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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.
Thank goodness you speak for every advertising agency and website operator in the world. I guess we can expect a more balanced approach from here on out.
U.S. websites will lose US$21.8 billion in ad revenue this year due to ad blockers
Advertisers saved US$21.8 billion by not advertising to unreceptive customers
Talk about missing the root cause. Ad blockers are only used because publishers have gone so ridiculously over the top in creating annoying, high bandwidth, high cpu-usage ads.
Not making the ridiculously over-inflated revenue you feel entitled to, and which is based on bullshit assumptions is not "losing revenue".
Acting like you deserved or earned that money in any way shape or form is your damned problem. Having reality bit you in the ass is also your damned problem.
Sorry, but pulling a number out of your ass and saying you feel entitled to $21 billion dollars has nothing at all to do with reality. Get a real business model and earn your money, don't just decree that you being a parasite embedded on a web page entitles you to a damned thing.
No, no it didn't. A bunch of sleazy assholes selling ads is nothing of the sort.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Users: hey can you give us less intrusive and annoying ads
Advertisers: fuck you here is your ad
Now
advertisers: hey please don't block our ads thanks
Users: fuck you
The biggest problem with ads is malware. The article suggested a plan to avoid malware: encrypt the connection.
I don't see how that will fix any problem related to malware......the problem is that malicious people are allowed to buy ads. That is the problem they need to fix.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Oh, wait. No, I won't. Because it is indeed too late. I could, and did, put up with advertisements when they didn't take too much bandwidth and weren't too offensive. That time ended years ago. I now adblock on every device / every browser, and install those features for all my clients as a default. I'll never go back. You screwed yourselves and have nobody else to blame.
Maybe companies could try to make money selling goods or services instead of ramming ads down peoples throats.
"U.S. websites will lose US$21.8 billion in ad revenue this year due to ad blockers"
No, U.S. websites won't make an additional $21.8 billion in ad revenue due to ad blockers.
You can't lose what you don't already have. This sounds like entertainment industry economics.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
The unfortunate truth is that once someone experiences the speed and cleanliness of adblocking, they simply won't go back. Not ever.
And, as explained in a previous post, the second thing they do is show their friends. And their relatives. And their social contacts.
And so it expands, like neutrons in a nuclear warhead; the chain-reaction gain is greater than 1 and the constraint of business models
("we don't take your word for the claim that the ad was shown") will either have to break down, or the whole business is "game over".
My advice to webvertizers: update your resume and find another line of work.
That doesn't make any ad sense.
The only reason that websites know that the ads aren't reaching the intended target is because they're using javascript to test to see if the ad makes it into the page. The solution is to stop checking. As long as you're making a good faith effort to display the ads, it's not your job to be sure that they made it to the target. If I'm the publisher of a print magazine and I put ads in the magazine, I bill the vendors for the ad space. I have no way of knowing whether the reader actually reads the ad and it's not my job to know. The same principle applies to websites. Bill the vendors for the ads you attempted to insert and you're not losing money.
Yes, we really do. Thank you.
Huh? No, we're not going to deactivate our adblockers. What does one have to do with the other?
Seriously, the whole thing smacks of someone who tried to dick over his business partner, simply because he was used to getting away with it. Then, noticing that he cannot this time, tried to use more invasive, brutal action against him and finally, noticing that even that doesn't work this time, resorts to whining and begging.
I'm fully expecting getting sued next.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Nope, they haven't "lost" anything. This is just like the bullshit "loss" numbers claimed due to so-called digital piracy. It wasn't guaranteed revenue even without the existence of ad-blocking software. Our brains are perfectly capable of "blocking" ads without software augmentation. Ad-blocking software is just a convenience for what our brains were already doing with a bit more effort. Like math.
"...U.S. websites will lose US$21.8 billion in ad revenue this year due to ad blockers..."
It's funny how there's no way I could care less about this.
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.
The old saying for marketing is that I know I am wasting half my ad dollars, I just don't know which half.
There was no ad blocker for broadcast TV way back when. Ads were stupid and annoying and became universally hated, and the audience gradually learned to walk away from the TV during the commercials. A few brighter lights among the ad community realized that to cut through the wall of hatred, they would have to create entertaining ads. Those who succeeded actually got people to look forward to their ads.
The internet ad community has been too lazy to notice that they could do better. Their ads need to be worth seeing. That idea has been hidden right in front of them for years. They've earned the payback they are now getting.
Don't step on the baby.
Learn how you can recover up to one trillion dollars from web advertisers for wasted bandwidth and psychic trauma.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I am a bit surprised that anyone in the online ad industry recognizes that they act like scumbags, but this is too little, too late. They've already burnt their bridges with me.
Also, I notice that not a single mention was made of doing something about the primary reason I block ads: the spying. Which makes me believe that regardless of their crocodile tears now, they fully intend on continuing with what I consider to be their most objectionable practice.
Any professional salesperson knows people inherently want to please others, so they are more willing to say 'yes,' than 'no.' It is well-known that among experimental subjects, there is a strong will to please the experimenter (see milgram, etc.) so it is unsurprising that the results show an absurdist tilt.
It's like walking up to a stranger and asking, "do you like my hair this way?" Of course, most people will say, "yes."
That scummy platform is the bane of my browsing experience and the worst culprit when it comes to saturating pages in flash heavy bullshit. Enjoy this article from 2013 from suits singing the praises of how much they're going to eyefuck everyone: http://www.businessinsider.com/rtb-or-real-time-bidding-is-the-future-2013-9
Here's an overview of why RTB or real-time bidding could make the difference in mobile, digital advertising's new frontier:
It could help solve the CPM problem: The glut of ad inventory as global audiences rush into mobile has dragged on mobile display ad CPMs (CPMs refers to the cost per thousand impressions). That means publishers can't monetize their mobile audiences effectively via ads. Advocates of programmatic — or automated buying and selling — say it can deliver the scale and efficiency needed to effectively match buyers and sellers and boost CPMs.
- Leveraging location data via real-time bidding (RTB): RTB is a style of programmatic buying in which digital advertising opportunities are auctioned off in real-time. The auctions take place in milliseconds as advertisers bid on the right to show you an ad immediately after you open an app or click to a new web page.
- On mobile, RTB could be extremely powerful because consumers take their devices everywhere — to the mall, the car dealership, Starbucks, etc. "You have a source of media that's with someone constantly," says Jamie Singer, director of client services at Everyscreen Media, a platform for mobile RTB that was recently acquired by Media6Degrees. "You're working in real-time, and getting information based on location."
- Helping to reach the holy grail of mobile advertising — controls and efficiencies: Believers in RTB and programmatic for mobile say they are making giant strides in perfecting their technologies, so they'll have the ability to leverage consumer data on mobile and track users as they do on PCs (while still being sensitive to privacy concerns). That will include location, contextual, and demographic data layered on top of real-time ad requests.
- Some publishers already achieve higher CPMs with RTB than they do with traditional ad networks: As a result, RTB is seeing wider adoption across the mobile ad ecosystem, and positive momentum on both sides of the equation. The sell-side is providing more premium inventory, and larger publishers. And the buy-side is seeing more demand for RTB from advertisers and agencies. Of course, RTB and programmatic are contributing to hyper-efficient markets where ad prices tend to be low. The key is for RTB to bring scale to premium mobile ad marketplaces, bring in scale-focused brands, and lift all boats that way.
FUCK YOU RTB!!!!!!!!!! LET IS BROWSE IN PEACE!!!!
It's that damn helpfulness that is so common to nerds: Can't keep a good thing to themselves. Making something like ad blocking ubiquitous naturally kills it, but does that stop nerds from showing everybody how to block ads? No, gotta help all the people, even though many of them would gladly exclude you in a heartbeat if it helped them in any way. So here we are, ad blocking has become a problem, and it will be "solved". We could have kept blocking ads and let the unwashed pay for it all with their attention, but no, not us nerds...
The unfortunate truth is that once someone experiences the speed and cleanliness of adblocking, they simply won't go back. Not ever.
Once you go block, you never go back.
It took the mainstream acceptance of ad blockers before ad firms finally realized what was already obvious to everyone whose career is not tied to selling ads. Talk about needing to have a house fall on you before getting the point.
I disagree. I'd pay real money for a live video stream of that. I'm not alone.
Now what are they going to do?
Continue pulling the same stupid shit that alienated people and has people rushing towards ad and script blockers like someone in the desert jumping on a glass of water.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
No shit. Thanks for the news flash. Here are some more headlines you might like:
"In Battle With Prosecutors, Ted Bundy Fesses Up To Murdering A Few People"
"In Battle With The World, Justin Bieber Fesses Up To Being A Gigantic Asshole"
"In Battle With Linux Users, Darl McBride Fesses Up To Possibly Bending The Truth A Wee Bit"
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
These asshats need to pick a new TLA... IAB is already taken.
Almost all the three letter acronyms, except the ones using very unusual combinations, have been taken. Multiple times.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I loved cracked.com. But I can't use their website without being bombarbed by video advertisements for stuff that sounds interesting but I do not want.
Video ads that won't let me scroll past them.
You want a real ad? It can NOT depend on 'force'. Grabbing someone and MAKING them see the ad is a clear way to make sure they never click or buy.
Rules for a good advertiser. 1) NEVER USE SOUND. Not unless they specifically click 'sound on'.
2) Make it EASY to turn off video/sound/skip the ad. If they try to close and you 'accidently on purpose' take them to your page, you will never get a sale. NEVER STOP THEM FROM SCOLLING AWAY. It's too late once they hate decide against you.
3) You have video? Low bandwith (small size) unless they click to play. If you can't get them to play the video, you can't get them to buy the product.
3) Targeted - REALLY targeted. Not "reader = books". No, instead it's Star Trek = other Sci-Fi.
Accept the fact that you are NOT TV - you can't make people pay attention, you can just make people get angry.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
In a way, that's bad because it means advertisers will start looking for ways to get around ad-block.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Coke, Charmin, Tide and other major national brands spend billions on TV advertising, putting their logos on race cars, blimps, and all sorts of non-clickable ads.
Notice I listed major national BRANDS, not major national PRODUCTS. It's all about branding. When you're ready to buy a router, you look and probably see options in three categories:
Top brands, Cisco and Juniper.
Brands you've never heard of, like Raytel.
Brands you recognize but don't know much about.
Most people will prefer to avoid brands they've never heard of. Just having seen the name before increases our confidence in the product. Any ad gets them out of the lowest category, "never heard of that brand". It's also a required stepping stone before a brand can make it to "top brand" status like Cisco or BMW.
When the internet started, yes, everything was free. It was also almost entirely educational institutions and hobbyists. These things don't scale. Yes I can provide free e-mail to my friends and family, but I can't give it to everyone. As more "consumers" joined the web, it became a lot more one sided. Most people on the internet now provide nothing of value to the internet. I can provide a free product (say facebook, google, drop box, etc) when I can handle the load off of one computer. When demand grows, I either have to shut it off or monetize it, I can't continue to give it away when the demand for my product requires a million dollar server farm on every continent.
To provide a car analogy:
I can give my friend a ride to work for free every day so he has no need to have a car. I might even be able to work a couple more friends in. But eventually, I either have to charge for the ride and become a full time taxi service, or start saying no.
Shouldn't that rhyme or something?
Now, if only we could think of something which rhymes with "block" ... Once I go block, they can ....
Damn, I was never good at poetry, can anybody finish that for me?? ;-)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
My advice to webvertizers: update your resume and find another line of work.
Or jump off a bridge, because you're talking about people who will not, ever, under any circumstances, earn an honest living. Parasites. Offer them a million honest dollars for an honest day's work, and they'll choose to pick your pocket for the $20 you had for lunch.
The unfortunate truth is that once someone experiences the speed and cleanliness of adblocking, they simply won't go back. Not ever.
This is what finally made me a True Believer. The speed at which pages started appearing was like night and day. *BOOM* (5 seconds versus 25 or 30 seconds)
Instant convert.
Later it became a matter of avoiding malware, but even if malware suddenly stopped being a thing (yeah right) I'd still use a blocker just for the speed increase.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Making something like ad blocking ubiquitous naturally kills it, but does that stop nerds from showing everybody how to block ads? No, gotta help all the people... We could have kept blocking ads and let the unwashed pay for it all with their attention, but no, not us nerds...
Yeah... this is my fault. So here's what happened:
I went home last Thanksgiving, and Dad and Uncle Bob were watching omgfootballz.com and Mom wanted to show Aunt Jan something on artsandcrafts.com, and Cousin Suzy and Cousin Josh wanted to play the cool games on notactuallyfunbutsomehowstillpopulargames.com, and because of all the auto-playing full-motion full-volume all-singing all-dancing video ads for the 2015 Chevy Ponderoso that they were all pulling down simultaneously, I wasn't able to access textonlytechnews.com. This cannot stand.
So, long story short, I put ad blockers on every computer in the house. Sorry.
I take issue with this, they're calling themselves "technologists" as though that would somehow make up for forgetting about user experience. I'm a technologist, and my job requires considering user experience.
I've seen this in online advertising for years. The ad industry measured how many people clicked, but not how many people they pissed off. They didn't care about users at all, not because they were technologists, but because of the ethos of their industry. Now that there's backlash they'll pay lip service to "user experience".
Text and (motionless) images only. No scripting, strong privacy protections. Build the ad blockers into the browsers, set to block any ads that do not declare compliance with industry rules. One site, network, or advertiser breaks one rule and that organization is blocked automatically by all browsers for at least 2 years.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
"there's no such thing as bad publicity."
Just imagine the exposure your client would get with a story like :
advertising executive shoots himself in the head
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Yes, that's right. TWO-THIRDS of my battery use can be attributed to Web ads and ridiculous Javascript idiocy.
Furthermore, all that activity sets my laptop fans to howling, where they're whisper-quiet without it.
Between the battery wear and the heat-related stress on my hardware, I don't need any more reasons to block ads. The reduction in stress and distraction (from trying to ignore squirming, writhing, strobing fields in my motion-sensitive peripheral vision) is just a bonus.
Or, vice versa. The perceptual/cognitive stuff is the important part, and I get a quieter laptop with three times the battery life as a bonus. Either way works for me.
These asshats need to pick a new TLA... IAB is already taken.
Almost all the three letter acronyms, except the ones using very unusual combinations, have been taken. Multiple times.
Clearly we need to upgrade to the Extended-TLA format (ETLA), which allows for 1 more letter!
I'm still using MS-DOS 3.3, you insensitive clod!
Let's talk about processed foods as an example.
1. A lot of people are lactose intolerant or allergic to casein. Stop putting lactose in salt and vinegar chips. Stop putting dairy byproducts in non-cheese-flavored food.
2. A lot of people have high blood pressure. Stop adding insane amounts of sodium.
3. A lot of people are vegan or vegetarian. Stop simply saying "natural flavour" and tell us if it's plant-based or not.
Unless you like losing customers, stop adding useless ingredients that a percentage of the population is allergic to, or just plain avoids.
To stay on-topic, I'll say that the only food products I buy are the ones I already know are safe. I only notice new products if they change the packaging/artwork/logo, which then makes me read the ingredients list once again, just in case the new image comes with a newly formulated product. But since 99% of the time it's still the same thing, it goes back on the shelf.
Stop trying to sell me your marketing, it's your product that I'm buying.
Why not get a committee to design TLA v6 ?
Enough with the stupid web page and TV advertising. Just create a YouTube account for your company or product and make video ads that are entertaining enough that they're likely to spread virally to one degree or another. As a benefit, you're no longer restricted by things like TV content restrictions (so you can make ads like that awesome un-aired Nutrigrain commercial made years ago, which actually increased sales of Nutrigrain bars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... ). Monetize that YouTube account so you can make money from the views in addition to any money you make from the sales of your product.
No reckless and unwarranted chewing up of users' bandwidth. No malware. I personally could put up with a (skippable) 20-30 second ad in front of YouTube videos to keep YouTube flush.
Can't make entertaining ads? Sucks to be you.
eBay's is non-existent if the seller is a lying scumbag.
I used to make my living selling on eBay. Doesn't matter if the seller is a liar or not, you can pretty much return anything if you just utter the magic words "Not As Described". Unless they have changed thing dramatically it doesn't really matter if the seller doesn't accept returns or not. You just tell eBay it was "Not As Described" and they'll almost certainly authorize a refund if you ship it back. My little company got screwed by a number of shady buyers despite us have a no-returns-ever policy.
I'm not saying there aren't shady sellers out there but returns aren't a problem if you know how to play the game.
If rather than ad blocking, users employed an app that downloaded the ads but neglected to render them, the advertisers would be paying for ads that well to null but they could never tell. I bet that could severely hurt the advertising industry if advertisers weren't sure if they were paying for ads that were delivered but never viewed.
If they keep pushing, this is where the war may go.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
The advertising companies will figure out how to bypass ad-blockers, then the ad-blockers will figure out how to block the new ads, lather/rinse/repeat.
If the ad companies did a few things, people wouldn't feel the need to block ads:
1. Don't auto-play sounds or moving images.
2. Don't react when the mouse moves over or near your ad. Only react when your ad is clicked on.
3. Don't serve ads laden with javascript/flash/whatever. Some simple javascript should be fine but if the script can't be vetted in a few moments it's too complex--reject the ad.
4. Serve the ads from the primary web-site (including any java script), not a third party web site.
5. Don't track users across web-sites.
6. Vet ads before putting them in rotation.
7. Don't use pop-up, pop-over, pop-under, slide-out or any other similar technique.
8. Don't open ads in response to closing an ad or other window.
9. Don't obfuscate where clicking on the ad will lead.
10. Don't accept ads from companies of questionable morals, e.g. quibids.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
You mentioned Google Contributor. How long does it take for a new user to get through Google Contributor's waitlist?
With payment processors taking tens of cents from each credit card transaction, how would pay-per-use work?
Extended TLA format? I think ETF would be a five section acronym for it.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Microsoft Denial of Service 3.3?
Learn to love Alaska
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/
I'm sure adblocking will die on the vine, just like piracy, under a tidal wave of laws and regulations.
Oh wait, no, that's not going to happen because people don't want it to happen. If Adblocker A gets shut down, everyone will move to Adblocker B, or otherwise implement whatever technical strategy that lets them use their computers. Technical rebellion is as easy as a few mouseclicks. And anyway, what are they going to do if 200 million people don't obey a bullshit law? Throw them all in jail, fine them?
Remember when the MAFIAA slapped a bunch of teenagers with $100,000s of fines for illegally downloading some $0.50 Bieber tunes? Remember how bad that PR shitstorm was for the studios? The first advertiser that decides to actually press for outlandish damages because someone blocked their advertising with an illegal blocker will do nothing but show everyone who wasn't paying attention to the noisy ads what a bunch of obnoxious, money-hungry pricks the advertising industry is. They'll be pulling their own noose tighter around their own neck.
Advertisers tried to squeeze more golden eggs from the goose than it could lay and are mystified why the goose is dead. If I were an advertiser, I'd either be looking for another revenue model or perhaps another line of work.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
seems to be the essence of modern progressivism
Progressive's strongly support free speech. These people are more correctly labelled neo-puritans, they have invaded the student bodies of universities all over the US and to a lesser extent the UK/AU. They're a new flavour of narrow-minded puritan that progressives fought against during the civil rights movement.Outspoken progressives such as Dawkins and Maher are calling them out for what they are; puritans in progressive clothing.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Another question is "Are ads EVER effective?"
I guess the answer has to be "yes", as I once bought a pepsi. And I still remember:
"Pepsi Cola hits the spot,
12 full ounces, that's a lot,
twice as much for a nickel too,
Pepsi Cola is the drink for you."
Of course, I didn't like the taste, so I only bought it once, but perhaps I never would have tried it if it hadn't been for the ad. (I don't recommend it, but my sister-in-law likes it. Who knows, you might find it better than catsup. And I understand it's good for cleaning gunk off of pans.)
But while I occasionally remember lots of ads, I rarely, if ever, remember an ad for something I often buy. Sort of like the advertisement for Pepsodent toothpaste included in South Pacific. ("Bloody Mary is the girl I love...and she don't use Pepsodent.) Does the company even exist anymore?
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Advertising works, even on those who say advertising doesn't work on them. Why? Because advertising isn't a nice tiny little black box. It doesn't only apply to one tiny aspect of what you view. It applies to *everything*.
What does this mean? Do you remember phrased related to "selling yourself"? How to sell yourself for a job interview, or when meeting new people, networking at a conference, etc? Basically, that's an advertisement interaction. You advertise something (yourself), and others react to what is presented.
The point is, that's not a TV commercial, a radio spiel, or a banner ad. Its an abstraction. And everyone here should recognize what you can do with an abstraction.
Every "thing" is an extension of a base "thing". C#'s System.Object; Java's java.lang.Object; etc. Every single thing that can be described as "creating an impression on a person" is a similar type of base object. Or perhaps having an appropriate interface would be a better analogy.
So what has those properties? Well, pretty much everything. Every TV show is advertising all its actors. Every road is advertising the city council. Every well-manicured or overgrown lawn is advertising for the family living in a house. People focus on the content of the advertising object (the actual jpg with "Amazon" on it, or the flash video from IBM, or whatever), and somewhat miss that it also applies to the object itself, as well as the container for that object, and the means of accessing and delivering that object, and on, and on. Each of those are also objects that themselves have that same 'advertising' interface.
And on the web, every ad is advertising for the advertisers. The /contents/ of the ad is advertising for the company that wants you to know about it and its products, but the ad itself is advertising for the ad company that created the ad; its delivery is advertising for the ad delivery network; and its presentation is advertising for the site that hosts it.
People say they hate annoying ads, but we also know that more annoying ads make people more aware of the companies they're advertising for. And there's a part of you that realizes that there are three or four separate entities involved in the presentation of that ad. For an annoying TV commercial, is your anger going to be at the product/company being advertised? The people who created that travesty? The people at the TV station who screwed with the volume settings so that the commercial was a lot louder than the show you were just watching? The people who are spamming this ad through all the late-night commercial slots so you see it all over the place?
There's plenty of anger to go around, and, honestly, there's probably not a strong emotional connection to the product itself; just the correlation between the strong emotion and awareness of that product happening at the same time. So you hate the commercial, but are more aware of and likely to remember the product itself, without necessarily hating the product that much more. Now if you bought said product and found out it was complete crap, the emotional association is solely with the product itself, and almost certainly will negatively impact your likelihood to buy it again.
So what have the advertisers done? They've well and truly advertised themselves into being one of the most hated industries around. It's more subtle and distributed than something like Verizon customer service, but because it's so constant and pervasive, it's become completely embedded in the public consciousness.
So, people hate ads. Not necessarily the ad -content- — I don't hate Ocean Spray, or Amazon, or whatever — but the -ads-. The delivery networks; the presentation; the slowing down of page loads; the tracking and surveillance; the way they affect the page design; the malware exploits; the annoyances and noises and disruptions.
So the advertisers have convinced us that what we truly, truly want is to be free of them. Not the advertising itself
I don't adblock because of ads, I adblock because they need 100x more power than the entire rest of the webpage. They could literally just turn a gif into a link and it would use barely any power at all, but that's not what they do.
If your content is any good you can produce it without polluting it with advertising:
http://www.noagendashow.com/
Have you read it?
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Just don't make too much of a statement in your CV that you have been working with web ads unless you want to continue working in that area. To most other companies it's like having 'I've done porn for 5 years' in your CV.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Put the cost where it belongs, on the source. When advertising bytes go from a server to a user then the advertiser pays for the bandwidth for every internet packet. Apply this rule for end user ISPs at the destination, and higher level tiers if feasible. If they can tell if the ad is blocked they can damn well track their bandwidth usage.
This would fundamentally change the online advertising model. It would knock out the low return/high volume ads immediately because they would become unprofitable. The groups making and selling ads would be faced with a real world cost metric that would stop them selling snake oil to their clients.
It works because it correctly applies capitalism to the business model: the users of a resource have to pay for what they use. The way things are now bandwidth is an "externality" to the cost model of the advertisers. In the economic model of capitalism an externality is a cost that is not accounted for in the total set of transactions. For example China is choking to death because they treat the cost of pollution as an externality.
Capitalism can provide a really efficient and effective control paradigm when it is applied correctly. Unfortunately much of the time it is used manipulatively to siphon money into the pockets of the greedy, corrupt and inefficient. See the US financial sector for endless examples.
Why is Snark Required?
I'm surprised the right wing copyrighters haven't thought about suing each other for "stealing" three letter acronyms!
The crapiest, most cluttered Web site I have ever seen is that of The Hindo, an Indian news site. Does anyone know a worse example?
Making something like ad blocking ubiquitous naturally kills it, but does that stop nerds from showing everybody how to block ads?
Huh? What's been killed? Blocking ads still works just fine.
Back when I rand ads on my website, the click through rate was horribly low, and that's what the advertising agencies used to demand very low rates for displaying ads.
The strategy everyone who hates ads has adopted is to never click on ads, and as a result, a website displaying 10000 ads will probably only get a handful of clicks.
So the strategy I've adopted is to click on evry ad I can. Especially on websites I like. With such low click through rates, just one user can double or tripple a site's revenue, and by the same virtue double or tripple an ad agency's costs.
It only takes a few seconds to open every ad in a new background tab that I'll never see. And I get the benefit of helping a website I like, while costing the advertisers money.
I'd think it wouldn't take an incredible number of people adopting the same strategy before advertisers have to change their game.
... So the strategy I've adopted is to click on evry ad I can. Especially on websites I like. ..
Now, -that- is an interesting idea! 8-)
Canada is already adopted this. RCMP, CSIS, an so forth.