Adblock Plus Now Sells Ads

There's a very niche site called HOTSLogs (Heroes of the Storm Logs) that parses replays from Heroes of the Storm. It's run by one person.

However, he's made the decision to...
A. Quit his day job in hopes of living off the site
B. Use a shady ad network
C. Refuse to entertain other funding models aside from his ad network and a debatably-difficult-to-find "Buy Premium" function

Thus, when his site's ads load loud porn after a tab has been open for a while, crash browsers, or do a throwback to the '90s with unclosable windows, his base of users (who are tech-savvy to begin with) don't have much sympathy. There have been at least three blowups over time and he's promised to "look into" it. I give it another month before we see a fourth.

The admen poisoned the well years ago, and now that we're facing data caps everywhere plus ads that are massive security risks, users are starting to say "Wait a minute..."

Obviously, a site like this actually cares whether its ads are full of shit or not because I'm pretty sure if they didn't Kyle would single-handedly burn down the ad network's HQ.
 
sfsuphysics said:
You do realize that the number of people using some sort of adblockers is but a drop in the bucket of the totality of internet users who either don't know, don't care, or are too stupid to find ways to remove ads.
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I'm aware and? That doesn't make it OK. You should be a good sport and disable ad blockers on sites you regularly visit. Of course not in the wild, but for the sites you consume on a daily basis you can and should make an exception. Otherwise it's just like dipping into the local general store for a chocolate bar every day without paying for it. Sure it won't bankrupt them, but it's not a nice thing to do.

Besides he was talking about the total eradication of all ads from the internet. That would mean the end of most free sites.
 
I can see this running in to legal problems, somewhere I guess. From the standpoint of you're not only taking awake revenue from the site but you're adding in your own on top of that. Sure it's done on the customer's side and by their own doing and that's the only thing saving them I'd think.
 
M76 said:
I'm aware and? That doesn't make it OK. You should be a good sport and disable ad blockers on sites you regularly visit. Of course not in the wild, but for the sites you consume on a daily basis you can and should make an exception. Otherwise it's just like dipping into the local general store for a chocolate bar every day without paying for it. Sure it won't bankrupt them, but it's not a nice thing to do.

Besides he was talking about the total eradication of all ads from the internet. That would mean the end of most free sites.
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Like many things, there is a pendulum swinging. Websites used to have reasonable advertisements related to the content of their site. [H] still runs IT-related ads. Tom's and Anandtech switched the way that their ads are set up, and now both sites have become more advertisement than content.

The onus is on the people in charge of the website and their relationship with the ad host(s) to develop a system that can generate revenue without alienating their visitors. To be honest, the people running websites and the advertisers made bad decisions in the hope of increasing site revenue, which has pushed away the tech savvy visitors that were probably the people that would have purchased the items being advertised.

With any luck, they will start to realize this and provide an alternative to what is primarily available on the Internet today. At the moment, it seems that they are causing more controversy rather than reviewing what it is that is causing people to feel the need for an adblocker of some form in the first place.

Also, several people mentioned that different websites appeared to show different advertising content (type, style of ad, position on page, etc.) and I suspect that it has something to do with the browser of choice as well as the other add-ons/extensions that they are running. I can go to a site like Wired from my Windows 10 laptop with Edge and the ad experience is entirely different than it is with Chrome on my office desktop with Windows 7. I have even seen a difference between Chrome on both on pages like Forbes or CNN. I suspect that the advertising algorithms are taking into account the operating system and any available tracking mechanisms within the OS or browser itself, but admittedly I am not a web programmer and I'm too lazy to monitor the traffic stream in that much detail...
 
dgz said:
Some sites are reporting up to 75% of their daily user are using them. I am struggling to remember the site :(
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Destructoid? I know they were one of the bigger sites that bitched about it, going so far as to call their readers criminals or somesuchother.
 
DrLobotomy said:
I don't use any adblocker on this browser. I have another browser setup with a variety blocking & protection plug-ins. This browser only goes to a few sites that are morally approved.
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I use the same browser for everything, but manually whitelist said "morally approved" sites.
 
IMHO, ads would be a lot less of a problem if the major ad services Google/Facebook/Doubleclick/whatever actually practiced editorial oversight.

If they had actual people reviewing every request to post an ad BEFORE it goes live, to make sure it doesn't come embedded with any exploits, doesn't point to a malicious or fraudulent site, and isn't too disruptive (not too large, no animations, sounds or flashy colors) many fewer people would be using ad blockers, and the revenue streams might even be higher...
 
Scizyr said:
There was another tech site similar to [H] I used to frequent until they started crying about how devastating adblocking is to their revenue. I immediately stopped using that site. Not going to mention which one it was because reasons.

The simple fact is advertisement networks cannot be trusted. 99% of malware still comes through middle-man attacks on ad networks. There isn't any feasible way websites can have sustainable ads currently without using one of the ad networks. Until that problem is resolved it is absolutely necessary that everyone use adblocking software and plugins.

If you were the captain of a starship in space and someone hailing you asked you to lower your shields, how would you respond?
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My go to response is always the middle finger with a warm smile.
Gotta serve it with a smile.
 
Scizyr said:
There was another tech site similar to [H] I used to frequent until they started crying about how devastating adblocking is to their revenue. I immediately stopped using that site. Not going to mention which one it was because reasons.

The simple fact is advertisement networks cannot be trusted. 99% of malware still comes through middle-man attacks on ad networks. There isn't any feasible way websites can have sustainable ads currently without using one of the ad networks. Until that problem is resolved it is absolutely necessary that everyone use adblocking software and plugins.

If you were the captain of a starship in space and someone hailing you asked you to lower your shields, how would you respond?
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yeah, as I mentioned above, the ad middlemen need to be held accountable for the ads they present.

It's excruciatingly clear that no one reviews the ads before they go live. There needs to be a thorough human vetting process of 100% of ads BEFORE they go live, that takes into consideration security, ethics and descriptiveness. This isn't' something that can be handed off to an algorithm.
 
Sovereign said:
Obviously, a site like this actually cares whether its ads are full of shit or not because I'm pretty sure if they didn't Kyle would single-handedly burn down the ad network's HQ.
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I'd be curious to hear Kyle's take on this, as this site is one of the few that actually does a good job. It appears like he is using the google/doubleclick ad service on the forum and main page, but for some reason it is not obnoxious like on many other sites. I've never operated a large volume site, so I have no ideas what the options are like from the site operators perspective when you contact an ad middleman like that, but I am very curious about it, because some sites are clearly doing it right and others are failing big time.
 
Armenius said:
Destructoid? I know they were one of the bigger sites that bitched about it, going so far as to call their readers criminals or somesuchother.
Click to expand...

Could be. I remember it was riddled with close to 20 external js scripts lol. What a crazy guy.
 
What is more amazing to me is that advertising works at all and pays at all.

I don't think I've ever intentionally clicked on a banner ad even once. I never trust a sales pitch and I never impulse buy anything. I buy things when I am good and ready to buy things, not because I see an ad, and when I do buy things, I research it independently before buying, I don't have any brand loyalties. I don't even think any purchase I've ever made has been even remotely influenced by any ad in any medium, web, TV, print, Radio or otherwise.

Sure, it has helped with brand awareness, but I don't shop based on brands. Brands mean nothing to me. Brand awareness is useless if it doesn't translate into sales.

I just wonder who all these sheep are who see an ad (which is an obvious sales pitch) and are like 'Sure, I'll buy that"...
 
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