Ad industry threatens Firefox users with more ads if Mozilla moves on tracking
computerworld.com
computerworld.com
> Without third-party cookies, they will not be able to participate in the existing industry system for privacy protection.
Their privacy is still protected, but they can't participate in the privacy protection system! Oh noes!
> They will see an increase in the irrelevant spam advertising served to them
So you're telling me that when you serve ads for "RightWingNews.com, LiberalOasis.com, MotherhoodWTF.com, and SuburbanDaddy.com [and] thousands of small businesses" there's no possible way to find relevant ads without tracking the user?
They will find a way to make it really hard to block that stuff based on generic rules or by blocking the servers that serve the ads.
I could say that I actually do whitelist sites to display ads, but we both know that I'm in the minority there, and beside the point.
Then me running AdBlock is not an issue, as the ads will be displayed as part of that requirement. There are numerous sites that do this already.
However, if the site chooses to render the site regardless of the capabilities of my browser, I can assume it's acceptable. Just as radio stations allow me the ability to change stations when commercials come on, or I can mute the TV and not watch the ads, requiring me to consume the advertising is silly.
And yes, I know what you are saying. Blah blah blah, it's what they intend the price to be and all that jazz. But at the end of the day, if I request something from you, and you give it to me, you can't be upset if I choose to read only part of it.
Hell, I counter it's more immoral to put demands on me before I agree to it. You say it's the price of the content? Well, my counter-offer is AdBlock. Sites are free to disagree with this counter-offer. Unless bargaining is off the table.
Should I be ashamed of myself for occasionally using lynx too?
> if everyone did this half the sites you ad-block wouldn't exist.
I'm not worried about that. I pay when given the opportunity for content on the web that I regularly enjoy.
> You're not participating in a fair transaction.
You seem to think that it's unfair that some people are able to negotiate a lower price than others.
You can rationalize it all you want but if everyone did what you propose we do, everything would be far more expensive.
The content providers.
The advertisers.
Me.
I'm ad tolerant; I don't run ad-blockers. This means I get to see all ads. And some of them a really awful. I feel sorry for content creators having to have those on their sites. A 30 minute YouTube video with a 5 minute advert? Those yelling smileys or buzzing mosquitoes? (I politely emails the site owner; I nearly installed ad-block) The really slow loading page-covering ad delaying access to the actual content?
I fully understand why people block ads.
I don't understand why advertisers ever thought that "Annoy the hell out of anyone seeing this advert" was the best way to go.
You're doing the right thing by not installing adblock, but really you should vote with your feet, by just not visiting those sites. As soon as you see ads that annoy you - go away. That's the right thing to do, because then you're not consuming the content. You're always free to consume content or not, but if you do, you should adhere to the rules that the owner of that content set - namely that you also view this ad.
That's a fair point, to some extent.
It's no different than pirating stuff
Off the top of my head...
Piracy is illegal, while not watching ads isn't.
In general, when something is sold for a price it's normal to pay so you can buy it, while when ads are displayed in other media there's no expectation that people must stop and look at them and the advertiser knew that up-front.
Consuming pirated content is a security risk if you do the "wrong" thing, while displaying on-line ads is a security risk if you do the "right" thing.
People can and do detect my use of adblock and either ask me to disable it for their site, subscribe to their service, or decide not to serve me the data.
I have every write to request data from you while also instructing my browser not to request ads. You have every right to decide not to serve me any data. Until or unless I actually infringe your copyright, or enter into an agreement to see your ads and then renege, this is not equivalent to piracy.
Speaking as someone who buys a fair bit of advertising, there are thousands of sites in the inventory of most RTB sellers which I'll just skip over unless their inventory is really cheap, because it's very hard to figure out a single product that most of the site's readership would use.
(Example site - Photobucket. What ads would obviously make money on there?)
Also, for quite a few sites where the core demographic does have some obvious interests, there aren't that many well-paying advertisers for that demo. Retargeting and similar tracking-based advertising systems help fill in the gaps when the core advertisers aren't buying all the inventory.
> "They'll see untargeted ads, which will look like spam. We have to get this information to them somehow."
Oh really, you have to get this information to me? Seriously? I didn't ask for it, I have no desire for it, no you don't have to. You want to, because someone is paying you to do so. Yet another case of someone thinking they have a right to a business model. No you don't. If it fails it fails. Find something to sell that people want (or at least don't despise enough to actively put you out of business).
Or small businesses will have to bring their revenue in by other means, such as charging real money for valuable content and services, or simply running ads themselves, targeted at their own viewers' likely interests, without relying on third party middlemen. Either of those outcomes sucks for the middlemen, but not so much for anyone else.
Fortunately for the advertisers and the user-as-product platform services, micropayments are mostly still wishful thinking, so they're not likely to see this happen on a wide scale in the immediate future. But if they think small -- or even large -- businesses on the web can only survive by using their ad networks, sooner or later they're going to get a rude awakening about the sustainability of their business model.
I imagine there will be some last gasp effort to legislate that people can't view sites without viewing the ads, shortly before the ad networks finally retreat into obscurity, but that's so user-hostile that I don't see it gaining much traction.
In the meantime, the first team who manage to gain traction with a social network that is totally user-focused and charges a small annual fee for basic features and a few more small fees for top-ups is probably going to be very rich. And for the smaller sites, anyone with enough traffic visiting say a blog to make real money via the ad networks is probably also in a position to negotiate a direct ad deal and cut out the middleman for better returns.
It actually also sucks for the businesses themselves, at least in my case. I'd much rather spend my time creating valuable content for everyone than creating valuable content for a few who pay me.
Of course there are alternatives I can try, I can keep content free and solicit donations, I can create various merchandise or I can directly sell advertising space hosted on my own site. All these options essentially take time away from creating content in the first place. My fear is that I'll be too busy trying to make money to make good content. Ad networks at least have the benefit of a "fire and forget" and having someone manage that whole aspect of my business, leaving me to work on content.
I totally get the whole point of no tracking, I'm not even really against it. I'm just trying to point out that it's not just the big business ad networks that will be affected here.
Whatever we might ideally like as site creators, I think the reality is that small-scale, targeted-ad funding for web sites, where we create something like a personal blog or a site with some articles and then slap something like Google Ads on them to cover the hosting costs, isn't going to be a sustainable model.
Instead, I think sites like that are either going to be done for love (as they always used to be), or done for profit (and run as a business, including marketing and advertising arrangements or some other revenue stream), or perhaps hosted on some sort of aggregator site that does have critical mass to run a cost-effective ad program even if its individual contributors wouldn't (which might be a business, or might simply be a bunch of like-minded individuals clubbing together to split their hosting costs).
There might even be some sort of positive cultural shift over time, where people stop wanting everything for free and start to realise that you get what you pay for and good sites are worth supporting. I don't expect that many people are going to actively donate to sites any time soon, but then you only need a few who do to pay an annual hosting bill for a low traffic personal site.
So while I do see your point and understand your concern, I don't think we're talking about the fall of the Internet here. Little guys like you and me will keep our sites running one way or another and still spend our time on content we think is worthwhile.
One minor point here - speaking as both an advertising guy and someone who runs content-based websites, this is much harder than it may appear. I qualify as at least a professional if not an expert in making money off website space, and I still frequently find it difficult to beat (intelligently set up) Google Adsense for raw CPM.
For someone with no experience or interest in making money directly off advertising space, it'll be much harder, and I'd expect most people trying this to take a pretty significant revenue loss in the short term. That may reverse itself in the long term - there are big advantages to running your own ads if you're prepared to put the time in - but the initial income slump will be painful.
Fair enough, but I think the big question is absolute rather than relative: do you still make enough handling ads directly to be financially viable?
For someone with no experience or interest in making money directly off advertising space, it'll be much harder, and I'd expect most people trying this to take a pretty significant revenue loss in the short term.
I'm genuinely curious about how many sites these days are small enough that they're basically amateur operations, yet make significant revenues from the ad networks (which is obviously a prerequisite for making significant revenue losses if they have to move to another funding model).
I just don't see it. Ad revenues have been falling like a stone since forever, so these days low-traffic personal sites are lucky to even cover their hosting costs, never mind making any real money. Aren't most sites with enough traffic to make serious money via the ad networks effectively professional sites being run as businesses already?
That may reverse itself in the long term - there are big advantages to running your own ads if you're prepared to put the time in - but the initial income slump will be painful.
I think that's the key thing, really. This is a long game, and fear of change because it will be awkward for some people in the short term generally leads to stagnation and never discovering ways of doing things that might be better for (almost) everyone after even a brief period of adjustment.
effectively professional sites being run as businesses already
The key issue here is that "professional" != "expert affiliate marketer" or "direct ad salesman". It's possible to be a very professional journalist who's extremely good at writing compelling content and sharing it online, and have not a goddamn clue about how to run a successful ad campaign, or how to sell advertising space to multinationals. This is very non-obvious stuff that takes a lot of time, energy and money to learn, and most people running websites - professional or amateur - do not know.
I don't doubt it, I just question how many of those people are doing that. How many top notch professional journalists are really trying to make money from their writing by running their own independent site funded by the likes of Google Ads? I'm a pretty avid surfer and have quite a diverse range of hobbies and professional interests, and I honestly can't think of a single site I've visited any time recently, in either a personal or professional capacity, that would fall into that category. Obviously I might be an outlier, but it does seem unlikely in this case.
Are you sure that on all of the surfing sites you've visited, there's at least one person who has the very specific and rare skills I've mentioned? I'd be extremely surprised if that was the case.
And if they don't have those skills, and the ad networks go away or divide their revenues by three, to quote the meme, they're going to have a bad time.
> They'll see untargeted ads, which will look like spam
Go die in a thousand fucking fires, people working in advertising/marketing[0].
[0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo
(edit: Jeez, hyperbole detectors seem to have a calibration problem today.)
And no, you cannot divorce responsibilities like that. That’s just dumb. How can you even?! How is that argumentation even possible?!
You can’t have it both ways.
You do know that Google is firmly part of that advertising industry? That’s how they make their money.
Did you even read the article? The IAB is complaining about Mozilla. You know who’s a member of the IAB? Fucking Google!
To explain it absolutely sober: There are people who actually work in advertising and marketing. Their job, more often than not, is selling something to people that they don't need. That's the kind of people I'm attacking and that should be easy to see from the video I linked.
Google has an advertising division, but largely, they supply services to advertisers. They are as responsible for advertisements they run as TV Channels are for the ads they run during commercial breaks.
Now, taking that claim further and saying we should also include farmers is hyperbole to highlight the fact that your argument is a red herring. But again - I thought we were just having a laugh here.
Who do you think wants targeting to work? Advertisers buy targeting services – but the ones selling them are companies like Google. That’s what they do.
To want to separate that is completely crazy.
You know, why are we even having this discussion? You know who complained about Mozilla here? Why, yes, it’s the IAB and one of their members is – you guessed it – Google. This is one of the lobby organizations Google is part of.
Why?
That's a big assumption. Someone also has to sell the things that people do need, or more generally the things that people would genuinely value and have an interest in buying if they knew about them. Advertising done responsibly serves a useful purpose for all concerned. The problem is that a lot of on-line advertising is not done responsibly, and that's why people find it intrusive and annoying and creepy and all those other negative connotations.
Also, marketing and advertising are not the same thing.
I thought it was enough to qualify it with "more often than not".
> Someone also has to sell the things that people do need
I think I can justly say that I purchase far more things that weren't advertised to me than those that were. The 'someone' in this equation is, imho, the people who actually produce stuff.
> Advertising done responsibly serves a useful purpose for all concerned.
Absolutely agree. My point isn't that it's impossible, just that it is rare. So rare, that I think the fury against the people who don't handle it responsibly is justified.
> Also, marketing and advertising are not the same thing.
Borrowed that generalization from Mr. Hicks.
Disagrement - okay - but calling for people to be killed - not okay, especially not over over something as utterly inconsequential as ads on a damn website. Remember that you just committed a very serious criminal offense with your post. I'm not sure how this reflects on the compony you work for as per your profile.
Oh and your remark on my company is funny. I leave it to everybody with more than a 1 second attention span to figure out why. Feel free to talk to HR.
Utterly tasteless? Sure. Illegal? Nah.
NB: Since you're Dutch, this site is relevant and shocking: http://www.doodsbedreiging.nl/
Untargeted ads would be a bit less... boring...
> "The Internet was created on the foundations of advertising," said Jaffe.
The fact is though, and I'm surprised to find that I must be the only HN regular who finds himself working in the world of marketing and advertising, that a hell of a lot of the internet and people working on making it better, not just worse, is paid for by advertising money.
The vitriol that's on display from everybody on this thread is, in a big way, as myopic and ignorant and full of self-righteousness as the guy they're calling names (who I agree is all of the above, yes).
Linux is barely 20 years old, the Internet has been around for decades before that. In recent years, it seems like more and more people are using ‘Linux’ in a context where they actually mean ‘Unix’. Just like the Internet and the web are not the same, these distinctions matter.
“ I must be the only HN regular who finds himself working in the world of marketing and advertising”
Nope, there are plenty of us here.
Ads are very important to the web as it exists, but to claim anything foundational is just ignorant. Formative could be argued, though.
Carry on, Mozilla!
If this is truly the case then Firefox users will notice and either turn the third party cookies back on or complain/switch to chrome. If the effect is that big, and people want to see the targeted ads, what do the ad networks stand to lose?
Firefox is making a right move, there is now a distinctive conscious choice you can make: Firefox, privacy by default. Chrome and IE can never counter that (because of their affiliations with ad networks). Maybe its not the biggest reason to use a browser, but it's a big one and it enforces Firefox's position in the market.
It's less about the actual ad networks. It's more that the sites who display ads that are better targeted and have a higher click through rate can charge more money for them and run fewer of those specific ads as a consequence. Businesses that are able to better target ads at people who might actually be in the market based on recent browsing behavior can spend their advertising money on reaching a higher quality audience. The alternative is that you get a spray of all kinds of ads that have no relevance.
and setting the network.cookie.cookieBehavior value to 1 (0 is the default)
You can also try setting network.cookie.thirdparty.sessionOnly to 1 to allow third party cookies during the session, but then delete them afterwards
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Cookies_Preferences_in...
network.http.sendRefererHeader 1
[0] http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.http.sendRefererHeader
This kind of privacy improvements actually make me want to donate to Mozilla to continue their efforts.
I don't think the option is there on their mobile browsers either - it didn't exist on Android when I last looked, and definitely wasn't there on iOS either.
That’s not the issue here. This is about defaults. No one cares about some obscure preference. It’s irrelevant.
Indeed, and like the article points out, the ANA and IBA just haven't been paying attention. From the article: “By default, Safari blocks third-party cookies, and has since its 2003 debut. The iOS version of Safari has done the same since its 2007 inception.”
By my calculations, there are a lot more devices running Safari than there are running Firefox:
There are 1.25 billion desktops and notebooks in use. According to NetApps Market Share, 17.3% of those use Firefox (216 million), 5.42% use Safari (68 million). There are 400 million iOS devices, all of those have Safari. So Safari is installed on twice as many computing devices than Firefox is. Now, total time spent browsing on desktops vs mobile is not equal, but it's getting there, especially as tablets become dominant.
This conclusion is reached by the author of the article, as well: “In the last 12 months, mobile's share of all browser usage has almost doubled, climbing from 7.2% to 13.2%. At that pace, mobile browsing will account for 20% of the total by the end of April 2014.”
"we will lose the opportunity to monitor and protect our privacy" Really now!!! So my privacy is best served by sharing all my data? This is so Orwellian. Noam Chomsky should have something to say on this :)
How exactly will blocking 3rd party cookies stop us protecting our privacy?
I could understand if they said something like "it will stop targeted ads", but that is just clearly bullshit
I'm still really not sure why my requesting information from a web server should leak any information about me beyond an IP address.
Me saying "Really, I only leave ads on to give a smidgen of money to the content provider; I'd much rather make micro-payments direct" is interpreted as me being an obscure hard-line communist.
I genuinely feel lost when listening to advertisers
If that is the case, then people will eventually stop using Firefox and sites will continue to put annoying popups that confusingly say 'We use cookies, do you agree?"
However I doubt that is what users would prefer. I think they would prefer less privacy invading advertisements and more contextually relevant ones.
It seems like the explicit purpose of those retargeting ads is to distract me from what I'm currently trying to concentrate on, by reminding me of something I was doing previously. That's not something I want, and in fact I find it quite intrusive.
Say I google "laser pen". Suddenly, I get ads about lasers! Cool!
Then I buy one of these laser pens. The ads have done their job. Lucky them.
But now that I've bought a laser pen, I no longer need to be shown ads for them - I won't buy another one, so for God's sake, stop showing me ads for them! Learn to know when an ad has served its purpose and move on.
I did a search for "injury lawyer" a while ago, I swear it was six months before I stopped seeing ambulance-chaser adverts on every damn website I visited...
I find out about new (tech) things by reading tech sites, which probably means I'm a sucker for advertorial, but at least I'm going out looking for info rather than having it shoved into my face.
I laughed so hard at this one.
Great move by the Firefox team. It made me donate for their cause.
While I like the idea of restricting third party cookies, I can understand the advertising businesses argument. They need to know what you want, so you can click on the ad, thereby providing a small amount of revenue to both website and advertiser.
I'm not sure why Mozilla would care about any business arrangement between some websites and advertisers.
After all, public should be educated about ads.
OH THE HORROR!
Better sense would have prevailed if you'd asked the choice been given to Firefox users to allow third party cookies if they wanted it.But no, you'd rather lash out on Mozilla. Good job - the two of you ad presidents! :)
The gist of this new behavior is a change from Allow All Cookies to Allow Cookies Only From Visited Domains. This is unlike Block All Third-Party Cookies option that existed in both Firefox and Chrome in the way that third party cookie is still accepted but only if user ever visited that "third-party" website before.
The behavior may be less strict than Block All Third-Party Cookies option and probably won't make much difference for Facebook or Google's tracking cookies (if you use them). But being the new default option means smaller players going to take a direct hit. Which is good.