Slashdot Mirror
Google, Yahoo Cry About Ad-Blocking (cnbc.com)
JustAnotherOldGuy writes: Google and Yahoo have accused ad-blocking software Shine of "destroying the relationship" between advertisers and consumers, after an executive from the company called its solution a "nuclear weapon" threatening the industry. Ad blocking software use grew 41 percent in the 12 months to August 2015 and there are now 198 million active adblock users around the world, according PageFair. Benjamin Faes, managing director of media and platforms at Google, called Shine's technology a "blunt" solution that punishes users and good advertisers, and said, "Blocking all ads I think it's diminishing my experience of advertising and in that case we see an issue for the user themselves." It appears that these advertising executives still don't "get it", and are disingenuously tone-deaf to the legitimate complaints raised about ads.
Here's a tip, Ben : "good advertiser" is an oxymoron.
Is a two way street. I wonder how many businesses and business models that bit the dust over the last 15 years felt the same way about Google?
Advertisers have several blind spots.
1. They don't care about user security and malware-exclusion. ("It's not OUR content after all.")
2. They don't care that WE are paying for any bandwidth usage they suck up on our end. (2MB pages with 10K the content the user wanted. Rest is advertising.)
3. For those systems where advertisers bid the suppliers for who gets displayed, the end user can sit doing nothing while the site owners wait for some "optimum" bid.
4. Most advertising is utterly irrelevant as far as the viewer is concerned.
For all of the above reasons, ad-blockers are our friends, and advertisers are the enemy.
I wonder if Shine blocks that article, because it is a great advertisement for their product.
Ad companies are routinely doing drive by malware infections. It's precisely this lack or review and certification of ads that is their problem. Until they are willing to pay editors to review and approve ads they will continue to be abused by ad companies and the only solution the consumer has at that point is the nuclear option. The very existence of autoplay video advertising and malware loaded ad's is direct evidence of their problem.
When the ad's go back to editorial approved ad's hosted and run by the companies providing the content no on will be able to block the ads. But this will mean the companies accepting the advertising have to take responsibility for the crap advertising they accept.
I'd say iOS supporting ad blockers probably contributed to it.
The whole point of adblockers is to 'disrupt the relationship between advertisers and consumers'; because that 'relationship' is inherently somewhere between 'adversarial' and 'cold war'. We don't go to varying levels of hassle just for fun; we do so because we fucking hate you and your 'product'.
The problem with the current incarnation of ads is that they follow you everywhere. I didn't realize how bad it was until I forgot to re-install all of my cookie blockers. Search for something on Amazon? See the ads in Facebook and Google. Search for something on Google? See ads for that everywhere else.
Ads used to be targeted to the user base of a website. The 'targeting' wasn't based on what I knew I already wanted but based on what I was interested in. I didn't mind some old ads because they were relevant to the site I was going to.
google et al seem to be living in another reality. There is no relationship to consumers, there is a WAR between consumers and arsehole companies like google. Ads have become more intrusive and obnoxious, ads that have video and or sound, dynamic windows that increase to cover the page if you accidentally scroll over them, ads positioned and made to look like search results or news items. They then wonder why Ad blocking is increasing and blame those that are trying to help the consumers, Googles lack of security/privacy awareness is just mindboggling, you want people to stop using ad blocking, then you need to stop acting like totally obnoxious pricks.
punishes [...] good advertisers
Good, then nobody is harmed. There are no "good" advertisers in the world.
Oliver.
Like any sane web user, I use a ton of browser extensions that warn me about requests to questionable third-party hosts.
When I browse Slashdot, requests are attempted to "Taboola" and "Janrain" and "ScoreCard" and "NTV" and "rpxnow" and "StackSocial".
Now I don't know what the fuck any of those are, and TBH I don't care to know.
So let's say I made an HTTP request to slashdot.org. As far as I'm concerned, the page served up by slashdot.org doesn't need to require requests be made to any other host to show me the stories and comments here.
whipslash, can you give us more information about what these questionable third-party hosts are doing, and why the pages served up by Slashdot try to trigger requests to these questionable hosts?
More importantly, when will slashdot.org stop trying to get my browser to make requests to them?
But he had this neat weird trick to show you. It's going to "almost break the Internet."
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
If you didn't know what was special about Shine compared to ublock or adblock like me then Shine is an ISP level blocking system. It's not something that gets installed on end users machines but further upstream. This is why people like google and yahoo are so disturbed by this. It means that even completely clueless users will have ads blocked.
I can absolutely see why the network providers would want this as well. Talk about a way of dramatically decreasing your network utilisation without any negative impacts on consumers.
From Shine's website it looks like they have just signed up 3 europe which means 300 million mobile users just installed ad blocking software.....
https://www.getshine.com/three...
I hadn't heard about this particular adblocker. I'll go check it out.
Thanks for the tip, Google and Yahoo!
I think it's just that the annoyance threshold for the average Joe has been reached. That and adblockers have been put into the limelight by so many ad companies trying to sue them out of existence.
Even Joe Randomsurfer noticed that, and he noticed that those ad-blockathingamajig are somehow the enemy of those noisy, obnoxious nuisances. Good enough a reason to take a look. Enemy of my enemy and all that.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I think that mainstream users are just starting to wake up to the fact that ad blockers exist. Ads may be getting more and more prevalent and annoying, but frankly I don't think many of us here would know if they are.
Google and Yahoo have accused ad-blocking software Shine of "destroying the relationship" between advertisers and consumers
That's funny, because no one forces anyone to install and use an ad blocker (compare this with advertisers wanting to force people to "consume" ads). People make the choice of installing an ad blocker because the so-called "relationship" between advertisers and consumers essentially consists of advertisers wanting consumers to bend over and accept anything that gets shoveled at them. Maybe that relationship was doomed to fail from the start, and maybe most people are just waking up to the fact that they don't have to be in that relationship any more. This is like an abusive relationship where the person getting abused realizes that this isn't a normal productive healthy relationship, and they don't have to put up with it any more.
Benjamin Faes, managing director of media and platforms at Google, called Shine's technology a "blunt" solution that punishes users and good advertisers
If advertisers aren't going to police their own industry then, yeah, count on other people to create a blunt solution. It may not solve the problem the way that advertisers would like the problem to be solved, but then again advertisers have had a good 2 decades to figure out a workable relationship for online advertising. So far their solution has been to abuse people and not call each other out when they notice other bad actors. Thankfully we don't need to count on them for a solution, but it's not going to be the solution they want.
Blocking all ads I think it's diminishing my experience of advertising
Of course it's diminishing your experience of advertising, you're an advertiser. Blocking all ads actually improves my experience of advertising, by a lot. If only I could extend it to the physical world.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
These were all on the site when we acquired it. We are in the process of cleaning up all requests and scripts like this.
No, what advertisers lack isn't so much smarts: it's any scrap of empathy or ethics. They're a pack of highly paid sociopaths.
They don't CARE if they steal the bandwidth of / infect with malware / otherwise annoy the living crap out of their victims, er, viewers.
As far as malvertisers are concerned, any attention is good attention, even the homicidally annoyed variety of attention.
They're just banking that after a while the memory of the annoyance gets dissociated from the memory of the product they're flogging.
This is why they'll pry AdBlock, NoScript and their successors out of my cold, dead, keyboard mashing fingers.
Kinda. Ad-Blocking was awesome when a tiny percentage of us used it to have a much better internet experience.
Now, as usage and awareness expands, I am see warnings, popups and outright refusal to serve me content if my ad blocking software is enabled.
This is the next frontier... sites will (legitimately, it's perfectly OK) stop serving you content, if you're not seeing their ads. Other sites will choose to make their money in more nefarious ways - and this one worries me - by using product placement / paid reviews / sponsored content, and blurring the lines between content and advertising. At least when I see an advert I *know* they paid for the ad. When Jonny Reviewer says "The new film, Badderass is awesome" is he really saying it's awesome, or is he saying "I can put bread on the family table now that the Badderass producers have paid me to shill for them"?
Personally, I think I'd rather have the ads back.
Yes we are looking at reviving the subscription option so that you can do something like this
They are easily one of the biggest, of not the biggest, attack vectors. Because of this I block ads and literally won't white list anyone, because there have been tons of cases of 'respectable' ad hosts being cracked and hosting malware through their ads. Often without the company knowing for months!
So no, I'd rather not have my systems infected because someone wants me to view ads that I won't actually click on anyways. I can count on one hand how many times I clicked on an ad before ad-blockers were a thing. Combine these two things together and they stay blocked. Forever.
Want me to unblock your ads? Step #1: Make them passive enough it's nearly impossible to use their ads to infect my system. We can talk about Step #2 once the first is done.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
What fucking "relationship"?
There is no relationship, there are the annoying parasites on the internet who want to inject themselves into what we do. I have never said "gee, I wonder what the assholes over at Double Click are up to these days".
But let's not pretend I gain anything from being tracked by a bunch of idiots who want to sell me something.
On behalf of those of us who have aggressively blocked ads for years, don't pretend there's some "relationship" here. And let's stop pretending that internet exists for the ad companies.
Do this shit without tracking me everywhere and violating my privacy, and I might have less of a problem. Expect me to allow 15 third parties to run scripts and set cookies, and you can fuck off.
You might as well say a guard dog is spoiling your "relationship" with a peeping Tom. Sorry, don't care.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
But, ads have become incrementally more annoying, and seem to have passed a threshold.
* I don't mind advertising. Advertising lets me find things that I might want or need.
* I don't mind sites showing me advertising.
* I don't mind advertisers knowing that their ad appeared on a page that was viewed.
* I don't mind advertisers knowing that someone clicked on that ad.
* I do object to the presence of ads making the page slow to load.
* I object very much to the presence of ads making the page extremely slow to load.
* I object to the presence of ads consuming lots of my bandwidth (I resource that I pay for).
* I object very much to the presence of ads making the page unusable (pop-overs, unsolicited audio, etc.)
* I do not cede my privacy to the advertiser.
- - you do not have permission to track me
- - you do not have permission to sell information (surreptitiously) gathered about me to 3rd parties
Stop treating me with contempt, stop treating me as a resource to be pillaged. If I tell you not to track me, do not ignore my instruction, and especially do not bleat that it's OK for you to ignore my instruction but it's not OK to for me to ignore your ads.
As your advertising becomes increasingly indistinguishable from malware, do not be surprised when a market springs up to counter it.
Protoplasm. Quiet Protoplasm. I like quiet protoplasm.
So far their solution has been to abuse people and not call each other out when they notice other bad actors
I like how we're calling them bad actors. Like we're eventually going to discover that Nicolas Cage was behind the whole thing.
Part of it is probably the distribution of malware through the ad networks.
Good to hear, I don't think the Slashdot user base is the "One weird trick" kind of crowd.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
Would doing that remove the "Slashdot Newsletters" and "Slashdot Top Deals" images/links?
I get those, DESPITE having "Ads Disabled" checked, due to my up votes.
Yes, I realize they are "slashdot originated", but they're still effectively the same as any third party ad, to me.
I agree 100%! A few more points:
--Advertisers did not pay for my computer. I am the ONLY one that gets to decide what gets downloaded and displayed on MY computer.
-- Recently Advertisers have called those of us who block their ads thieves, and the authors of ad-blocking software criminals.
-- I consider that the advertisers are the criminals, trying to steal the (capped) bandwidth that we pay for,
-- They try to steal private information to target ads to us, and if thats not creepy enough, sell that information to make more money!
-- The try to steal our valuable time and attention, wasting that time, and distracting us from getting things done in a timely fashion.
And BTW, I never started blocking ads until they started to get seriously annoying and headache inducing!
Blocking people who block ads from viewing their sites unless we whitelist them or turn of ad-blockers is NOT going to work! Websites that do that are killing themselves, just as the advertisers are killing themselves with their stupidity!
Also the company this article mentions, Shine, which provides carrier-level mobile ad blocking. Their product isn't a browser extension like uBlock Origin, it's more of an ad-blocking proxy server that they're currently rolling out on the Three mobile network. Advertisers are particularly annoyed about that because it rolls out to everyone, even the non-tech-savvy, vs. people having to install browser extensions.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
To be frank I'd be willing to pay a subscription to Slashdot. I do so for other sites I value. I get a lot of value from the site in the form of entertainment and have for a long time. It would be nice if a subscription got you some real value added features but I'd be willing to pay something less for what I get for free now.
I'm fairly militant however about my ad blocking. It is HIGHLY unlikely any advertiser on slashdot is going to dangle something in front of me that I care about enough to buy. But more importantly I value my privacy and since advertising networks can help themselves in trying to track my every click and search I am forced to take pretty harsh steps to maintain my privacy. This is not going to change. Ever.
1. How do you propose funding websites, if not with ads?
Provide enough value I'm willing to pay for it directly. I do that with several websites I frequent. If people aren't willing to pay for what you are doing directly then it probably isn't worth all that much to them.
Speaking for myself I value my privacy FAR more than any random article you could possibly entice me to read. I have NO interest in being tracked by advertising networks and I will take harsh measures to ensure it doesn't happen. If their crappy business model can't handle that then too bad. Your bad business model is not my problem.
That's funny, because no one forces anyone to install and use an ad blocker
Shine blocks ads at the network level - individual users couldn't opt out, even if they wanted to. This is different than adblocking browser extensions, in that users are forced into it.
Not that I'm against it. I use a similar system on my home network, and love it.
... Better pay for every single other viewpoint ...
Believe it or not, it is entirely possible for a single source to offer multiple perspectives on an issue. Once upon a time this was known as journalism.
Not a problem. Once upon a time people bought newspapers. They were generally also available at the library but it was more convenient to have them delivered to your home.
**If** our current two decade'ish experiment with web based ad supported news fails its not the end of the world. We had a system that worked well for centuries. That old system's economic model may work with pixels as well as it worked with dead trees.
I've had the Disable Advertising button on /. for years. You know what? I only turned it on once just to see what the difference would be. The difference wasn't that big so I turned it off. I am quite happy supporting sites/services that are of benefit to me. I no longer visit sites I used to love because they enabled IN YOUR FACE ads that get in the way of the reason I'm there. I couldn't go to Forbes at work anymore even if I wanted to because they flag our proxy as an ad blocker and won't even let me past the ad banner until I turn the proxy off! If you want an example of a site with ads that don't bug me /. is a pretty good one.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Dear advertisers... It's not you, it's me. I no longer find you attractive, but I can't say that because then I'll feel guilty. Oh, by the way, good riddance.
I have to say, I just added /. to the AdBlock exclusion list, just to see what ads I'll get, and I'm impressed.
I'm seeing two ads at the top of the page, both of which are relevant to my interests - guns and hiking gear. The latter is, in fact, specifically for a product that I wanted to buy for a while, and was looking for a good deal for, and it offers a discount. No sale this time because they don't have the desired size/color, but still, this gets my nod of approval (and a bit of unease because of how accurate it is).
So, thumbs up from this Slashdot user, and I think I'll keep the exclusion.
Any good fisherman will tell you, there's a certain point where the bait's not big enough for the hook; crying because the fish are uninterested in the hook isn't going to get you more fish.
Stop being irredeemably greedy, you're far, far past the point of diminishing returns.
-Styopa
fake download buttons are one of the reason why it's good to use ad block.
Benjamin Faes, managing director of media and platforms at Google, called Shine's technology a "blunt" solution that punishes users and good advertisers
If advertisers aren't going to police their own industry then, yeah, count on other people to create a blunt solution.
I've often felt the same way, but now I'm idly wondering - how would they police themselves? Nothing short of the FTC has such power in the USA, and that's just for the USA.
They have trade groups but seem unable to force bad actors to desist.
It's like, how would the 0.0001% of responsible telemarketers stop the rest from spamming us via telephone?
I guess I'm just wondering if anyone has any thoughts on how this could be implemented.
Blocking all ads I think it's diminishing my experience of advertising
Of course it's diminishing your experience of advertising, you're an advertiser. Blocking all ads actually improves my experience of advertising, by a lot. If only I could extend it to the physical world.
I just cannot agree with this more; well put.
They started putting ads with sound in them. It got to the point that if I forgot to turn off my speakers I'd get woken up in the night by an left in a tab I didn't bother closing.
Then the ads that would force the browser to a specific location on the page (breaking the website, but making it so you could see the ad).
They have no-one to blame but themselves. I honestly truthfully didn't give two shits about ads until they started talking and hijacking normally respectable websites. I mean - I do understand - that's how a lot of sites generate revenue so I feel bad, but my health and well being comes first - and talking ads that wake me up at 2 am are not healthy.
If some executive personally promised me no more sneaky backhanded, noisy ads - I would turn it off and try again for a while.
So you can't survive with me blocking your annoying, intrusive, malware laden advertising? Tough. If you can't compete, then die. It's free enterprise, bitch!
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
Google and Yahoo have accused ad-blocking software Shine of "destroying the relationship" between advertisers and consumers
If by relationship you mean an endless barrage of dick pics, then sure.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
From the users' point of view, this entire article is how FUCKING AWESOME Shine is. Previously, I had never heard of Shine, but here, Yahoo and Google are screaming that Shine is the best thing ever.
Shine must have paid these whores a lot for that.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump