Study of Ad-Blocking Software Suggests Wide Use | Hacker News Reader

Study of Ad-Blocking Software Suggests Wide Use

bits.blogs.nytimes.com

77 pointsmgav135 comments

> The numbers come as tech companies, publishers and advertisers grow anxious that their efforts to reach users through increasingly sophisticated online advertisements are having little effect.

Herein lies their problem. Had they stick to simple ads, people wouldn't rush to block them.

Per a HN comment I saved in my quotes file, "Any sufficiently advanced business model is indistinguishable from a scam." -- dsirijus, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8227941

> “What’s causing grave concern for broadcasters and advertisers is video advertising, which is some of their most valuable content, is starting to be blocked,”

Video advertising is a whole new class of shitting on your users, and they're surprised people are blocking it?

It's as if those people lived on another planet. I wonder how many executives and ad-network people use ad blockers personally. I find it hard to believe they can't see the manure they're dumping on the Internet.

Personal, but fun anecdote: my girlfriend works in marketing and kept away from ad blockers for a long time, partly due to professional sympathy, partly simply because she wanted to see the ads, since she has a professional interest in that sort of stuff.

She eventually caved about a year ago and installed ABP. No matter how interesting it was, nor how much she sympathized with the folks working in media agencies, browsing the web simply became completely impossible, especially over an occasionally flimsy 3G connection.

Simple ads are "collateral damage" in this case, but even those can be worth blocking, e.g. to protect against tracking.

Sometimes it's like we live in a parody of the real world.

I feel that the online video ad situation is akin to advertisers blasting loud commercial jingles in the middle of the night, while complaining that people are getting sound isolated walls and how that's hurting their business, some even going so far as to talk about how thick walls should be illegal.

When I navigate to an url I don't get a fully rendered webpage ready from the server, but instead I get served a bunch of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It's then up to my computer to compose those things into the interactive website, using the rendering engine of my choice. How the website turns out being rendered can depend on a number of factors, like what screen resolution I use, what fonts I have on my system, etc. Maybe I'm using a text browser that can't render pictures or video.

So, it's so darn crazy to me that some people would say that I'm stealing or being dishonest by not rendering the ads in the website. Is it really my duty to render those ads, even if I don't intend to click on them? Would I still be stealing if I rendered them, but never moved my eyesight over to where the ad is placed? How far do I have to pretend?

I think the difficulty comes in when the two parties (us vs the site owners) come into the situation with different views about what the website IS.

You're viewing it, quite correctly, as a technical request that's made and some data that's passed back that you can use at your discretion.

They're viewing it as you entering a digital storefront where they need to take every opportunity to convert you into a customer.

In your mind, you're staying right where you are and the data you're getting back is just that: yours. In their mind, you're entering into their space and so they have certain expectations of you and your experience. You telling them what kind of advertising they are allowed to have is, in their minds, tantamount to walking in to one of their stores and telling them to change the displays they have out. Not saying that it justifies any claims about what should be legal, illegal, etc. but it does make sense why each party would have the opinions they do.

If so, I'm gonna start charging them for my CPU usage. If what's going on in my computer, using my electricity, isn't under my ownership, I'll be darned if I'm gonna pay for it's execution.

The problem with this approach is it's only arguable because your computer gives you more control over how you use the content you are requesting from them.

When you watch TV, you are requesting the broadcast from your provider, and that comes with embedded ads that you have no way of removing (ignoring TIVO and all that). You don't charge back the electricity used by your TV to your provider, right?

When you access someone's website, you are requesting that they send you the data. They are not forcing it on you, so they have some say as to how they package up the data you ask for.

You are of course able to refuse to request more, or using your computer you can modify and dissect it (like using ad blockers) but that's a different issue.

Anyways.. all I'm saying is that expecting 100% control over how someone else's data is delivered to your computer is a position just as bad as the advertisers who say you should not be able to block their ads.

The right solution is somewhere in the middle.

If I taped the content on my old VHS, and then fast forwarded past the ads, and they argued that I shouldn't be allowed to do this, then sure, I would argue they should pay for my electricity for showing that ad, since apparently they are the ones who are in charge of how my VHS should be used. I'd say the argument I'm making isn't something new that just appeared with computers.

To drag this point out, imagine if in addition to the video ad, the website included one of those fancy bitcoin miners that is written in JavaScript. Should it be illegal for me to prevent it from running while I read their article? If it MUST run, then surely it's fair that they foot the extra electricity I end up using?

There is no rational world where they control the usage and I foot the bill. That sort of system would require slavery to be logically consistent.

I see this is a lost cause on you. You're not willing to see (willfully or obliviously) that the content provider gets a say in all this as well, since they foot the bill for producing the content you are consuming.

Yet you are somehow surprised or insulted when they argue you should not have a say (which is your exact argument but in reverse), and that you should be 100% in control of how you consume their content, regardless of whether or not it contradicts the business model they've chosen to implement.

The correct approach should be to not consume their content if you don't like how it's being delivered.

>The correct approach should be to not consume their content if you don't like how it's being delivered.

Now they have 0 consumers as ad-blocking numbers increase. They lose revenue and go out of business due to a bad business model.

The correct approach would be for them to find a sustainable business model. Your "correct approach" puts them out of business.

But your approach makes the ads worthless (because nobody views them), and they still go out of business.

Of course, you don't claim that your approach keeps them in business...

My use of an adblocker is not an "approach" to the problem. My suggested approach is to find a sustainable business model, which could keep them in business.

The business model is their problem - not mine. Even if I'm the cause of why their business model is failing, it's not my problem to solve.

Companies with better business models will eventually replace the companies that go out of business. If an ad-supported site goes offline, I do not care. A site with similar content and a more sustainable business model will replace them. If their content was valued enough - a donation funded site will replace it.

I can turn the TV off during that time. But, because it's such a small cost, and so minimally invasive, I just mute it instead.

Ads that are minimally invasive and minimal bandwidth I have no problem with. The problem is that no ad provider guarantees that ads will be under a given size per page load, and be minimally invasive to the content I want to consume. Hence, they all get turned off.

> requesting the broadcast from your provider

This is identical with HTML. I request a page via HTTP, and they send it to me. What I do with that page is up to me. Just like I can mute a commercial on TV, change the channel, or shut the TV off[1].

> they have some say as to how they package up the data you ask for.

Correct. The problem comes when this is extended to include what someone does with that data after it changes hands. We have historically described this situation as the publisher's rights ending at the "1st sale"[2].

Anybody that wants rights to restrict what someone does with the data they are sent should get a contract that describes these requirements. (an EULA, writing at the bottom of a previously-requested page, and the HTTP headers are not contracts)

As for paying by CPU usage: I'll run the javascript and load the image or video files only after I receive a payment for electricity usage (CPU time) and compensation for my lost personal time. Hourly rates are available upon request.

> The right solution is somewhere in the middle.

The right solution respects users instead of trying to move the Overton Window[3].

[1] Max Headroom, Episode 1.6 "The Blanks"

    Janie Crane: "An off switch?"
    Metrocop: "She'll get years for that. Off switches are illegal!"

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

On a subset of the devices I use, I pay by the byte for my Internet service. In that case, blasting me with a bunch of video content that's much larger than the article I intended to read. Advertisers do not respect this, even though it has an impact on my finances. I reserve the right to choose whether I consent to paying for something, and I don't consent to the terms they're trying to offer me.

If they were to give me some opportunity to make a decision about this, in the same way that a real storefront does implicitly by me being able to look into the store before choosing to enter, that would be one thing. But such a mechanism does not exist, so as far as I'm concerned the analogy is invalid.

Valid point, I hadn't considered that the amount of data they're trying to send you may end up costing you more money than you were willing to allot to their site. However, I don't think that makes the entirety of the analogy invalid. They still think about their website differently than you, regardless of how you're being charged to view it.

It could also be argued that once you're in a store, there is a very real disrespect of your personal finances placed on you by the burden of advertising and product placement. An abuse of consumer psychology in a physical space is just as bad as an abuse of your phone data. Both cost you time and money. While it still stands that you couldn't have seen the video advertising coming ahead of time, you also can't see the psychological tricks that get you to purchase more coming ahead of time either. In both cases I think it's up to us to not get fooled again.

Another spot where the analogy breaks down is that I don't think of a non-ecommerce website as a kind of store. I think of it as being more equivalent to a magazine or newspaper. And in those cases advertising is certainly present, but the overall experience is much less overtly invasive to me, the consumer.

I also suspect that non-ecommerce website publishers really would rather think about their websites as being akin to magazines. They aren't really in control of what gets put on their page through the ad networks in the same way that print publishers are, and I can't imagine many editors are terribly thrilled about the things that ad networks place alongside the content they produce. I really kind off feel bad for them; they're caught up in a pretty terrible Faustian bargain.

Very true! Non ecommerce sites suffer just as badly as their users when an executive decision is made to increase the amount of advertising on their pages.

I wonder if the increase in adverts is based on someone thinking that it will pay for their site's cost or if they're doing it with the mindset that advertising is their business model rather than providing interesting content.

Nowadays, advertising is their business model and producing quality content is merely a means to an end.

The rule of thumb is pretty simple: If you're not paying them money then you couldn't possibly be their customer. You're probably actually their product.

> You're probably actually their product.

In some cases - like GMail and other communications services where other people are involved - you and the people you communicate with are their product.

The "second hand smoke"-style effect of these "free" services has been largely ignored. Making a (bad) decision to trade your privacy for some service can be morally justifiable. Making that decision for the friends/family you communicate with is another thing entirely.

> Would I still be stealing if I rendered them, but never moved my eyesight over to where the ad is placed?

No, because merely visiting the site and rendering the ad has done its job. The value of a web ad is in the information collected and profile built about you. You're going to see ads somewhere, even subconsciously, and you're going to buy something, somewhere. The hope is that retailers can place something in front of you where your task is buying instead of reading. Cell phones are going to be a huge assist to physical retailers in this area, because they carry your online trail into the store.

EDIT: I expect the day to come when advertising networks are subpoened for information on people.

> I wonder how many executives and ad-network people use ad blockers personally

I can tell you ;)

Executives don't use ad blockers - they've usually drunk enough of the cool-aid to not be bothered by the ads.

Others, like the devs, for sure would have ad blockers installed (but disable when they need to do dev relating to ads)

It really just comes down to greed. The publishers had a good thing. They were making some profit, and they were finding ways to innovate (better tech, better subscription penetration, etc.), and then they had to go and get greedy with all our personal data. That's what sparked the war. We simply aren't willing to pay that much for the content we consume.

I'd agree with everything you say if I'd cross out "with our personal data". I don't think this is what started the war - most people don't care or even understand the nuances of this issue. But they experience publishers' greed directly in form of more ads, more annoying ads, more scammy ads, malware installed by ads, etc. Nowadays ads are offensive actions - annoying at best, costing lot of time and money at worst (if you catch that ransomware because some asshole put the thing you're looking for inside a "value-add" bundle). It's enough to piss everyone off even without bringing up the topic of data they're collecting and what they're doing with it.

You're right.

I think the personal data aspect of it really angers some of us, but in reality the sheer volume and annoyance of ads these days is more of a slap in the face than anything else. Perhaps privacy concerns have helped to push us over a tipping point.

I think that privacy concerns may be what caused the recent increase in the development of ad-blocking and anti-tracking tools. Tech people seem to care disproportionally more about on-line privacy than the rest, and they're the ones who develop tools to stop it.

This. I have no problem with ad per se. They are a annoying but necessary part of life. After all, products and brand needs to make themselve known.

However, I do have a problem with tracking. I'd rather have ads that are of no interest to me than having a ad network gathering huge of amount of data about me.

The day ad network will stop tracking, I will stop blocking.

Rather, the problem lies in the need to generate increasing returns without charging anyone for a service. Facebook's recovery model has been to acquire and monetize anything with a growing userbase, Google's has been to sprawl across as many verticals as possible in a wild goose chase for long term sustenance.

It's going to be a sad day for Silicon Valley when advertisers stop getting their money's worth – which seems inevitable at this point. Products reach their saturation point and you can either kill the user experience (and subsequently kill the userbase) or you can start charging (and subsequently kill the userbase).

We do still have a few more years left of pseudo-charitable "Internet-giving initiatives" to get the rest of the world's loyal consumer-to-be population online. That way we can shove ads for the local ebola clinic in front of people in need of real help. That should sustain SF housing prices for another decade or so.

...and here comes dot-com bubble 2.0

The active campaigns that award ephemeral internet points actually seem fairly effective. Those are what worry me most though, as it seems like the making of a tragedy of the commons.

I suspect if companies tracked the actual return for various adds, it would put an end to the obnoxiousness fairly quick. It's easy to why so many companies are willing to engage in click-fraud.

Exactly. There seems to be a huge disconnect between what ad executives assume people will engage with and what people will actually tolerate. I think people will tolerate small banners and images and interstitial video ads that are 3-4 seconds at the very most (on video sites). If you can't get your message across in that time then prepare to have your ads blocked by a generation that expects the internet to be instant.

> Ad-blocking will lead to almost $22 billion of lost advertising revenue this year, according to the report, put together by Adobe and PageFair, a Dublin-based start-up that helps companies and advertisers recoup some of this lost revenue.

I guess assuming that the users of ad blocker users would visit the sites with the same frequency as without ad blockers, and they click on ads with the same probability if they see them as people who don't use ad blockers.

This is the same fallacy as counting the lost money on pirated content. Most people who pirate wouldn't buy a product even if they couldn't pirate it. The solution is much simpler for ad ridden websites: what about not serving the main content for ad block users? If you don't like them then don't serve them, it shouldn't be that hard. Maybe they don't do this because:

- Ad blockers are still a minority on most websites

- They don't eat up much bandwidth

- It would be really bad advertising (ha!) for them doing more harm than good

> what about not serving the main content for ad block users?

Some porn sites have started to do that. Well it's not like there is only 1 porn site on the planet... There lies the issue with that method.

Unless every content provider does that it is not going to work. And it's also a cat and mouse game just like piracy. The technology will always be ahead of whatever scheme they use to block content.

As a musician, I get somehow a taste of revenge from all that crowd that is freaking out, the same crowd told us to "adapt or die" 10 years ago. Well they now need to adapt or die, because ad revenue will not be a viable business model 3 years from now...

Publishers have the same problem musicians do: it's (a) ridiculously easy to publish now (text or music), (b) you're literally competing with every other publisher/musician in the entire world. There's a larger consumer pie, but a ridiculously larger producer pie. http://rocknerd.co.uk/2013/09/13/culture-is-not-about-aesthe...

> There's a larger consumer pie, but a ridiculously larger producer pie

No it's just that people don't want to pay for stuff on the internet, period. This is valid for all digital goods, music,books,movies,news and co. Whether there is competition or not it doesn't matter.

> it's (a) ridiculously easy to publish now (text or music),

producing =/= publishing

A published crap will still be crap. Producing something good takes effort and it's valid for all digital goods including the press. And since nobody's willing to pay for that work, more and more crap get published,which makes people want to buy less and less.

> No it's just that people don't want to pay for stuff on the internet, period. This is valid for all digital goods, music,books,movies,news and co. Whether there is competition or not it doesn't matter.

Hence why iTunes was a failure, let alone Netflix? Make it easy and the customers will come. (I was actually surprised that iTunes worked, and people were willing to pay as long as it was sufficiently convenient.) Just not enough for the massively greater creator pool, as talentless bozos like me can put music out there too.

iTunes was a success for Apple sure, not for artists. And if Apple wants to move to a Spotify buisness model there is a reason for that.

As for Netflix it's only really successful in the US.

> Make it easy and the customers will come.

So why aint you rich already ? smart guy.

> So why aint you rich already ? smart guy.

Downvote for facile argument and unnecessary insult.

Exactly. I spend way more on digital media than I did ten years ago. Games on GOG especially, some on steam (if there's no DRM-free version), digital music downloads from bandcamp, direct from artists and in some cases through resellers.

There's nothing about being on the internet that makes people not want to spend money. Some people are just cheapskates and will never buy your stuff and some people don't have economic resources to do so (for example students, etc). Chasing these people will just eat up your time. Focus on the paying customers.

Hulu basically blocks it's main content if you use an ad blocker.

Is there a way to mask the fact that you are using one?

I'm not actually sure who they check for it. I assume they have some JavaScript running on the page that looks to see if the resource was actually loaded? I just turned adblock off for that one site because I don't care enough and the ads aren't that bad.

> Well it's not like there is only 1 porn site on the planet... There lies the issue with that method.

How is that an issue? They get literally no revenue from theses users. I get there's some sort of worth of mouth marketing from theses users... but usually is the same with adblock so essentially it just mean more user that doesn't worth anything.

I can say I watched a lot of grey market content when I could a) not afford otherwise seeing it, and b) when there were nor reasonable offers like Netflix. Since there's Netflix in my country my grey market consumption has diminished to less than 10%. And 100% of that remaining content is content I can't get on Netflix.

The reality is advertising is a brainless way to refinance for content. That's one of the reasons people minimized buying DVD/Bluray, or watching tv (I am not even connected to public tv any more). Find a better way and people will pay.

Finding that way might be hard, harder than I think, but I don't think the whole text media industry will go down before they find a model that works.

> what about not serving the main content for ad block users? If you don't like them then don't serve them, it shouldn't be that hard.

Harder than you think. Ad blockers actively subvert attempts to detect them with code and filter updates. If ad blockers were easy to detect we would surely see more of that.

So I just started using ad blockers (uBlock Origin on Chrome, adblock + ghostery on Safari) because I was finally sick of the amount of extra bandwidth, CPU and just noise they are creating with this crap.

I've intentionally not used ad blockers for years, because I get that's how companies make money, but heaven's to betsy if they don't dig their own graves with the intrusive over-intensive crap these days.

My old tactic was to just not visit sites with offensive, intrusive or band-width heavy ads. These sites, bar some outliers, no longer exist. Every tech, current events and editorial site pulls down half the fucking internet to show me some words on a screen these days.

I just started using ad-blockers for similar reasons. I found an increasing number of sites (especially news sites) were becoming so obnoxious with the advertising that it was causing my browser to frequently freeze and/or crash.

I really don't mind a simple, static banner ad, but this crap has gotten out of control.

I started using adblocking software -years- ago, when an ad on a reputable, syndicated comics page (gocomics.com I think) minimized my browser, and popped up an ad to look like a system dialog telling me my computer was at risk. That was it for me.

Since then, uBlock occasionally gets disabled on Chrome because I don't even know, and it usually is just a few pageviews before an ad is so obnoxious that I notice and re-enable it. I don't understand how people without adblockers even use the web at this point.

I recently just hit my limit, too. The final straw was advertising videos that grabbed focus and refused to let it go. Worse, the videos were at the bottom of the page and would force my browser to scroll to those videos, refuse to yield focus until X seconds were played. Then, after I was able to scroll back to the top of the page to view the content I was after, the whole thing would start again as the next video played. AdBlock was installed after that.

I recently installed it at work due to offensive political advertising during our last elections (non-usa country)

This article makes an important point: ad-blocking is not just a means to remove annoying (and often disgusting) advertisements; it's also to prevent data being collected about you without any consent or oversight.

I'm not sure how successful it is in that regard. Just browser fingerprinting is enough to track most people; cookies and third party connections are not essential.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Fingerprinting

It prevents ad companies from fingerprinting you, you never make the connection to seedy-ad-company-X, you only make the connection to facebook/nyt/WaPo etc

You should avoid tracking pixels too, or downloading any 3rd party content (like CSS). You can use umatrix for this though.

Ok, this is new. Why exactly must we not download CSS?

3rd-party CSS. I.e., if the page includes CSS from an ad network, the network gets the request and can track it. Basically using CSS instead of a 1px tracking bug.

One of the many shitty, underhanded methods these companies use to track people without their knowledge or consent. I will shed no tears for these companies when they go bankrupt as people push back against their methods.

I understand now, but the idea of CSS in this is what threw me off. This is valid for any file that the computer makes a request for, if queries are attached to it.

It's an arms race. Blocking cookies currently works.

Is it possible to track someone without using cookies? Maybe. Do most of these advert sites make heavy use of cookies? Oh yes.

Don't forget the security perspective -- as ad networks are being abused for malware delivery more and more, ad-blocking is also a way to stay safe.

Not to mention all the fake "DOWNLOAD!!1" buttons that an ad-blocker removes, eliminating a large percentago of malware installations for less tech-savvy users.

I've had more friends/family request ad-blockers. This has become an even bigger issue with auto-playing video ads on mobile which both suck up bandwidth and randomly begin playing loud audio on your phone when it's otherwise silent. We're talking mainstream sites like Slate, Salon.com, Daily Beast, Bust.com, etc, all of which automatically played loud video ads on my girlfriend's phone. On Android, this necessitates switching to Firefox and using something like AdBlock Plus or uBlock since Google Chrome on Android doesn't even support plugins. I'm unsure if these ads are intentional auto-playing video ads or AdSense's broken "hover to expand" ads which are always triggered accidentally and are, for all intents and purposes, auto-playing video ads.

I was recently giving a screen-shared demo to a media company that makes the vast majority of their revenue from online ads. One of the execs saw the adblock extension button in the browser chrome, interrupted the demo, and proceeded to tell me how terrible I was. Needless to say we did not make the sale.

Lesson learned: When giving demos, open an incognito window since most plugins are disabled by default.

The next time tell him that you are finding flaws in adblock to help ad companies. If he asks you for more details tell that this is a support 1 yr service because you have a dedicated team constantly researching new adblock versions.

> proceeded to tell me how terrible I was

Because that's probably cutting into his paycheck ;)

I have a similar anecdote. I work for a company selling a recommendation platform to travel agencies, and the content we display is often similar in layout to regulars ads. It happens, from time to time, to demo a version of their own website to them, with the proper recommendation block injected (mostly to seek the client's validation on the look and feel). And, I recall having one of them congratulate us for the fast loading and clean display of their pages (on my ublock-running-browser). I didn't pick this up. Obviously, the original page was literally cluttered with ads..

Someone good at their job would have taken the opportunity to find out why you were using the ad blocker and considered the impact on their industry based off your response. It wasn't professional to have such a childish outburst during a meeting, and to interrupt at that. I would think it's possible you are better off in the long run not getting the business.

I wonder if the audience for ad-blocking software is also not that "valuable" to begin with (from an advertiser's perspective). These are more sophisticated people that don't fall for blinking warnings, fake browser UI and who don't tend to install stuff without meaning to.

Maybe they're losing the less tech-savvy folks too, as their "computer whiz" friends and family members grow tired of fixing yet another drive-by toolbar or ransomware install. Myself, when working on someone's computer, I now download Adblock as a first thing after a clean browser installation.

I now install this on other people's computers as well as ABP. http://unchecky.com/

Automatically unchecks most 'related/sponsored offers' in installers for software. Most of the adware that people install often tends to be a result of not reading the installer properly.

Some ads are presumably responsibly implemented and for decent products

And by some you mean nearly all. At least the ones that sustain the "important" parts of our Internet (Google, Facebook, news media, etc.)

Facebook forces some sanity into the form, but not into the content. As for the rest, no, most ads (especially on news media sites) are neither reasonably implemented nor for decent products. Products that are advertised are not the ones best for you, but the ones the company will make most money off.

If 1/3 people in certain countries use ad-blockers, I'd venture to guess that they are no exclusively without value. In fact, since they are probably more savvy than the rest, they might be better targets.

> blinking warnings, fake browser UI and who don't tend to install stuff without meaning to.

The majority of online ads are bland and don't use dishonest or obnoxious tactics. People just tend to notice the dishonest/obnoxious ads more.

Dishonest advertising is big business and even gets featured on Tech Crunch as "legitimate business":

http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/16/conduit-worth-1-4bn-acquire...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conduit_%28publisher_network_a...

Same way with piracy. Most people who are pirating content weren't a potential customer in the first place.

Seeing how a lot of browser/flash/java drivebys seem to come from ads, I also consider them good security practice these days. See for example the recent firefox exploit.

https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2015/08/06/firefox-exploit...

We need a better system than ads.

> We need a better system than ads.

We already have that, it's called a link with text or an image file with no scripting or plugin. But since there are 3 parties involved who don't trust each others (content providers,ad networks,advertisers) , it's not going to happen.

I've been thinking lately that websites should just do static ads. No ad networks, scripts, cookies, etc. Just the content of the ad (video, audio, text, images). Not only will they be harder to block and lead to a better experience for users they could possibly negotiate for higher rates since there would be no middle man.

That would lead to lower rates because you can't prove your impressions. No honor among thieves.

Flip it and host all your content on the ad servers? Or at least some important parts, such that blocking them would make the site unusable?

Of course someone could startup a sniffer built to do nothing but prove impressions.

I've worked with a few companies that have used log files as proof of impressions to get around ad blockers. Every few months I would have to do wrong and disgusting things to the log files until the numbers looked like what they wanted to show customers. They don't trust each other to be honest.

Without ad networks, pretty much only large and well-capitalized sites would be able to sell any ads at all.

If there is valuable enough ad space it wouldn't matter how large or well funded you are. The size of the site's audience is a factor but not the only one.

Still, some sites won't have a valuable enough space for ads. That's okay not every site should be able to get deals with ad companies. A good business shouldn't look like a get rich quick schema.

I disagree. To realistically sell ads directly to advertisers (or agencies) you have to be big enough to support a dedicated ad sales staff. And even if you have exceptionally valuable ad space, you have to be garnering enough impressions to make talking to you worth the advertiser's time. It would be impossible for many of the ad-supported websites and blogs I enjoy to earn dollar one from this approach.

That's clearly not true since in another comment here someone said they already do this and I doubt they're using a dedicated sales staff since they've mentioned dedicating time to it.

Regardless, it could soon be impossible to earn money with the other approach.

Selling ads directly is the best when you've got the time and energy to do it. That's what I do on my site and it does produce higher returns.

We also got rid of Adsense a few months ago as the ads were generally of lower quality and didn't match the market of our publication all of the time (retargeting, etc). We also use only images for ads, as we try to have them be of magazine quality.

I'm sure some people visiting the site use Adblock etc but most advertisers are happy with the traffic they receive that losing a few views doesn't seem to bother them.

> We need a better system than ads.

Complimentary editorial copy, corporate press releases masquerading as news stories, paid product placement, paid endorsements as part of the content ... Eh I'd rather stick with the existing "block known ad hosts and any graphic of X by Y pixel dimensions", easier to block.

It's ok! We have all that stuff too!

Seriously, the tech press went full-on "editorial wall? pfeh, so 20th century" fifteen years ago, and the rest of the press has followed. You're describing the present.

I started blocking ads about a year ago when some mainstream tech sites began to show ads that I felt make me unhappy, such as "The 10 signs of getting a heart attack/Alzheimer's/cancer", etc. Usually with a picture of someone in their 60's looking quite sad or disoriented. I find this kind of advertising very offensive and I'm sorry that I'm now also blocking all other kind of ads, too.

The irony is that Ghostery is reporting 14 trackers on the page as I read the article...

Ahh, the free market is great, until it totally isn't. I look forward to seeing what new revenue strategies the truly innovative companies will come up with. We've all been lulled into the complacency of cheap and easy ad dollars -- let's innovate instead.

true innovation isn't cheap, and sometimes it's cheaper to try warping the market instead of innovating. After all, money is like water - it flows through the path of least resistance.

Ad networks is also a pretty convenient to spread malware. see for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising

Maybe this study will prompt advertisers to consider why a third of the internet is blocking their ads?

Just kidding. They'll just get mad at blockers and continue to make their users' lives a living hell.

I use adblock, ghostery, several JS blacklists etc., uninstalled all Flash from all computers years ago, and still I regularly catch "funny calls" to strange IPs I don't even visit in Little Snitch.

Highly recommend this little utility. The logs make for unexpectedly interesting reading.

Looks like it's Apple only?

Glasswire, https://www.glasswire.com/ is a solid Windows alternative.

To ad sellers: We may be technical here, but we all have friends and families.

I just helped my all-but computer-phobic ex-wife with a computer task last night. She had ABP installed. I think my teenage son did it.

Reap it.

I actually wrote to the NYT about this some weeks back. In essence: feel free to block me, charge enough subscription to cover your needs, or go out of business. Or, display static ads that don't collect and forward information about me.

It just occurred to me that if adblocking is made illegal, then the next generation of adblocking software won't block ads, they'll block sites. "This site is known to use intrusive ads, which are illegal to block. Whitelist or Blacklist?"

If I remember correctly, ad blocking software overlays the ad with blank HTML right? So blocking ads doesn't actually reduce data usage, since the browser still downloads everything, Adblock just has to parse it and get rid of the junk.

I believe because of this download-then-parse model, webpages actually load slower. I remember an HN article on the front page about it.

Nonetheless, I still use Adblock. The sites worth supporting I normally pay money for in some way, such as premium on a forum.

> If I remember correctly, ad blocking software overlays the ad with blank HTML right?

Don't know why you're being downvoted, you're simply unsure about a (wrong) assumption and asking about it, which to me simply calls for a correction / explanation. Anyway, no, uBlock for example actually blocks http requests, based on huge community-maintained blacklists. Just try loading theverge.com :

- Without uBlock: 131 requests

- With uBlock: 37 requests

Thank you, I've been here for a long time, still a noob though. I figured if I wasn't sure there had to be others thinking the same thing.

The article alludes to this, but doesn't state it: let's be clear that by blocking ads, you're not just blocking annoying advertisements---you're blocking software, most of which spys on you. Some sites load megabytes of JavaScript.

Another perspective: for free software advocates, these simply must be blocked, because they're non-free.

I can’t actually remember when I began using ABP. I install it on all browser by default and I believe about a year ago have begun using Ghostery to block annoying beacons everywhere. Never had much success with it on my Google Nexus Tablet and because of it simply stopped surfing the web on tablets and smartphones altogether. However, since the release of Adblock Browser - big big kudos to the team for creating such a fantastic piece of software - I can resume browsing the web on my portable devices. I don’t mind relevant and unobtrusive ads. However, some sites simply have gone overboard with 30 plus beacons included and ads everywhere. I will never support such an aggressive approach to monetising a resource. Especially by those large publishers which believe they can do whatever they want on the web, simply because they're now not limited by physical space anymore, as they are with their print magazines.

If you're rooted download F-Droid (Open Source Play Store Alternative) and download 'AdAway'.

https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.adaway

Works a charm ;)

If you're not running a rooted device, uBlock works excellent in Firefox for Android. You get all the same filtering power in a mobile browser.

I've been using adblockers for a few years. Something happened at work, I had to reinstall a browser, and I only install addons as the need arises, so it takes awhile to get a new browser installation up to speed with the ten or so addons I eventually end up with.

Ad blocker was first, and almost immediate. To paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke, "My God, it's full of ads!"

Not to mention the risk to my employer by allowing ads across the firewall.

EDIT: And there's an opportunity for people who want to sell into the enterprise. Businesses should be blocking ads at the firewall. My employer blocks egregiously non-work related sites, but they don't yet seem to care about ads riding in on allowed sites. I expect that to change.

Maybe ad blocking and the ensuing evisceration of the "free but agree to view ads tailored to you via the deep profiling of your identity using information you would ordinarily presume to be private" business model will be good for us (good for privacy)

What is the best ad blocking plugin for Chrome nowadays?

I've found ublock to be the best for both chrome and firefox. Take up much less cpu than adblockplus.

I suppose "best" is subjective, but I'm using "uBlock Origin", "Flashcontrol", and "HTTPS Everywhere" together and am satisfied.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa...

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/flashcontrol/mfidm...

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/https-everywhere/g...

Is there a reason for using flashcontrol over simply setting the plugin to click to play?

Wasn't aware that was built into Chrome until just now. I'll give that a try and see if my experience is the same. Thanks.

I tried the native implementation for a day, but found that it doesn't handle enabling content selectively as gracefully as the extension.

Cheers!

If you feel up to it, I still personally recommend a hosts file. Extremely low overhead, and it blocks all forms of malicious content from ad endpoints.

I use: http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

Whoa, that's intense. Definitely going to try this out when my new laptop arrives! Thanks!

I've found some content won't appear/work if ads are blocked. So in some cases I temporarily whitelist a site in AdBlock or Ghostery. With a HOSTS file, isn't that sort of thing a lot more painful?

(I used to use the HOSTS method but stopped for that reason.)

This has yet to affect me to the point of me actually noticing that anything was broken. The worst I'll see is a lot of extraneous whitespace on a webpage where an ad would have been.

That said, frankly, if a web site won't work properly because it can't load content from an ad network, then it's probably not a site I'd want to visit and pull information from.

I've been using a different one (http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.txt), which is roughly the same size. However, their entries seem quite different (only 1921 common domains out of 11356+13586 total). Maybe they should be merged.

It would be very interesting to perform an analysis of the differences and merge them, I agree.

They work well, but the only problem is I've found is they can have a lot of false-positives.

Stuff like redirects that sites use to track links can get blocked and you can't follow links on a page, etc.

I recommend you check out StevenBlack's Amalgamated hosts file: https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

  Currently the hosts files from the following locations are amalgamated:
    MVPs.org Hosts file at http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm, updated monthly, or thereabouts.
    Dan Pollock at http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ updated regularly.
    Malware Domain List at http://www.malwaredomainlist.com/, updated regularly.
    Peter Lowe at http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/, updated regularly.
    hpHosts at http://hosts-file.net/, updated regularly
    My own small list in raw form here.

uBlock Origin

I use uBlock Origin and Ghostery.

Does uBlock have a mechanism for allowing non-intrusive ads in?

I resisted ad-blockers for years because I believe in giving up my eyeballs to ads for free content, but finally gave up when my son started downloading minecraft mods, and he'd have trouble discerning between real download links and ads which installed malware. So I really don't mind some basic advertising, I just don't want (subjectively) "obnoxious" ads (and, yeah, the subjective part makes it hard).

I see that uBlock allows you to configure lists - are there lists that only contain the worst violators? (Forgive my ignorance, as I said I'm new to ad-blockers as I resisted for so long).

uBlock's creator has a pretty strong stance against premade whitelists from what I've seen (the original version is currently called 'UblockOrigin' by gorhil), so there's no default allow function. You can of course allow ads for specific sites by clicking on the icon and then clicking the power button.

With ad-network malware from major news sites, it is actually dangerous for your nontechnical friends and relatives not to run an ad-blocker.

"Ad blockers are safe sex for the Internet."

"You could sleep with lots of people and demand their test results every time ... or you could just use a condom. Same with ad blockers."

Of course there's widespread use. When you put in 2-4 video ads with sounds per page and clog up my browser, you'd be out of your mind to think I'm not going to take steps to stop this assault on my senses.

I don't see how advertisers don't get this. Surely they are not entitled to my eyes and ears.

The ad companies have, IMO, brought it on themselves.

Flash ads, Java ads, ads with auto-playing sound, popups that interupt the UX, insane analytics deliverables that can increase total page payload and runtime by multiples of the original page size - they are the problem.

I work for a company that makes much of its revenue off of advertising, so this issue is near-and-dear to my heart. As ad blocking has increased in popularity, the networks' response is to impose even more intrusive, resource-intensive, user-hostile requirements on their ad deliverables, and it's only been getting worse. Browsing ad-supported sites is so painful these days because the advertising networks are no longer a relatively minimal ride-along with the parent page - they're practically their own webapp that gets injected along with the host content. Instrumentation shows payload times 4-5x larger than the host page, and total load times can be 10-20x greater than just the host page.

The problem is that ad networks don't feel the pain of increased payload sizes, user-hostile deliverables, degraded UX, and user frustration. There is no feedback mechanism with which to economically punish the bad ads and reward the good ads. The lifetime of an ad unit is so relatively short that there's no incentive to develop a quality deliverable, or to fix problems unless a publisher's development team notices a specific unit and can call out specific problems with it (which generally only happens when the ad is doing something like, I dunno, crashing the entire tab).

I have exactly zero sympathy for the advertising industry's AdBlock problem - it's a problem they've wrought of their own doing. If you want to fix it, there has to be a hard focus on ads that don't actively make it harder for users to get and ingest publishers' content. Reduce deliverable sizes, get rid of long transitive dependency chains (scripts loading scripts loading scripts loading scripts is awful), get rid of stuff that is constantly causing network overhead (viewability trackers are easily the worst offenders here), aggressively police against flash/java ads, police against ads that autoplay audio, ban ads that pre-load video (I have instrumentation on ads which load thirty megabytes of video before the user ever interacts with them), minimize reflows and DOM manipulation - tl;dr, stop being so incredibly user hostile.

Ads are, as far as users are concerned, malware that is painful enough that they'll seek out ways to avoid it rather than just tolerating it. That's the ad networks' problem, and nobody else's.

Wow, only something like 10 to 20% in the US ? For the first Internet nation of the world, I was expecting better.

I expected much less, 10% is great!

I don't want to get into arguing about adblocking too much, but it is notable that all studies, including this one, about adblock reach are from companies who have a vested interest in growing ad blocking's reach... yet the press gobbles it up.

When accessing an ad-supported website, there is an implied agreement to not automatically block ads. Using AdBlock is an immoral violation of this implied agreement.

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