Slashdot Mirror
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."
"La la la la la la la I can't hear you!"?
IAB represents the advertisers, so it's not surprising they're upset at adblock. Ad blocking has just been going up and up.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
they have adblockblock installed.
I recently used Firefox for the first time in ages (I've been using Chrome, like everyone else).
I quickly learned that Firefox now comes with built-in ads! I don't know what the technical name for the page is, but it's the one that's a grid of panels. Several of them were goddamn advertisements! They were totally irrelevant to my wants and needs, too.
I couldn't fucking believe it. How the fuck could somebody at Mozilla think it was a good idea to stick ads in the browser itself?! Holy fuck, Firefox became popular because it let users install ad-blocking extensions! Didn't Mozilla realize that?!
There's no point worrying about the ad industry or ad blockers when the web browser itself is forcing ads on you!
Fucking unbelievable, Mozilla! Fucking unbelievable!
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.
Aren't they a permanent annoyance?
One goes to a site for a certain purpose - to look/find/do something.
Then there are movements, popups, slideshows aside from the permanent - please give feedback/survey later-ones...
Visual beggars for attention, distractions, from the original purpose requiring extra effort and time to avoid/ignore/eliminate.
Who likes/needs those?
Suckers! On a very large part of the Internet, defying the original purpose of this great idea.
Born to be killed.
...they got ad blocked.
YEEEEEAAAAAHHHHH!
...because in Russia, ads block you!
Nothing to see here. Move along.
This is, to a degree, like the record companies not wanting to talk to Napster or Apple (when iTunes was new), because their business model was being destroyed. ABP is not going away, and they've extended olive branches (in the way of allowing "non-intrusive" ads). Ignoring ABP is counter productive to the ad industry's cause. Work with them, or they will continue to work against you.
sig: sauer
This is what AdBlock plus is. They're not against advertising. They're against intrusive advertising. Websites can apply to get their non-intrusive ads whitelisted from the program, so that they show up anyway. (Note: the criteria being used is much akin to the way ads were displayed in newspapers and print magazines.) An overwhelming majority of AdBlock users who responded to their survey said that this was the way to go, because everyone knows the content needs to be paid for.
Online advertising wouldn't need to be destroyed if it wasn't focused on being as annoying as possible to grab attention.
Maybe companies should focus less on loud, bandwidth-hogging, un-mutable videos, pop-overs, pop-unders, anything Flash, and focus on making stuff people want to buy.
There are no commercials for Ferrari, Lamborghini, or Bentley. Beater dealerships, on the other hand...
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
What? So if my business is, say, making people unable to turn their TVs on, the people in the TV industry should just "adapt" to people being unable to use their product?
Well, yeah, assuming of course that for some reason an increasing majority of users have decided to use the product that blocks TVs (fantastic analogy, BTW). This is what is happening in online advertising: users have decided they are better off without it. Of course, that is their choice to make. If that means they can't access forbes.com, then people will keep things like that in mind.
Adblock plus is literally in the process of destroying the business of online advertising.
Don't be obtuse. The coffin of online advertising was designed, perfected, and manufactured by the advertisers. They made their bed, now they have to lie in it. Use of tools like Adblock is the inevitable conclusion to the abuses and overreach that online advertisers have been doing for the past couple decades. You might as well whine about popup blockers or spam filters. Once a technology like that gets abused, you can bet your ass that another technology is going to be developed to block it. If advertisers don't like that then they probably should have started their self-policing campaign before ad blockers really caught on. As it is, they're starting to realize that their tricks are going to be caught, and only now are they crying foul. They did this to themselves, if the attendees of the IAB's conference want to blame someone for the state of their industry and their business model all they have to do is look around the room. The most surprising part of this whole affair to me is that it took so long for ad blockers to become mainstream, but I'll chalk that up to the fact that IE did not have an ad blocker for so long. The rise of browsers supporting extensions has opened up the general public to ad blockers. Adblock Plus was released in 2006. Advertisers have had a decade to understand that people don't want to see ads and think about how they can co-exist peacefully, but instead they used that decade to figure out how to force more and more ads down peoples' throats. They made that decision, so now they get to deal with the consequences. I don't think you're going to see a lot of people shedding a tear for advertisers.
why would a group of advertisers want to have anything to do with them?
You would think advertisers would want to hear from the other side, particularly on ways they can come to a compromise. Apparently, you would be wrong.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
So if my business is, say, making people unable to turn their TVs on, the people in the TV industry should just "adapt" to people being unable to use their product?
Don't talk crap. Adblock doesn't prevent people from using their web browsers.
A closer descrition: "If somebody is making a technology that prevents TV's from showing advertising, the TV industry should adapt to people not watching ads."
Well, let's look at the situation: We've had DVR's that can skip commercial for nearly a generation now.
Some of the more forward-looking companies in the TV industry has adapted to a model that has no ads: See Netflix, Amazon Prime video, and Hulu +'s ad-free option.
Each of those networks produce their own highly-rated, highly-watched content.
There are, of course, incumbents who refuse to adapt.
Ironically, the ones who refuse to adapt are all advertising companies: the old TV and cable networks. Their refusal to adapt is well described in their anger/frustration that Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon do not report their viewerships (ie. "ratings").
Well, let's think about that for a second: What are ratings for? They're to provide a value for how much an advertising slot during the show should cost.
Well... Netflix doesn't show ads, so what is the point of ratings? Netflix knows how many people are watching, and they know what it costs to stream. As long as they've got a profit, and their customers are happy, why do they care what advertisers think?
It's the advertisers trying refusing to change their habits, and refusing to accept that consumers are so tired of advertising that consumers prefer to pay directly for content than get it "free" with commercials.
In the same way, internet consumers are sick of being monitored and assaulted all of the time by intrusive advertisers who continue to try to force increasingly unpalatable advertising upon consumers.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
I doubt you'd be welcome at an ad industry conference with that attitude either. You're suggesting companies concentrate on engineering and customer service instead of marketing? Madness!
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...
Then people would stop using Firefox like they stopped using IE. People use Firefox because it can be made to obey the wishes of users. A browser which doesn't obey isn't as useful as one that does. Would you buy a car that slammed on the brakes automatically at every billboard? Would you even agree to ride in one for free?
No, Adblock Plus is in the business of formulating acceptable standards for web advertising.
Right now what we've got is a mixture of Wild Wild West on crack and a whorehouse specializing in HIV positive girls where the nearest condom is several continents away.
Don't get me wrong. I support content providers' right to make money off of their content by utilizing a portion of my screen real estate and attention.
That, however, doesn't give them the right to completely take over the entirety of my screen real estate and pop un-avoidable video ads with full, loud audio.
Additionally, ad networks are an unmitigated clusterfuck of an attack vector on my machine. My generosity doesn't extend to having to burn multiple hours/days restoring a system because some rogue ad/network slid malware by my AV/AM systems and crashed my system. My time and effort is worth money too.
And come on. The Forbes Fuckup only happened.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/... about 2 weeks ago.
"Disable your ad blocker SO WE CAN SHOVEL MALWARE ON YOU!"
FUCK
THAT
NOISE!
The reason internet advertising is in such dire straights is the advertisers PUSHED it to this juncture. They kept coming up with ever more obnoxious, intrusive, downright DANGEROUS methods of serving us shit we really don't want to see. As such, people who want to actually be able to use their computers in a safe, effective manner, look towards blockers. So these ad assholes keep looking for ways AROUND ad blockers, coming up with things that are even more crazy-obnoxious, intrusive and dangerous. Hell, if they could, they'd force click-throughs too.
And what remediation do people get when malvertising kills their machine?
It's a bunch of buck-passing.
Site Owner: Oh it was the ad network! Fuck you! Have a nice day!
Ad Network Owner: Oh it was a rogue advertiser! Fuck you! Have a nice day!
Advertiser; Oh! It was a third party company we hired to get our name out there! Fuck you! Have a nice day!
Third Party Ad Company: *CHIRP* *CHIRP* (Basically, they're operating under another in a series of new names this week. Again. Fuck you! Have a nice day!)
As such, there is ZERO accountability in this "industry". It's ALL snake oil.
Basically, the internet advertising people don't want to settle on an acceptable ad standard.
Know why?
Because the profit margins are even shittier than those for their current obnoxious, dangerous crap!
This bit of shenanigans with ABP is just another nail the internet ad companies are driving into their own coffins.
Internet advertising is a nasty, STD'ed up whore. Ad blockers are condoms.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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
the content is free (no money payments) regardless, so your first argument doesn't particularly hold up.
The content is free (no mony payments) because you're (supposed to be) viewing ads. Take away that source of revenue, and the argument very much holds up.
It's a problem of perspective (again the BSD's freedom vs. GPL's freedom debate all over...)
For ME AS A USER/READ:
- I just click on a link, I don't pay, I get content, It's free (for me as a end-user, reader).
- If I don't use adblock : it's the same (from my point of view).
- If I do use adblock : it's also the same (minus all the flashing/blking/noisy/fullscreen annoyance)
- If I do use uBlock AND privacy badger : it's also the same (though my identity doesn't get stolen).
- If I do use uBlock AND privacy badger AND NoScript : it's still the same (though It's much harder to drive-by corrupt/infect my browser, at the cost of slightly broken UX)
No matter what, I still get my content simply with clicking, no payment required. It's free (as in beer. Gratis).
It's for the publisher that things change:
- if readers don't use anything : the publisher seemingly handed content for free, put actually get money back by selling the crap out of its users.
- if readers uses AdBlock / uBlock, etc: the publisher handed something out for free, and doesn't get much back, beyond some marketing analysis of readership, that can still be sold for money to sponsors
- if readers use uBlock, PrivacyBAdger, NoScript, Tor, etc. : publisher is screwed. They did hand content for free as usual, but this time they can't sell anything about the user to make some buck.
But from the users' point of view, nothing change the price paid for the content. It was 0$ before ad blocking, its still 0$ after.
So the argument that "suddenly the users discovers they can haz something for free" that was mentioned above is invalid.
They already got it for free (i.e.: gratis, without needing to pay any dollars) before.
What change is their experience of the web :
- before, it was an awful place with marketeer trying to push obnoxious ads as hard as possible. Making the result, distracting, ugly, noisy, not user friendly, slowing down loading time, and costing a fucking lot more on bandwidth. (actually costing more than what the publisher makes up, but that's another debate).
- after : web is finally a bit saner place, where you can actually get the content you want and nothing useless more.
You can have security vulnerabilities by visiting an ad-free page that uses JavaScript. Hell there are exploits in CSS.
That's why the more paranoid people don't stop at AdBlock/uBlock but keep other blocking of Javascript and plugins: NoScript or Flashgot, etc.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]