Advertising Execs Diss Ad Blockers

[Red Squirrel]

The advertising companies did it to themselves. If they had stuck to non annoying ad formats that also don't act as spyware, perhaps we would not be forced to block them in order to make the internet usable.

 

[TheGardener]

The advertising companies did it to themselves. If they had stuck to non annoying ad formats that also don't act as spyware, perhaps we would not be forced to block them in order to make the internet usable.

This kind of reminds me of what advertisers do on TV commercial breaks. They boast the commercial's volume up to 3 times that of the program content. I find myself constantly clicking on the remote's mute button or decreasing the volume button. Another ad blocker.

 

[Zorba]

They got greedy and let ad networks devolve into spyware infested, music blaring, plugin consuming garbage. I have no sympathy.

This. First time I got malware from an ad was the last time I ran without Ad Blocker and No Script.

 

[Red Squirrel]

This kind of reminds me of what advertisers do on TV commercial breaks. They boast the commercial's volume up to 3 times that of the program content. I find myself constantly clicking on the remote's mute button or decreasing the volume button. Another ad blocker.

Yep I thought they were suppose to make that illegal actually, not sure what ever came of that. Then there's the fact that a 20 minute show is put in a 1 hour time slot filled with commercials. I now PVR shows that I want to sit down and watch, so I can skip all the commercials. If it was only 1-2 commercials in a row it would not be so bad, but I've seen 10+.

Advertisers don't know when enough is enough and drive people towards solutions that make the advertising completely useless.

I'm sure eventually they'll lobby for some law to make PVRs unable to skip commercials or record in first place, at which point someone will come up with another solution, or just pirate the content altogether and not watch it on cable.

 

[MongGrel]

NM.

 

[master_shake_]

If they didn't cram ads down people's throats maybe just maybe they're wouldn't be a need for adblock and pvrs.

It's not about free content its about not wanting to be annoyed.

 

[StrangerGuy]

No, it's not us with the shitty business model of upping the ante on malware and general annoyance, it's our "customers" that are over-entitled because they value useless stuff like security and sanity.

 

[Jeff7]

Yep I thought they were suppose to make that illegal actually, not sure what ever came of that. Then there's the fact that a 20 minute show is put in a 1 hour time slot filled with commercials. I now PVR shows that I want to sit down and watch, so I can skip all the commercials. If it was only 1-2 commercials in a row it would not be so bad, but I've seen 10+.

Commercials online sure as hell don't care about this.
Using headphones?
"Nice eardrums you've got there. It'd be a shame if someone were toHAVE YOU CONSIDERED SWITCHING TO GEICO YET?!?"

Advertisers don't know when enough is enough and drive people towards solutions that make the advertising completely useless.

I'm sure eventually they'll lobby for some law to make PVRs unable to skip commercials or record in first place, at which point someone will come up with another solution, or just pirate the content altogether and not watch it on cable.

"Our data shows that you watched a 5 minute ad so that you could view 2 minutes of content, but then you didn't buy the product advertised. Thief."

 

[cubby1223]

This guy is full of shit.

It is not obvious that content should be free (or ad-supported), but the internet started that way.

Since most content was free, the utility providers (ISPs) have priced the value of the content into their fees. So I pay $75/mo for my limited connection, at 10 year old speeds, instead of a more competitively balanced price.

I'm 'OK' paying that because I count the value of all the content I receive, the majority of it without charge.

In reality my money is being distributed unfairly, with content creators getting the shaft while entrenched ISPs receive the lion's share of user money.

That makes no logical sense...

It's like the argument that I paid for all the content I pirated because I paid for the hard drives I store the data on...

 

[Linux23]

Eff em. I use ad block with pixelserv on my tomato router and I block everything now on all of my devices on my network.

I was literally shocked to see how many of my devices was calling out to ad servers and Google analytics without me doing any browsing at all. My Nexus 6p is ridiculous in the amount of ad servers it tries to reach out to.

 

[Zorba]

That makes no logical sense...

It's like the argument that I paid for all the content I pirated because I paid for the hard drives I store the data on...

I think he means from a free market point of view, if the content wasn't free people would not be willing pay as much for the Service. Because if most content was for fee, the total cost of using the internet would go up.

I don't think he really meant he was paying for the content by paying for the ISP.

Another way to look at it would be if ISPs were $30/month instead of $70, people would be more willing to pay for content.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

They got greedy and let ad networks devolve into spyware infested, music blaring, plugin consuming garbage. I have no sympathy.

This this and this. Did I mention, this?

First there were banners on sites. Ok. Fine. I understand. A banner at the top/bottom.

Then came the pop-up... oh god the fucking pop-up. Pop-up evolved into pop-upS, pop-in's, pop-et's. Popping shit all over your screen. Then came sites that inject spyware and install malware if you don't wear a condom - I mean have protection. Then came pop-up blockers.

So they did what they could to get around pop-up blockers... they put banners on the right side ALL the way down as you scroll, banners on the left side ALL the way down as you scroll, in addition to on top/bottom and inbetween. Also "Sponsored" links to "stories" that are really just fishing ads.

I run both AdBlock and uBlock with all the possible filters. Websites that depend on simply ad-revenue can suck it. I'm sorry, but you guys ruined it yourself. It's not the consumers fault that you drove us to doing this.

 

[postmortemIA]

I remember when internet 1.0 was out and some lame sites had automatic audio playing... it was big no no back then; why would it be tolerated now?
ABP will force advertisers to be reasonable.

 

[3chordcharlie]

That makes no logical sense...

It's like the argument that I paid for all the content I pirated because I paid for the hard drives I store the data on...

This is not a good analogy.

I do pay for content: netflix, subscription newspaper, music. I don't pirate copyrighted movies, music, TV, books or anything else. But I also don't watch ads. I've had enough adware, spyware, bloatware, etc. It seems no one sticks to simple banner ads, they all try to install, track, invade, and otherwise 'improve my user experience'.

Most content is provided 'free'. Then a moral imperative to watch annoying, time-consuming, bandwidth sapping advertising is tacked on? No, thank you. If a content provider chooses to deny their site to adblocking users, so be it, I won't read it.

A big part of the value proposition of the internet has always been information at your fingertips. I would like to see some of the exorbitant fees charged by my ISP for shitty service went to support the 'free' content I consume. Alternatively, if the service were priced more fairly, I would love some additional news/magazine subscriptions.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Eff em. I use ad block with pixelserv on my tomato router and I block everything now on all of my devices on my network.

I was literally shocked to see how many of my devices was calling out to ad servers and Google analytics without me doing any browsing at all. My Nexus 6p is ridiculous in the amount of ad servers it tries to reach out to.

I've been wanting to look into doing this too actually. I can't recall where but I had found an online list of all the ad/spy servers, could easily generate a script that creates a bunch of DNS zones that return a DNS error and stick those in my local DNS server. For the ones that are malicious IPs I could just block at the firewall. Though I think most ad servers are accessed as a hostname so should be fine.

 

[Linux23]

I've been wanting to look into doing this too actually. I can't recall where but I had found an online list of all the ad/spy servers, could easily generate a script that creates a bunch of DNS zones that return a DNS error and stick those in my local DNS server. For the ones that are malicious IPs I could just block at the firewall. Though I think most ad servers are accessed as a hostname so should be fine.

It's pretty cool. I can see all of the DNS lookups in real time from my router to see what each device is trying to do. If it's on my block list I think it redirects it to pixelserv which returns a blank gif image or something like that. I don't even see YouTube ads anymore which was starting to get annoying after I clicked on every video.

You can also check into pihole using a simple raspberry pi. That was the route I was going to take but since I already had custom firmware running on my Netgear R7000 I looked into an all in one solution which works really really well.

 

[Genx87]

I had no idea advertising on private sites was considered free speech? Tell me more advertising exec!

 

[DrPizza]

10 second video clip? Wait for these two 15-second ads.
Oh wait, the second ad's server stalled out. Reload the page to try again. Sit through the first ad again.
Ok good, the 30 second ad is over. The ad is now going to wait another 10 seconds to see if I want to click on their buttons to go to the site.

<continuing>
F it. Let's see if someone copied the video and posted it on Youtube.

And,
Wow, a lot of people are talking about this. Let's click the link. Hmmm. Looks like I have to enable something in NoScript to see the video. WTF?! There must be 40 different things trying to run in the background. I don't know which one to unblock, and I'm not going to unblock them one by one, hoping I guess the right one. And then, I find out after unblocking one, that it opens up 5 more that want to run. Well, let's look on Youtube for the video.

 

[akugami]

They got greedy and let ad networks devolve into spyware infested, music blaring, plugin consuming garbage. I have no sympathy.

this

This is exactly why I use adblockers.

It used to be that even with a few animations, I was ok with the ads. But you're having a quiet time, reading articles, click on the next page, and BOOOOM, there is blaring music and pop-ups and other crap.

There are a few sites I will not block ads on, such as Anandtech, and Ars Technica, but those are rare nowadays. Even then, there can be some intrusive ads that don't get vetted. For example, months back, Ars Technica had that annoying LG black ad with rainbow lights that follow your mouse. I had to enable adblock on Ars Technica for a while due to that annoying ad.

And that's from a quality website. Now we run into lesser known websites, or hijacked ads that try to scare you into thinking your computer is infected AND YOU MUST INSTALL THIS NOW OR YOUR COMPUTER WILL BLOW THE HELL UP!!!!1111

To the advertisers complaining about free speech, you're free to blow hot air out of your ass, and I'm free to block your ass. As long as I'm not blocking it for the billions of netizens, your argument has no ground to stand on. It's the same as you spewing your crap on the street while I put on earplugs.

 

[Linux23]

Oh and I can't stand pages that want to know your location. I'm on a news website wtf do you need to know my location???

 

[JoeBleed]

I'm sure eventually they'll lobby for some law to make PVRs unable to skip commercials or record in first place, at which point someone will come up with another solution, or just pirate the content altogether and not watch it on cable.

"Major Principal of Media Law 2014" on google books. If the link below doesn't take you right to it, just look for the title above.

https://books.google.com/books?id=H...v flag to prevent dvr commercial skip&f=false

last two paragraphs on page 294. Essentially they tried several years ago, similar to attempting to ban the VCR, to stop DVRs with commercial skip. The EFF sued them. Guess they won.

But i also thought that some cable companies or OTA DTV had flags for commercials and wanted to be able to prevent commercial skips.

Edit: found this:
http://entertainment.slashdot.org/s...d-for-disabling-fast-forward-function-on-dvrs

 

[Jeff7]

Oh and I can't stand pages that want to know your location. I'm on a news website wtf do you need to know my location???

"If we don't know who you are, where you are, and what brand of toothpaste you prefer, you won't get the optimum experience from our website!
A non-optimum experience is not permitted."

 

[RaistlinZ]

Oh and I can't stand pages that want to know your location. I'm on a news website wtf do you need to know my location???

That's almost as bad as department stores asking for you phone number and email address when you make a purchase. WTF do you need that info for?

F*ck 'em all.

 

[akugami]

That's almost as bad as department stores asking for you phone number and email address when you make a purchase. WTF do you need that info for?

F*ck 'em all.

Having worked in the retail, it's not always as nefarious as you think for dept stores. They want to collect that info for loyalty rewards programs, but it's really to collect your info so they can send you ads whether by snail mail or email. That's a given. However, there are pluses. For example, Columbia (the clothing company) will search for your purchase receipts based on your email or phone number. So if you need to return something, and you don't have the receipt, you are still covered. It's linked to your account so there are some convenience associated with having an account with them.

 

[IGemini]

uBlock + Ghostery + NoScript = me browsing the internet how I choose. It might take a bit of effort to distill down to the relevant stuff, but that's far more preferable to being randomly annoyed by pointless ads doing a drive-by download of malware.

Rothenberg can shove his ads so far up his ass they become his fucking nose, for all I care.