The Internet?s next victim: Advertising; What the story of AdBlock Plus tells us: The online economy

[Harmon]

?Everyone agrees that advertising on the Internet is broken,? says Till Faida, CEO of Adblock Plus, creator of by far the most popular ad-blocking software on the Web.

The soft-spoken German, visiting the San Francisco Bay Area to network and drum up support for his company?s ?Acceptable Ads? initiative, sketches out a distressing scenario: Ads aren?t generating enough revenue, so websites are forced to run ever more ?aggressive? ads ? a maddening deluge of pop-ups, blinking banners, and autoplaying video and audio commercials. But as ads steadily become even more annoying, users click even less, forcing revenues down even further.

?This is creating a vicious circle, which will at some point lead to the whole system collapsing,? says Faida.

READ MORE: http://www.salon.com/2013/09/02/the_...m_advertising/

Fucking Mafioso

[Barefootsies]

Pure comedy.

The same guy who is peddling his product to block ads pontificating about how the web has to get more aggressive because of it. Unfortunately, the web on the whole is now a business which is essentially ad supported. Fuck with the money, and there will be repercussions with the end result having freeloaders crying in their collective beers. Nothing is truly "free" in this world. You are always going to have a trade off somewhere. The sooner you learn this lesson in life, the better off you will be.

[Klen]

Damn,that is indeed mafioso.

[Niktamer]

this is clearly a protection racket.

[woj]

wouldn't just putting some ads on his site be 100x easier and less sleazy? oh wait...

[Markul]

Just redirect users with adblock active to a goatze website

[Klen]

Originally Posted by Markul

Just redirect users with adblock active to a goatze website

If you have your own ad system then you can bypass adblock but if you use traffic brokers,then you cant

[woj]

Originally Posted by KlenTelaris

If you have your own ad system then you can bypass adblock but if you use traffic brokers,then you cant

don't worry, won't be long till they close all the loopholes... can't wait till they decide one day that affiliate links are bad and block all links with affiliate codes in them...

cause isn't an affiliate link an "ad" after all?

then hopefully all the adblock supporters will realize how dangerous software like this is...

[Markul]

Originally Posted by woj

don't worry, won't be long till they close all the loopholes... can't wait till they decide one day that affiliate links are bad and block all links with affiliate codes in them...

cause isn't an affiliate link an "ad" after all?

then hopefully all the adblock supporters will realize how dangerous software like this is...

People that make a living from anything online that support ad-blockers must be fucking morons

[deloany4scott]

okay, enough with the rumor time, had our fun, back to business. there is always some guy who thinks to know the blablabla business is going down, because....don't we still all earn our money? In every business there are up and downs....have a nice day!

[Barefootsies]

Originally Posted by Markul

People that make a living from anything online that support ad-blockers must be fucking morons

Read many of the posts on this forum to reinforce this fact.

All of these guys supposedly in the industry who steal everything they can get their hands on and brag about how they do not pay for movies, music, video games, whatever. Then, in the next thread, they are running an enterprise operation from a $5.00 hosting plan and being down for 2 minutes just cost them $10,000.00. Or the guys who brag about using all of these sort of programs referenced in the O.P. but then are affiliates pushing online offers. Or hate email/marketing messages from their own affiliate programs but keep opening threads bawling about it.

It continues to reinforce which of us are actually businessmen who understand the importance of these topics including the impact on our bottom line, versus those who are short sighted hobbyist fry cooks who can't see the forest through the tress.

[Barry-xlovecam]

The Highways were once cluttered with billboards, today there are very few billboards -- there are still highways.

What changed was the highway billboard advertising revenues to the adjacent property owners. Property values did not collapse.

With television you have the "mute" button to manually block annoying advertising -- there is still television.

Internet advertising, mainly sophisticated mainstream ad networks, have invaded user privacy with their data mining operations -- if I look at female hygiene products ONCE the next 5 months I will be seeing tampon banners -- people got tired of that sort of shit. If I look up drug or health information -- maybe trying to find an answer for a friend who has cancer, some ad network banner will track me as a cancer victim and sell that information to other commercial interests that may use it to screen me for mortgage loan credit or some other purpose. The Internet advertising network's promises to their clients and their own privacy invasion practices caused their own problems.

Furthermore, these ads have created a problem due to EU Internet privacy directives for websites that are coming into effect now -- their promises to their clients create new problems for me. Also, my own use of ads to market our websites becomes less effective due to consumers wide use of ad blocking software.

Products that could be free by ad revenue support are in some jeopardy. The Internet will become user service fee based. Tube sites may die. Maybe, it is not such a bad thing

[GonZo]

Originally Posted by Barefootsies

Read many of the posts on this forum to reinforce this fact.

All of these guys supposedly in the industry who steal everything they can get their hands on and brag about how they do not pay for movies, music, video games, whatever. Then, in the next thread, they are running an enterprise operation from a $5.00 hosting plan and being down for 2 minutes just cost them $10,000.00. Or the guys who brag about using all of these sort of programs referenced in the O.P. but then are affiliates pushing online offers. Or hate email/marketing messages from their own affiliate programs but keep opening threads bawling about it.

It continues to reinforce which of us are actually businessmen who understand the importance of these topics including the impact on our bottom line, versus those who are short sighted hobbyist fry cooks who can't see the forest through the tress.

pearl

[Klen]

Originally Posted by woj

don't worry, won't be long till they close all the loopholes... can't wait till they decide one day that affiliate links are bad and block all links with affiliate codes in them...

cause isn't an affiliate link an "ad" after all?

then hopefully all the adblock supporters will realize how dangerous software like this is...

I am quite sure how this method cannot be closed as adblock is based on patterns,and once you randomize pattern it is impossible to block since then adblock cannot know is it object an ad or just plain text/image.Same with affiliate links,they are too random unless they start to block manualy which again i dont find it possible as affiliate type links are used even for direct non affiliate purposes.

[Barefootsies]

Originally Posted by Barry-xlovecam

Products that could be free by ad revenue support are in some jeopardy. The Internet will become user service fee based. Tube sites may die. Maybe, it is not such a bad thing

Good. It would get freeloaders to pay their fair share.

[woj]

Originally Posted by KlenTelaris

I am quite sure how this method cannot be closed as adblock is based on patterns,and once you randomize pattern it is impossible to block since then adblock cannot know is it object an ad or just plain text/image.Same with affiliate links,they are too random unless they start to block manualy which again i dont find it possible as affiliate type links are used even for direct non affiliate purposes.

Nothing is impossible to block...

these adblockers are still very primitive, easy to fool... but give it some time... once someone works out there is $$ to be made, tosses some funding their way, hires some real brainpower, etc... and in 5 or 10 years you might be forced to pay an extortion fee (not unlike the visa/MC fee now) just to stay in business...

it's not unlike evolution of search engines, 10 years ago they were very easy to fool, now it's not so easy anymore...

[Barry-xlovecam]

Originally Posted by Barefootsies

Good. It would get freeloaders to pay their fair share.

Unfortunately, 99.88% of the freeloaders will just have to find a new way to freeload -- they will not become buyers anyway ... Saves a lot of lot of bandwidth and people will stop claiming "traffic is king!"

[Barry-xlovecam]

Originally Posted by woj

[p]ay an extortion fee (not unlike the visa/MC fee now) just to stay in business...

Those fees are there for a reason; The adult websites abused their rights to merchant processing with cross sales , credit card banging and other unethical practices resulting in their being classified as high-risk businesses based on loss ratios.

Sorry, but if you cannot afford the initial and yearly fees to the credit card associations you are uncapitalised and are too high-risk -- this is from a lender's POV and nothing personal.

[robwod]

Originally Posted by Barefootsies

It continues to reinforce which of us are actually businessmen who understand the importance of these topics including the impact on our bottom line, versus those who are short sighted hobbyist fry cooks who can't see the forest through the tress.

Agreed. However one of the most asinine comments I keep seeing in these sorts of threads are webmasters suggesting to redirect anyone using an adblocker to some sort of "educational page". The reality is, adblockers are not new, and certainly not going away anytime soon. You have one segment of a publishing community looking at ways of defeating adblockers in a futile game of cat and mouse while others are recognizing that a likely more productive use of time is in finding ways to re-engage a surfer using such a tool -- via fallback css advertisements, as but one example.

Heck, I see people suggesting turning off comments on blogs instead of getting a free WordPress/Akismet API key and engaging their surfers who leave comments. I can't count how many times we've turned comments into a discussion that have led to multiple sales. We've even had the discussions reach a point where the models themselves have come on and gotten involved and engaged their fans directly -- either they found it via SE's or one of their fans sent a link to the comment discussion. Not to mention the extra SE weight that comes with active content that gets shared via discussions.

Opportunity is right in front of most people, just some do not recognize it at first or simply do not want to do the work (i.e., build and forget is their preferred method). I prefer long term sustainability.

[robwod]

Originally Posted by Barry-xlovecam

Those fees are there for a reason; The adult websites abused their rights to merchant processing with cross sales , credit card banging and other unethical practices resulting in their being classified as high-risk businesses based on loss ratios.

Sorry, but if you cannot afford the initial and yearly fees to the credit card associations you are uncapitalised and are too high-risk -- this is from a lender's POV and nothing personal.

There was a time, some will remember, when you had to buy a membership to the sites you were promoting and, in some cases, had to buy/license your own content to promote those sites. Thus, webmasters had a financial interest/investment into the sites they promoted. As a result, you had far fewer hobbyists as it was rather expensive to get started in any real capacity, especially with bandwidth being upwards of $10 to $12 per GB of Tier 1 bandwidth.

Anything under $500 / day on a free site and you were upset. 1k a day was expected as a minimum.

[Tom_PM]

IMHO, false premise. Ads are NOT very bad at all. I don't run adblock on any computer of mine and amazingly, my computers are not on fire from aggressive advertisements. I rarely get popups and when I do, I know there is a little X and how to press down with a finger.

The guy sounds like religion. There's a problem that you have and if you come in through here, I have the solution.

No thanks, bro.

[Klen]

Originally Posted by woj

Nothing is impossible to block...

these adblockers are still very primitive, easy to fool... but give it some time... once someone works out there is $$ to be made, tosses some funding their way, hires some real brainpower, etc... and in 5 or 10 years you might be forced to pay an extortion fee (not unlike the visa/MC fee now) just to stay in business...

it's not unlike evolution of search engines, 10 years ago they were very easy to fool, now it's not so easy anymore...

It's not about is it possible or impossible to block,it's about willingness to block such ads.
For example,there is one forum which had all their ads as plain images,so it impossible to block that on pattern,only by each image individually,and that is too much hassle.
It is a similar like when you pick what scripts you will use on your sites,if you use the one which is used by very little webmasters ,then there is a chance how you will never be hacked even if that script have security holes,simply because those who hack into sites are concentrated on most used scripts.

[trevesty]

This is why, for the most part, I hard code my ads in the old fashioned way.

[Paul]

Originally Posted by Barry-xlovecam

Products that could be free by ad revenue support are in some jeopardy. The Internet will become user service fee based. Tube sites may die. Maybe, it is not such a bad thing

Originally Posted by Barefootsies

Good. It would get freeloaders to pay their fair share.

Current example - Online News

Most of them will be behind a paywall within the next few years, many already are

[oppoten]

Originally Posted by woj

don't worry, won't be long till they close all the loopholes... can't wait till they decide one day that affiliate links are bad and block all links with affiliate codes in them...

I've already noticed them doing this with cams links and redirects from brokers. Click the link and the window closes.

[Klen]

Originally Posted by Paul

Current example - Online News

Most of them will be behind a paywall within the next few years, many already are

I dont mind paywall,even preffer it more then ads.I bought one article for fun and kicks and i liked how easy it went,you just need to send sms to get code and that was it.

[Rochard]

Advertising is broken on the Internet? Seems someone knows I own a Jaguar and a Jeep, buy a lot of Skagen watches, and like going to Hawaii. These are the ads I see all day long. All of the ads are exactly what I might be interested in.

[notinmybackyard]

Adapt or Die

So try standing outside Internet cafes holding a sign.

[Creatine]

[nextri]

The best thing to do is clearly to redirect adblock users directly to advertisers who have products to promote with a landingpage that can't be blocked by adblock. This way you monetize the users as well as save bandwidth from leechers who see your content but don't click any ads.

Win win..

PlugRush provides a service that does this for you btw...

[Barry-xlovecam]

Redirecting is just bailing water with a leaky bucket -- it doesn't solve the problem -- it just attempts to keep a weakening business model alive.

[Creatine]

Originally Posted by Barry-xlovecam

Redirecting is just bailing water with a leaky bucket -- it doesn't solve the problem -- it just attempts to keep a weakening business model alive.

Have you seen the movie World War Z? It's similar to that.

This is not a cure, it's simply camouflage.

[96ukssob]

Originally Posted by Harmon

?Everyone agrees that advertising on the Internet is broken,? says Till Faida, CEO of Adblock Plus, creator of by far the most popular ad-blocking software on the Web.

The soft-spoken German, visiting the San Francisco Bay Area to network and drum up support for his company?s ?Acceptable Ads? initiative, sketches out a distressing scenario: Ads aren?t generating enough revenue, so websites are forced to run ever more ?aggressive? ads ? a maddening deluge of pop-ups, blinking banners, and autoplaying video and audio commercials. But as ads steadily become even more annoying, users click even less, forcing revenues down even further.

?This is creating a vicious circle, which will at some point lead to the whole system collapsing,? says Faida.

READ MORE: http://www.salon.com/2013/09/02/the_...m_advertising/

Fucking Mafioso

You going to take what he has to say seriously?

Of course the maker of a ad blocking software will say online ads are shit, so you should block them... what a brilliant idea

I love when people bitch about advertising... how else do you cheap assholes think you get to watch porn for free on the net, or play your iPhone games?

[Klen]

Originally Posted by nextri

The best thing to do is clearly to redirect adblock users directly to advertisers who have products to promote with a landingpage that can't be blocked by adblock. This way you monetize the users as well as save bandwidth from leechers who see your content but don't click any ads.

Win win..

PlugRush provides a service that does this for you btw...

Nice,that's innovative way to handle problem,and not just crying and blaming me like i am responsible for it lol.But i still think you could serve ads normaly by using randomizing pattern,for example i checked eroadvertising code and tried to to bypass adblock by encoding code,but that did'nt work as code contain word "ads" three time,even domain itself contain it as well,so that is such a bad approach.But i guess they dont care about bypassing adblock anyway.

[Captain Kawaii]

Originally Posted by robwod

Agreed. However one of the most asinine comments I keep seeing in these sorts of threads are webmasters suggesting to redirect anyone using an adblocker to some sort of "educational page". The reality is, adblockers are not new, and certainly not going away anytime soon. You have one segment of a publishing community looking at ways of defeating adblockers in a futile game of cat and mouse while others are recognizing that a likely more productive use of time is in finding ways to re-engage a surfer using such a tool -- via fallback css advertisements, as but one example.

Heck, I see people suggesting turning off comments on blogs instead of getting a free WordPress/Akismet API key and engaging their surfers who leave comments. I can't count how many times we've turned comments into a discussion that have led to multiple sales. We've even had the discussions reach a point where the models themselves have come on and gotten involved and engaged their fans directly -- either they found it via SE's or one of their fans sent a link to the comment discussion. Not to mention the extra SE weight that comes with active content that gets shared via discussions.

Opportunity is right in front of most people, just some do not recognize it at first or simply do not want to do the work (i.e., build and forget is their preferred method). I prefer long term sustainability.

Akismet is not free for commercial blogs. if someone is using Akismet for a commercial blog without paying the small, nominal fee as required by Akismet, they are stealing it.

[nextri]

Originally Posted by KlenTelaris

Nice,that's innovative way to handle problem,and not just crying and blaming me like i am responsible for it lol.But i still think you could serve ads normaly by using randomizing pattern,for example i checked eroadvertising code and tried to to bypass adblock by encoding code,but that did'nt work as code contain word "ads" three time,even domain itself contain it as well,so that is such a bad approach.But i guess they dont care about bypassing adblock anyway.

the problem is they block our entire domain. all ad networks. we would have to have random domain names, and that would be hard for publishers. But there might be other ways.. I'll think about it..

[robwod]

Originally Posted by Captain Kawaii

Akismet is not free for commercial blogs. if someone is using Akismet for a commercial blog without paying the small, nominal fee as required by Akismet, they are stealing it.

This is true. Though from the posts I see on GFY the past few years, it appears there are an awful lot of hobbyists here and/or those do not treat their pursuits as part of an actual business or commercial entity. Indeed, it must be awfully difficult for some people since the contest threads have disappeared.

My point, however, is that most people tend to not think outside the box and treat people as potential customers. They'd rather jerk them around or redirect them because they blocked a banner. I'm suggesting treating your sites like an actual business (which indeed includes licensing your software) and benefiting long term from the sustainability of your actions.

[bigluv]

The best advertising is laser targeted and welcomed by the viewer. If ad blocking really does become the 'sky is falling' issue that some here believe then that will be the answer.