Adblock Plus: the tiny plugin threatening the internet's business model | Hacker News Reader

Adblock Plus: the tiny plugin threatening the internet's business model

theguardian.com

26 pointsjonathansizz57 comments

Frankly, I hate advertising -- ALL advertising, not just web advertising -- and want the advertising industry to die in a fire. I recognize this is a bit controversial, especially with Americans (who seem unable to conceive of content industries that can exist in the absence of advertising: the BBC and the entire book publishing industry apparently exist in a cognitive blind spot), but advertising is mostly oriented around selling us stuff we don't want or need, and as such it shares many characteristics with spam; it's insidious, intrusive, tries to steal your attention, and works by instilling uncertainty and self-doubt.

Yes, 90% of the web would die without advertising -- but I think we'd be better off with just the 10% left over, because it'd be the best 10% (the stuff that has a viable business model that works without advertising).

"Yes, 90% of the web would die without advertising"

I doubt that very much. I think it would be more accurate to say that 90% of the web would change without advertising revenue. People will still want social networks; they will still get social networks, and it is likely that those social networks will be more distributed as the money for big, centralized services will be gone. News will still be distributed, some behind paywalls, much not behind paywalls. Search engines will still exist, some charging a fee, some run by their users (imagine a distributed web search system i.e. a P2P network of people who index the web and respond to searches made by other users).

> and the entire book publishing industry apparently exist in a cognitive blind spot

Books have tried it, and ebooks may well have ads at some point. Luckily, the experiment for print books failed.

I wonder how you'd react if someone approached you with a deal to mention a product X times in a book? (I imagine it would be a colourful and robust response!)

I ask because Fay Wheldon did this for Bvlgari.

http://www.kottke.org/03/04/advertising-in-books

> In September 2001 the novelist Fay Weldon wrote what was, certainly at the time, the world's first sponsored novel. Entitled The Bulgari Connection, it was, you guessed it, sponsored by the jewel house, Bulgari. According to this article in the Guardian, Weldon was required to mention the name of Bulgari at least 12 times. It was originally intended as a private venture, but was then released for commercial publication. Nevertheless, fairly scary stuff though it is, the fact that this was a year and a half ago and doesn't seem to have spawned hundreds of similarly-sponsored books gives at least some hope that this won't be a trend throughout the publishing industry...

Salon has a nice piece about it. (http://www.salon.com/2001/09/05/bulgari/)

War time penguins had ads, at the end of the book.

http://www.nevillehobson.com/2010/08/22/are-ads-in-books-suc...

Here's an article about tobacco advertising that shows glossy inserts in Kurt Vonnegut books.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/books/review/Collins-t.htm...

Yes, but. Having a non-offensive business model guarantees nothing about the quality of the services provided -- they are orthogonal concerns. I would be very happy to pay for what I like, rather than be subjected to the grotesqueries of advertisers (still less to be packaged up and sold on like a shitty mortgage), but a lot of good would be lost in that 90%.

I don't think you really hate advertising as much as you say.

You get to use tons and tons of great sites without paying money, because the good people of ADVERT_CO paid for your attention.

Advertising gives you something you want, so you pay attention to something you don't want. But unless you want to pay a subscription fee to every site you use, it's not a bad deal at all.

> But unless you want to pay a subscription fee to every site you use, it's not a bad deal at all.

There are websites out there that do not rely on ads and do not require a paid subscription to be used (I built one, a CSE).

Yup. Me too. That's the principle I run on.

How do they stay in business? And, what is a CSE?

> How do they stay in business?

Make users happy, provide useful content, help them save time and make informed choices when purchasing. Has worked for 14 years so far.

> what is a CSE?

Comparison Shopping Engine.

So, they get a get money for sales? A percentage or something? Genuinely curious.

EDIT: I see you've answered this question above.

When I'm doing serious comparison shopping, I use a subscription site. I feel better about the reduced incentive to inflate recommendations.

Although the subscription site does make mistakes, it's usually in the durability side of things (they can't test a new product for three years and have the results by April).

The comparison shopping sites are quite nice once I know what I'm looking for, however.

How do you make money from your site?

CPC and CPO agreements with the merchants... I.e. the user visits the merchant from the site (sometimes buys something) and we get paid for that.

The people of ADVERT_CO work hard to distract and confuse my attention such that I overpay for the products they push. For every ad-supported site out there, I'd be better off by directly paying them money for their service. This is basic economics, if it weren't true then ADVERT_CO would be out of business.

The concept of advertising does not require that the ad viewer "overpay" for the product of the advertiser. It only requires that in the long run, the average additional revenue for the company is greater than the average cost of the ad.

If Alice spends $1 to show an ad to Bob, who then spends $2 on $product (which has 0 marginal cost to Alice), which is so wonderful that Bob obtains $3 of value from it, everyone is a winner.

Lots of ads try to convince the viewer to spend money on something not in their best interest, but it is not inherent to the vehicle of advertising that this be so.

You assume that Alice is the sole provider of the product, which is by and large false. In practice Alice shows an ad to Bob at the $2 price point, while Claire and Darcy have the same product for $0.5. Furthermore, Alice creates an entire marketing literature designed to obfuscate the fact that Claire and Darcy products are the exact same product, at times produced by the exact same manufacturing plant. Bob doesn't have enough time to cut through the bullshit, so never learns about Claire or Darcy, and ends up overpaying $1.50, which is then split $.50 to the marketing department of Alice, $.50 to ADVERT_CO and $.50 to Alice's shareholders.

PS. The "value" that B derives from the product is not quantifiable within the orthodox economic framework, as "value" is an arbitrary number that can only be determined by a buyer meeting a seller's price in a competitive market.

Alice may well be the sole provider of the product. This is especially true in the realm of products with zero marginal costs.

Even if we assume she is not, and that a fungible product is available from other vendors, the fact that Bob has not yet purchased it, even though it offers more value to him than it is reasonable to assume that Bob may go on not knowing about it indefinitely. (If not, why hasn't he purchased it yet?)

If Alice pays for an ad, Bob buys her product and then derives more value from it than it costs, he is still better off than he was before, even if he could have bought a substitute for a lower price.

The value (or utility) Bob derives from the product may not be quantifiable precisely, but it is certainly possible to quantify in approximate terms, and this practice is very common in Economics literature. Price paid in a competitive market is not the only way to quantify utility. Indeed, some of my undergraduate economics courses were concerned very largely with how to estimate the value (or, if you like, the aggregate provided utility) of resources for which no markets exist.

It appears that we are in agreement that Bob is overpaying. The point in contention seems to be whether Bob is "better off" than he was before the purchase. I am unpersuaded by the circular argument "Bob made the purchase, therefore he is better off, otherwise he would have not made it". The whole point of ads is to confuse Bob into making the wrong decisions, and given the size of the ads industry, it's obviously working.

> But unless you want to pay a subscription fee to every site you use, it's not a bad deal at all.

Considering how little money sites get per advert view, (not even whole pennies IME,) I'd happily just pay them double the money not to advertise to me. Remove all the ads, all the associated tracking shit - keep the prices per view at double advertising sort of prices. Yeah, I'd pay. Happily.

What we really need is a way to do secure efficient micro-transactions - I don't want to be having to enter my card number every time I view a page. Or have some sort of trusted intermediary so we can tally up the pageviews and pay everyone appropriately at the end of the month. But the no-advertising model needn't be a bad thing.

I think your point is interesting, but I'm not sure I agree about all advertising. I think it can be useful in some cases, say IKEA open a new store near you (and you were already planning to renovate your home), you would find out a lot quicker if they had advertising on billboards around town or in newspapers, than if you slowly found out by word of mouth.

There is a difference between pure advertising and informative advertising. While I'm completely against the former, I support the latter, but in a severely limited format (i.e. such ads can appear only on special billboards, e.g. one for concerts, one for art exhibitions, one for new restaurant openings; that people can only see on purpose (not just by driving by), and without any extra information (i.e. without semi-naked women enticing you to "need" the product)).

No one seems to agree with you. Everyone wants online and mobile content for free, and very few care how it happens. So either someone else pays for it (advertisers) or those people become the product (selling their data to marketers). I don't see that attitude ever changing, but I do anticipate traditional approaches to paying for content getting more intrusive or slowly disappearing in favor of other models.

I don't recall a vote.

Please read more carefully before down voting.

My point is that the general public does not agree with the idea that all advertising should disappear. They just want something for free and don't care how they get it. Apparently this idea was a little too controversial.

There is a HUGE controversy about Adblock plus. One blogger uncovered some of their business methods. They have Mafia like structures and extort businesses. Unfortunately it's only in German and I have yet to find an English site report about it.

Main article (very detailed):

http://www.mobilegeeks.de/adblock-plus-undercover-einblicke-...

They've been trying to cover up their methods and simply lied about it. Stay away from Adblock Plus.

Some shorter article:

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Adblock-Plus-Weitere-...

Use Adblock instead. Adblock Plus is another product entirely, unrelated despite the name trading on the popularity of Adblock.

Yes, they are separate, but the history of the names is complicated. See "why are the names so similar?" on https://getadblock.com/adblock-is-not-adblock-plus

Alright, that's enough, I don't trust these guys to tell me which ads should be blocked and which shouldn't. Uninstalled.

Thanks, that first link is awesome! Well, at least if you can look past the boatload of sarcasm :/

Is there an alternative?

I use "Adblock Edge" as an alternative. It's basically a fork of adblock plus but without the "acceptable ads" feature.

I never appreciated the difference or history of the Adblock and Adblock Plus plugins. I'm currently removing ABP from all my desktops and laptops in favour of Adblock Edge. Thanks.

To Adblock? I use a system level HTTP proxy (Glimmerblocker [1] on OS X, Privoxy elsewhere [2]) because I don't want to encounter ads in e.g. my RSS reader.

To an advertising-based business model? Unclear.

[1] http://glimmerblocker.org [2] http://www.privoxy.org

MVP hosts file blocks ads on Windows machines by editing the hosts file. No 3rd party software needed. http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm

Seems like it should work on other OSs too, actually. Thanks for the link.

The problem / article is about ADBLOCK PLUS - not with the normal Adblock. Two different beasts.

I've been happily using Adblock Edge (a fork of ABP without the acceptable ads feature): https://addons.mozilla.org/En-us/firefox/addon/adblock-edge/

I allow ads on sites I support and respect, and everyone else gets blocked. I'd rather do that myself than have ABP decide that for me.

Unfortunately ABE is not available for Chrome (see https://bitbucket.org/adstomper/adblockedge/issue/23/adblock...), so I still use ABP on Chrome. Is there an alternative out there yet?

Yes. AdBlock (https://getadblock.com) is actually the most popular extension on Chrome, more than Adblock Plus. It blocks solely based on your filter subscriptions and custom rules and is funded solely by usrs.

https://getadblock.com/adblock-is-not-adblock-plus

On OS X there's GlimmerBlocker, which is hugely superior to AdBlock Pro or Edge.

[1] http://glimmerblocker.org

Here's the problem...anything that can be done, will be done. And ads can be blocked online. It's just reality. Like digital music will be copied and secret government problems will be leaked and embarrassing pictures of politicians will surface online.

It doesn't matter what you want to happen. It's just going to.

So we, as people who profit from the web, need to think about structuring our businesses in such a way that the inevitable doesn't kill our work.

(FWIW, Adblock's business model is apparently extortion, which makes me sick.)

Please note: This article is about Adblock Plus. AdBlock is a completely separate extension with different developers, and is 100% user-supported.

Details: https://getadblock.com/adblock-is-not-adblock-plus

As an alternative, I switched to Adblock Edge: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/adblock-edge/

Adblockers should just block ads, not be used to extort money once they reach a certain level of adoption.

Given that the business model in question has come to revolve around highly targeted advertising achieved via extensive tracking and profiling of users, it certainly deserves to be threatened.

Unfortunately, the AdblockPlus "acceptable ads" criteria don't address the privacy issues. So the ABP folks are actually promoting advertising standards and ads that are intrusive. To make matters worse, this "ad blocker" that supposedly "protects your online privacy" is purposely equipped with a material defect in the form of an enabled by default whitelist that allows many ads through including those that are harmful to your privacy. Those unsuspecting users who fail to learn of this and/or those who forget to opt-out can get burned.

Ads make for some interesting doublethink.

One one hand, I hate the consumer oriented society that wastes resources on a ton of useless products; I despise the scummy advertisers who manipulate people into pursuing the wrong goals. On the other, I like having stuff and will happily buy things to put inside my home and on my person. I am totally dependent on the consumer ecosystem and I enjoy creature comforts.

That said, when I truly need something I will make a targeted search for it. It's really rare to see ads that actually interest me. So I am generally extremely hostile to the ad business. I hate everything about them, because they symbolize the uncomfortable truths and compromises our society rests upon. They are everywhere and mostly do nothing but sap your mental energy.

The advertising problem is very strange. There is content we do want which we could have by paying a small amount. But we're (by and large) unwilling. So we get ads.

A tiny fraction of the ads are clicked, and a tiny fraction of the money spent on that product goes back to the content producer. And that's enough to fund them.

We could avoid seeing 100 ads which end up giving 10 cents to the site if we'd just pay 10 cents each.[1] It would be nicer for us and simpler for the content producers. But we're not willing, apparently.

It seems perverse to claim that we value good articles and shows if we force the creators to sell us boots in order to make a living.

Oh, micropayments, when will we find a workable system for you?

[1] Made-up numbers

> But sites are rarely paid “per click”.

Doesn't google AdSense alone count for a non-trivial portion of internet advertising? Unless the rules are different for bigger partners, all AdSense revenue is per click.

I don't like the implied threat stuff going on here. I may look for a different ad blocking solution. But that article was pretty shrill.

As far as I'm concerned, most online advertising is malware.

if you don't want to support eyeo there's a fork of ABP called adblock edge.

works just as well, without the acceptable ads racket

Can anyone shed some light on the Hacker News story ranking algorithm?

After 1 hour, this submission was in third place on the front page, then I checked again about 15 minutes later and it had dropped to 93rd place, on page 4! There are many other stories that are both older and have fewer points that are higher up the rankings. Judging by the number of comments, this link is obviously a story of interest to HN.

Just curious what's going on..

Employes of a certain company that starts with G do this on stories harmful to their employer. I'd bet that's the reason.

So the ranking isn't simply based on a combination of age and upvotes? I see.

I think it also has to do with a rush new votes up or down. Sort of trending

I have written a short article on adds and 'peak advertising'. Might be of interest.

http://mosermichael.github.io/cstuff/all/blogg/2013/10/14/po...

"The Internet's business model"

The internet is a single business with one business model? Holy shit. It must work well, as I hear the internet's all the rage with the young folks. Should've invested sooner.

Hah. I recall antispam companies doing the same thing - once they got big enough, they demanded money from major mail exchanges. I'm sure companies paid out rather than risk long legal cases and poor PR.

Thanks, due to this post I have switched from ABP on chrome to Adblock. Had no idea the ABP people were acting in this way, will try to spread the word.

Ads are fine, up to a point. If the page is almost all ads and not marked clearly as so, then F that company.

But these AdBlock PLUS guys are extortionists. Google paid and their ads are "acceptable." all of the sudden. (Disclaimer: not a fan of Google at all) Google being the world's largest advertiser is leading the way in putting the entire business model at risk, ruining ads for everyone. They started with no ads, then a few ads on the side, then on top, then 2-5 on top and 12 on the sides, now ads everywhere and just a few results hidden by ads. Now the product search is 100% ads and I doubt that most people know (not everyone reads HN and Ars) I posted them before but this is a disgrace and it's not receiving the needed attention from the media:

http://i.imgur.com/mhJhc5W.png

http://ho9od35yvs05ejqn.zippykid.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/u...

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