News Adblock Plus launches its own advertising platform

It will be interesting to see how this affects things as I use Adblock Plus in addition to uBlock Origin, Adguard Adblocker, ScriptSafe and Privacy Badger.

 

The belt, braces, string, and sticky-back plastic approach.

I thought Adblock used user created block lists, or am i confusing it with another addblocker.

 

Ohh, I don't like this, especially given the fact that I actually gave some money to Adblock to thank them for their product.

Some people say you shouldn't use ad blockers as many sites need it as a source of income. Well, quite frankly, I say tough. I once had a nasty experience by accidentally clicking on an advert. Never again.

 

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, until either a) a highly animated "eye catching" ad appears, b) a virus infected ad appears (the 'family' laptop had Kaspersky freak out over an ad the other day) or c) a video ad appears.

If any of those happen, AdBlock Plus is history.

 

It's interesting you are recommending an alternative adblocker on a site that is ad dependent.

I think the only way around adblock is to bake ads rights into the content. Youtubers have done this for years. It is a better solution for content monetization than using vile advertising networks.

 

I'm not overly concerned - simple ads I can deal with.

I only deployed an ad-blocker after the advertising arms race stepped way over the line:

Full screen pop-ups, auto play video ads, those f***ing annoying ones that follow as you scroll down the page, partially blocking the content you're trying to read.

Seriously, how in hell is an ad going to be successful if all it does is irritate the sh!t out of you?

 

Indeed it is but then I tired of intrusive ads a long, long time ago not to mention the associated privacy issues. Visiting a new site can be a bit of a pain as I go through the different options to see what I want to allow but it only needs to be done once.

That mix of extensions also means I can see just how intrusive some sites really are and some people might be quite surprised just how much goes on behind the scenes.

You can indeed add your own filters for Adblock as well as Whitelist domains your trust or want to "support".

 

I think the current simplistic list based concept of ad-blocking on the way out.

It's long occurred to me that there are ways of making ads pretty much unblockable if the impetus is there. Basically by automatically baking them into the content and making them machine indistinguishable from the content you actually want to see. Either that or tying the viewing of adverts to the serving of the content.

I think Facebook and some other major site doing this might be the tipping point. Smaller sites will start asking why all ads don't work this way and the ad companies will start pushing for similar solutions that are easy to implement.

I think the golden age/freeloading ******* age (depending on your POV ) of adblocking might be over people.

 

Channel 4 does that on its website for the F1 videos (no idea about rest of content), ad blocker on? No video for you.

 

I completely agree. But you forgot the most annoying ad of them all - the ones that scroll the page for you. Nothing irritates me more than trying to click on a link, only to find that just before it happens, an ad at the top of the page loads, pushes the whole page down where the link I wanted to click on is not below my mouse anymore, and then I click on something else (sometimes the ad itself).

I personally don't use Adblock because I see that as unfair to the websites I visit that depend on ads for revenue. I do, however, use a flash blocker, since those are usually the worst - they're annoying, they worsen my viewing performance, and they slow down the page load speed.


Anyway, seems to me Adblock is a bunch of hypocrites. It's kind of the same idea as paying someone to pirate software for you. Sure, it may be cheaper to pay the hacker than it is to buy the software, but it still doesn't make sense why you'd financially support a thief rather than the people who made the thing you want in the first place.

 

To be fair, Adblock has always advised that you whitelist sites that have sensible and unobtrusive ads to support their content, so I see where they're coming from on one hand.

On the other hand, this way they're taking revenue directly away from the sites they suggest you support by replacing the site's ads with ones from their own platform, which is a mega-m-m-m-multi-dick move.

 

In addition to all the above, the one thing that really irritates me about ads and was the final straw pushing me to use an adblocker, was the amount of times I was left with a blank screen, whilst waiting for a page to load, because an effing third-party ad-server was refusing to respond.

 

Ads require content to be downloaded and therefore will always be blockable. Once they are properly baked in though there's no getting around it. Bit-Tech could arrange a sponsor and make the article image half the actual image and half a sponsors add or image. You cant block the add without blocking the actual content. Gareth could add some ad copy to the article as well. There's no getting around that. The thing is it requires more effort from everyone. Sites have to chase sponsors and manage the ads and companies have to find the right sites for their products. There would be no scatter gun approach of buying/selling x number of impressions from an ad network and forgetting about it.

 

Ads being properly integrated into website would be fine with me, it's having the page load, then watching all those extra cutouts boxes, banners and pop ups load in over the next five seconds that moved me to use a blocker in the first place.

That and the extreme laziness a lot of site apply to their monetisation. Relevant adverts are fine (Like the OCZ SSD one on this page right here) but when it's online pharmacies and health insurance shite popping the site that's hosting them is getting blocked.

 

I'm talking about line of copy like "Shadowz Gamerez Peripheralz so much RGB you'll go blind!". Rather than a bought article or something that could be misconstrued as your opinion.

I just think baking ads in is a better solution than going down the anti adblock arms race. The ads tend to be more targeted, they are less intrusive, they are consistent with the content, they don't have the same privacy or malware risks.

I don't understand your ovaltine reference.

 

If it makes you feel better, I got the joke the first time around and thought it was pretty funny.


"They should call it Roundtine!"
- Jerry Seinfeld