasted that U.S. websites will lose US$21.8 billion in ad revenue this year due to ad blockers," writes Jeremy Kirk.
From what I can tell, most website operators are at the mercy of advertising agencies. Basically it's a case of let the advertising agency have their way with the site, or don't get any ad revenue. Or get another advertising agency, but there don't seem to be many of those that pay well.
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
This. I only recently started using ad blockers. I truly didn't mind a reasonable amount of non-obtrusive advertising, but the recent trend toward throwing 42 javascript-heavy ads in your face on each page load and freezing your browser for 30 seconds (or crashing it), turned me into a uBlock user. I'm not going back.
The cherry on top of this shitcake is that nothing would be lost if they didn't first of all drive people into blocking their ads.
I mean, let's be honest here. Yes, there have always been the ones that block "on principle". But they were very few and far between. They didn't matter anyway, being the "oh I don't get influenced by ads" crowd anyway, they didn't click them. No loss there.
Where they are now losing is with the masses. The Joe Randomsurfers that have now begun to use ad blocking. And there is NOBODY to blame, NOBODY at all, but the advertisers themselves.
Anyone who has ever done any computer work for Mr. Joe R. knows one thing: They put up with a lot. And I mean a DAMN LOT. Usually, when you get called with a description like "Yeah, well, my computer's kinda getting slow and acting funny, could you take a look?" you can't even SEE the damn browser window underneath all those "helper" bars anymore, and starting the computer takes ages because you have to click away like a billion "please buy our software" windows. Yes, they put up with ALL of this.
Can you even remotely imagine just HOW much you, dear advertisers, had to piss them off to even consider thinking about finding out whether it is maybe possible to get rid of the ads? Do you have a faint idea just how obnoxious you must have been for them to, you know, DO something with their computer?
And that ship has sailed. You got them to do something, and just like they put up with a lot of crap before they went and installed blocker software, they will put up with a lot of inconvenience and "sorry, this page is not available if you block our ads" before removing it again.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The ad industry really sucks at their job (especially Internet ads). Their job is to make consumers LIKE them, to WANT to watch the ads and buy their products, but they end up having the opposite effect.
Imagine if you are a software developer, and instead of writing new code, you find yourself regularly deleting code that others wrote on your team (and all available backups), forcing them to re-do their work. If you were this bad at your job, would you expect to make any money?
The ad industry is faced with several huge problems:
1. Ads take up too much bandwidth. They need to use more efficient content formats (yes, even if that means IE6 users can't see the ads), compress ads (yes, even very lossy compression) to reduce their size, and improve caching behavior, so they have absolutely minimal performance impact.
2. Companies that produce ads or aggregate ads from disparate sources do a very piss-poor job of vetting ads to make sure there is no malicious code in the ad. Hijacking links, CSRF, drive-by downloads, ad chaining from one site to another, opening more ads upon closing existing ones, and links to explicit content are very common. These are malware behaviors, people. Advertisements intended for paying customers should be much more respectful of the consumer's personal space and *not* make every possible attempt to invade their system and prevent them from closing the ads.
3. Most ads that we view are not relevant to us. We would never buy whatever is being sold, either because we know it's trash, or we're simply not in the market for that type of product (selling women's dresses to single guys, gaming mice to grannies, etc.)
4. User trust in the ad system as a whole is at an all-time low, mostly due to the past effects of attempted identity theft, personal information exfiltration and malware installation attempts of a large proportion of the ad networks.
These factors mean that users are left with two alternatives: either don't visit websites that display ads, or use an ad blocker.
If the ad industry can't come together as a cohesive whole and actively seek to eliminate these bad actors within their industry, their negative influence is going to continue to drive users to block ads, even if a significant portion of the ad industry completely cleans up their act.
At this point, the only ads I can tolerate are Youtube ads which can be skipped after 5 seconds. Not only are they sometimes relevant, but they're much more pleasant to watch than most of the annoying popups out there, and they come and go very fast if I'm not interested (5 seconds is a rounding error since the video might take that long to buffer anyway). Not only that, but they are also rendered using the same efficient codecs that Youtube uses. I've even stopped to watch one or two full ads.
Imagine if 95% of car mechanics at car dealerships deliberately tried to screw you by saying things are broken that aren't (deliberate lying, not accidental misdiagnosis). How many people would trust mechanics vs. trying to fix it themselves or asking for a trusted friend's help? Most people would not be willing to bring their car into the dealer in this case. In reality there's still a significant percentage of bad apples out there, but I think it's much lower than 95%. Unfortunately, in the ad industry, the percentage of bad apples is very, very high, and the percentage of people trying to do the right thing is very, very low.
They'll go after the ad block authors, first with incentives, then with threats. They'll try to get laws passed, they'll try to hook into existing property rights violations like DMCA. They'll fight and fight to shit up your life because they've been able to get paid for it up until this point.
We'd better have a plan for all of these points!
Actually I think he has hit the root cause. The best adverts are the ones that benefit the user. Take Amazon's reviews. They are often quite useful because they are largely uncensored and written by buyers. I often end up buying stuff from Amazon instead of eBay, even if it is a few quid more, because it has user reviews.
Advertisers are starting to realize this. Rather than the traditional paid reviews (be it money or freebies or after-event parties or whatever) they see that consumers value really independent reviewers who will call a product crap if it is.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Well, here's the other problem with that: we're the product.
See, Slashdot doesn't author any new content. Their value, whether they realize it or not, is in the people who comment.
Slashdot without the comments is a rather pathetic news aggregator. It certainly wouldn't generate nearly as much money as a pay-walled site which just links to other sites. Because nobody would give a damn.
Sites whose primary selling feature is an abundance of crowd-sourced/user contributed data who suddenly think the value is intrinsically independent of those users can get a nasty shock when they start to demand money for the privilege of participating. Experts exchange, being a prime example.
So, Slashdot can sell ads. People may or may not block them. They can also sell subscriptions so we can see "articles in the future" and whatever else that gets you. But, really, the value in a site like Slashdot is its users -- even the crazy ones like the "you're all cows" guy.
But the front-page of Slashdot with no comments and discussions merely linking to other web sites and the odd puff piece from Bennet Haselton or the articles Nerval's Lobster shills for Dice? Yeah, good luck making a business model out of that.
Charging to get links to other people's content? Not so good as a business model if you ask me.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
And by them being obnoxious we remember who NOT to buy from. I, like the guy above, have never clicked an ad but i have refused to do business or buy products from many obnoxious advertised products. And yes Ive seen plenty of storys about poor click through also. so ya they cry about everything. whatever happened to that camera/webcam obnoxious ad years ago? Poof gone no longer in business.
I've clicked on ads many times. Not because I wanted to, but because the ad resized during the page load and I was trying to click on something else, but it jumped under my mouse. IBM, take note.. I only clicked on Ken Jennings twice this week on the Slashdot as because it resized after loading. Consequently I harbour negative attitudes towards Ken Jennings, Watson and IBM.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Make it a malware filter instead of an adblocker. Freely configurable, of course, so "the cloud" can add malware as it is found.
Unfortunately some nefarious elements might add benign, wholesome advertising sites...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Sssshhhhh! You'll wake the marketing people! The last thing that they want to hear is the truth: 99.9% of advertising is ignored - both on the Internet as well as on TV, billboards, movie placements, etc. It gives the marketing people a chance to say "Look! I did something! See! There is my brand name!". But seriously, does anyone pay attention to them?
On TV these days everyone uses a DVR or similar device and skips over the ads (hence not even seeing them at all).
On Web Browsers, the ads are either ignored or out-right blocked. The only difference being that the blocking is detectable and is therefore setting off alarms in the marketing world.
On apps, they just annoy people and constitute a serious threat to the security of one's phone and one's personal information.
Movie placements? Seriously? When I see a product conspicuously placed into a movie or TV show, frankly, it makes me want to turn the thing off because it is just too stupid for words.
The people selling ads make claims that the ads have a subconscious impact on the buyers when they go to buy a product, but I am highly skeptical of the validity of those claims and the numbers that they try to cite to back up those claims.
But, as long as the people selling ads can continue to convince the marketing people that it works, we will continue to have mountains of mediocre content on TV and the 'Net, we will continue to see people who play make-believe as a job (e.g. actors) and people who play games (e.g. athletes) get paid more money than 100 people put together who actually make things that do something as a job and we will continue to see ad companies have conniptions over ad blockers and DVRs (remember the hubbub when Tivo first came out?).
Busty Babes in Bikinis playing volleyball decrying one another if their latest Texmex burger is "Tex" or "Mex" with two guys in the stand watching hungrily, monster burgers in their hands, saying "You going to tell them that it's both?" "Nope," says the other as he takes the kind of bite you might while still trying to watch TV while eating.
Sounds pretty misogynistic to me...
Sounds awesome to me. People having fun and generally enjoying themselves - the thing the neo-puritans hate the most.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Don't forget that some ads are now a vehicle for malware; ad hosters never vet their content much anymore.
The possibility of ads being infectious malware is the primary reason I block them now.
Reducing page load times is the second reason I block them.
Being able to find the actual content buried in an ad-laden page is the third reason I block ads.
Make ads less weighty, less intrusive, and less likely to fuck up my PC and I'll think about allowing them again. Maybe.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
So, Slashdot can sell ads. People may or may not block them. They can also sell subscriptions so we can see "articles in the future" and whatever else that gets you. But, really, the value in a site like Slashdot is its users -- even the crazy ones like the "you're all cows" guy.
Seriously, it wouldn't be Slashdot without the trolls - it would be a bland, boring place. My early reaction to the comments to this story was actually "where's APK? I hope he's OK". There's a real sense of community here that keeps people coming back (no, not the "we're all friends" nonsense, no real community is like that either). Mess with it and the community dies.
But fortunately Dice seemed to get that - heck, I should probably change my sig now.
That's the problem with paywalls - people are only going to pay for original content, not news aggregation, and a lot of what news sites do is just aggregation of AP stories and stories from other sources. How sure can you be that yor produce enough original content to survive a paywall? Maybe the paywall easy to bypass hedges your bet.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
is to stick with Google. I run a few adds to pay for the hosting fees (it's a few hundred a year, yeah, I know I could do better but my host works and I can email their support directly). You'll know when you're site is serving Malware ads, it'll be taken off line by Firefox/Chrome warning your users that your domain is serving up viruses. It happened to the Angry Nintendo Nerd and it happened to Penny Arcade. Both of those guys do their sites full time. Mines a little hobby site for my Firefox plugin to store help docs and beta version of my plugin. I haven't got the time or the inclination to spend getting my site off black lists. So far google's managed to police their Ad network well enough that I haven't had to (knock on wood).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/