I'm all for ad blocking. But I'm even more for net neutrality. ISP blocking ads is tiny step away from "blocking all ads expect the ones ISP is paid to let through" and selectively blocking any other kind of content.
ISPs are utilities, not censors, nor cops.
Someone else mentioned "opt-in" which would not violate net-neutrality and I support.
People think this is some sort of fancy "Ad Block Plus" -- it's not.
Basically the ISPs want Google and Facebook to give them revenue because they "transport" their packets that are ads. This is an affront to net neutrality.
Three will block ads and then charge Google/FB to let them through.
Indeed. I have a much broader Press Release that is actually pretty clear in stating that Three believes it that ads publisher should pay for the data they use to bring the ad on the user's phone. This is a slippery slope, and certainly a threat to net neutrality.
Three also believes that users shouldn't have to pay for the data that advertisers use to bring ads to their phone, which seems reasonable enough - I think we've reached to the point where users are paying more in data costs to view ads than the advertisers are paying to advertise to them which is ridiculous.
This is also true, indeed, but I don't think it's a provider's role to decide what kind of ads should pass or be blocked, especially if such decision will be based on who's paying and who's not.
Right now there is a free rider problem with internet content. If this becomes more prevalent the market will have to adjust to deal with free riders.
If you believe that content creators have a right to earn money there are two ways that can happen:
1) directly - you pay directly for the content that you want to consume or 2) indirectly - you see ads or sell your data in some way.
I wonder what people will choose if these are the choices. Right now you can ignore paywalls because relatively few sites employ them and they aren't robust.
There's only a "free rider problem" if you view the internet as a tool to generate income, as opposed to a tool you can use to offer something to the world. If all ads were gone tomorrow I wouldn't see a single website I regularly use drop off the internet. I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the quality of web content on average would skyrocket if you couldn't make a dime off of ads.
How does ads affect this hypothetical world where quality of web content skyrocket?
The web isn't a closed platform for a limited number of service. Multiple website are trying to survive without ads, Wikipedia is one of them. Nothing stop them.
Ads allow for content creator that still need to pay rent, to actually produce content while still paying rent. You know like any job.
The one that still can produce without anything, are still free to do it currently and plenty are actually doing it.
This blog post is exactly what I'm getting at. The best content comes from people who are passionate about the material, not the potential monetary income. Curiously those same people tend to have no shortage of people willing to step forward with funding to keep them doing their thing.
I don't know which sites you use specifically - but i would guess many people on hn use at least one of the following: Google Search, Gmail, Facebook, Chrome/Firefox.
> If you believe that content creators have a right to earn money there are two ways that can happen: 1) directly - you pay directly for the content that you want to consume or 2) indirectly - you see ads or sell your data in some way.
I don't think this is a truism.
Sites in the style of BBC/CNN/Fox/Yahoo/etc. may have a tough time with their online content if they aren't able to support those properties with ads.
IME most content that's actually worth the time it takes to consume (e.g., well-composed articles and essays written by field experts) is not ad-supported. A lot is behind paywalls, and still more is provided on non-ad-supported websites. For example, distributed freely by fee-supported professional organizations or else by the author him/her-self as a tool for self-promotion/brand building. I don't see any reason why high-quality content can't survive on non-ad revenue, given that there are plenty of counter-examples.
And that's just considering the ad-supported sites that are actually content-driven. A lot of online advertisement is not supporting original content creation at all.
> For example, distributed freely by fee-supported professional organizations or else by the author him/her-self as a tool for self-promotion/brand building
Content made to promote something, isn't that an ads? Sure that could happen but hell nothing stop ads from being more high quality right now. I much prefer to watch content that's primary goal is to entertain, teach, etc... and not to sell you stuff.
> I don't see any reason why high-quality content can't survive on non-ad revenue, given that there are plenty of counter-examples.
Well nothing stop them to exist right now. The reverse is false though, content funded by ads currently only exist based on that good ad targeting.
Personally I seriously hope Google push more Youtube Red and Google Contributor. Ad work for people that can't pay for it (or don't want to), we only need something for people that doesn't want ads but can pay instead.
If a huge proportion of the internet economy stopped existing, the only real losers would be the big ad firms like google. I think we can all happily live without 99% of youtube's shit
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, though the last time I said it people thought I was a complete loon and down-modded me to oblivion:
If we had real, viable micropayment services, where you could click a mouse button and spend $0.002 to read an in-depth news article or $0.008 to watch a YouTube video (these amounts are probably more than the content owners are getting per-impression from the ad networks), I think ads would mostly die out and these sites would be self-supporting.
Unfortunately there's 2 things that make this more complex and far more expensive.
1) any pricing that did this would have to replace ctr * ad_pricing(keyword, site) * (1 + VAT) + admin_cost(for keeping track of a billion customers) + cost per transaction from banks (2% + 0.25$ is typical)
So to replace a 1% CTR 5$ keyword ad (anything relating to financials, insurance or credit cards) we're talking a "micro"payment of at least 0.25 + 0.050.2 1.21 = 0.31 EUR. This is ignoring a number of costs (such as chargebacks). (assuming 21% VAT)
And here's how the money gets divided up in such a scenario:
Bank: 17 cents
Government: 10 cents
Site owner: 4 cents
Lowering the amount the site owner gets doesn't really reduce the amount the user pays. Anything less than about 30 cents is a non-starter. If you paid the site owner nothing, it would be 28 cents.
If we go through ad networks instead, and companies pay for ads through bank transactions, bank gets nothing (aside from the fees on business accounts on both sides, which aren't per-transaction costs), and the government gets 8% (assuming 33% profit margin for the ad network, which is high, and 25% corporate tax). If you "avoid" tax like most ad networks do, the government gets very little, 1-2% at most.
2) Starting this up requires violating a Nash-equilibrium. A huge number of people need to seriously damage their own business in order to make this happen before it can happen.
And that's ignoring problems that this would allow governments, banks, courts, ISPs and ... to block content based on controlling the financial system (which is a necessity to combat tax fraud anyway, blocking payments because either courts or governments don't agree with the transaction is something that constantly happens).
You could of course try to get the government to drop 90% of their VAT for internet transactions, and banks to stop charging for payments, and ... but good luck with that.
All you're doing is proving my point. The banks and government should not be getting $0.27 cents! That defies the whole definition of the word "micropayment". A micropayment has to be workable at less than $0.01, otherwise it's not a micropayment system.
Basically, your whole argument is "it can't be done within the status quo". No shit, sherlock. If it could be done, someone would have done it already. That's why the status quo has to be changed.
Top sites and apps: Facebook, Google, New York Times, Gmail, Podcasts (that are increasingly ad supported), Google Maps, etc.
Most of the content that trends on hn. Long tail of content that lets you get an answer to just about anything on Google.
There's also services like Blogger, which I don't think have advertising, but since Google is probably the biggest player in the ad industry then I guess its existence relies on ads. Even web browsers like Firefox indirectly rely on ad money.
All of those services would do just fine charging for their service if they had to. Especially if their competition started doing it too.
I was referring to all the shit that wouldn't survive, like blog spam, scam/malware parked domains, etc. That crap makes up a huge part of the Internet, and nobody will miss it.
Web advertising is on the same level as spam as far as I'm concerned. They both depend on gullible and ignorant people who don't know any better clicking through. Just look at Google search result ads today vs 5 or 10 years ago. It's harder and harder to tell the difference between ads and results because they need to trick people.
Browser-integrated adblockers can do better, because they have access to the page content. Host-based blacklists don't work as well; they can only handle hosts that serve ads and nothing else, not hosts that serve both ads and non-ads.
But yeah, host-based blacklisting is the only approach with a hope of working outside the browser. Transparently proxying web traffic wouldn't (and shouldn't) work with HTTPS, and is an incredibly bad idea even with HTTP.
> But although the company said it plans to roll out the technology internationally, it is not yet clear when Irish customers will feel the benefit. [emphasis added]
http://www.numerama.com/magazine/24803-free-propose-aussi-le...