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posted by
martyb
on Wednesday September 21 2016, @08:12AM
from the NOW-we-know-what-the-'Plus'-is dept.
from the NOW-we-know-what-the-'Plus'-is dept.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/13/12890050/adblock-plus-now-sells-ads
A story at The Verge reveals the newest plan for the company behind Adblock Plus, they are entering the ad network business. In exchange for 20% of your revenue, you can get pre-approved ads that will show to users with acceptable ads enabled. While pitched as an easier alternative to the old process of getting ads approved, the ultimate goal is the same. Now, they will get a percentage of all acceptable ads though the program. The article points out that this is one big step closer to racketeering, as they are directly taking a 6% cut. Or, as the old gangsters would say, "would you rather pay me to keep 80% of something or keep 100% of nothing?"
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Life is to you a dashing and bold adventure.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday September 21 2016, @02:31PM
The reason we all love ad-blockers is that nobody wants to see ads. It's not about how intrusive the ads are, it's that they're demanding bandwidth, screen space, eyeballs, all in an attempt to fool us into buying something we didn't really need. We're getting very good, collectively, at blocking ads out of our lives in a way we hadn't been able to do since the invention of mass media:
- Many of us don't watch TV broadcasts live, and can use the 30-second skip on our recorded TV device to go right past any ads that might be buried there.
- Adblockers have collectively blocked out many if not most of the ads that attempt to be served up online.
- Newspaper and magazine ads are rapidly going the way of the newspaper, namely the dustbin of history.
- Mailer ads and catalogs are going straight into the garbage, unread, by the people they are really targeting (the ones with the disposable income to buy what they're selling).
- Internet ads are being blocked by various ad-blockers, ABP being one of them.
The upshot of all of this is that right now, the marketing industry is desperately trying everything they can to get our eyes on their stuff, but it isn't really working. And that's a great thing for cutting down on waste, because we're no longer getting exposed to propaganda that convinces us we absolutely need stuff we don't need. That's not to say products aren't sometimes useful, but the way that we should be finding useful products is driven by us searching for the stuff we're looking for, not marketing people forcing us to look at ads for things we probably don't want.
And yes, that means websites that rely on advertising to make ends meet are going to go away. I'm OK with that: The really good online publications are moving to a more subscription-based or donation-based model anyways.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Capt. Obvious on Wednesday September 21 2016, @02:56PM
Except for that series of content producers called newspapers. Like 90% of their revenue was lost in the switch to subscription/ads on the web, so reporters are being laid off. The "donations" model means that Boros or Adelson buys the paper and runs it at a loss, but where's the harm of having a few billionaires control the news?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 21 2016, @03:59PM
>where's the harm of having a few billionaires control the news?
you mean like they already do?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday September 21 2016, @04:26PM
You mean like we have now? The entire mainstream entertainment complex in the US amounts to, at most, 5 companies.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Wednesday September 21 2016, @11:43PM
Entertainment, yes. There used to be (in the 90's) local papers that weren't under a couple of corporate umbrellas. Most of the news is generated at the "newspaper" level.
Now, Bezos owns the Washington Post, Murdoch owns the WSJ, and it goes on. Newspapers went from being profitable things (which encouraged people to invest in them to make money) to money sinks (where people invest in them to control the news.) In addition to the latter being less socially good, people can split profit many ways, allowing for minority owners. Control of public discourse... less so.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 22 2016, @12:11AM
> There used to be (in the 90's) local papers that weren't under a couple of corporate umbrellas.
I think you over-estimate. In the 80s I lived in a state with a population under a million. There were 2 papers in the big city and then a handful of other local town papers. They we are all owned by larger companies. Sure there were more than 5 total owners, but a concentrate among rich 30 owners or rich 5 owners isn't that big of a difference.
(Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Thursday September 22 2016, @06:31AM
I mean, if you look at really rich groups of 30 (say, teams of sports organizers) where a lot of the wealth is illiquid, you'll see they have a far different profile than groups of 6 with more liquid wealth. See how the football group that Trump was part of, compared to the smaller group of 6 that successfully joined the NFL. Or the current NBA owners meetings vs. when Google execs are on Apple's board.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday September 21 2016, @04:03PM
That's not to say products aren't sometimes useful, but the way that we should be finding useful products is driven by us searching for the stuff we're looking for, not marketing people forcing us to look at ads for things we probably don't want.
Exactly. There's a place for commercialism and "advertising" (if you can call it that): when I'm shopping for stuff, I'll frequently Google for stuff, and many times will try out shopping.google.com to find internet retailers who have an item so I can price-compare. That's basically advertising, but if I'm specifically looking for Product X, then yes, I do want to see who's selling it and a site that shows me that is more than welcome.
Another thing I'm all in favor of is a site that shows me things like "people who looked at this product bought this other product". I've found a lot of stuff on Amazon that way; frequently I'll look at one product, but then I'll see that other people ended up buying some competing product, so I'll go look at that and find that it's a better deal, has better reviews, etc. Of course, neither of these things does much to employ or profit "advertisers"; the latter is something done entirely by the retailer (Amazon) internally to boost sales among its own customers, and anyone who's in the business of doing advertising for a separate client company would be out of a job if this were the only advertising (not saying that's a bad thing....).
And yes, that means websites that rely on advertising to make ends meet are going to go away. I'm OK with that: The really good online publications are moving to a more subscription-based or donation-based model anyways.
Or they could do advertising the old-fashioned way, sorta like PBS does it: "This story brought to you by so-an-so....", or they could just put up a static image advertisement, served from the site itself rather than a 3rd party, and coded/named so it's not easily distinguished from the site's content by automated scripts.