Ad flog Plus: Adblock Plus now an advertising network, takes cash to broker web banners The maker of ad-busting plugin Adblock Plus (ABP) has opened up a market to let publishers and advertisers link up on ads that it will not filter out. A new "Acceptable Ads Platform" (AAP) marketplace will allow advertisers to pay to get around the ABP settings, while also providing site owners and publishers the ability to …
I think they are quite aware that they're replaceable - they just figure that as long as they're making small and subtle enough changes most of their current user base will not see a need to move on elsewhere; and they're quite likely right.
Nicely written FAQ page that explains everything.... that links to the ad criteria:
"What are the criteria for an ad to be declared an Acceptable Ad?
The criteria for what makes an Acceptable Ad can be found here."
https://acceptableads.com/criteria
404 page not found. Nice work guys!
"We used to call this racketeering"
Well, yes and no. There are subtle differences between saying the classical "nice outfit you got here, it would be a shame if anything happened to it" and saying "you might be interested to know we left an unguarded open crate of machine guns and grenades right next to your door - would you like us not to do that?"
In this context means - non-irritating/dangerous ones.
IE:
NO animations/noises/interaction
NO popups
NO scripts
NO pageunders
NO massive advertising frames.
NO tracking
ie:
small, static adverts that don't annoy.
That said, I moved to ublock years ago and experience with any whitelisting service is that sooner or later some outfit will come along that will ignore the rules, then sue when their accreditation is withdrawn.
There are subtle differences between saying the classical "nice outfit you got here, it would be a shame if anything happened to it"
It's changed to "Nice ad you got there, it'd be a shame if anything happened to it". Still racketeering, really.
Not that I give a shit. People are sick of being annoyed by intrusive, flashing, pop-over, pop-under, screen-dimming, inescapable, fraudulent, tracking, privacy-invading, top-volume-video-playing, blatantly misleading malware-infested crap being foisted on them using the bandwidth they pay for in an attempt to buy shit they don't want or need at prices they can't afford. They've simply said "enough is enough" and installed an ad-blocker.
You made your bed, ad-flingers, now fucking lie die in it.
"Essentially demanding money with menaces."
Pay us money to maintain a list of acceptable adverts or people who CHOOSE to use us and CHOOSE to allow acceptable adverts from a list they trust us to maintain won't see you.
The alternative being "not to be seen at all"
Advertisers seem to assume they have a _right_ to shove stuff in our faces without the _responsibilty_ of not pissing us off in the process and like many others I've stopped using sites in the past due to intrusive adverts.
Right now a baby's nappy holds more responsibility than the vast majority of advertising agencies.
They should be thankful we're taking the tack of shunning them. The alternative (distributed clicking networks) would bankrupt them in short order.
Not completely.
I don't like advertising but I understand that businesses need to be able to promote their products and services, that running websites does cost money and website owners are entitled to some renumeration for their costs and efforts.
Its the advertising industry itself, with it's philosophy of "how do we get inside people's heads and make them want to buy the product" that I find unacceptable, not the web site owners trying to scratch a living with a few ads on their site. So my criteria for acceptable ads are:
1. No tracking or profiling of my online activity. This is non-negotiable. If you want to serve "relevant" advertising, base it on the page content, not what you've gathered about the person viewing it. So if a page is about cars, have adverts for cars or car parts. If the page is about home improvement, have ads for hardware stores and such. If I'm on such a page long enough to read it all, I'm more likely to be interested in an ad that relates to that page, and there's no tracking or profiling or "personalisation" necessary.
2. No obscuring or blocking page content. That not only includes scroll-overs and popup divs obscuring the page, it also includes "click-through" pages requiring me to click off a dozen or more "offers" before getting to the content. Have the ads in a sidebar or split in the article or similar, not as an obscuring invasive block getting in my face.
3. No animation or sound. If your ad is a constant distraction from my ability to focus on the article I will block it so I can concentrate. So bouncing monkeys, jiggling credit cards, cycling colours and waving girls are not acceptable. Neither are sudden voices or music interrupting the music I'm currently listening to while browsing the site. It's not going to make me buy your product, it's going to make me hate you.
4. Preferably text-only, no imagery. Advertisers tend to use distracting, vivid images to try to pull your attention off the page to the ad. In some cases that can be as bad as animation for distraction, so a Google-style text-only ad is a better way to go. (An example of this is Jim Wales' "puppy-dog eyes" guilt-trip banners on Wikipedia during their funding drives. Those get blocked the moment they come up.)
5. Adverts must be clearly marked as such. This means that it's not sneakily made to look like part of the article, it has to be clearly captioned as being sponsored or an advert. It also includes deceptive ads made to look like Windows error dialogs and similar things to try and fool people into clicking on them, which is something I think should be charged as fraud or misrepresentation.
I think a majority of ad-blocker users would agree with me that if the advertising industry conformed to these five criteria, most of us would be willing to unblock ads. All the advertising industry has to do is take some social responsibility and understand that people are not robots to be programmed. But sadly I feel it'll be a cold day in hell before anything like that happens.
Wherefore I will continue using an adblocker.
I agree with everything you say but tests have shown that ads without animation, or imagery are almost useless to the masses. Take an old magazine with ads in the back pages (e.g. Loot) .. be honest.. even I would probably look quickly at the ones that stand out the most. The simple one liner text ones imply that the advertiser is very stingy and will spend as little as possible on their ad, so why buy anything from a company like that?
It's an interesting debate. I don't like ads either, and have never bought anything from an online ad. I prefer subscription or donation for websites I use but a lot of websites don't have this on offer. And I realise I am in the minority who are willing to pay for content.
I don't like advertising but I understand that businesses need to be able to promote their products and services, that running websites does cost money and website owners are entitled to some renumeration for their costs and efforts.
Personally I hold the site operators equally responsible here. The ultimate driver for many issues is simply the over-reliance on advertising by too many sites - it seems too many sites tack on ads as an afterthought when they realise they have no other business model.
Ultimately this doesn't scale, there are too many sites out there, advertising is only going to be a niche area of the economy, and therefore there simply isn't the money to go around. This is why you get so much online advertising, why so much of it is intrusive, and why so much is from undesirable sources: the funding gap needs to be filled by whatever means. This goes even for respectable sites - for example go to any of the Johnston Press local newspaper sites and you'll instantly see display ads for obvious scams not good but presumably they are the only people who will pay.
I suspect what is ultimately needed is a genuine micropayments model with wide levels of adoption. Unfortunately when that has been tried greed seems to take over. I may happily pay 5p or 10p to read an article of genuine interest but would be less happy to pay e.g. £5.99 a month for the vast majority of sites I only visit a couple of times a month.
"go to any of the Johnston Press local newspaper sites and you'll instantly see display ads for obvious scams "
It strikes me that a call to your local trading standards office would disabuse newspapers of the notion that they can allow these in the online version any more than they do in the print versions.
...businesses need to be able to promote their products and services
If only they could set up some kind of website with nothing more than ads so that any person interested in ads could browse... You know, something like the ads pages in the old newspapers.
Of course most people won't go to such site, the same as most people used to trash the ads pages, but it would be a win-win solution for everybody: businesses would promote their products and people would get rid of ads.
...that running websites does cost money and website owners are entitled to some renumeration for their costs and efforts.
Entitled????? Did anybody force them to put up those sites?
Oh, you mean they've made a business decision and hoped to make some money. In this case paywall the site and wait for the money to roll in. Not happening? Then your business model is broken and it's high time to pack.
IANAL, but if that's possible I'd imagine AB+'s contractual arrangements would pass the liability on to the advertiser. It would be stupid not to. But the bigger damage will be we'll all uninstall.
As to "when" verses "if". At the moment, advertising networks aren't under much pressure to block malware -- it's reputational damage. And they have to deal with complex iteractive ads.
AB+ will only have to deal with static images or text, so the pool of undiscovered exploits must be diminishing. And there users are technically literate and willing to switch to competition so they are motivated to block these things. Getting out malware should mean hacking into AB+; or hacking an advertiser and pushing out an add with a zero day. This should be more than an exploit kit or a scam company can achieve.
First, this opens a door to another company to create an ad blocker to replace ABP.
(Its a free market)
Second, now ABP can be accused of shaking down sites by saying... Look, we're going to continue to block ads as people look at your site unless you cough up the cash... IMHO that could get them in trouble with the law.
Not a smart thing to do.
"Look, we're going to continue to block ads as people look at your site unless you cough up the cash"
I'm not sure this is really an issue, since they're making their money by taking a cut of the sites advertising revenue rather than charging them a subscription fee. If they make their percentage too large then publishers will simply abandon the service. Sure by doing so they'll loose ad revenue from visitors using ad blocker but they'll still be getting 100% of the ad revenue from the ones not using an ad blocker.
For anyone other than large websites/publishers at some point paying the ABP tax, plus the time to select acceptable Ads from the market, wouldn't be worth the commission ABP want. Anything >=50% would seem like it wasn't worthwhile to any small or medium sites I suspect.
So the question then is, would ABP rather get 30% of something or >=50% of nothing.
If ABP wanted to hike their fees this way, they could implement a sliding scale where their commission goes up based on the number of hits per day your site gets.
The people that use ABP are the same type of people that aren't very likely to click on ads anyway. At the very least, not nearly an amount needed to justify the 30% surcharge to have them displayed.
Advertising only works when the advertiser can prove to the client that the client is no making more money than they spent to hire the advertising company and to run ad campaigns. The fact that ABP users aren't very likely to click on ads, let alone purchase the item advertised, causes the whole advertising 'value proposition' to fall on its face. No one is going to spend a million dollars just to increase profits from sales by a few hundred dollars.
I fully agree. We block because we don't want adverts at all - I know when I want to go and buy something.
However, I expect that if we look through the marketing window, the view is they spend more, they get more sales.
I really hope that people move on to other ad blockers and the message is received that its not what people want.
uBlock seems to work very well for me. I can't recall the last time I saw an advert and any whining web site that complains about the adblocker gets closed and I go elsewhere. I've not seen any negative. The only real change is that I've purchased from different sites than the one I originally expected to visit - their loss.
"The only real change is that I've purchased from different sites than the one I originally expected to visit - their loss."
Actually it may well be your loss as well. That advert, whether you click on it or not (don't forget in some cases ads pay for being loaded on the page as well as when actually clicked) is a revenue stream for that company. Having that revenue stream may well enable them to offer you a better deal on whatever it is they sell since they also have the ad income.
You wouldn't refuse to go into a supermarket and buy food there simply because they also have other things on display you don't want to see on the way in and demand they only display the things you want. As long as the other products aren't clearly in the way and preventing you getting to what you want there isn't a problem. It's no different with ads as far as I'm concerned.
As much as intrusive ads (and by intrusive I mean autoplaying videos and ads that cover the sites own content) are a genuine problem, a banner across the top or side of a page is really not a problem to anyone. You can try and argue that it's a problem to you, and that you don't want to see it and you'll decide when you want to buy something but if that's really the case you have a sufficiently capable brain to simply ignore the advert.
@Phil W
6 years ago I felt I was wronged by the Co-Op group, a family of 5 have spent little to no money there (only when there is no other shop available). The same goes for Ebuyer (Best decision EVER)
Some people do stand by their convictions, I am one of them.
The advertising industry Fucked society hard and I have lost ALL trust for them, I detest any form of advertising, if I need something, there is a great product called google that is really useful for finding things.
" if I need something, there is a great product called google that is really useful for finding things."
So because you hate advertising, you find the the things you want by using a search engine, which displays ads (or sponsored results if you prefer to call them that) in your search results and which is run by one of the largest advertising companies on the planet. Congratulations on successfully sticking to your convictions there....
@phil W
No I use Google to SEARCH for a product I want not what somebody tells me I want.
I still find it hilarious that the most effective tool of finding what your looking has made Billions through advertising, this is simply burning the candle at both ends and not letting it burn out. AMAZING work imo.
Just because they made a load off advertising does not mean that their search engine doesn't work, Ad's were about before google and will be about after google.
So because you hate advertising, you find the the things you want by using a search engine, which displays ads (or sponsored results if you prefer to call them that) in your search results and which is run by one of the largest advertising companies on the planet.
Between uBlock and NoScript, I don't see said ads or sponsored results.
I'm the same, I firmly believe that the true value of any company is what they do when things go wrong... Ebuyer have been amongst the worst companies I have ever dealt with, lies, constant cock ups, they even deleted my account because I complained about the bad service and lies their staff kept telling me.
I've not used their site in almost 5yrs and I never will again... Not even if they're the cheapest, I'd rather pay a few extra quid with a company that has proved itself reliable and easy to deal with.
As for the Co-Op... they're overpriced and only to be used in last minute desperation when no other shops are open... Which is normally on a Sunday evening when all proper Supermarkets are closed.
@the heckler in the third row ;)
RE: Ebuyer, It was 7 years ago I stopped buying due to a massive cockup with a steam mop. But I was then building a computer for a mate, the parts list was done on Ebuyer so re-opened my account there for a one off purchase on his behalf. Closed the account within 2 hours £850 goes elsewhere ....
May I recommend Scan.co.uk for bloody good customer service, same computer build as above, called them up ordered .... found out we could actually get the GPU cheaper through them, called up to add it to the order, not 30 min later was told "No sorry you cannot add it to your order, it has already been picked and awaiting shipping", so they offered (not asked) to drop the postage fee, and then out of the two they dropped the postage fee for the more expensive package !!! They have most certainly earned a good rep with me, and havn't tarnished my view of them yet, and to top it all off, they are actually quite competitively priced.
*Disclaimer, I do not work for scan, I doubt I ever could as they have such yummy computer parts in storage :D
" a banner across the top or side of a page is really not a problem to anyone."
The problem with banner ads can be surmised as follows:
Site allows advertising banners and has a written agreement with the ad network to NOT allow such adverts.
They show up anyway. Users complain _loudly_ and some go elsewhere.
Site finds it has no legal recourse over breach of contract and despite assurances form the ad network, it keeps happening. Half the time the ad network doesn't actually pay up anyway.
This isn't theory. I've seen it occur on a number of sites. The reality is that advertising networks have been shitting on users and site operators alike for years and for the most part it's not actually worthwhile to allow adverts on your website.
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