Online Ad Industry Admits “We Messed Up”

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Now that they have admitted to having a problem, how do they plan on fixing it?

“We messed up,” begins a statement by Scott Cunningham, Senior Vice President of Technology and Ad Operations at the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade group whose members account for around 90% of the ads you try to ignore every day. “As technologists, tasked with delivering content and services to users, we lost track of the user experience,” explains Cunningham.
 
If Ad Blockers didn't exist, my guess is "Scott Cunningham" wouldn't have the same thing to say about "messing up". Fuckem.
 
A good start toward fixing the problem would be legislation holding websites liable for any damages and/or lost time caused by malware delivered via their website. Now, most sites just auction off an ad box and as long as they get their money, don't have a stake in what shows up or get delivered via that ad box. When website's bank accounts are on the line, they will do a much better job of vetting potential advertisers.
 
No mention of Flash, probably the cause of 90% of the hatred toward "invasive" ads.
 
what ads?

with the exception of this site's tasteful and informative advertisements (ahem) I have not seen an ad in years
 
Really? If you look at the evolution of advertising you'd have to be completely inept to not realize what you're doing is going to piss people off.

- Let's make our ads bigger and not scale to mobile (data)
- Let's make our ads with lots of GET requests
- Let's serve up JS in our ads
- Let's serve up flash
- Images, let's do videos!
- Videos? How about we do sounds that can't be muted!
- Even better, let's autoplay the videos/sounds in a loop. But we won't serve those up everytime, only sometimes so the user has to hunt down the page that has the video/audio ad that loaded on the fly.
 
The problem is the alternative, which is already becoming more prevalent.

The "native advertisement" is the future. This where reviews, news articles, and posts will exist simply for the purpose of pushing a particular product.

Instead of there being separate advertisements along side your content, the content itself will become a covert advertisement.

Your going to see more "polls" and "surveys" and "man on street" reporting about great products. I put those in quotes, because they won't be real.
 
A few websites I go to happen to have banner ads, these ads are typically a couple frames at most, they aren't "flashy" to get your attention, they're simply sponsors trying to deal with the forum. These ads stay at the top so if I scroll down they disappear, there's nothing that pops up on the screen, or from the side, or any sort of video that autoplays. The size of banners are small percentage of the overall screen size even when they are on the screen.

Ad makers failed because too many "pushed that envelope" and made ads annoying, intrusive, and an overall pain in the ass. Very soon annoying became the norm, and ad blockers made the internet a sane place again. I suspect that this guy wants ad blockers gone even though the are talking about making the above mentioned "sane" choices, there are very few sites I whitelist for ad blockers, because ad companies ruined it for everyone and it really is easier to just not know what ads pop up.
 
[H] got it right when it comes to advertising. The ads are non intrusive, and they are actually relevant to the reader's interest.
 
As technologists, tasked with delivering content and services to users, we lost track of the user experience,” explains Cunningham.
Click to expand...

It's kind of annoying how people with shady agendas change the meaning of common words.

This guy is referring to ads as "content" and "services" to end users. They are not that to the end users. Period.

It's the whole "organic" foods all over again.
 
Even those people without ad blockers know to avoid certain websites now. All these little 'facebook style' feel-good stories (the kitten and puppy endless cuteness links) are probably going broke because we've all learned to stay away due to ad overload.
 
I just received unsolicited spam from Costco in my inbox, which I have never used, liked, followed, or interacted with the company before. Unsubscribing from their news list, says that they collection my information using stolen private facebook data. See, this shit is why nobody like ads.
 
And what I mean by "private" data is that the email address they collected is set to share with no one (only me). Nor do I have any apps or logins linked through facebook.
 
There is a vast VAST infrastructure laid in place for tracking purposes. I know because i work in it. It is growing every day, and everyday people find new ways to integrate various pieces of information they collect about you. What you bought on amazon, what TV show you watched, who you voted for, what games you play on your phone, what kind of car you drive, where you live, how much you make, who you work for, etc.

All of these are put together to make personality profiles for everyone. Spammy banner ads on website are only a tiny part of it.

Your personality profile can determine what ads you watch on TV, what articles/products appear on the front page of websites you visit, what kind of shops move in your neighborhood, what they sell, and for how much.
 
Oops correction: Obviously you can't know who someone voted for, but you can make a very very good guess based on their voter registration and general voter profile. If I know you donated to Mitt Romney campaign, even if you're registered independent, I know you'll probably vote republican.

Expect lots of republican fliers in your mailbox.
 
They're just saying this so everyone goes "Aww, maybe they aren't so bad" and forgives them. Its just an image thing. They don't actually give a fuck...I hope you all realize that.
 
Some websites are now refusing to show any content if you use an ad blocker. I have never used an ad blocker because I feel that websites are entitled to make money to keep the sites running. If a site has too many ads I won't visit again.
 
And then ad blockers will figure out how to make it to where content will show up. Its just a battle back and forth like anything else, and ads are on the losing side.
 
One sportbike forum which I frequent has two All-State insurance video ads playing at the same exact same time, one at the top of the page, on at the bottom, and they auto play on literally every page you load.

I emailed All-State, they responded that it was out of their control and they weren't responsible. I asked them who pays the bills for their advertising campaigns?
 
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belfert said:
Some websites are now refusing to show any content if you use an ad blocker. I have never used an ad blocker because I feel that websites are entitled to make money to keep the sites running. If a site has too many ads I won't visit again.
Click to expand...

You should absolutely use an ad/script blocker. It's not just about the ads, they track your behavior and then sell and re-sell that to whoever wants it. Your patterns on one site can modify the content you're exposed to on a different site.

This whole "but this is how we make a living derpderp" argument is totally bogus. The way you make a living is shitty and sneaky. When you visit a site you have no idea what's being tracked and by whom. I go to some of these places and my blockers report 20+ trackers and other data miners.

And we're not even talking about the free-for-all that goes on with smartphone apps.
 
belfert said:
Some websites are now refusing to show any content if you use an ad blocker. I have never used an ad blocker because I feel that websites are entitled to make money to keep the sites running. If a site has too many ads I won't visit again.
Click to expand...

Those aren't hard to work around (remember that they still have to work with search engine crawlers).

I don't have a problem with whitelisting simple, non-intrusive ads, like on HardForum and I make a point to whitelist any site that I support and that has non-intrusive ads. However I do have a problem with 90% of the websites that serve ads because they are intrusive, take up resources, take up bandwidth and serve malware.

Advertising has become the number one vector for malware ever since attachment filtering made it difficult to use e-mail. When I implemented network wide adblocking on our corporate network, I saw a 95% reduction in antivirus hits. 95%. That's staggering and frankly, if sites want to continue to be able to make money off of advertising, they better clean up their act and pronto.
 
fucking pages full of flash ads that hose my cpu. Hate those.

whatever happened to animated gif ads?
 
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