Display ads will die out when it becomes an uneconomical business model.
But, I recently trialled a subscription to The Times (UK) and found they were still deploying banner ads almost to the same degree as non-subscription alternatives.
So, maybe, they are going to be sticking around for a while yet?
It's time for display (or, for that matter, all) ads to die. Web pages are unusable without adblockers, because otherwise ads will annoy you more and more to the point of throwing your machine out of the window...
It is the greed of a few in our industry that has made the lives of everyone else pretty miserable.
I've spent some time recently about what the world would look like without advertising at all (or very limited types). Is that a thing that has a name?
What I'd find acceptable forms of advertising are product placement/sponsoring in TV shows/movies as it's done today, and marked-as-such (!) "native advertisements". You want my time and money, so better deliver me a good, convincing story...
I worry that efforts to kill display ads are going to kill independent publishers and leave only corporate-sponsored publishers pushing biased articles - a situation which I'd dislike slightly more than display ads.
Reading this article just makes me want to rent a bunch of cloud instances or something and set up a bunch of bots to contribute to more "ad fraud". Burn those ad money, as fast and as much as possible.
Pretty much this. It is their problem to figure out a way to deliver content in an acceptable and profitable way. The current way is clearly (starting to) being rejected by the Internet users.
I'm fine with any of the Flattr, Spotify or Patreon models. But the newspapers still think they're competing against each other rather than their general obsolescence and so each one is charging like $10/mo for access to only their own content. If I wanted to pay for all the news sites I visit through Hacker News links alone I'd be paying over $100/mo
That assumes there is a revenue model - which there probably isn't; ads can't be that business because it biases the news[fn:1], when I read a newspaper I read it through some aggregator[fn:2], which means I am not going to pay for any particular newspaper (because I would need twenty such subscriptions) and I can't buy a bundle (because it does not exist and probably doesn't contain the particular newspaper the link is to).
Ultimately I think the next newspaper will probably come from Google, and be AI.
[fn:1] Old newspapers may be excepted, as they have a long time to deal with this. I assume that buying ads in NYT can't change their editorial stances, but they are an exception.
> and I can't buy a bundle (because it does not exist and probably doesn't contain the particular newspaper the link is to).
Wouldn't some kind of syndication service work, where you subscribe to a custom bundle out of selection of available news sites, and the sites then get revenue based on how many readers included them in their subscription?
Even so, who is to say that the particular newspaper the article links to is included in that bundle? Or that it is included in the bundle of the other people commenting (yes that is moving the goal post, but I forgot to included it in the original)?
It should work. That said, how willing are the newspapers to adopt a revenue plan that might work?
From here, my impression is that nearly all of them are completely unwilling to change anything at all. Even their layout they can't bother to adapt for the web.
If the bulk of journalism outlets went out of business along with their advertisers, I'd consider that a win/win. I know that in the age of Trump we're supposed to venerate journalism as some kind of selfless civil duty, but the vast majority of it is throwaway punditry and apologia for an illegitimate order.
Actual investigative work like the kind of stuff Shane Bauer has done would still have legs on subscription/donor based platforms.
> I know that in the age of Trump we're supposed to venerate journalism as some kind of selfless civil duty, but the vast majority of it is throwaway punditry and apologia for an illegitimate order.
QFT. Journalism has been awful at least for decades.
> Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
- Michael Chrichton
In a complex world, the very idea of generalist journalists is broken.
From what I can tell, journalism has continually improved since the founding of the Republic. It's useful to correct unrealistic expectations we have about it: that its practitioners are selfless volunteers serving out of civic obligation. It's a profession like anything else, with good members and bad ones, almost always under the same masthead.
I think it would be tough to argue that modern institutional journalism is somehow worse than that of, say, the World War 2 era.
Crichton's "amnesia effect" is a vivid example of how people get this wrong. Are newspapers wrong about Palestine? Quite often. But it's not for the same reason that they're wrong about show business. Show business is a specialized beat with specialized reporters and not every newspaper has someone dedicated to it. Everyone understands that about reporting Palestine, but fewer people understand that about show business, and so Crichton sounds incisive when really he's just making a banal observation: different journalism outlets are strong on different topics.
I don't think it's that banal an observation. Most media consumers don't subscribe to all the relevant trade pubs. Which means most of the journalism they consume comes from outlets that are weak.
I want to tell you that it's pretty much useless for the much bigger guys.
There are a few services that help track IPs that view and click ads on a global basis. They are backed by ML algos that can determine with a high rate of accuracy whether it's fraud or not.
Using some of the reputable services, the advertiser can go back to the network and request refunds due to the fraudulent clicks.
So if you did do this, you'd only be hurting the smaller players who rely on ads to fund their ventures.
Yes, I fully realize that, and in the end, I'm still just going to stick to my adblock/umatrix&friends solution, without doing anything more. :/ It's just an idle urge to somehow hasten the demise of the "Age of the Ad".
An article I read sometimes last week made an unflattering, but rather astute comparison that a site which relies on ad networks for their income is like a streetwalker - selling out integrity integrity for money, competing with or against shady people (the scammy porn sites, the automated link-farms with Markov-generated pseudo content, etc.). And if one has to "interact" with sites like that, it is smart to use protection (adblock&friends).
I wish I could find the article. I'm quite certain it was linked here on HN one or two weeks ago.
AdNauseam is nice, but only in certain conditions - for example, I would never activate it on my work laptop, for fear of triggering web content filters my employer uses. I do not want to get into trouble when AdNauseam "clicks" on some unsavoury, or flat out illegal ad - those sometimes get through the screening on all ad networks, no matter how well they try.
There are many problems with the state of online advertising today. First of all, far too many online ads are actually fraudulent. They are either advertising dubious products, like penis enlargements pills or lose weight fast, or are click-baits for other ad-loaded pages. And of course, there is malware served along with the ads. And the remaining more or less legit ads are damn annoying.
So for me, I try very hard not to click on any online ads. It has come to the point where I consider a product dubious, if it appears in online ads - the exact contrary from what ads try to achieve.
The only way out of this I can see is, if web sites stop just using random ad networks, but get active in the selection and placement of ads on their sites. Large publications should run their ad departments - like any printed magazines and newspapers always did - and place selected ads in the content and also host them themselves. Smaller sites might require the help of ad providers to make a living, but I see them also in the responsibiltiy of selecting the ad provider to ensure only acceptable ads on their site. This might mean that some sites are not profitable any more, but far too many sites exist which are basically serving ads and no real content of their own.
To make me accept online ads again, the people doing the advertising first of all have to regain my trust.
So you used to find online ads interesting/useful and click before? I always thought at least tech literate people don't click on ads at all. I for one don't recall a single time I clicked on an online ad (mostly due to your reasoning that they are dubious.).
No, I can't say I ever did. And I don't think I said that. But from a time, where I might have been neutral and possibly interested in legit ads, the advertising has managed to create a strongly negative feeling, which usually then applies to the advertised products, even if they are legit.
I don't suffer from banner blindness so much as revel in it.
Seriously, the moment an ad pops up, I'm looking for the close button. I don't pay any attention to the advertiser and if I do, it's usually an automatic negative impression.
Your brain is automatically filtering stuff out because if it didn't you'd go crazy. Just imagine remembering everyone's face you saw on your commute or every conversation you had at that party last week.
It's a numbers game. While the industry buys and sells impressions, only a tiny percentage of people actually buy things. Why in the world can't THE TYPE OF PERSON that tolerates online advertising be their target, instead of the rest of us innocents?
You ever take a taxi or Uber and have the radio blaring, including commercials (which last many minutes at a time, sometimes a huge percentage of the ride)? I have, in fact most of my car rides. THAT is the type of person that tolerates ads.
If the entire ad experience were opt-in, maybe they could charge higher for impressions. Those impressions would actually matter, because the chances of trying to forcefeed and forcibly distract a concentrating nerd reading a news or tech article and the latter getting annoyed would be much smaller.
_Not_ recalling an ad doesn't mean that it isn't actually in your brain. Professor Robert Cialdini sited research in his book "Pre-Suasion" that the most effective ads were those that were _not_ recalled by users. You're effected by ads more than you think or recall.
I think this means that 1 in 5 pages hosting a third party ad network has no relevant content for a legitimate web user, so visits to that site must be by bots. Not saying that is what happens, just a way of interpreting it in a way that is not impossible...
Assuming the article is to be trusted, I see two insights here. First, even today only 30% of users use adblockers. Helping educate people is still the best way we can fight against this parasite of an industry. Every time a friend asks me to help set up their computer, every time I see a browser without an adblocker, I do what I can to fix it. Even on purely security grounds, there's no excuse to run a browser without at least uBlock Origin.
Secondly, it seems click fraud still has some growth potential. I've used AdNauseam before, but perhaps there are more efficient ways out there?
> I am concerned — very, very concerned — that costs of ads will go up and up and up from this unethical obstruction
"unethical obstruction"? UNETHICAL OBSTRUCTION?!?!?!?! You have got to be ____ing kidding me!
First of all, that is like saying switching to a different channel during a commercial break is unethical. It's like saying the use a spam filter is unethical.
Secondly, and most importantly, in an age where ad networks are used to spread malware, it takes a lot of nerve (or ignorance) to call an act of legitimate self-defense "unethical".
Not to speak of the negative impact ads have on website performance, battery usage and waste of bandwidth.
Unethical? Un-____ing-believable!
[Just to be clear, it seems the article itself is trying to make a different point, but that quote just blew a fuse for me.]
From a technical perspective you're wrong. Adblock Plus does sell exceptions but something like uBlock Origin doesn't and it was designed to be low on resources
Not all ad blockers have a "business model." Some are just volunteer efforts by people who are tired of the resource-sapping ads that have become common all over the web.
And then the follow-up claim that users "simply notice native ad placements more" because they're in the content area, ignoring the fact that mobile users are way more likely to accidentally click them in the process of scrolling the web page. I know I've done this a nonzero number of times, compared with the zero number that I've deliberately clicked on.
And don't get me started on "welcome ads" aka "click the tiny near-invisible X in the corner to close the damn thing, and if you miss you'll get taken to some horrible site which will eat half your monthly mobile data".
> “I’m really not worried about whether advertising will be able to find its way through digital channels. I am concerned — very, very concerned — that costs of ads will go up and up and up from this unethical obstruction”.
The moment I read this a huge banner obscuring 80% of the page popped up inviting me to "join banner ad network" or somesuch.
I couldn't care less about "unethical obstruction" by AdBlock as long as advertisers feel that they can freely obstruct me.
Additionally, this website loads a bunch of tracking scripts from ad networks such as adbeat. Etc. Etc. But sure, cry me a river about how poor advertisers suffer.
Online advertising is confusing to me. Clickthrough seems like a very limited view of what advertising actually is or should be. I don't know how much advertising money is being spent overall these days but for most of my life, advertisers and their customers have done just fine using billboards, TV ads, newspaper and magazine ads, and other situational impression-based advertising. Billions of dollars were spent and made on such ads. The prices were based on estimated impressions, not on how many customers immediately entered into a business transaction before doing anything else. It's ridiculous to expect website users to drop what they're doing and click through to some other site that they know is going to try to sell them something. It's far better to get your brand and product in their minds via the impression. It's far more likely this will pay off in the long run. Asking users to engage immediately is asking them to throw away what they were doing for something they weren't. That's foolish. I wouldn't be surprised in 90% of the "clickthroughs" are mistakes anyway. That would explain why phone clickthroughs are so much higher, because it's way easier to accidentally click on the ad instead of the X.
I also wonder how the listed stats on how well people remember the last banner ad they saw compares to magazine, newspaper, and TV ads. And how the numbers change with different layouts and approaches. I'm sure there are people in the industry who have numbers on this, and they must not show what I think they show. But the direction web advertising is going is not a healthy direction for anyone involved. I feel like a major change in the CW around the current approach to online ads has to happen.
Ad blockers would be easily thwarted if publishers hosted the ad content themselves. There's obviously a question of potential impression-count fraud to be addressed, but magazines and newspapers and TV and radio broadcasters have all solved their own versions of these problems. But it's not like the current system of ad networks that are filled with literal scams and thousands or millions of fake websites serving fake ads to fake clients via fake web searches are exactly fraud-free. I think the software engineers who've created the current broken system did too good a job of selling their cleverness, and we've got a bunch of wrongheaded metrics and approaches that are feeding a vicious cycle. How do we break out? I have no idea. But the answer has to come from the publishers and the companies looking to advertise. Podcasting seems to have found a far healthier balance. And maybe we're just in the golden age and the money ultimately won't be there in the long run, but regardless, the web is long past its own golden age.
That is what fraud and malware are doing to the web ad industry. And they don't mind doing that.
So, the reason that ad blockers are killing the ad industry lies in the industry itself. There is not enough self regulations on spam, malicious sites, fraud, etc. For emails, we have filters that remove the majority of spams, but for ads, there is only ad blockers that remove ads indiscriminately. If ad platforms cannot find a way to remove the majority of those, the industry is simply doomed.
Let's just have a cold look. If people don't want something what can a company do? Bundle that nasty thing with something people want. And this is what the ad industry has been doing. And now the power to bundle has started to unravel long ago.
It's simple. Would you prefer something with or without distraction if you had the power to choose?
Ad industry is doomed. Except if they find a way or other to regain the power to force the bundling. For example by declaring ad blockers unlawful.
58 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 72.4 ms ] threadBut, I recently trialled a subscription to The Times (UK) and found they were still deploying banner ads almost to the same degree as non-subscription alternatives.
So, maybe, they are going to be sticking around for a while yet?
It is the greed of a few in our industry that has made the lives of everyone else pretty miserable.
Ultimately I think the next newspaper will probably come from Google, and be AI.
[fn:1] Old newspapers may be excepted, as they have a long time to deal with this. I assume that buying ads in NYT can't change their editorial stances, but they are an exception.
[fn:2] HN, reddit, facebook, twitter, etc.
Wouldn't some kind of syndication service work, where you subscribe to a custom bundle out of selection of available news sites, and the sites then get revenue based on how many readers included them in their subscription?
From here, my impression is that nearly all of them are completely unwilling to change anything at all. Even their layout they can't bother to adapt for the web.
Actual investigative work like the kind of stuff Shane Bauer has done would still have legs on subscription/donor based platforms.
QFT. Journalism has been awful at least for decades.
> Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
- Michael Chrichton
In a complex world, the very idea of generalist journalists is broken.
I think it would be tough to argue that modern institutional journalism is somehow worse than that of, say, the World War 2 era.
Crichton's "amnesia effect" is a vivid example of how people get this wrong. Are newspapers wrong about Palestine? Quite often. But it's not for the same reason that they're wrong about show business. Show business is a specialized beat with specialized reporters and not every newspaper has someone dedicated to it. Everyone understands that about reporting Palestine, but fewer people understand that about show business, and so Crichton sounds incisive when really he's just making a banal observation: different journalism outlets are strong on different topics.
There are a few services that help track IPs that view and click ads on a global basis. They are backed by ML algos that can determine with a high rate of accuracy whether it's fraud or not.
Using some of the reputable services, the advertiser can go back to the network and request refunds due to the fraudulent clicks.
So if you did do this, you'd only be hurting the smaller players who rely on ads to fund their ventures.
An article I read sometimes last week made an unflattering, but rather astute comparison that a site which relies on ad networks for their income is like a streetwalker - selling out integrity integrity for money, competing with or against shady people (the scammy porn sites, the automated link-farms with Markov-generated pseudo content, etc.). And if one has to "interact" with sites like that, it is smart to use protection (adblock&friends).
I wish I could find the article. I'm quite certain it was linked here on HN one or two weeks ago.
So for me, I try very hard not to click on any online ads. It has come to the point where I consider a product dubious, if it appears in online ads - the exact contrary from what ads try to achieve.
The only way out of this I can see is, if web sites stop just using random ad networks, but get active in the selection and placement of ads on their sites. Large publications should run their ad departments - like any printed magazines and newspapers always did - and place selected ads in the content and also host them themselves. Smaller sites might require the help of ad providers to make a living, but I see them also in the responsibiltiy of selecting the ad provider to ensure only acceptable ads on their site. This might mean that some sites are not profitable any more, but far too many sites exist which are basically serving ads and no real content of their own.
To make me accept online ads again, the people doing the advertising first of all have to regain my trust.
I have bought Tile, and Amazon Products and I have used Clarfai in projects.
If the ads are that useful I will click them.
The industry is pretending that they did not notice that trend, but that will come to bite them sooner or later.
The longer they delay the U turn, the less reversible this idea gets in minds of Internet users
No for real, I think banner blindness is an automatic attempt to solve the real problem: intrusive unwanted and even dangerous ads.
Seriously, the moment an ad pops up, I'm looking for the close button. I don't pay any attention to the advertiser and if I do, it's usually an automatic negative impression.
Your brain is automatically filtering stuff out because if it didn't you'd go crazy. Just imagine remembering everyone's face you saw on your commute or every conversation you had at that party last week.
It's a numbers game. While the industry buys and sells impressions, only a tiny percentage of people actually buy things. Why in the world can't THE TYPE OF PERSON that tolerates online advertising be their target, instead of the rest of us innocents?
You ever take a taxi or Uber and have the radio blaring, including commercials (which last many minutes at a time, sometimes a huge percentage of the ride)? I have, in fact most of my car rides. THAT is the type of person that tolerates ads.
If the entire ad experience were opt-in, maybe they could charge higher for impressions. Those impressions would actually matter, because the chances of trying to forcefeed and forcibly distract a concentrating nerd reading a news or tech article and the latter getting annoyed would be much smaller.
* https://www.amazon.com/Pre-Suasion-Revolutionary-Way-Influen...
seriously?? that's surely impossible?
Secondly, it seems click fraud still has some growth potential. I've used AdNauseam before, but perhaps there are more efficient ways out there?
"unethical obstruction"? UNETHICAL OBSTRUCTION?!?!?!?! You have got to be ____ing kidding me!
First of all, that is like saying switching to a different channel during a commercial break is unethical. It's like saying the use a spam filter is unethical.
Secondly, and most importantly, in an age where ad networks are used to spread malware, it takes a lot of nerve (or ignorance) to call an act of legitimate self-defense "unethical".
Not to speak of the negative impact ads have on website performance, battery usage and waste of bandwidth.
Unethical? Un-____ing-believable!
[Just to be clear, it seems the article itself is trying to make a different point, but that quote just blew a fuse for me.]
He's actually right. Adblockers are a racket, their business model involves asking advertisers to pony up protection money for exceptions.
> Not to speak of the negative impact ads have on website performance, battery usage and waste of bandwidth.
This is true, but adblockers don't care about fixing the user's problems.
Not all ad blockers have a "business model." Some are just volunteer efforts by people who are tired of the resource-sapping ads that have become common all over the web.
Want to show me where Gorhill asks advertisers to pony up money to be exempt from uBlock Origin?
>This is true, but adblockers don't care about fixing the user's problems.
This is one of the core design choices of uBO: use minimal resources
Ah, yeah, we suffer from banner blindness. It's such a bad thing for those consumers, they don't care about our useless ads anymore!
And don't get me started on "welcome ads" aka "click the tiny near-invisible X in the corner to close the damn thing, and if you miss you'll get taken to some horrible site which will eat half your monthly mobile data".
https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/
I think the title is more like:
Finally, someone who gets it...
The moment I read this a huge banner obscuring 80% of the page popped up inviting me to "join banner ad network" or somesuch.
I couldn't care less about "unethical obstruction" by AdBlock as long as advertisers feel that they can freely obstruct me.
I also wonder how the listed stats on how well people remember the last banner ad they saw compares to magazine, newspaper, and TV ads. And how the numbers change with different layouts and approaches. I'm sure there are people in the industry who have numbers on this, and they must not show what I think they show. But the direction web advertising is going is not a healthy direction for anyone involved. I feel like a major change in the CW around the current approach to online ads has to happen.
Ad blockers would be easily thwarted if publishers hosted the ad content themselves. There's obviously a question of potential impression-count fraud to be addressed, but magazines and newspapers and TV and radio broadcasters have all solved their own versions of these problems. But it's not like the current system of ad networks that are filled with literal scams and thousands or millions of fake websites serving fake ads to fake clients via fake web searches are exactly fraud-free. I think the software engineers who've created the current broken system did too good a job of selling their cleverness, and we've got a bunch of wrongheaded metrics and approaches that are feeding a vicious cycle. How do we break out? I have no idea. But the answer has to come from the publishers and the companies looking to advertise. Podcasting seems to have found a far healthier balance. And maybe we're just in the golden age and the money ultimately won't be there in the long run, but regardless, the web is long past its own golden age.
That is what fraud and malware are doing to the web ad industry. And they don't mind doing that.
So, the reason that ad blockers are killing the ad industry lies in the industry itself. There is not enough self regulations on spam, malicious sites, fraud, etc. For emails, we have filters that remove the majority of spams, but for ads, there is only ad blockers that remove ads indiscriminately. If ad platforms cannot find a way to remove the majority of those, the industry is simply doomed.
It's simple. Would you prefer something with or without distraction if you had the power to choose?
Ad industry is doomed. Except if they find a way or other to regain the power to force the bundling. For example by declaring ad blockers unlawful.