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Google's Chrome Ad Blocking Arrives Tomorrow (theverge.com)
Google is enabling its built-in ad blocker for Chrome tomorrow (February 15th). From a report: Chrome's ad filtering is designed to weed out some of the web's most annoying ads, and push website owners to stop using them. Google is not planning to wipe out all ads from Chrome, just ones that are considered bad using standards from the Coalition for Better Ads. Full page ads, ads with autoplaying sound and video, and flashing ads will be targeted by Chrome's ad filtering, which will hopefully result in less of these annoying ads on the web. Google is revealing today exactly what ads will be blocked, and how the company notifies site owners before a block is put in place. On desktop, Google is planning to block pop-up ads, large sticky ads, auto-play video ads with sound, and ads that appear on a site with a countdown blocking you before the content loads. Google is being more aggressive about its mobile ad blocking, filtering out pop-up ads, ads that are displayed before content loads (with or without a countdown), auto-play video ads with sound, large sticky ads, flashing animated ads, fullscreen scroll over ads, and ads that are particularly dense.
Google can basically redefine what they deem as an acceptable ad (ones made by themselves) on the fly. This is bad news.
Sounds very much like they want to control what you see and who gets paid. I haven't met a single ad I like, so I'm skeptical that any "pro ad" committee is going to come up with a fair list.
If I am wrong, great. Somebody have the scoop on this?
The Coalition for Better Ads:
"While the Coalition’s consumer research was designed to identify the least preferred ad types, it also provides insight into consumers’ evaluation of a far broader range of ad experiences, including those more preferred by consumers.
Google: "We're only tracking your every move and recording your preferences to bring you a better online experience, you ungrateful dolt!"
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
So, in other words, it still lets ads slip past, waste my bandwidth and time?
NEXT!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Naturally Google won't block any of their own ads...
I'll keep blocking all ads insofar as I can find the tools to do so. If google wants to actually pay me cash money to watch ads then we can revisit this discussion. I pay subscriptions for services I like. Ads just waste my bandwidth and time so companies that rely on them for their business model can die in a fire as far as I'm concerned.
"While the Coalition’s consumer research was designed to identify the least preferred ad types, it also provides insight into consumers’ evaluation of a far broader range of ad experiences, including those more preferred by consumers.
"More preferred" actually translates as "less hated". Nobody actually prefers ads, they just hate some types more than others.
All self-playing video ads need to be blocked. Otherwise users are going to resort to 3rd party blockers. So many sites, including New York Times (which I pay for!) are practically unreadable without a blocker, due to animated ads.
does that mean they will remove the full screen gmail app ad when you open gmail on your mobile device, that conveniently puts the skip button under the navigation controls on some mobile devices?
Skip Chrome and use Firefox with full ad block. If you don't have unlimited data, this is the wisest option (those ads aren't free for you, and they are heavy).
Since even 'approved' ads can contain malware, it is foolish to not block all the ads. Block them all (and if you must use a hosts file, why not?)
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Forbes does that (if you have adblocker installed, you can't visit their site). They seem to be happy with it.
For me the end result is that I don't visit their site. And nothing of value was lost.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Bitching and moaning from advertising companies, and media outlets that use outlets, and are too stupid, apparently, to see how their lack of vetting ads, the rise of malvertising, te increased annoyance of ads, pushed the increased use of ad block, and how actually combatting these problems, while no panacea outright, would help loads. And don't give me that "Oh, but they have to make ads annoying now that people are using adblock," not only does that feel like utter BS, ads were getting annoying BEFORE adblock became popular. I was browsing the internet in the early 2000s, and had to deal with the same sort of SHIT - popups, popunders, auto-playing media ads, etc - the number, and annoyance level have only gotten worse since then.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
Youtube (brought to you by Google) does two of those no-nos: 1) It displays ads that appear on a site with a countdown blocking you before the content loads. 2) It auto-plays video ads with sound. So Google should, by definition block Youtube ads, which it won't. So cynical! How long until Google loses all the sympathy it gathers in its young years?
Are you saying that Google actually runs ads like those being discussed?
I'm saying I don't care what kind of ads they run. Just being less overtly obnoxious doesn't make them any less creepy to me. In fact it's the ones who quietly try to track my every movement on the internet and who try to profile me that offend me the most.
I prefer static images ads or text-only ads. If that's the end result of Google's filtering, I'm all for it.
I prefer no ads of any sort and no tracking. Google's preferred style of ads may be less obnoxious but it's more creepy.
Internet Explorer died a few years ago, Microsoft replaced it with Edge.
Also, requiring people to use Edge would be a big fuck you to users of other browsers and to Mac and Linux users, which is a sure way of losing users for your website.
#DeleteFacebook
I would not mind accepting some irritating ads from sites that I want to support. I would like the ability to whitelist the sites.
I would not mind giving Google some keywords to tailor their targeted ads. One mistyped or misclicked site, and forever I'm getting ads pitching stupid things like Beechcraft jet for 2 million dollars. What Artificial Stupidity would think I'm in the market for a jet plane?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Blocking animation in ads isn't a very easy problem for two reasons. First, how would you distinguish desirable animations, such as the main video on the video's description page, from ads? Second, CSS can animate a JPEG.
All self-playing video ads need to be blocked.
I fully agree on text articles and on the videos that some news sites have started to use to decorate their text articles. But preroll ads on sites like Dailymotion and YouTube are also "self-playing video ads". Would you prefer not to have access to Partner videos and claimed videos at all, especially outside those few countries where YouTube offers YouTube Red service?
So many sites, including New York Times (which I pay for!) are practically unreadable without a blocker, due to animated ads.
At this point, I endorse ad blocking on subscription websites. The dynamic there differs greatly from websites offered to the public without charge, as you are the customer.
ntr
Internet Explorer isn't available for any of the following operating systems:
Fedora
CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux
SUSE
Debian GNU/Linux and Raspbian
Ubuntu
Linux Mint
Slackware
Android
FreeBSD
What error message do you plan to display to users of Chrome or Chromium (which comes with an ad blocker) or Firefox (which blocks only those ads that fail to respect users' privacy) on those operating systems?
I've long since switched to the Brave browser. Negatives first: Brave supports the idea that it can serve as a payment conduit, so that you can make micropayments to publishers. While not a bad idea, the implementation is unrealistic. But you can turn it off and ignore it.
On the good side, it already blocks ads, 3rd party cookies, and (some) fingerprinting.
The only thing remaining - and this is missing from every browser I am aware of - is to stop auto-download (and auto-play) of multimedia. Even if a browser doesn't auto-start some stupid html5 video, it is still downloading the damned thing. A switch to control that behavior belongs right next to the 3rd-party-cookie switch.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I can see two ways that the Chrome team might consider it "technically correct (the best kind of correct)" not to block preroll ads on Dailymotion and YouTube.
Ad Experience: Auto-playing Video Ads with Sound The ad format's page states: "The Better Ads Methodology has not yet tested video ads that appear before ('pre-roll') or during ('mid-roll') video content that is relevant to the content of the page itself." This alone would get sites like DM and YT off the hook until such time as CBA gets around to testing prerolls. Ad Experience: Prestitial Ads with Countdown The ad format's page states: "In desktop environments, prestitial ads that can be dismissed immediately did not fall beneath the initial Better Ads Standard for desktop." The illustrative animation on the page implies that this refers to a modal lightbox, not an ad confined to the video's own play area. So technically, the user can dismiss the ad by navigating to another video or by pausing it and scrolling to the comments.This will block only non Google ads to leave the Google ones alone.
The millennial that doesn't like most of the stuff designed for millennials.
I mean, I have this "uBlock" thing that's working fine with Chome and Firefox.
They have both basic blocking *and* custom blocking.
And they also block Google ads which chrome won't be blocking.
How is supposed the Chrome builtin blocker to be any better that a more general solution?
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
On desktop, Google is planning to block ... ads that appear on a site with a countdown blocking you before the content loads.
Like the ones on many YouTube videos?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
People prefer ads to the other two possibilities:
There are FAR more than just two possibilities.
having to buy a 1-month subscription for $5.99 just to read one article
So buy one subscription that aggregates articles. That's basically what the Associated Press is anyway. Or buy the article piece-rate. Maybe the value of that article is only $0.01 or less per read. Advertisers have to guess how much it will cost to get someone's attention so I see no reason why content providers should be unable to figure it out. Or give the article away and make money on something else like merchandise sales.
If no readers are willing to pay you for your article then maybe that says something about its market value and your business model.
or the article not existing in the first place because the publisher went bankrupt.
Someone else's bad business model is not my problem. I'm not about to relax my grip on my time and personal information just because someone else feels entitled to make a profit from it. If the advertiser wants my attention they can pay me cash money for it. Otherwise they can fuck off and I do not care at all if they go bankrupt. Your assumption that they are somehow entitled to profit from information about me is an assertion I reject completely.
Alternately, you could, you know, like, maybe, think about displaying ads that aren't a potential vector for scams and malware and don't start making noise unexpectedly and startle your users. Maybe? Just a chance?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Let's see if the people at Youtube are outraged enough at this change to take action against the makers of Chrome. These companies' struggle might be the next big war. Who will win?
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
I see at least three practical problems with Coinhive. First, if the viewer is viewing the article using a low-power ARM or Atom CPU, the viewer is unlikely to finish mining enough blocks to pay for one article view by the time the viewer finishes reading the article. Second, the Coinhive brand has been tainted by widespread installation of Coinhive on publishers' websites by intruders without the publisher's permission. Third, Coinhive relies on JavaScript, which some users (especially those who regularly read SoylentNews, Slashdot, or other more technical websites) disable by default as a means of blocking phishing, malware downloading, and other attacks on the browser.
So buy one subscription that aggregates articles.
A service called Adult Check tried that business model in the late 1990s. But its "grown-ups can pay $10 per month for nice things" business model ran into two problems. The first was that the publisher of Perfect 10 magazine successfully sued Adult Check out of business when it was discovered that several publishers (website operators) accepting Adult Check had displayed infringing copies of photographs from Perfect 10. The second is that if different publishers are on different subscription aggregators, viewers are back to the same situation they're currently in.
Or buy the article piece-rate.
I fail to see how would such an "a la carte" model work. Payment processors charge on the order of 0.30 USD per transaction, which greatly exceeds the 0.01 to 0.05 USD asking price for a single article.
Advertisers have to guess how much it will cost to get someone's attention so I see no reason why content providers should be unable to figure it out.
The logistical difference between an advertiser and a subscription aggregator is that only the publisher, not the viewer, needs to establish a business relationship with the advertiser.
If no readers are willing to pay you for your article then maybe that says something about its market value and your business model.
If readers are willing to pay for one article but not 100, does that say the same thing?
Nor is my comment history the topic. So ad hominems aside:
Your comment appears to promote "regular ads that consist of text or an image" as an alternative to the script-driven ads responsible for the abuses that Google Chrome will block. For example, Daring Fireball runs "regular ads that consist of text or an image" and are hosted on Daring Fireball's server (source). But that model requires each publisher to staff an ad sales department in order to advertise the site's ad space to advertisers, and advertisers are likely to pay far less if they can verify only clicks, not views.
So let's say a publisher that doesn't get quite as many views as the Markdown documentation on Daring Fireball wants to switch from abusive ads to "regular ads that consist of text or an image." How would such a publisher go about marketing its ad space to advertisers in a cost-effective manner?
And you will notice that those paywalled results don't stay in the top 10 google results for long.
I wouldn't be so sure of that. Subscription websites, such as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times and closed-access academic journals, tend to rank consistently high in many of my Google Search queries. This goes double since October 2017 now that Google Search no longer imposes a cloaking penalty if a paywall is marked as such with JSON-LD.
For the most part, they become part of my "minus list". You know, the long, and growing, line of "-this -that -whatever -site:paywalled.crp" pasted onto every query.
How often do the terms in your minus list cause you to hit Google Search's limit of 32 terms per query? (Before 2005, it was 10 terms.)
It's not the amount* as much as needing to whip out the payment card in the first place. If you read three or fewer articles on a particular site per year, arriving at them from Google Search or Slashdot or whatever social network you use, how likely are you to pay $5.99 for a year's subscription and create yet another line in your password manager?
* Except that the payment method charges a transaction fee on the order of 30 cents.
A better solution would be to allow adds only in a sidebar ( user selectable width ), only download adds up to a ( user selectable ) percentage of the total page data size ( say 15 percent of the total bandwidth used ), and only download after the content has been downloaded so we don't have to wait while some damned flash downloads to see we need to click on the next page button. I recognize that many sites are supported by adds and I'm willing to give them a percentage of my attention, bandwidth, and browser space, within reason, to support site content.
You live and learn, or you don't learn much.
I don't run an ad blocker, but I do use NoScript, and a while back, Forbes would not load at all. Now, there's a splash page with a "click to enter site" link, and on the rare occasions I follow a link to Forbes, it displays fine.
I'm not sure about Wired. At one point, they refused to show anything if they thought you were using an ad blocker, and even "temp allow all" in NoScript wouldn't get past this. Their "help" link for this said about NoScript "It's too complicated. Don't use NoScript", to which my reply was "Oh **HELL** no!" and I put Wired on my personal index expurgatorius.
I think I may have seen a Wired article recently by accident; if so, I didn't run into this again, so maybe they changed their mind about that.
Just like anything else.
Then, when you use Google to query, it should trigger a pop up along the lines
"Do you want to accept Content from Google, press OK to continue."
99% of people will click yes. Google ads are through on all platforms. Other ad vendors need to figure out their own way of tricking people to accept them. And of course, the accepting message has to come from a page on the same site as the signature cert.
An no Google specific monopoly hard coded.
The advertising industry uses the term "publisher" for anyone who operates a website. Even a website offering its text under a license for free cultural works, such as Stack Overflow and the rest of the Stack Exchange network, is considered a "publisher".
I'm interested to read your proposal for a more service-like business model for journalism.
Yes to all of the above, but asking permission and then using the viewers computing resources for whatever makes the most sense for the content distributor is an interesting model. Does not have to be coinhive, also if you block the script, you could be blocked from the site, just as forbes and others do with adblockers now.
Silence is a state of mime.
also if you block the script, you could be blocked from the site, just as forbes and others do with adblockers now.
If a website displaying essentially static articles fails to render for users who completely turn off JavaScript before visiting the site, could one make an argument that the site is inaccessible to users with disabilities and that its publisher is probably in violation of applicable disability discrimination laws?