Google’s Ad System Has Become Too Big to Control
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It has gone from hardcore nerds (about 10%) blocking ads which was fine to everyone and their mother blocking ads on desktops/laptops, and I do not blame them. According to my measurements of adblocking (surprisingly easy to detect if ads are being blocked)
I have used adsense since it started in 2003 making close to million euro in that time, but the last few months have been absolutely disastrous (tho my traffic has also fallen in last couple of years unfortunately)
Basically the writing is on the wall and I have concentrated on other projects in last while
There must be alot of worried people now at google wondering if they will still have a job in a few years, yes mobile is helping but for how long?
But there's also a deeper problem. In my opinion, when you install an ad blocker, you're already exceptionally unlikely to click an ad on purpose.
I don't think that's the case, I think it's just a lie told by people working in ad sales
Nobody installs ad block because they realised they weren't interested in any of the adverts. They're doing it because some adverts are annoying or distracting or browser intensive or privacy violating or...
None of those things make a person less likely to click on an advert if they see one that is both reasonably presented and relevant to their interests.
Of course there are people who detest adverts, and in those people there's obviously a (close to 100% I presume) crossover between "has adblock" and "wouldn't click anyway", but I think those people are a small minority of people blocking ads.
I don't work in ad sales, and I'm not lying. Yes, ads are beyond annoying and they're making some websites borderline unusable - but the reason why ads don't work lies in the fact that the number of ads I ever clicked on purpose could probably be counted on one hand, over my entire lifetime.
It may well be the case that I'm exceptional, but on the off chance I'm not: advertisers were wasting their dollars on showing me stuff since way before I even knew what an ad blocker was.
I don't think I would ever install an adblocker if it was 80% small text ads (like Google off side ads), or a non invasive static image (granted it's not taking more space than the content I was about to read). Could website function with this kind only ?
Also, I really wonder what it looks like for a user to click on an ad...
ps: I didn't count the few times I did click on them voluntarily just to give some prints to a website in need.
You're not alone. I use adblocker on sites where the number and kind of ads is annoying. On the sites I don't block I have never clicked an ad intentionally.
Ads on the web (and especially in mobile apps) usually have the reverse effect: it drives me away from using that site or application or to install an adblocker, and the ads I do see I use as a guidance on what NOT to buy.
The point is there are lots of people who block adverts because of how obtrusive they often are online, but who if they didn't block them, would be of value to the advertisers. (Keep in mind value doesn't have to be a click, there's also brand awareness, (sub/)conscious retention of information about an advertised product, etc.) Maybe you're not one of those people.
I do apologize if I misunderstood you, but re-reading your comment and mine I still don't believe that's really the case.
Either people like me are a lie told by the ad industry or we do exist. It's unlikely both of these are true at the same time.
I also object to the rest of your original comment, which literally boils down to "Nobody installs ad block because they realised they weren't interested in any of the adverts", I just didn't address it explicitly because it would have been redundant. But if you are looking for a lie told by people selling ads, that sentence would make a better candidate.
But that wasn't actually the point I was trying to make. My response to "when you install an ad blocker, you're already exceptionally unlikely to click an ad on purpose" isn't that nobody exists like that, but that (in my opinion a massive majority) are doing it because of bad adverts, not because they're anti-adverts. And my maning about the lie told by the industry is that when a company spending ad money says "what about all the people on your website we see using adblock?" Mr Ad Sales' answer is often (that I've witnessed) to say that those are people who never would have given your advert the time of day in the first place, so it's irrelevant whether they see it or not. (Of course now days with better tracking and better competition, it's more common to see adblock detected and not charged as an impression.)
I hate distracting blinkety-blink and I hate the tracking and spying aspect of the whole sordid business model, so I adblock. But I can't say I'm immune to the ads I do see.
Can you please provide a source?
I don't mind unobtrusive ads, and the google adsense ads tend to fall into that camp.
No applicant will be favored or treated differently,
and no one can buy their way onto the whitelist.
Everyone has tocomply with the criteria and everyone
has to go through the same process before the ads
qualify as "acceptable."
Do companies pay you for being added to the list?
Whitelisting is free for all small- and medium
websites and blogs. However, managing this list
requires significant effort on our side and this
task cannot be completely taken over by volunteers
as it happens with common filter lists. That's why
we are being paid by some larger properties that
serve non-intrusive advertisements that want to
participate in the Acceptable Ads initiative.- in-app ads which, without clicking on the ad, bounce me out of the app and into a browser
- browser ads which bounce to the good old "your computer has a virus!" exploitware
- animated web background ads which slow the browser to a crawl
On iOS there are ads that bounce you out of the browser and into the app store.
I cannot understand how anyone thinks this is a good idea. I am ad tolerant but those ads make me want to use ad block technology.
I started blocking ads after the day I picked up a virus through an embedded ad on an NBA team site. Just too risky to leave ads running.
AdAway and XPrivacy are the two apps that made rooting my phone worth every second I spent doing it. Cannot recommend it enough!
Genuine question, I don't like ads in apps and if I use an app I donate or pay for it rather than relying on free
[Edit] A good example of one that doesn't allow you to pay, but insists on showing you ads, and if I'm to go by the reviews, video ads, is AppSales, which allows you to track the price of an app on the app-store.
* remote control apps (security type "wipe phone if requested, resist attempts to remove from phone") * backup apps (Backup EVERYTHING... some apps try to block that) * Junk removal (No I don't need a racing game that I can't remove on my samsung - switch it from system app to normal app please kthxbye) * Host adblock
I'm less militant about in-app adds than I am about in-browser, personally.
But yeah, for a while I just made a point of unlocking the bootloader and installing supersu on any new device just so I could run AdFree (simple hosts file/blacklist solution) to block the ads in apps.
Still, I recently got a replacement for a broken phone and while I unlocked the bootloader immediately (kind of a pain once you've set your phone up) I haven't gotten around to installing AdFree. Turns out most of the apps I use anymore don't include those sorts of ads. Of the ones that do show an ad window inside the main part of the app (and not just in a settings window or something), it really did remind me that I ought to plunk down the $1-2 for the ad-free version. They're apps I use often enough and with Adfree I didn't even realize there were ads in the app.
For the handful that I don't care about or use shitty intrusive ads, I just uninstall them once I notice it. I feel a lot better about it because I'm supporting the non-shitty developers and uninstalling the ones I'd rather not support.
But for browsing...oh hell yes I use an Adblock extension in mobile Firefox. The ads that show up on mobile sites are 10x worse than what I see on the desktop, they take up more screen space, they waste data when my plan is capped at 5GB monthly, and they're easily dealt with via the addon.
Also, one day Congress will figure out that it could be a good idea to introduce a tax on ads.
1. Test accounts that visited substance abuse websites were much more likely to be shown ads for Watershed Rehab but nothing shows up on the ad settings page indicating the change.
2. Test accounts where the ad settings page has gender=male were much more likely to be shown ads for the recruiter careerchange.com, which offered "$200k+ Jobs - Execs Only".
The first case sounds very much like retargeting. The substance abuse website would drop a cookie and get a small payment from a central db for telling them that this cookie is associated with viewing substance abuse websites. Then Watershed Rehab wants to advertise to substance abuse website visitors, so they pay the central db for a list of cookies, which includes this one. Then Watershed sets up an ad campaign with Google and asks to target visitors with cookies on this list. This can't show up as an "interest" on the ads settings page as "substance abuse" because the association was made by third parties; Google doesn't have enough of the picture to see what happened. You can opt out of retargeting by turning off "interest based ads" at https://www.google.com/settings/ads
The second case sounds like careerchange.com submitted an ad campaign that looked at the gender field. Advertisers have tried to target specific genders for a long time through color and where they advertise, but the internet does make it much more explicit. Still, this is a very small sample to be drawing large conclusions about, especially as careerchange.com stopped doing it (observed in their May run but not the June one).
Disclaimer: I work at Google, on open source software, and I don't know anything about these specific cases.
Any substance abuse website that does this is run by charlatans and has all the morality of a hyena. This is such a violation of trust that I cannot imagine any healing coming from it.
Or is there something else that makes this bad that I'm missing?
"This seems generally positive apart from the risk of occasionally ruining someone's life."
Your profile says you work for Google. Maybe Google has an "enlightened" policy towards substance abuse, but I wonder what your manager would do if s/he thought you were in need of rehab? In a lot of companies, getting rid of you would be the manager's reaction. Starting the death spiral for someone who is looking for help is horrible and to treat it like any other targeted advertising is insensitive at best.
Given the down votes, I would guess people agree with you, but I really wish our profession would think about these things and the affects on normal people.
Perhaps marketers should be able to target the demographics that they are trying to reach.
Perhaps the system is working as it was intended.
This is nothing new and the implied if not explicit backdrop of the article in the first place. Or maybe I'm missing your point.
The world of advertising seems an odd place to have this battle. Do we really believe that a person of protected class X has an affirmative right to be targeted by advertising in the same way as everyone else? I find it difficult to imagine someone exclaiming "how come HE got to see the advertisement, but you didn't put the ad in for me?" - or anyone who does get offended in this way is probably seeking out faults to complain about.
"We also like to assign blame where it is due. However, doing so is often difficult. For example, our view on blame varies based on why females were discriminated against in our gender and jobs experiment. If Google allowed the advertiser to easily discriminate, we would blame both."
Google allowed the advertiser to easily discriminate
With demographic targeting in AdWords, you can
reach customers who are likely to be within the
demographic groups that you choose. Demographic
groups that you can choose from include:
* age
* gender
* parental status
For example, if your business caters to a
specific set of customers within a particular
age range, gender, or parental status, you may
want to target your ads to this audience because
they’re more likely to be interested in your
products or services.