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Adblock Plus Blocked From Attending Online Ad Industry's Big Annual Conference (arstechnica.co.uk)
An anonymous reader writes: Adblock Plus has been uninvited to the upcoming IAB Leadership Summit and is having its registration fee refunded. The company was informed of the cancellation in an email with little explanation. A company blog post reads in part: "Unfortunately, the top brass at the US IAB don't want us coming to their Leadership Summit next week in Palm Desert, California. We attended last year, and we signed up again for their 2016 meeting including paying the hefty entrance fee. We were fully confirmed and they even listed us on their website as a participant. Then this week we got one of those sudden emails that land in your inbox innocently, then floor you with something weird, unbelievable or ridiculous when you click on them. This one came from an unfamiliar IAB address, and it informed us that our registration for the summit was canceled and our fee refunded."
I use AdBlock. I wish I didn't have to. I do not mind websites using advertising to finance them making quality content I want to read. As a former open source developer, I know it takes real money to make quality content -- "for fun and for free" is a fantasy pirates made up to justify downloading something they ought to pay for.
For years, I could block annoying animated ads without resorting to adblock. First, I changed Netscape binaries to make the string “netscape2” “notscape2” so that animated gifs would not loop. Then, when I moved to Firefox, I used about:preferences to stop animated gifs from looping and used the flashblock plugin to block animated flash ads. But now, the annoying animated ads are using Javascript. Since NoScript has issues with blocking legitimate content, I have installed various forms of adblock (I have used adblock, adblock plus, and ublock)
They work, but they by default blacklist all sites, which I don't like. Sites with non-intrusive ads should be rewarded with page views. Sites with intrusive ads should be punished with all ads blocked from their site. I end up whitelisting a site I haven't been to and reloading the page; I will un-whitelist them if there is a single animated ad on the page.
The web is killing the publishing industry, and I do not agree with the notion that we are entitled to content without paying them, either directly or by looking at ads. But animated ads are just to distracting for me -- I can not read an article which has them -- and have no analog in print media, so I need to block them. I just wish I could do so by blocking only the animated ads.
They are fools. Keep your friends close and keep your enemies closer.
ABP is not going away
At least for Firefox, ABP is very dependent on Mozilla continuing to develop a browser that supports 3rd party add-ons. While this feature clearly makes their browser more appealing to people, ABP could be effectively shutdown if Mozilla cooperated with the Ad Industry and Content Providers in such a way that prevented their add-on(s) from working.
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Landfill Mining Co.
Managing the (Un)natural Resources of Tomorrow
The ad companies have a new product which is basically they run your website instead of you, allowing the ads to come from the same domain as regular content, effectively making ad block ineffective, as it won't be able to distinguish between content and ads. They have no interest at all in letting ad block learn about this product. Ad block only go to the event to essentially extort money anyway, saying they will allow non intrusive ads, in reality you just pay them money and you get on their white list.
Yes, people do. I'll even watch the occasional one that's interesting. I watched the one from the government claiming that the bridge out of the city isn't about to crash down into the river, because it's (darkly) hilarious that I live in a place where governments buy ads like that.
One thing you realize when you watch a few of those ads is that the content is right up front, in that first five seconds you can't skip. They're going for literal "impressions," eyeballs transferring their name and logo to brains. Apparently that's all you need to convince people to buy your crap.
The recording industry was (partially) saved by Apple, who with iTunes, came up with a way to buy music that was less hassle than stealing it. That doesn't mean that the industry's model didn't take a huge hit - it did. And they're still able to make money from streaming sites and (golly!) radio.
Ad Block is, yes, threatening the Ad industry. But they're a more serious threat to online content in general. Advertisers have other places to get their messages out, but online publishers are stuck with online publishing (duh). Without advertising to fund it, the only other model is to charge for it. But iTunes had a much more salable product - people knew what songs they wanted, and there was no place else to get essentially the same thing as a recording by popstar X. So most online publishers can't charge, either. The only thing left is 'native advertising', which kind of ruins the content by hiding ads inside it. Not a rosy situation.
I say this as an AdBlock user, as well as a DVR user. Which doesn't say much for the argument that's about to kill Union participation at the Supreme Court. Given the chance, people won't pay - even if they 'know' they're getting benefits that might be threatened by their freeloading. But apparently Justice Kennedy thinks government workers will gladly fork over union dues once they become optional. Maybe so, since the union is directly working for their interests - as opposed to ad-supported media that are mostly just acting as bait for advertisers. But still...
I do have AdBlock set to allow some non-intrusive advertising. So far, so good. I haven't been tempted to turn that back off.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Hysterical much, Chicken Little? They aren't even ads... they are the same pre-populated bookmarks that Mozilla has always shipped. The only change is now they tile bookmarks on the default homepage, a feature that is actually popular with causal users. Power users don't use the default homepage anyway.
It's decent but he should also add: "and burns extra gas every time you pass a billboard and it takes 5 times as long to reach your destination" This would match the horrible tolling ads have on load times and bandwidth